From a long term Eve player perspective, I don't care if my suits are BPOs if the modules cost enough for death to sting. All they have to do is make sure that the modules are valuable enough.

"when your dropsuit is a BPO why should you ever use anything worse than your best dropsuit available?"

Because this is basically tiericide. Going up the tree isn't going to give you the huge jumps in power that going from standard to prototype does in the current Dust system. There's only the one level of each suit type. The point is to give each suit a particular role it excels at. like how Eve has cruisers that are good for brawling, kiting, sniping, repairing, drones, shields, armor, speed tanking etc. So you won't pick the "best" dropsuit, you'll pick the one that gives you the role you want to fill at that time. Suits higher up the tree will likely have more slots, making them more expensive to run for modest power increases and have higher meta levels which you have to take into account for matchmaking.

This also lets them do something else. Eliminate useless starter fits. You don't need cannon fodder suits that are no good for anything when every player starts with one role unlocked and unlimited suits for it.

I started playing Planetside 2 recently, and it seems like they're basically taking that game's approach to skills and increasing the complexity by about 10 times. Ie: rather than a handful of roles that you max out, each role leads to another one. The system described also has far more distinct suits built into it: 3 basic frames (light, medium, heavy), 4 basic roles, 4 racial variants of each role and then two specializations off of each of those. People talk about the proposed system as if it's going to be simple...well from what we've seen that's a kneejerk reaction without actually looking at what was shown. There's more complexity in it while being more accessible than what we have now. It's just that the complexity comes into picking the right suit for the job, rather than picking the right skills to make your suit super powerful.

So, benefits of the system shown to us:
1) More roles, no massive power advantage through simply having more SP (not as massive as now, anyway)
2) If you've invested in a suit you can always use it, even if you've been knocked down to using militia gear
3) Every player is fulfilling a legitimate role on the battlefield, no more useless noobs in frontline suits.
4) Clearly defined roles without power differentials built in means things are easier to balance, especially with weapons being locked to certain suits
5) Due to number 4 and the meta levels system, better matchmaking

Benefits of the current system:
1) Complex. Well, it's hard to understand why you should train one thing or another. Not really an advantage. I'd argue that having a larger number of suits balanced against each other makes the system more complex and interesting from a gameplay perspective. At least it LOOKS complex. It's also not very eve-like. If Eve had Dust's progression I wouldn't pick a ship to fill a certain role, I'd pick the ship that is the "best".
2) The super rich can use their wealth to stomp all over the poors, since they don't care if they lose a proto suit. The suit being inherently more powerful before modules are brought into play means the noob doesn't even have a chance. Not much of a benefit.

The suit will cost something, the modules, equipment and weapons. Tiericide is pretty relevant to the question I was responding to. "Why not always use your best suit?". Because there will be no "best suit". Once you've established that, then all you have to do is take the value of a dropsuit and push that into the value of modules. The only truly free suit will probably be the basic light / medium / heavy frames. The others will have modules etc to pay for.

Because the player in Eve can exist without a ship...

[...]

And the biggest difference, dropsuits are lost dozens of times in a night. Nobody loses more than a few ships in a weekend unless they're really trying to. Most ships are owned for a very long period of time which is where the emotional connection to the ship comes in. You don't really get that with something you have to replace dozens of times in a night. This is something that was talked about at Eve Vegas.

Yeah, I remember when I lost my first ship, an Arbitrator (Amarr cruiser, big deal for a noob) that I had spent days mining for, I was devastated - by means of contrast, when I lost my first dropsuit I respawned and promptly lost about ten more.

I do sometimes get attached to particular fits though. Fits that I hit certain milestones in (first MVP, first 2000wp match etc), fits that are totally rubbish but still fun, fits that I just can't get rid of.

That, I believe, is the reasoning behind the BPO dropsuit thing.

And ultimately, despite not making a ton of sense lore wise, if the module costs are balanced right, it shouldn't make that much difference to the economy, or to the risk / reward ratio of using the more advanced suits.

EDIT: This is assuming I understood the progression presentation correctly and all suits are effectively becoming standard suits, with a relatively flat overall power curve as you get more specialised.

BPO's MUST STAY !!! We paid for them with lots of real money !!! IF they are not there than a hole lota people will also NOT BE !!!

NVM

Ok so if things like weapons and tanks cost materials to produce, than if I have a BPO original for a caldari LAV than it should give me a considerable discount on the materials needed to produce it, right ? Am I under standing this or not ?

Also it must give some very small advantage in the game and be a little more than just a cosmetic item, as it was in dust. This time perhaps balance BPO originals more so that it is not desirable to abuse them so much.

Not sure what you guys are talking about but the new talk about LEGION and character transfers is very exciting to me. I am starting to get interested in LEGION. I am saving for a new PC, perhaps and will try to learn more about EVE as I still have my 60 day free thing from the collectors edition.

+1 couldn't say it any better and you are absolutely right I hate matches where the other team gives up and only uses their starter suits its to easy and I hate it more then loosing.

@Maken

No, everything should have both a BPO and an associated cost. The Isk cost should roughly reflect the Isk cost of the materials necessary to make the item in question.

Ill sum it up quickly it as possible.

How quickly annoying it would be if you had to re-create attributes of your character every time you died?

Suits are being shifted to become more of your character than an module so things like cosmetics comes to mind.

The feeling of loss and reservation can be kept with modules you apply to the suits but the admiration for what the suit becomes only grows if the player gets to keep it instead of losing it every time they die. Espeically if its a cosmetic with limited life span.

I mean how many of you want to see the quafe suit fielded more often? Asoma? Oblivion? Hazard? there is a whole list of suits I refuse to wear because even though I have a supply of them and they have similar stats to other suits the fact is I cannot get anymore of them. So the most I can do is wear them in the warbarge to show off and thats it.

This goes back to the whole if you cannot afford to lose it dont fly it. BPO suits would alleviate the fear of losing special items earned or granted or obtained as well and would help increase player emotional investment into the suits.