New players may have no idea what I’m talking about, but Personality was a character stat that was tracked for a very long time in the Hero panel. It was basically never used in-game, and it vanished sometime this year in an update. However, I think there is a good reason to bring it back now.
In the living story, dialogue now changes according to the choices made at character creation, which you cannot alter. So, for a human, it changes depending on whether you are nobility, a commoner, or a street rat. 3 options x 5 races = 15 possibilities to program for.
Without going into detail, there were 10 personalities – which changed according to choices you made. Most players won’t create 15 characters. However, if personality was what altered the living story experience, a player may end up having a different personality at the end of a story chapter or two than they started with — which gives them an IMMEDIATE incentive to play it again because it will play out differently this time. This isn’t difficult to implement, especially since it is currently being done for 15.
Say there’s a map that has three major bosses on it with very different battles. Depending on your personality, one of them will let you through without a fight. Replay it now with a different personality and the experience will be vastly different because one of the battles will have changed entirely. How much more interesting would the living story be if you could experience 10 different variations with the same character? Maybe you’d have to use 4 characters since personality is more difficult to alter entirely so quickly, but is still more likely than creating 15.
