In their quest to ensure Planetside 2's classes work in Planetside: Arena, the upcoming battle royale iteration of their futuristic shooter, Daybreak Games had to take some deep cuts, even though the classes still hint at their best usage.
If you've been following Daybreak's planetary foray into battle royale, you know that unlike Planetside 2, Planetside Arena only has three classes - assault, engineer and medic.
While seasoned Planetside 2 veterans might find this a bit restrictive, what with the original game offering a vastly more intricate system of six classes, Planetside: Arena's Lead designer Tony 'Carto' Morton said that the three available classes should still be sufficient to let players shake things up when they're bored.
Anyway, Planetside: Arena's first class is the assault and if the name isn't self-explanatory enough, assaults are built for pure conflict and their passive means they run 10 to 20 per cent faster than the other classes.
Assaults can also lay down defensive spikes, which are something like beacons that heal friendlies while harming enemies. Add to that their ability to propel themselves forward quickly and you've got a pure killing machine.
Next up is the medic and as you'd expect, their main ability is healing friendlies in a given radius but they do have a few more aces up their sleeve. There's a shield regeneration totem, which does exactly what it says and the ability to revive fallen soldiers quicker, as well as open chests faster than the rest.
Last but not least is the engineer class, Planetside: Arena's deployable specialists. Engies can deploy defensive walls and turrets, where the latter automatically detect and shoot enemies. We're yet to see how Daybreak went about this though, seeing as how Planetside 2's turrets are more like glorified enemy detectors than an actual real threat to players.
Daybreak Games
As the Auraxis lore would have it, Planetside: Arena takes place on a map called Echoes of Amerish, which is mini-Amerish for players of the original game. It picks up after the events in Planetside 2, when all that's left from the factions are some cosmetics.
We've got to admit though, Daybreak couldn't have provided a better justification for microtransactions if they tried and for once, we're looking forward to seeing some freedom, order and enlightenment flavoured cosmetics.
Planetside: Arena, a Planetside 2 battle royale by Daybreak Games
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