Originally Posted by TRex
In any given population, (just rough figures) 5% will be extra-ordinarily gifted, another 10-15% competent, leaving 80% of a population as medicre at best. If you only cater for the top 20%, you will have a niche game that may last for years and years but barely make note worthy profit. Catering for the 80% makes more sense for profit, but expect the attention span to not last longer than a year or so. Adding classes and cert trees to fit, gives extra cushioning to keep that attention span a little longer.
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Extra-ordinarily gifted at what exactly? Doing everything? You honestly don't think you'll have people with different affinities for certain activities over others?
I personally think you're way off base. It IS a (indirect) way to cater to the playerbase, but not how you think it does. People pay for games that are fun. Let's face it, a game that's not fun isn't worth playing. The idea of introducing classes is to give all players a role to fill that they find most applicable to what they want to do/what they're good at, furthered by the cert system. Having no classes made PS1 character progression stale, because there was one optimal setup that could respond to the most situations. THAT is what will lead people to stop playing, because a major aspect of the game is not inventive or interesting. And when people stop playing, they stop paying.