Hmm…
I never play sniper (in any game), its just not my playstyle.
I only play engineer for the repair/disarm ability.
I only play assault for the plant c4 ability.
Fops or medic it is then. 
Maybe new or improved abilities will change this, always going to be a fine balance though.
Hmm, I’ve already been accused of false advertising DB by saying it ‘captures the magic of ET’, we’re getting to a point where I may need my quote changed or removed out of fear of a lynching from ET fans 
I am going to keep an open mind about these changes. The more I think about it I find myself liking it more and more. I guess some people are going to be sore just cause its not ET, never was, and is moving away from it in some large regards. I never found a game like ET to be appealing JUST because it had classes. I never found a game to be good JUST because it has 1 unique feature, in other words, or a game bad because it lacks 1 or 2 features. So I am definitely keeping an open mind.
I like the idea of removing grenades from certain classes and making it a feature to specific classes.
From skimming a few responses I can tell people are getting caught up over the class-character distinction. I think people are pre-judging this a bit and that distinction is going to be more of a semantic one. It sounds like we’ll still have a class of characters that can heal, that can give ammo, that can drop turrents, focus on assaults, etc. etc… The biggest departure seems to be planting and disarming as well as secondary objectives. Honestly, that is the furthest thing from my concerns about the changes to the game.
I think people should just keep an open mind about the coming changes. I definitely am.
We only need a pogo stick to replace the “bug” from W:ET and DB is ready for mainstream… Yay for change! 
Now I know why they chose not to include my “Objective-based gameplay is back!” quote
Continued thanks to you all for making so many constructive and objective posts. We are extremely mindful of what you think - it’s one of the pillars of the game. We’re really keen to get this patch out so we can see how it affects the way you play.
[QUOTE=Protekt1;460720]
I like the idea of removing grenades from certain classes and making it a feature to specific classes.
From skimming a few responses I can tell people are getting caught up over the class-character distinction. I think people are pre-judging this a bit and that distinction is going to be more of a semantic one. It sounds like we’ll still have a class of characters that can heal, that can give ammo, that can drop turrents, focus on assaults, etc. etc… The biggest departure seems to be planting and disarming as well as secondary objectives. Honestly, that is the furthest thing from my concerns about the changes to the game.
I think people should just keep an open mind about the coming changes. I definitely am.[/QUOTE]
Let me preface this by stating that I’ve only been playing since yesterday.
I feel like your opinion is most in line with how I’m feeling. Special/Class abilities will still be there in general and if some characters get new or upgraded abilities then there won’t be just Fops and Medic teams as some have stated. Making frag grenades a character ability is one way to do that. I think that many won’t want to miss out on them as it fits in many people’s play styles. For the record, I didn’'t think DB was spammy at all, in the two days I’ve been playing, but I absolutely get the reasoning.
About class-agnostic objectives: I think we’ll see how that turns out pretty well in testing and some have already stated solutions if it doesn’t work well.
A problem I see with the character-focus is, as others have already mentioned, that characters aren’t distinguishable enough. Especially in a fast-paced game like this.
Will come back with thoughts after I’ve tested this.
I salute you SD for doing this, “balls out” kind thing, it’s what the alpha is for and what DB in my opinion needs. We can go on and on with the small changes here and there but i.e. taking the grenades out will make the classes uniqie abilities show their effectiveness so much more clearly. Hopefully you/we can get the characters spot on with, maybe, a few of more of these things! (I’m not saying “screw the nades forever” obviously)
It’s just a shame that some people read “test this shizzle” as “final changes”.
I’m split if i like it or not, I see many goods in this Drastic changes proposal but I see some uncertainty in the gameplay.
So Testing this for a while should clarify all this .
Just a note about nades ,soldiers doing last objective in Waterloo was coming too strong with the nades ,I was been bombarded of nades by like 3-4 soldiers while trying defusing I guest if all characters can plant there will be less nades flying around , might be a good thing .I like nades but too much is like not enought
I guess that is indeed a problem. Despite having basically mixed classes, it might be a good idea to keep the previous class system - as “primary role”. As such it would be easy to distinguish which player can arm/defuse fastest. Overal I never liked the idea, that my hole team is alive - except the engineer; So we lost. In some ET mods, you can take the uniform of a fallen teammate - e.g. become the engi (if he’s body has not been completely gibbed). But I always though man - if I could just finish arming that dyna, maybe I am not as smart as an engi, but c’mon the dyna is already laying there (and sometimes you have like an eternity to defuse it, but you know your doomed already.)
Now at least I can arm it myself - and even drop it g.
While some of this stuff is interesting in competition, different tactics like take out the engi first… its very frustrating in Pub, usually I end up being engineer, because lemming medic protecting the engineer does not work either if that guy moves badly.
I think it will now be more a fight for area control, which I think should be good for competition, and take some frustration from Pub.
Lastly guys at SD think about Synergy, different mercs should have different effects on each other. Maybe someone loves proxy, as such being soon to her makes his heart pound; and gives him a boost!
I hope this change is going to be good 
lots of pitfalls there on the way, but that is a property of the golden path.
I won’t lie in saying that I am highly skeptical towards some of the changes here, however it won’t ruin me to test them out and see what we can gain. When I start breaking things down without past bias… I think I will like a lot of it actually.
Currently my primary concern here is about the agnostic objs. I understand the reasoning behind this and it could work out quite well, but some things would have to happen. If each class/character indeed served an equally appealing team role regardless of the obj then you would still have the “class dynamic”; it just wouldn’t be as rigidly defined. The only real loss here is the importance of killing and gibbing the obj class, which adds an exciting and strategical dynamic. I personally would prefer it if there was still the class specific objs for that reason, but that classes were appealing regardless of whether they were needed for the obj or not. The one thing that I would really like to see is map flow oriented class specific side objs though.
