Bastion did a great job of allowing the player to control difficulty with their deity system. Each god, if activated, adds new powers/strength to the enemies but also bonus XP/Currency drops. For example, one of the Gods makes the enemies explode on death and gives +10% XP and +10% Currency. The player can stack these with each other in any combination, allowing the player complete control over not only the difficulty, but also how that difficulty is achieved.
There's a big clue of the front of the modules we've seen so far: I am presuming that the first two are difficult at lvl 1 but less so at lvl 4. The third module would be a killer at lvl 1, very hard at lvl 4, difficult at lvl 5 etc.
Desktop Dungeons had that idea a while back, I think, but in a monotheist way, i.e. only one deity at a time.
I wonder if we will know whether The Forest of Souls or The Defence of Woodhome is harder, though? Maybe it would depend on class combination and deck construction. Or just general knowledge after people have played them both. I, for one, have always enjoyed those little extra-difficult early challenges--that first sub-boss that really tests you, or that early level that makes you squeeze the most out of your limited early resources or skills. The trick is encouraging players to rise to the challenge instead of just passing it by--if you make the reward too good, people will try to farm that one level for loot, if the reward is too little, people will just skip that level for easier ones.
I guess a party that has lots of 'fire' cards would do well in the first instance, a party with 'clerical' members better in the second. The three person party and the different equipment / deck options should keep things fresh for some while, I think.
I would love to see randomly generated dungeons, roguelike style. If you could buy "modules" that allow different styles and themes of random dungeons with different card suites (so, say, the Fiery Sword of Vengance can only be found in adventures X and Y and fire-themed dungeon Z) , I would be setting aside cash now.
I've been wondering about all that. In modern gaming it's straightforward to say "oh, yeah, low-level stuff like levels 1-4," but we've never been given a straight answer about character advancement. It presumably will have its own unique qualities in this game. These module "level" labels could need to taken less literally.
I don't think those were meant to increase difficulty, just change the way you play. They are mostly bonuses with some potential drawbacks that you try and mitigate, the way I see it.
Peggle might be worth talking about in terms or replayability. - on the adventure mode there is always the next level that you have to beat. - there is the high score for each level - there are challenges (using the same levels - that you can take in any order once you have beaten the main adventure) - there is also the challenge to completely clear every level - and the high score for a whole adventure run through. This gives multiple challenges - and multiple options - once the main game has been played through.
