A few very stupid Planetside 2 questions

[rangent]

I've never really played Battlefield longer than a few minutes at a friend's house, and never played Planetside 1 at all. I have a few questions about reading the HUD, and the game in general:

1) How do I tell players are enemies and which are friendly? Both infantry, and those in vehicles? (I started as Vanu Sovereignty)
2) What is a good class to start out as?
3) What should I do to help and stay out of the way?
4) How do I enable voice chat?

Sorry, and thanks for the help!

[Rabaan]

1) enemy's will have a red triangle pointing at them over their head, friendlies will have other colors depending if they're in your squad/ platoon/ outfit

2) it depends on your play style, you like running and gunning? heavy assault, or 'HA' for short, you like fixing armor, setting mines and turrets? engineer, i could go on an on.

3) your best bet to help without getting in the way is to play a medic, and get a squad, and follow them, heal them and revive them as necessary, shoot what enemy's you can, and have fun

4) if you push 'esc' in game and bring up the menu, then go to 'settings' ( its in the lower right corner, iirc ) you'll see an option for key bindings, then you'll see what buttons enable voice chat, i have mine bound differently than the default so that's the best i can do there.

I hope this helps, good hunting

[rangent]

Rabaan, thank you very much! This helps a ton! Looking forward to trying a medic out tonight.

[tgf]

Also a stupid question, but how does one "win"? Is there an overall objective or winner? Or does it just continue indefinitely?

[Tooterfish]

The game continues indefinitely. There are carefully, discreetly placed elements in the game which help maintain a constant threat and imminent sense of either victory or defeat for each empire. The overall objective is to be an active participant in an on-going struggle for dominance, which is achievable, but both rare and short-lived. The end game is limited only to your imagination.