Well, personally I'd go for more of a specialist path. As you rank up you put points into different perks, like throwing grenades farther or running silently. Obviously, higher ranks would have better perks, but it'd be a way of being able to play how you want to without diverging too much from the basic gameplay.

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There's some things you just can't control in life...that's what telekinesis is for.

I'm not so sure about the class idea, but running around the bases and searching for weapons sound pretty fun to me.
Essentially, you would be able to customize yourself however you like, but given that you have enough space to carry them with you (like an inventory).

Perhaps weapon kits would suit you better?

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He's more for picking your loadout.

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Everything is MEEE! viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&p=6592#p6570

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Well, weapon kits as class replacements could fit in with both. Just change the class player limits to kit limits, and the innate health/etc. values to things that are only active given the kit you have. It'd take a little time, e.g. 5 seconds, to change a kit, so you can't sneak up to someone using the stealth weapon and then take out an LMG and blast him in the face with it.

See, the whole principle of having these structures things instead of customizing yourself however you like is a balance issue. It's easier to balance a few number of hard-set values rather than having to account for the rambo that puts all his points in grenade-throwing.

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To me it looks like many people think of classes (and/or equipment) quite backwards. I think it might be going on in big, commercial AAA games too to some extent, hence the bad experiences people have had with class systems.

I think that classes, and all weapons/equipment/whatever must enable certain, carefully considered gameplay. For example, if you want the gameplay to include a superior ability to kill enemies with great certainty from far away, sure thing, consider adding a sniper class or a selectable sniper rifle. But ONLY if you really want to enable that kind of gameplay and think it will make the overall game more fun!

I think it's a great error to add (for example) a sniper class/rifle just for the sake of it, and only then start to wonder how it could be made to fit into the gameplay you have or are going for. This is how silly classes/equipment and balancing issues come to be.

From gameplay's perspective, it's actually irrelevant if a feature is implemented as a class or a piece of equipment. The implementation is just a means to an end (the gameplay). Try to look beyond classes, equipment and whatever, and look into the gameplay that the class or equipment would bring with it.

For Running with Rifles, I would go with selectable equipment. To me classes would imply visually different character models (think of Team Fortress 2), and I think the production would be better off with avoiding that extra content work. The RWR characters are these generic, jolly soldier guys anyway, so just expand on the current idea of giving them sticks that go different kinds of boom!

This might seem a bit excessive and require a lot of coding, but I really think it would help with evening things out. My idea is a level system, but no the usual one .
What would happen would be is that every time you did something in the game that related to a certain class/knowledge (medic, soldier, stealth, bomber, sniper, etc.) you would gain points for it (like experience). So say, for medic knowledge, you helped fend someone that was hurt or surrounded, if you did that one time you get 2 points if medic knowledge. So every time you do something like that you get two points. So, there would be a bunch of different actions you could do to gain knowledge for each area. Some giving you more/less points depending on their difficulty to do. So, after you have gained enough experience to level up, a window would open (this would probably cause you to be immune to bullets until closed or a certain amount of afk time/ any time passes for it to automatically close to prevent people afking) and for the first level you would get to put in an OVERALL amount of, say, 3 points into the knowledge sets. So you would have the bars for each knowledge and a plus by it, and the bar would extend up to the cap for that knowledge. So, on the far right corner there would be a box that says the OVERALL points you have in each knowledge. So, if you had 10 points in medic knowledge and it cost 5 points to put ONE point into the main medic knowledge bar to level up that area, than you could put up to two points in the medic knowledge area. BUT, than your overall number of points that you had for all the areas would be reduced to one because you put two in the medic area. I hope this makes since, and as you leveled to higher rankings the cost for each point would rise, and the OVERALL points for each area would also rise. I think this would really help with the class things because as you leveled up each area, every, say, two levels in a certain area would give you a new weapon. Like, in the medic area after I put two points in it I would get a syringe that I could then heal players with after I dragged out of the line of fire (btw, dragging players should be added and players should be able to become wounded and fall to the ground so that there would actually be a reason for medics ). Just a thought I hope you will give it consideration

Wow dude, that was a massive necro.

I like your idea though. Having good interface and key-set for the actions would be quite hard to do though, not to mention the coding. I still like it, doesn't sound overpowered but adds a feeling of progression.
I think that it would go hand - in hand with the engineer idea: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=326

It being a necro is a good thing, right? Oh well
I have seen the engie before already, which I think would help. I don't know what actions you would do to get mechanic knowledge, but I love being an engineer. Plus, with the leveling up idea we would need to add either loadouts or have random drops from enemies which would allow you to receive and use you new weapons/tools/items if you wanted.