Welcome everyone to this week's edition of Question of the Week. This question is brought to you by WildArms, who asked:

What do you have planned to make sure characters differ? If everyone can get every skill then wont people find "the best" skills and equipment and all end up being the same?
Many MMOs have problems with balancing skills and try to separate players in alternative development paths - classes is the best example - so achieving powerful combinations is limited to one path only, a fighter, a warrior, a thief and so on. Each class has its powerful abilities and developers try to balance them to their best knowledge. Characters in Earthrise will not have classes or take exclusive character development paths. Players will have the same choice of skills and abilities. That alone will not lead to ultimate builds because many skills will not provide players with passive bonuses that directly affect their success in various actions, but instead unlock wide array of carefully balanced abilities they can use in different situations. These abilities will be customizable action templates that can be further enhanced using special system we will announce in detail soon. This system will allow players to modify their abilities to a certain extent. They will be able to create new abilities builds and receive a slight boost but there will always be some disadvantage that they have to live with and take into consideration in almost every situation the ability comes in play. Think of this as the paper/rock/scissors game, where “the best” character template will be beatable by another “best” character template.

Characters may have the same skills developed to the same value and have access to the same abilities, but their choice of modifications of abilities will shape their skills and game play approach. There will be abilities that will make you powerful for a price, but there won't be abilities that let you own the game. There might be alternative ways to achieve certain effects in the game, and players will have to put a lot more strategy and combinational thinking rather than picking the latest, most powerful sounding ability and jumping into the fray.

Same goes for equipment. The system we mentioned above and the modification aspect of the crafting system will be very similar. It will be extremely difficult for a crafter to come with the very best, ultimate, uber equipment in the game, and if he cannot craft it, don't expect players to be walking around looting epics. All items will come from the labor of other crafters, designers or manufacturers. We are talking about hundreds of different item templates, hundreds of different designs that can be combined together cumulatively. Quality of manufactured items will also be a very important factor, including several very cool ideas we are juggling with that throw a little sense of luck in the equation. Players might even find out that there are multiple approaches towards attaining certain effect from a weapon, armor or a device. That is mentioned to illustrate that the equipment market will be very rich in flavor and complicated. Coming up with the best equipment will not be as easily attainable as reading a walkthrough and repeatedly raiding a location. Don’t forget that items get worn out and they break. Sure, a player might at some point have access to the most powerful weapons in the game and that would give him an advantage... but that is temporary, as weapons break and his great investment in achieving that power will wane away.

Then there's PvP. Because of the loot system we implement in the game, the power curve will be much smoother and provide much more player-centric rather than item-centric experience. The "best" weapon in the game will be powerful, but will not lack balance and raise issues among the gamers.

In a summary, learning all the skills or achieving the best equipment in Earthrise will be difficult, but attainable. At that point players will not face a static system where there's one clear answer, but a customization system that unleashes countless alternative solutions for every possible situation in the game.

That's it for this week's Question, but be sure to check back next week. Additionally, I know a lot of you have been asking about the number of skills being available, and you all will be happy to know there will be an answer about that as we get closer to beta.

Sounds great! CoH/V had a badge system like that in which you could modify factors like damage, effects, and cooldowns, but the amount of badges able to be popped into said skill is dependant on the character, and badges could only affect what the skill already has.

Cant wait to see this system in action though, the perfectionist in me is already clawing at his hair XD

You're getting this wrong. He's not saying there are "set builds" in the game where it will always beat another "set build", there are probably an infinite number of builds in this game, none of which are unbeatable. That's what was meant.

what i would like to see is a combo of ranged/techno-magic/melee
nothing better than luring someone onto you with a melee setup and he whipping out a gun and blowing their pinky toe off with it before blinding them with nanotechnology and making a surgical incision into their windpipe! 
(not sarcasm)

Wow, im liking the sounds of this system .

Thanks Moll !

Yeah I was most certain that I was getting it wrong, but I think you didn't understand me completly anyway.
What I'm trying to understand is will there be skills in the game that are superior to other skills to the point
where the guy who has skill A can always beat a guy who has skill B but not skill C to counter skill A with?
I'm having a hard time explaining this so my apologies if i'm unclear (again).

Let's say there is a skill called Pushback. This skills throws your char backwards 10 yards and gives you a 1 sec
disorient effect. Now, there is a counter to this skill called Anti-pushback (yeah i know, not feeling very creative
atm). My question is this then, if you meet a guy with the pushback skill, and you don't have the counter, will
he always beat you without a chance (talking same level of skill on players here). Will he win because of
game mechanics or do you stand a chance anyway?

I'm hoping that no skill get's to the point of being a "must-have" in every scenario.

I'm seeing this system as more along the lines of a Ryzom style skill system. In that game you can train in an entire skill or just parts of the skill. As in you can buy a sword attack skill but with in that skill there are smaller parts as in a damage part, cool down part, and a action loss part. So the more skills you have in swords the more you can modify your skill to suit the situation you plan on going into be it PVP or a certain type of mob that you have to attack fast of what have you.

Yeah, that was it. I'm just terrible at explaining, good thing someone understood what I meant.
Rock paper scissors approach is fine by me, as long as you always have a chance given equal player skill.