The Banner Saga - Of Banners, Sagas, Microtransactions and Balance

[RPGWatch]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes another look at Factions in an interview that discusses balance, microtransactions and more:

RPS: What sorts of characters and items will we see trickle in from the single-player story? Also, how will that affect the balance? What happens to free players when owners of The Banner Saga proper start charging in with crazy story classes?

Arnie Jorgensen: Everything in our game revolves around this big story-based idea that we've got. The whole game started with this story. Factions takes place on the map, in the story-based world. These aren't two different worlds. As things happen in this world, things happening in your story, they're going to happen to Strand and the other areas on that map. Not to go into it too much, but Strand is going to be an evolving city as you play. Easily updatable and changeable.

Alex Thomas: That was a big theme I think we glossed over a bit. When Chapter One comes out, what happens in Chapter One is going to have a direct relation to what happens in Factions. As you unlock characters in Chapter One, you'll unlock them in Factions as well. We want free players to see [story classes in action]. We're calling our magic-users Menders. They get hooked up in a match where they're fighting against Menders casting these spells, and they're like, "Holy crap, how do I get that?" You get the single-player game and you play through it, and now you know who these characters are and you can use them.

Arnie Jorgensen: Since Factions is a free-to-play game, we are hoping to pull people along into the single-player story-based game. If you only want to play Factions, you don't have to pay anything. It's a free game. But eventually, when you're playing against the story-based people, you're going to be fighting against guys who have Centaurs and Menders and crazy crap like that. You're going to go, "Okay, I think it's time."