Hi everybody!

There has been a lot of speculation lately on Skills, Abilities and Tactics in Earthrise, which we have been interested to see. It turns out the latest House of Commons raised even more questions than we had time to answer in as much detail as we liked, so we'll taking the opportunity today to clear up a little mystery about this topic.


Skills in Earthrise will not provide passive effects (in other words, things you get with little to no effort involved) that permanently affect the character and make it stronger. We believe using passive effects can unfairly favor game veterans because this creates an unbalanced situation between time invested playing and actual player knowledge.

Skill use will unlock what we are calling Abilities and Tactics. Players will have to learn how to use their Abilities and how to pair Tactics with Abilities to enhance their effects and make them more powerful in specific situations.

Basically, there's no technical difference between a player who just starts learning a new skill and a player who has mastered all the skill can offer, as long as both players do not use any of the Abilities offered by that skill. Once Abilities come into play, the more proficient player will have a sizable advantage because they will have unlocked more abilities to choose from.

In additional to unlockable Active Abilities, there will be Passive Abilities, or Abilities that once unlocked, will affect the character in a permanent way. They are very similar to passive bonuses from Skills but the amount of the bonus is flat and is not calculated based on skill value. Choosing what Passive Abilities to unlock will decide how your character's base statistics in combat (and crafting) advance.

Here's an example. As you advance in Melee combat skills, you might unlock the Physical Training Ability. This Ability might give you increased potential to advance your Physique. Passive Abilities can also stack up, so if you unlock several abilities called "Physical Training Ability", the effect could be rather important!

Just as we have mentioned that a player can learn every single skill in Earthrise, they can also unlock all the abilities and tactics. However, keep in mind your equipment will limit what Abilities are active or not at any given time. Many Abilities will be based on using specific equipment, such as your protective armor or devices installed in it. But since you can change your armor, you can also change the pool of available Abilities to you and rearrange your Action Bar accordingly.


We've been reading our community's thoughts very closely since we mentioned the topic in our recent Developer Chat and noticed that some people have compared Earthrise with classic MMOs where activiating an Ability is sufficient enough to receive the effect over the target.

In Earthrise only some Active and Passive Abilities will have immediate effect upon use, or will require a "mark" placed on a target (for limited auto-targeting). Instead, many Abilities will actually get only powered up when Activated, and will require to be "shot at" their targets. If the player misses the shot, then the Ability has no effect on the target. This will make even Ability-based play dynamic and not too much different from standard combat.

It may sound a little complicated, but we welcome your questions in the thread below! Please keep in mind that like all systems, things may be subject to change as the game develops.

Have a fantastic week! We look forward to your feedback and speculation.
~ m.

First!  ETA: Second (bah, i added more detail to mine )

Anyways: That full explanation adds a lot of depth to the system!

I suppose most of the questions I still have about the topic at hand get a bit specific for this stage (such as, can you give us more examples!?) but it's great to have a better handle on the way it works.

Here's the way I saw it - it got me at first until I read further:

Which means yeah they're permanent, but you may or may not have access to them all the time based on equipment. (disclaimer: I'm not exactly the most expert on this system, so this is just my understanding of it and I'll work on getting it clarified.)

Not to be nitpicky, but that seems sort of intuitive: if I unlock, say, a bonus to the effective range of rifle weaponry, I wouldn't get that bonus if I'm carrying a pistol.  That can get generic or specific as it wants (don't get bonus to "ranged weaponry" when carrying a sword, don't get bonus to "plasma pistol type 1" when not...you get the idea) or is it something more complex than that:

to clarify using the example from the OP: I unlock "physical training", which makes it easier to get "physique" (again, going by example).  Well, I get a whole ton of physique running around hacking people to death with a phased plasma battleaxe.  Then I switch to firing a pistol: unsurprisingly, the bonuses to my physique don't apply to something as trivial as firing a pistol. Does that sound right, or is it a bit more complex (or again, more "specific") than that?

sure if a pistol whip is an option, yes. I was referring specifically to "firing" the pistol: My point here is that the system is either
A) really a pretty simple system: you get level X in a skill and you get passive modifier Y *for the equipment/action that skill relates to*... there's nothing complex about that at all. (Now, it gets more complex obviously when referring to abilities/tactics, I'm trying to nail down exactly how the passives work)
or
B) more complex than the details we've been given: more back to that "template" or "loaded passive" system, where you have to choose a set of passives to be your bonuses and if you change equipment on the fly you'll also need to change your bonuses or you're SOL.

I think there should be very minor speed increases to give an edge. I'm a martial artist and the speed difference between a black belt and a 2nd degree black belt is not so apparent, but it's there and it gives that little edge over the opponent. Doesn't mean BB1 can't totally own BB2, In some cases the BB1 would have a much better strategy and better tactics than the 2nd degree.

All in all, i feel repetitive tasks should yield a speed increase as they do in real life.

Theres quite some confusion, as everybody will interprete this im some or the other way, so I#m not hopping into speculations here.

Let's get into Beta asap and then we'll have something to talk about 

This is the point that pose interogation for me. Choosing

Do you think they mean that we get to choose 1 from a list of lets say 3 abilities, or are we gonna have a page of ability giving the description and what is recquire to unlock the ability.

IMO both are good but call for a diferent devolepment in character. I would be more concervative with the 1of3 choice than having to plan in advance what you need now to get an ability later.

What do you think?