Is it worth having multiple characters and specializing in a particular class? Or will they all end up with all the special abilities anyway?

Whats the point of choosing a side when you create a new one?

You only get 20 skill points - that's enough to get all of the universal skills and all of the skills for a single class, or to get a few key skills for 2 or more classes so that you become a more versatile character.

Personally, I've got three characters set up:

Heavy Character, specializes in soldier and medic
Medium Character, specializes in engineer and soldier
Light character, specializes in medic and operative

If you go into more than one class with a character, you cant get all of the skills for that class, but I find that (engineer aside) most classes have a few skills that really arent all that useful, and arent necessary to play the character well. So far, engineer is the only class that I've taken every single skill on - for the others, there are plenty you can skip to save points (like skipping the adrenaline/metabolism stuff on medic, or sticky grenade/turret control on operative, or some of the grenade skills on soldier). Still, I like to set up each character so that he can effectively play two classes, so that I can always switch if one or the other is needed more in a match.

I'm awful about creating ALT's, be it an RPG (Dragon Age, Fallout 3), an MMO (Champions Online, DCU) or whatever.

I just love character creation...

So yeah, right now I'm rocking 4 characters... one for each class and all of them are pretty radically different.

Also you level quickly and level difference is not fatal in this game, so I think you might be depriving yourself by not getting a few alts.

To setup which side (Resistance/Security), you prefer.

Pretty much, it's for the game to TRY to put you on said preferred side. Especially, playing with friends, etc.

At least that's what I believe..

The side you select on creating a new character decides which opening cutscene plays before you get to the customisation thing, and which version of the character is shown on the character select screen, and which weapon skins are shown as default on the weapon selection and customisation menu.

Being on PS3, I'm not sure if Hippnotic's comment is also true, but it would make sense for that to be the case for multiplayer.

As for multiple characters, there are about 50 abilities, and you only get to buy 20 of them for a character - that leaves a LOT of possible combinations you can build. Multiple characters = multiple playstyles catered for without the need for regular re-speccing.

I think its a good idea to have a few set up, i plan on 3 also.

Medium maxed out engi

medium maxed out medic

and skinny maxed out covert.

I gotta say i tryed them all and really didnt like the fat guy slow and slow some more, and he only really takes two more hits then hes dead so i didnt really see the point of that tbh.

lol might even have time to max out a fields ops aswell whilst psn is down :S ( new i should of gettin a fkin xbox!)

Good post, mate.

I'm going to start expanding my level 12 soldier into Engineer skills!

I'm only playing one character at the moment (with universal, medic and engineer talents) but the more I think about it, the more I actually want to change him to Medic/Operative and create another one for Soldier/Engineer. Or maybe Medic/Soldier and heavy body-type for the health boost. That would make it a bit harder to reach dying teammates, though. Hmm.

"Dual-class" seems to be feasible, since there seems to be no "need" to really get *all* abilities for a single class.

Another good reason to set up a new alt is to complete challenges. If you are having trouble completing a challenge with your high level it's because the enemy AI gets more difficult as you rank up. I'm pretty sure the AI is based off your level, so at level 1, the AI won't have any abilities, but at level 15 they all have buffs, put out turrets and are a real nuisance.

Feels weird that I can't gain any more abilities. Not really used to it. Yeah, I'm aware of what they're doing but I'm not a fan of starting things over again.

Currently only working on one to unlock everything but I'm sure i'll roll security to learn the other side of the story.

I have 4 characters so far. 1 at level 20 and the other 3 at level 10. Each specialize in each class.

I never did like respecing (Although I do like the option to) so I went off and created 3 other unique characters.

(I like playing dressup too, so sue me)

My first character, Engineer is heavy, with the chinzor or Maximus as my primary and mossington as my secondary.

My second character, Soldier is also heavy, with the gotlung or EZnade as my primary and the Gorund with a grenade launcher as my secondary

My third character, Medic is medium, with a silenced Rokstedi and a silenced tampa.

My 4th character, Operative is light, with a silenced carb-9 or silenced barnett, with a silenced machine pistol as a secondary.

Once these guys are all at level 20, I'm gonna go off and make a Jack of All Trades character as my fifth.