Champions Online Interview

Cryptic Studios' Bill Roper answers a couple pages worth of questions about Champions Online in a new interview on IncGamers.
There are a fair few non-combat skills lockpicking, science knowledge, and the like. Are these going to be essential to a team going through an instance?

They're not required, but you get a lot more out of the instance. We make sure that for anything that is an ancillary skill - like a lockpicking or crafting skill there are things that you can find that you gain benefits from, or areas that you can get into if you have one of those. It can help you maybe get different players than you might normally run around with. Once you find what those are, it's fun to go through the instance again, and realise (We've gotta make sure we bring an arms-crafter with us, because if we can have him operate that table we can then open that door, and that's a whole area we haven't been in yet.)