Difficulty

[Aaron]

This is something I've been wondering about as well. Whether TBS will follow the Fire Emblem/Shining Force approach of having most of your fighting done by unique, named characters; or if it'll follow the King's Bounty/Heroes of Might and Magic/X-COM approach of you mostly relying on semi-generic, pseudo-anonymous "units" that you'd "hire".

[Oktober]

Either way, hopefully they let us name the grunts!

I want my very own varl-Fafhrd and a Grey Mouser to mix it up with some Dredge...

[Tsuga C]

Now that's a pair of names from the past!

[Tychoxi]

Well I really like what I'm reading here, if your units "die" in battle they may not permadeath, but this will still bear real future consequences! And then, via the storyline proper, you will have permadeath. It's a very elegant compromise between the gamestyles offered so far in games.

What I would love to see in games regarding difficulty, is to have "advanced" gameplay options. So you have the "Easy", "Normal" and "Expert" or whatever as usual, but if you want you can click on "advanced", and tweak and personalize the innerworkings to your liking. This would be especially fitting in games with high replayability.

[Arnie]

Really great thread. Difficulty is something we've been talking about for months now and I feel we have some interesting ideas. I can give you some foggy insight by reminding you all that TBS is not a black and white win/lose scenario. There may very well be ways to shame your forefathers and kin by leaving a battle before all enemies are dead so you can both keep the caravan moving AND some of your most valued characters from getting too run down. If you're an advanced player or just trying to keep your viking honor then, by all means, battle to the end and perhaps be rewarded...but remember your characters could possibly be wounded quite severely from the effort.
We're also throwing around the idea, for those that love story but have no interest or skill for turn based strategy, to enable a mode where you may quick play combats and basically leave each one at the earliest possible moment. Sure you may miss out on not only the fun of combat and some plunder, but it would let you concentrate on the story.
A little something for everyone.
Sorry I'm not giving too many details but we're currently laser focused on The Banner Saga: Factions and I'd rather not talk about systems that are still in flux for The Banner Saga: Chapter 1.
We're reading all these threads even if we don't respond as often as we used to.
Skal!

[LoliSauce]

Thanks Arnie. Right now is probably the most difficult part for most of the fanbase as it's right in crunch time and you've already revealed just about everything that you can until beta drops, yet here we are used to all the constant updates and fiending for more.

I imagine I speak for more than myself when I say that we're just really excited! Hope we're not throwing down the pressure too hard on you guys.

[lamaz]

I like the idea of a more story focused "mode". I would probably play the game "properly" for the first time, but after that I think I'd like to see all the different possibilities without sacrificing so much time on the combat.

[LaMort13]

Arnie, any chance we'll have shared xp among the party, rather than individual xp? (as discussed above)

Fire Emblem, FFT, et al. used individual xp, and I agree that it gets really tedious mid-game. (Especially after new characters join the entourage.)

[Flickerdart]

Given how upgrading units works in Factions, I'd wager that you will have a shared pool of Renown with which to upgrade your units. But there might be story events that give units abilities above and beyond that renown pool, which new units would obviously miss out on - a good encouragement not to let your people die if you can help it!