Boss's with personality

What are your thoughts on boss's with personality?

My thought are as follow I think boss's with personality would be a unique thing and would make people look more into the backgrounds or lore of the boss or area they are going to,
for example there is a sword's master who's goal it is to prove he is the strongest or most skillful with the sword so if u fought him as a group and someone had a sword they are more than likely to have his aggro and throw in a few voice lines to emphasis why he is after them, or a bandit chief has been ransackin villages or caravans and is going to resell his spoils for profit if you are there to recover the stolen goods you can go ahead and start recovering the goods during the fight and you would get his aggro, you could implement this with monsters as well i.e. you attack a monster's spawn/children/eggs...etc. you would gain its aggro and it would perhaps even go into a beserk mode dealing additional damage.
I feel like this can be implemented outside of combat as well via giving gifts to people in order to gain their favor and based on that you could get different dialogue when interacting with them I think this should be special and not everyone could do it reserving this special dialogue for other players to hear around them but is reserved for that special player i.e. you save a bartender's daughter he gives you a discount of like 2% or less and makes comments about how the saviour is back or just thanking him, I think it would be cool to be able to build relationships with NPCs even monsters to an extent for example you save a wounded wolf cub and release it into the wild later it grows up and its pack is friendly to you or gives u the chance or paying them homage via food or something in order to gain safe passage through their territory stuff like that if the mocs remembered the actions of players and interacted with them accordingly would be interesting i.e. if a players actions or response are blunt/disrespectful when receiving quest that NBC and their associates are less likely to bother them with task unless in more dire circumstances or of a player is know for taking more killing quest and word get around the village they would be more likely to receive killing quest rather than gathering/exploring diplomacy quest from that npc what are your thoughts on this? I may have diverged away from the original topic but I think it all pertains to the same subject

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Wandering Mist

I'd expect every raid boss to have some lore behind it as a bare minimum, otherwise what is the point in fighting it? Often though what gives a boss personality isn't what they do in the fight itself, but the events leading up to the fight. Facing off against the Lich King in WoW was a huge deal because of everything he had done throughout the history of the franchise. Seeing him for the first time in the raid fired up the passion inside me because I remembered all the terrible things that the Lich King had done across multiple games over the span of 6 years.

Much like any antagonist in films, books or TV, if you want your boss fight to have a meaningful impact you need to set them up properly beforehand.

Noaani

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I'd expect every raid boss to have some lore behind it as a bare minimum, otherwise what is the point in fighting it? Often though what gives a boss personality isn't what they do in the fight itself, but the events leading up to the fight. Facing off against the Lich King in WoW was a huge deal because of everything he had done throughout the history of the franchise. Seeing him for the first time in the raid fired up the passion inside me because I remembered all the terrible things that the Lich King had done across multiple games over the span of 6 years.

Much like any antagonist in films, books or TV, if you want to your boss fight to have a meaningful impact you need to set them up properly beforehand.

Completely agree.

Actual bosses should have their actions and influence introduced to players at least months - but ideally years - before players meet the boss itself.

zabild

noaani wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I'd expect every raid boss to have some lore behind it as a bare minimum, otherwise what is the point in fighting it? Often though what gives a boss personality isn't what they do in the fight itself, but the events leading up to the fight. Facing off against the Lich King in WoW was a huge deal because of everything he had done throughout the history of the franchise. Seeing him for the first time in the raid fired up the passion inside me because I remembered all the terrible things that the Lich King had done across multiple games over the span of 6 years.

Much like any antagonist in films, books or TV, if you want to your boss fight to have a meaningful impact you need to set them up properly beforehand.

Completely agree.

Actual bosses should have their actions and influence introduced to players at least months - but ideally years - before players meet the boss itself.

Yes for most end game bosses I am talking about dungeon bosses and the random elite mob you may find in delves,camps and the wild, obviously endgame bosses should be set with lore far before you even meet them I talking about all bosses

Noaani

zabild wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I'd expect every raid boss to have some lore behind it as a bare minimum, otherwise what is the point in fighting it? Often though what gives a boss personality isn't what they do in the fight itself, but the events leading up to the fight. Facing off against the Lich King in WoW was a huge deal because of everything he had done throughout the history of the franchise. Seeing him for the first time in the raid fired up the passion inside me because I remembered all the terrible things that the Lich King had done across multiple games over the span of 6 years.

Much like any antagonist in films, books or TV, if you want to your boss fight to have a meaningful impact you need to set them up properly beforehand.

Completely agree.

Actual bosses should have their actions and influence introduced to players at least months - but ideally years - before players meet the boss itself.

Yes for most end game bosses I am talking about dungeon bosses and the random elite mob you may find in delves,camps and the wild, obviously endgame bosses should be set with lore far before you even meet them I talking about all bosses

In terms of lore for such bosses, I actually like the way Elder Scrolls games do it.

If you look around almost any area in Skyrim, Oblivion or Morrowind, you can gain a real understanding of what has happened, or what is happening there. It may be a journal you find, it may be the evidence of a fight, it may be NPC's talking about what they are doing among themselves.

For smaller encounters, their lore really does need to be contained within a very small bubble around them. I mean, it would suck going to the library and reading about a mob, thinking he is awesome and you want to meet and then kill him, then going out, finding him and realizing it is just some solo mob in a swamp somewhere.

On the other hand, if that solo mob in a swamp somewhere has clues as to why it's there, rather than just being there, then that makes the game much more "real". It also rewards players that look for these kinds of details, which I think is always a good thing.

Ravudha

One day, I want to see a raid boss that can simply be bribed...there are players amassing vast fortunes and nothing to spend them on!

Wandering Mist

Ravudha wrote: »

One day, I want to see a raid boss that can simply be bribed...there are players amassing vast fortunes and nothing to spend them on!

Haha that would be a very unique gold sink.

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