Thoughts on the homogenezation of vehicles

[Death2All]

My friend and I were having a discussion about this earlier today. Just wondering what the the community's general consensus is on the homogenization of vehicles.


What do I mean by that? I mean how there's a huge decrease in the number of vehicles with independent roles, instead we're having a select few vehicles with multiple variable roles. For example, a Vanguard equip with AA guns now fills the void for a Skyguard.


The gripe I personally have with it, is that it sort of defeats the whole purpose of the the idea behind the whole "class system" idea. The idea that they implemented classes so that players could easily distinguish what an enemy is based solely on their appearance, I.E. a medic will have Crosses and a medic fanny pack and will be able to heal/revive people.

I think think it's a little odd that that concept is pretty much thrown out the door, since Tanks can fill multiple roles this time around and you'll never know what exactly it's equipped with.

In PS1 when you saw a Marauder you knew exactly what it was capable of based on which gunner seats were occupied. You knew that if it didn't have a gunner in the passenger (chain gun) spot and you were in an aircraft you'd have an easy kill because it couldn't defend itself. Vice versa, if it had a chaingun you knew to back off.

Also multiple vehicles with individual roles certainly added an increase in variety on the battlefield. I'm just saddened that we may only see Prowlers/Vanguards/Magriders on the battlefield, all spec'd differently, instead of seeing a bunch of different vehicles that could all fill the role.

I know I'm probably clinging onto PS1 desperately, and I know PS2 is far to along in it's development for this to be changed, but like I said, I was just curious what the general consensus is on Small number of vehicles that can fill multiple roles vs. Lot's of vehicles each with their independent role.




EDIT: Sorry, I wanted to add a "neutral/wait and see" option but I can't figure out how to edit the poll.