Guild Wars 2

It had no purpose. what was it originally meant to do?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personality

I think it was partially developed and then dropped. There was a blog post a year to two back where the NPCs would react to you depending on your personality. You might occasionally get free stuff if you were charming or be able to punch an NPC if you were brutal, for example. NPCs might cringe away from you when you walked by. For whatever reason, lack of time or it wasn’t working out, these were cut from the game. Leaving just the first part where you get the personality.

Knighthonor.4061:

It has no purpose.

I actually paid attention to this at first and picked my responses carefully. Then I realized it didn’t do anything. For example the heart in Queensdale with the Ettins where you talk to them and pick a response based on personality. I thought picking responses based on my characters personality would lessen the likelihood that they would fight me. It didn’t. Now I just click stuff real quick to get to the point.

It’s for role-playing.

It’s meaningless.

Probably got dropped because it didn’t affect gem sales.

AntiGw.9367:

It’s for role-playing.

Pretty much this.

They wanted to expand, but didn’t want to lock people out of rewards based on the choices they made.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I actually paid attention to this at first and picked my responses carefully. Then I realized it didn’t do anything. For example the heart in Queensdale with the Ettins where you talk to them and pick a response based on personality. I thought picking responses based on my characters personality would lessen the likelihood that they would fight me. It didn’t. Now I just click stuff real quick to get to the point.

That’s exactly where I stopped caring about it as well, now all the fast clicking has labeled me a scoundrel… I’m alright with that.

So we’re all forced to have a sister with the same name. Good stuff.

Incidentally, there are certain NPCs (such as the temple speedbuff givers in Divinity’s Reach, I believe) who will allow you to give personality ‘responses’ repeatedly in whatever combinations until you find a personality type you prefer. I noodled around with some such NPCs just to see what the options were, early on in the game.

It really only matters to people who like to role play

Quick Mouse.7635:

It really only matters to people who like to role play

As someone who role-plays a lot, I can assure you the personality mechanic means nothing to the vast majority of role-players.

As it is, arenanet have provided minimal role-playing support.