When some gamers heard that Command & Conquer 4 was going to be changed around a bit, and gaining some RPG mechanics, they didn't take it too well. After all, Command & Conquer is the grand-daddy RTS series. Why change up the fundamentals of the RTS formula now? On the other hand, some fans of the series thought that it things might need a change to keep the game fresh. 

Electronic Arts certainly wasn't kidding when they said they be introducing some gameplay changes to the mix. Today they went over some of these changes in a press release.

Class based play

Each faction will have offense, defense, or support "classes" to choose from. "Each class is unique, offering players different play styles, giving you tons of strategic options and coming with its own set of units designed to support your chosen style." This is probaly less like the class-based heroes of  Dawn of War II, and more like the class-based options you could pick in Command and Conquer Generals, where you could choose different 'builds' of your chosen faction (i.e you could play as the U.S with a focus on air power.) 

Mobile bases

"The Crawler is your giant, new, all-in-one mobile base that you control on the battlefield to produce new units, structures, powers and upgrades, each specific to the class and faction you chose to play with. Build units and store them in your hull as you move around the map and surprise your enemy with a sudden fury of units!"

Base-building is a core element of most RTS games -- this is probably the biggest change coming to the new C&C. If the Crawler is actually as almost customizable as a regular base is, perhaps it will make gameplay more interesting that you can move it around on the map. But on the other hand, some players may think that perhaps this is over-simplifying the base dynamic too much. Turning the base into a unit certainly seems to cut down on your strategic options for customizing your base -- not increase the things you can do with it.

Persistent Player Progression

In what appears to be an attempt to get gamers to maintain interest in online play, in the new C&C, every unit you kill will add experience points to your online profile. These points will unlock "new units, powers and upgrades."

This feature seems promising, but one pitfall may be that you'll have 'high-level' players owning newbies. Hopefully they'll build the correct match-making software for online play that will mitigate this problem.

This also might lead to unbalanced super-units that players unlock -- but only time will tell.

Blizzard's approach to this issue is to sustain interest in online play in Starcraft by making all factions as balanced as possible, thus improving the strategic capacity for the game.  

5vs5 Multiplayer

Previously, the limit in online play was 3vs3. This is now being raised to 5vs5 for "objective-based 5v5 multiplayer."

5 on 5 battles could certainly be pretty crazy, chaotic and fun. For high-level players, making a strategy up with four of friends could be a blast.

Possible downsides to 5vs5 play could be the difficulty in finding balanced teams (if playing with strangers), and preventing one or two dropped connections from ruining the entire game for everyone.

To all appearances, it looks like EA is trying to broaden the appeal of Command & Conquer; trying to make it a game non-RTS fans might get interested in. The situation has something in common with Mass Effect, actually. Yesterday EA was saying how they wanted to make Mass Effect more "accessible" by highlighting a more action-based, FPS-like experience, with health regeneration -- because according to the game's publicist the word "'RPG' can scare people off from playing a game because they think it's going to be boring." And now, in odd contrast to that statement, with Command & Conquer they are introducing some RPG elements. (I guess they just want to sell all of their games to everybody!)

These changes are a bit ambitious -- but maybe the series needs a kick in the pants. But will these changes improve the game for RTS fans (i.e most of the people who buy the game), or will these changes hurt the core gameplay elements, at the cost of convincing some new, non-RTS players to give the game a try?