Creating Specialization within PS2s Class System; A solution

[Helwyr]

There's been a lot criticism of PS2s Class system, particularly from PS1 players in that there's a lack of real specialization, or any sense of dedication to particular roles like PS1 had (pre BR40). I have a conceptual idea that I believe would resolve this without removing the class system and I would like to share it and hear your opinions.

The problem:

Currently everyone can be anything, all classes and vehicles in their basic form are open to everyone. This means that players can and will bring whatever class/vehicle that suits the needs of the moment and do so with ease. While there are means of enhancing roles via certs, this will only be a temporary limitation as there's no cap on how many certs you can have.

A secondary problem related to this is that certain abilities or combinations of abilities only really work well in gameplay if a small number of players have access to them and those players have to choose to sacrifice access to something else of value. The PS1 system with a BR cap of 23 or less made this possible, PS2s class system does not. The sort of abilities I'm thinking of are mostly the controversial ones, Galaxy AMS, Expert Hacking, A2A, and hybridization of classes as examples.

Finally SOE wants to make PS2 accessible, forcing players to choose a limited number of classes or vehicles at the start of the game isn't going to fly with SOE's plan. It's also unlikely they would abandon the class system at this stage of development. So, any changes can't remove the class system or mess with new player experience.

The Solution:

Specialization occurs optionally later in a characters development where only an advanced player will encounter it, and rather than just gain access to new cool stuff you have to abandon access to some of the classes or vehicles typically available to everyone to gain that access.

So, how would this work? There would be a number of Class and Vehicle Specialization that would open up once you'd maxed a particular cert or combination of certs. To access that you would also have to select an unrelated Class or sub section of Vehicles that you will no longer have access to, at all.

Using Hamma as an example who on this forum we're all familiar with as someone that loves flying the Galaxy. Also, those of us in beta know that the AMS on the Galaxy is something of a controversial topic, it may or may not end up in the live game, but if access were limited there would be fewer objections, so lets assume it's on the list of Specializations, lets call it "The Airborne Deployment Specialist" ...Hamma wants this, but now he has to close access to something else, picking one of the following...

The list being:
1) Heavy Assault
2) Light Assault
3) Engineer
4) Medic
5) Infiltrator
6) MAX
7) Aircav (ESF & Liberator)
8) Ground Assault (MBT & Lightning)
9) Support Vehicles (Galaxy & Sunderer)

Obviously in Hamma's case he can't choose option 9 as that's where the specialization is from. I've never seen Hamma in a video use an Infiltrator, so lets assume he picks this one, option 5. Now Hamma has access to certs that allow the Galaxy to work as an AMS, but he can no longer switch out to an Infiltrator or access any of their specializations.

The list of Specializations could be long, I'm not making a list at this time, as I'm sure everyone of them would be controversial and I don't want the focus of discussion at this point being on what ought to be on the list but rather the overall system.

Specializations could open access to more than one new cert, that's a balance issue. Players could have more than one Specialization, but they'll also be closing access to more classes and vehicles by doing so.

What if you change your mind? Well in addition to closing access to a class/vehicle a Specialization should also cost a decent amount of cert points to open it for use and subsequently improve the ability, just like any other certification. A player can scrap a specialization, but doing so does not refund those cert points. As such switching to and from Specializations isn't to be taken lightly, but it is possible.

End result is the new player experience and the class system remain intact, but layered on top is the Specialization system that transforms many advanced players into real specialist roles, giving a similar feeling in terms of end results to the original Planetside certification system.