Important to note however is that global objs like the doc run are still highly appealing, so that should be taken into consideration. I like the fact that certain classes will be able to perform tasks faster, which still gives incentive towards playing them in a comp environment if your all about the fine details. If anything I see these changes making the pub game less frustrating, but I don’t see them intimidating the comp game as well. Will have to test before coming to any conclusions though.
LoL style character bans would be an interesting dynamic to test too though. If you know your opponent has someone who is too effective with a certain character loadout you can sabotage them! Of course this wouldn’t be nearly as game changing with the incoming flexibility of characters.
The characters, no classes change sounds very radical indeed. But from an innovative point of view I REALLY approve of the idea. It is quite a challenge to level this out, but if done properly with our input I am very confident this will allow a much better “class”-depth of the game. Looking forward to it!
Pfft… all I see this is as a ploy to sell load outs. As no doubt plans will include (after they have eased this on us) options to have your favorite skin with a equipment load out of your choosing. So Dirty Bomb of Duty with it’s single game mode, that has mixture two of objectives types is left with a one trick pony gameplay differentiation… objectives.
Whats the point of gibbing the engineer/soldier over the shooting the other alive player shooting at you. When anyone can do the objective, it cheapens the whole tactical fast paced shooter I have come to enjoy. The only target you will now prioritise when presented with a choice is the medic… fun & thought provoking.
If you are dead set on this wonderful idea would you SD, please consider keeping the status quo for a competitive mode with it’s own (current) rule set with predefined classes. This is akin to when I attempted to play Guild Wars 2 after listening to all the hype about not needing healers and tanks in a mmorpg. The end result however, was a gameplay equivalent of a concoction of diarrhea, vomit & HIV. Hey this is a shooter though, so you have to cater to [strike]morons[/strike] individual playstyles so I suppose it will go down a storm. As the changes suit a TDM game and god knows everyone loves TDM, just ask your 8 year old son.
The only positive from this, is the one objective class to rule and in the darkness bind them approach. Is that by proxy, it will paper over the crap map design shortening the time taken in a match. Just another reason to go down this road then, I will get my coat shall I?
The way I seem to understand it is just that the class specific objs will be gone, not necessarily the classes? The classes just won’t be as restricted in terms of what they do and how you play them from my understanding of the read. Characters defined by unique abilities rather than weapon sets seems worth testing. Idk how far SD plans to take it, but would something like pseudo classes be weird too if they were balanced well? The class roles still exist for the team combat/support dynamic, but obj roles are now shared to an extent. I’m waiting to see how it goes with all global objs, and considering doc run is my favorite obj type from the past and was global maybe it will lead to more new obj types of that nature.
Also the whole class specific obj concept actually reminds me of the class support vs combat role discussion. Example being that we all have different ideas of how a class like the medic should function, but not that they couldn’t all co-exist. If anyone can do the obj you obviously lose the tactical focus of gibbing out the obj class, but then your still focusing on gibbing out the classes/players that are giving a team the most momentum at a given moment. Plus if the engineer constructs at 2x the speed of any other class your still going to focus them down, but you won’t be able to bring a team to a full stop by killing+gibbing one player in that aspect. I still don’t know if the dynamic was that critical or not at this point considering, but then again it’s just a test so why not find out.
Like most of the previous post not really sure about all characters having ability to to use c4, pliers etc. Very willing to give it a try and see what happens. Thanks for the excitement with the release of the next couple updates. Character and weapons seem more reasonable to make extreme changes to, but not the core gameplay, ‘team’ objective.
I play engie/assault 80% of the time because I want to have a purpose. Chase the EV down and repair, Im a engie… its what I do. Sacrifice my life and not feel as bad when Im lying dead because I know the medic that just killed me cant destroy the barrier I just constructed. Job complete!
Would be nice to let T-Rat have a choice of a few more primary and secondary weapons balanced for the engie character… limited amount. Too many weapons… whats the point? But then again you have to make $ somehow. More weapon skins and tags, not weapons themselves.
Cant wait to test. Good stuff and keep up the great work.
After a night’s rest there are a few things that also occured to me:
Also, I think SD could potentially make a huge mistake here(a possible pitfal) by making all merceranies viable in every situation. It’s OKAY for certain mercs be not that usable in a particular situation (because the team already has a character that fulfills that role (medic/engi etc etc). That problem should be allievated by having OTHER mercs that the particular player ALSO likes even if it’s a different role.
When you have 20+ Mercs it shouldn’t matter too much if mercs are classbound because there is enough CHOICE for that not to be a great concern at all. In League of Legends when someone picks a champion which goes mid and is an AP carry I’m not gonig to be sad and just pick another character in for example support I also love playing. Even if it’s a totally different role. And just like Leauge of Legends where you can select a character that’s non-optimal (another AP carry) you can select another Engineer even if the entire team is composed of 5 engineers; But unlike LoL where you’re stuck for the next 20-60 minutes in that role and you screw up your team pernamently you can just switch choose between 1 of the 5 characters you have currently selected during a round.
However, that brings me to something I hope will be implemented. Now you have to go the barracks to select your character. I’d like to see that moved to before a round starts, or when you just join a server. there’s always some time before a round starts to choose your characters for that round. (it should remember the characters also from when you played last). the interface shouldn’t just show the artwork of that particular character, how awesome it is but instead show a 3D model of that character doing silly/cool animations. Which already adds some personality to them. A static piece of artwork doesn’t really do that.
Also, there should be mercs that do crazy paranormal stuff. Or just crazy items. Like a medic character having a gun that shoots syringes wiht colourfuld deadly liquids.
I just hope it wont come down to 5 medics chain reviving doing all objectives.
