Can We Revisit The A.S.P. System?

The A.S.P. system is one of the few things added to this game over the years that I felt was genuinely a step in the right direction. The augmentations have really helped flesh out some of the infantry classes by providing them extra versatility or specialization, and there just aren't enough systems like that in the game.

First and foremost, I believe it's time to move this system off of prestige, so it can be accessed by new players before battle rank 100. While I understand the necessity to limit it initially in case of imbalances, as well as give veteran players a reason to grind again, I would say enough time has passed where these are no longer concerns. That doesn't mean we need to dump the prestige system entirely, and honestly it could be reworked as a way to give consistent rewards so that people want to keep gaining gobs of exp, but that's not the focus of this discussion.

As I stated before, the benefits from A.S.P. really help with giving players a sense of specialization, and breathing new life into a class is a way to keep the game feeling fresh and fun. Right now this fun is being denied to newer players, and I feel it is an egregious misstep, and tends to lead to a perceived (and actual) gap in power.

With that said, the A.S.P. system is far from perfect, and while some of the skills are nearly oppressively powerful (looking at you Jackhammer secondary) there are far more that are equally middling. I personally feel that by fleshing out more of these abilities, and possibly even expanding the A.S.P. system to some sort of skill tree similar to what you find in an MMORPG, you could not only bring more refreshing mechanics to the table, but also begin to fix some of the mismatched dynamics that plague this game. On top of that, A.S.P. reset tokens bought from the cash shop would no doubt help this games less-than-realized monetization model.

I honestly have no doubts that the A.S.P. system as a means of specialization is far, far superior to trying to mix things up with implants, which have honestly fallen flat in most regards. If nothing else, this game desperately needs a way for players to specialize their character so that not only do they feel that they are bringing something unique to their squad/platoon, but also stop every player from being a jack-of-all-trades, which is one of the biggest contributing factors to stagnant fights and stale gameplay.