New Companions and Romance Speculation

Here's what I want to see for companion characters:

1) a Male Jedi Knight (0 in the game while there are 4 female ones)
2) a Female Sith (0 currently in the game, Jaesa doesn't count since she starts as a Jedi)
3) More Male Romance-able companion characters for Female players (Sith Warrior is the only class in the game with two for female players while Sith Warrior, Smuggler and Agent have two for male players)
4) Additional Companions with completely different Light/Dark stories
5) A Jedi Healer Companion

Additional things I'd like to see from a customization standpoint:

1) Companion specific Titles - through story or otherwise
2) Companion Specific mod-able gear
3) Companion gear set bonuses
4) Additional abilities - gained through quests or drops
5) Customizable Abilities/Ability Bar

Jonas Balkar for male troopers.

Corso Riggs for male smugglers.

Doc and Scourge for male knights.

Malavai Quinn for male warriors.

Andronikos Revel for male inquisitors.

Vector Hyllus and Watcher Three for male agents.

Iresso and Tharan for male consulars.

The list goes on on. We also need flirt options that can progress even further with the npcs we meet in the galaxy, like the ones that were already programmed to respond to opposite-sex etc. Simplify this by extending the behavior to all npcs capable of a sex-life, no asinine divisions or tokens necessary. Duke Organa is an example. Royalty, patriarchal flair, and the precious name are no shields to make any bro "safe." No exceptions.

It worked beautifully for Kaidan in ME3. Do it again with these guys. Females too, for the ones who are into that. They must range from obvious to obscure, regardless of hetero-based hang-ups about gender from devs who are years and years behind. Repeat the process that was done for Kaidan and improve upon it.

I do not believe for even a second that the decisions we've made for our characters' storylines are written in stone. Anyone who doubts this, just reexamine the variables in your characters' choices and ask yourselves if in the future this buggy game with its slow content updates would actually deign to respect all our current input into storylines, if the level-cap finally does raise. I'm positive there will be resets and/or incentives to re-perform the storylines shortly prior to a new level cap being added, and there will be changes to funnel us into mostly uniform starting points for our class stories at 50 so that BioWare will have less backside-covering to do for themselves.

How does this relate to necessary revisit of all flirt-capable NPCs? Better question is how could it not relate? When BioWare finally does re-tool our existing storylines to better cope with their own backside-covering for the raised level cap, they will be forced to openly commit via actions (if not words) SWTOR's attitude about LGBT gamers. By then at the latest, even the haters who work on this game will have to face up to the fact that "standardizing" all the love-interests into addressing our toons by title instead of gender actually presents less work for them, more enjoyment for gamers. If this game is going to stick with saying "sir" and "my lord" at all times, BioWare cannot pretend "voice-acting and programming issues" to be their excuse.

Point of order:

No they haven't.

What they said was they wouldn't just take the existing companions and swap a couple pronouns in their dialog; that if they were going to write a s/s romance they'd take the time to make sure it felt like a genuine story of its own and not a poor man's copy of the "real" or "base" or "default" o/s romance. Which still doesn't mean a whole lot of difference, really. Resources sort of demand it. If you look at Dragon Age 2, for example, which put a huge percentage of its various dev budgets into NPC story and interaction, Fenris and Merrill's romances are still basically identical regardless of who you romance them with. Anders and Isabela will treat the PC subtly differently - Isabela seems a little more open with and possessive of a female Hawke than a male Hawke, Anders is a little more patronizing with one - but 98% of the lines are still the same, the base story arc is the same, the fundamental theme of the relationship is the same. And they've got a lot more story material to work with to begin with than any of the SWTOR romances.

All that said, there's still a serious lack of choice on offer if you're limiting romancable companions to human and near-human. Since the majority of classes have exactly one female companion period , and a lot of the guys are, like, wookies and talz. So as much work as it would be, adding new companions is still plausible (though I'd think one per gender per faction would be the absolute max, and it'd more likely just be one per gender shared across both). And as far as that goes, I actually would hope for some super-butch speeder mechanic, since I have no interest in the Nadia/Kira/Mako "little sister" type that I'd otherwise have for most of my favorite classes. Choice is good.

More than anything else, though, I'd hope for a low-level character, someone you can pick up by the time you leave Coruscant or Dromund Kaas. That way, even if I didn't plan to romance them, they'd be of great use; Agents and Bounty Hunters are far too lonely for far too long (and Bodyguard mercs could seriously use some tank or DPS. At least classes that get their healer five dang planets in can use the ship droid).

I only ask bioware to make sure the new romanceables are healer companions, considering that 90% of the time, everyone uses the healer companion since it makes leveling and doing dailies far more easier.

I have to disagree with the ship droid, it has no parts at all, so anyone would have to spend crazy amounts of credits to get droid parts or to get the mats to craft them, themselves and the fact that they gain no affection what so ever, makes them a waste to use.

The issue with the companions is that, they are still positioned in a way that makes it seem like they weren't planning on the healer being the most widely used on all classes, they even had companions use special mod kits to choose the companion's roll, man, that would be cool if they kept that in there, but sadly, they changed that during the beta.....such a huge mistake bioware........huge mistake.

Killing two birds with one stone would be a pretty unfortunate choice here, alright. The best option would be to open some companions up for your character's same-gender needs, some for the alien angle, with some overlap here and there. That way my female bounty hunter can sweep that incorrigible Gault Rennow off his feet, while my big ol' bear of a male inquisitor can win the heart of Khem Val (er, eventually).

I think the only thing Khem Val wants to do with your heart is eat it, literally. Nomnomnom.

If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that Thana or what ever her name is from the SI story will not become a companion. Why? Because SI had the option of killing her. So what you are asking Bioware to do is either throw a huge **** you to anyone who killed her, or create an alternative companion for those who killed her (waste of time/$$$ creating 2 companions as opposed to 1).

And even if she did survive the fight and escaped the exploding spaceport, she would be hell bent on killing you, not joining you. I'm not saying anyone out there cannot create a fan fiction where she joins up, but what I'm saying is it would go against everything her character was. Not to mention any DS Sith who attempted to kill her would never trust her.

Now she is very popular among SI players so what i see Bioware doing is creating a character similar to her (although she is a Jasea Willsam that doesn't like you or tries hard to make you believe she doesn't), and making her a companion.

The Thana mission line is for all Empire classes. Too bad she wasn't a companion though, cool character. She was one of the few people my Juggernaut didn't kill.

While I agree that it's dumb he starts naked, every single time you get the option to pick a companion item as a quest reward post-Coruscant/Kaas, you get the option to pick a droid part.

They're typically green and emphasize End over Aim but they're still adequate for a healer, healer comps don't need to be geared particularly well to be effective. At level 15-19 when you first get him he doesn't need to be geared at all, if you're in at least half blues yourself.

As far as affection goes, there are extremely few conversations in the game that force combat and none at all that are forced post-combat (you can always esc out), so if you're worried about optimizing both combat and story then you can just swap companions before conversations.

The only thing you can't work around is only having one type of companion for thirty levels. Which only happens to bounty hunters, because every single other class has both the ship droid (heals) and their starter (DPS or tank) from the beginning. Adding yet another early game healer is not a solution.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be damn nice for all the poor knights out there, mind you (who gives a class that can tank or DPS a tank and then a DPS? how is that helpful?). But they at least have options. If you're stuck playing twin turtles with Mako, you do not.

All I want is for my female trooper to have a female companion that is not a member of Havoc Squad. Like a close-range scoundrel. My agent chick I can care less about.