Question I REALLY want answered.

[exLupo]

As a few others in this thread have noted, this system is not new nor is it untested. It's fairly clear that there are EVE vets on the PS2 dev staff. Both from some of the comments made in regards to the sandbox and econ systems as well as the timelock skill progression.

From the way things have been said in various videos and posts, every player will slowly unlock tiers of basic gear. Any player will be able to pinch hit for any basic role. However, in the example above, MAX may be only available to players who have allocated skill time to HA. If you take that back to EVE, that time allocation may be a serious investment.

I've been playing EVE off and on since '04 and my oldest character can fly a large variety of basic (known as Tech 1) ships. Frigates to battleships. Mining barges to haulers. However, for nearly every Tech 1 there is a Tech 2 equivalent and even Tech 3 in some instances. My best can only fly two empires (of four, not including pirate factions) Tech 2 ships for a handful of types. Only one of Tech 3. And then you have to get weapon skills and I've only unlocked one type of missile and two types of lasers. On top of that there is an entire skill system for industry and market management and much, much more.

The point I'm making (yea yea, get to it) is that there will likely be a ton of paths and not enough time to follow them all deeply before the servers eventually shut down in time for PlanetSide 3. Even if everyone can switch to basic AV to help repel a vehicle push, if those vehicle pilots are specialists who have put in years to perfect their skillset, they'll have an advantage assuming "skill" levels are still the same.

On top of all of this, Smed was talking about spending finite resources on customization in a recent panel video. Roll this again back to EVE. You can get Tech1 guns damn near everywhere and for pennies. Tech2 is less available and 10, 100 or 1000 times more expensive depending on how desired the gear is. The system looks like it will be balanced on two facets. Making the choice between a wide but so-so skill set or a narrow but powerful specialization and then dealing with resource scarcity to limit the tools you actually have.

I would be fairly surprised if they made deep specialization in any one tree something you could realistically accomplish in less than six or more months. Total fantasy but it could go something like this: Go half way up MA to HA. Max out HA. Go up Agile to unlock Rexo. Max out Rexo. Max out ATV. Max out Medic but Rexo can't use the field medic backpack so you're limited to basic healing guns. You skip AV because you can't fit both HA and AV on your one "large" back slot. Since you're a perfectionist, you've taken all of these skills to 5 (EVE has a 1-5 system) and you're 8-12 months in. Now you're tired of being a heavy boot and want to spend time in tanks. Welcome back to Day 1. Rinse/Repeat.

And make sure your empire has the right resource flow or you won't be able to use the specialist weapon variants you've unlocked.

edit: I don't think the time-to-skill will be in EVE's ballpark. That's just not the kind of investment FPS gamers can usually keep the attention span for. However, from what has been said, the impression I get is one where, if you specialize, you'd best get good with basic tools in other trees for a good while.

[Malorn]

That is certainly one way it can go, but that said...

In the Public Panel Video, Matt said this

Day 1 you'll be able to switch between playing a Medic, playing an Engineer, driving a Tank, all those sorts of things. But later on as you advance your character you'll be able to either really deeply specialize in any one of those trees or be a generalist and sort of pick and choose the certifications you want to get.

If you can do all of those things in one day then it seems as though the time to train certs (at least the core certs required to fill the role) will be very quick, while true specialization might take a lot longer. This is in stark contrast to EVE where you need months just to be remotely competitive.

I think those of us that have played EVE are a bit fearful of the huge time investment it took to do anything useful in EVE. It does not sound like that is the case here from what Matt describes. The difference between an ultimate Vanguard Driver and the Day 1 Vanguard driver doesn't seem like it will be that big, other than maybe more upgrade options for the ultimate vannie driver.

[exLupo]

I think the core concepts will be very similar but PS2 will give you freebies and the time-to-unlock sliders will be much different.

Everyone gets 1 rank of Frigate(MA), Cruiser(HA), Battleship(Tank), Mining Barge(AMS) and Indy(Galaxy). You'll have to train Cruiser (HA) to unlock Battlecruiser (MAX). In EVE, Lv5 for 1x skills are currently, before implants, about 7 days total from inject to max? Think maybe 3 in PS with in-combat bonus factored. And also without higher multipliers for anything or the stacked depth of something like a Fleet Command ship that takes 30 days of X, 20 more days of Y and then another 170 days of Leadership skills to even begin to make it worthwhile. EVE Lite. I'm in control of my fate and your choices are important but I don't have to dedicate, say, 280 days to a charisma bender I'm still avoiding.

[Hamma]

Yea EVE was very deep skill tre wise, I think we are going to see a more hybrid concept of that type of training.

[megamold]

i would just like to make a small point that alot of ppl seem to be neglecting,
not everyone will WANT to play every role even tough it might be possible to do so.
for ex: im a heavy assault first and a sniper second i try my hand at some vehicle driving but not often. why? because i mostly like to play a assault and sniper role
i suck at infiltrating
i suck at flying

so why would i want to put time into certing these? cause im not gonna use them.
there will be players who will want to do everything and they will need to put in the effort to get to the point where they can do everything but i do not think this is true for the majority of players.
i will most likely cert for a mosq at some point but mostly to do some exploring and have some transport, but i'm not gonna waste my time with it in battle cause i would be having more fun on the ground with a gun in my hands

personally im gonna start with some certs in heavy assault and basic sniper certs and upgrade my assault first and my sniper when its required


i have faith in the dev team and i'm sure ps2 will not be ps1 but i dont think thats a bad thing
hell if they just rehashed ps1 and called it ps2 i would most likely be pissed off for them not taking it seriously, but they obviously are so im happy