Originally Posted by Itharr

FFXI had something similar with their Job System. I loved it.

Not exactly. Information about the classes can be found on the main page so thankfully it doesn't violate any NDAs to talk about it. ^_^

In FFXI you started with a job, but could switch to any job you wanted when you wanted. Don't like being a warrior? Switch to a black mage. From my understanding the more you advance the more power you get and more jobs are unlocked to work on. Eventually you can pick a secondary job to complement your primary and do two things at the same time.

TR has a strict tier system that branches at level 5, 15, and 30. At level 1-4 you start out as a recruit and have pretty balanced and basic skills. At level 5 you can pick between a combat orientation (soldier) or a 'magic'/support orientation (specialist). If you went soldier then you branch again at 15 between combat that is just blanketing firepower and hoping you killed the ant with your carpet bombing (commando) or combat that is stealthy precision (ranger). At 30 you specialize again if you went the precision route to a close quarters "reach out and stab" approach (assassin) or the "one shot, one kill" precision of ranged combat (sniper).

Its very interesting and the use of cloneing makes revisiting those key levels easier to try out both branches of the field without having to make another level 1 character and doing the run and gunning again. Of course that's still a lot of levels and time. Once from 1-5, twice from 5-15, four times from 15-30, and eight times from 30 onwards.