AGS’ approach to event world bosses.
NPC - “adventurer, I need your aid a big ruffian is out there and we dont quite know what he is doing but it cant be good because he looks like a big meany and has a very threatening demeanor.”
player - “isn’t that just a blind prejudicial mindset? have you stopped to ask the large person what they are doing? have you actually seen first hand that this person has actually done anything other than simply spawn in the world and stay in one place and just minded their own business? because that’s all I have seen from this ruffian as you call it.”
NPC - “if you kill it I will give you a reward.”
player - “did you just try to hire me to kill a seemingly innocent yet misunderstood creature with at best a dubious hypothesis on their motives?” “is this happening right now?”
NPC - “hurry adventurer, for there is little time.”
the synopsis of every event is simply put, here is bad guy, go attack bad guy because you will get rewarded for exchanging some part of bad guy’s attire or body part for that matter… and some how we are supposed to feel like any of this matters. there has been no build up towards this boss battle other than being told through exposition that the bad guy is bad.
to simplify this…
A more structured approach to this is simply introducing the treat before the main event by means of smaller attacks on the player or a place a player would frequently visit. This micro threat technique is very much common method in movies, tv shows and novels. If jaws the shark showed up in plain sight of the audience within the first 5 minutes it wouldn’t have been a classic thriller favoured by so many fans. A jack in the box doesn’t show up when you first turn the crank, you gotta spin and spin and let that eery music play for a bit and build anticipation and in new worlds case you engage the player by poking and prodding at them with tid bits of evidence that lead a player like bread crumbs to the world boss with a better understanding of what is at stake with every clue or hint they come by in their travels. Try to avoid blatant exposition as info dumps are just an easily explained cop out.