Planetside 2 Removing my favorite aspect of PS1

[Malorn]

The root problem was that PS1's cert system, while awesome, did not scale. In the beginning it encouraged specialization because not everyone could do everything. As more potential certifications are introduced the only way to allow people to really use them without sacrificing their existing method of play is to expand the cert pool.

As the cert pool expands the player base becomes less-specialized as now we can do more stuff. While we might need to still specialize into the super-duper-ultra-advanced-hacking the majority of the playerbase used the expanded cert pool to become all-purpose soldiers complete with all the certs they need to handle any situation.

That turned Planetside from a great game where you can choose your own specializations into something where specialization didn't matter at all.

The class system is effectively the same as having certs with dependencies and limitations. It allows them to expand the roles over time and provide more specialization options without creating homogenized good-at-everything soldiers. It also allows them to add cool and powerful specialized abilities without worrying about players combining that ability with other powerful specialized abilities to create super soldiers. In this way they are much easier to balance and expanding on the certs and abilities scales very well into the future. Specialization remains relevant.