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Am I the only one to think it strange to have so much discussion over same gender romance but no mention of inter-species romance? Why should one be such a big thing while the other passes unnoticed?

 

As romance can be ignored (just don't pick flirt), why not make every option available? Oh, yes, aside from popularity, there's legality. Except that this is fiction, so doing whatever within a game isn't the same as doing whatever in real life. So why not make every option available, if the relevant (flirt) conversation choices are picked, because all the animations are the same, you just need the voiceovers? m/m m/f f/f human/wookie human/droid (!)

 

I'm only starting, of course. My opinions might differ once I've played more and seen what unfolds. Which options I've picked so far depend entirely on the character and my imagined personality for him or her. My rather proper and very dedicated female Jedi never flirts. My male smuggler flirts with anything female (much to the amusement of my RL partner). If I ever play a character who would go for same-gender romance, then it'd be nice to have that option available. Maybe I'm odd in trying to roleplay on a roleplay server in a multiplayer roleplaying game, though...

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There isn't much discussion of inter-species romances because they already exist in the game. I have a female twi'lek, plenty of flirts with humans already. My ratataki agent had the quickest FTB scene I have seen yet, wasn't even level 5.

 

Granted, these are only between the human-in-rubber-mask alien races, so there could be room for improvement, not trying to dismiss this, just saying that they do exist in one form.

 

I agree with SirGladiator and I think this is a perfect example of how it should have been done. The option is there, so no one really says much about it. If only they had done the same thing with SGRs, there would have been barely a word said.

 

Though, there is a part of me that remembers the saying "There's no such thing as bad press" and wonders if BW/EA did it this way to get more press mentions. *shrugs*

 

^.^

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Its actually kind've funny, in an ironic sort of way, how all the stereotypes and generalizing done by anyone playing the game is done 'because' of the way things have been handled. My mind keeps going back to Skyrim, because its part of a series that I always enjoyed, it was never one of my favorites but the games were reasonably fun, and when I played the most recent version I had no idea that they had romances at all (none of the previous ones did), much less that my female character could marry a female NPC. Thats because it wasn't a big deal, you could romance anybody you wanted, it made things easier for the programmers and more fun for the players, it was a win-win for everybody. The fact that they took the exact opposite approach in SWTOR is the reason why people are complaining way more about way less now. In Skyrim, literally every romancable NPC's sexual preference was whatever you wanted it to be. Nobody complained, because everybody had things their own way. Here, all the NPC's were set to straight-only, and now suddenly they're adding a certain number (higher or lower than 2 we dont even know) who aren't straight-only, and it generates controversy. There would've been no controversy if it had been done Skyrim/DA style all along, people would've realized that everybody was getting exactly what they wanted, and it wouldnt have been a big deal. If they finally came out and announced 'We're going to give everyone what they want, we're going the Skyirim/DA2 route from here on in' and let us romance all the characters that everybody else can already romance, there'd be a day or two where a few people would complain, then it'd be back to business as usual, that would be the end of it. Instead they're dragging this whole thing out, little by little, pretty much manufacturing and then maximizing the controversy, all while giving us about as little as they possibly can, for no logical reason whatsoever. It's long past time that they finally did the right, and logical, thing and brought the romances up to the Skyrim/DA standards, its easy enough to do, and everybody wins.

 

Not every NPC in Skyrim is amenable to marriage (notice I said marriage, not romance - honestly there's no romance to speak of in the game*). In fact, only a select number of NPCs are available, and those are all "Amulet of Mara"-sexual. As far as I can remember, all of the paired NPCs you see are heterosexual, though. The implication of the way marriages work in Skyrim is that there are a lot more bisexual people there than there are on Earth, but the majority are still heterosexual. Nords, in particular, take a practical approach to romance and marriage, and will take it where they can get it due to the harsh nature of the land - at least that was my understanding of the in game explanation (though I suppose it could just be that the Dragonborn him/herself is an extra special snowflake that everyone's attracted to). I don't think the other races outside of Skyrim would be quite like that, if Skyrim's dweller's seeming propensity towards bisexuality is not just extra special Dragonborn pheromones, though it is possible to play whatever race (of Tamriel) you like in Skyrim and marry in the fashion of the Nords.

 

* Except

perhaps with Serana from Dawnguard, who you can't actually marry (if you do everything just right, you can ask her, but she refuses as she's leery of temples despite the fact that she'll still follow you into them - go figure!). Her romance is very much sub-textual rather than overt, and could be read either as a strong friendship or romance.

 

(Lastly, people did kick up a stink about gay marriage in Skyrim - it might not have been as loud as the protests over SWTOR, but I think that has to do with the IP SWTOR is based on more than the way the romances were/are going to be implemented. Skyrim wasn't immune to criticism by conservatives/right wing nuts/family values/religious fundamentalists/homophobic idiots just because it was handled in such a subdued/no fuss manner. These same people made a big fuss over DA2 too... And I'm sure they did over DA:O. And even the ME series copped it.)

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(Lastly, people did kick up a stink about gay marriage in Skyrim - it might not have been as loud as the protests over SWTOR, but I think that has to do with the IP SWTOR is based on more than the way the romances were/are going to be implemented. Skyrim wasn't immune to criticism by conservatives/right wing nuts/family values/religious fundamentalists/homophobic/leftwing nuts/athiests/basically people of all walks of life and beliefs idiots just because it was handled in such a subdued/no fuss manner. These same people made a big fuss over DA2 too... And I'm sure they did over DA:O. And even the ME series copped it.)

 

*fixed*

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after a quick trip to google, i found this about the "no gays in star wars" thing http://kotaku.com/5230325/there-are-no-gays-in-star-wars that's the original quote i think.

 

Interresting read. I can see it from that angle. Who's to say those words aren't in the Star Wars Basic vocabulary? What's to say it doesn't exist in the FANTASY galaxy, far far away? We the players aren't writing the fiction for it. Writers of the FICTIONAL place get to dictate the rules of the setting.

 

This is of course not the case, as they're adding SGR in Makeb patch, so obviously there is now, but before, that could of been an interresting discussion (if people knew how to be civil in an online discussion, and by the sounds of it no one knew how to stay civil...Im sure there were some though :p)

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after a quick trip to google, i found this about the "no gays in star wars" thing http://kotaku.com/5230325/there-are-no-gays-in-star-wars that's the original quote i think.

 

Right. So they weren't even saying that gay people don't exist in Star Wars, but that from their perspective the terms don't exist in Star Wars. As SithKoriandr points out above this is BW:A's Star Wars so if anyone would know it'd be them.

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I believe it was a developer discussion forum debacle not long after the game launched. Apparently there was a huge (and predictable) argument about how Star Wars should be some kind of bastion of morality (hah) and in the discussion of same gender relationships one of the devs tried to be clever and say, 'There are no gays in Star Wars,' presumably with the aim of stimulating conversation by making people go, 'What? There are no gays in Star Wars? What do you mean?' which would be a valid conversational tactic on a considerably less heated matter so it backfired. Board exploded with vicious arguments and they shut the topic thread down immediately after.

 

I don't have any links to back that up, though; I'm working on hearsay. If someone actually read it or, better still, can link to it I'd appreciate that enormously.

It was not even a developer, but the community manager who made this statement. I remember that back in the day all EA boards had rather strict obscenity filters. E.g. the Sims3 boards censored the German word for pregnancy because it contains the letters w,a,n and g in that order.

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Though I could drop by here, so, "SGR"? go for it. I honest love playing a female class, even though I'm a male irl. Is your character a male? isn't that gay by saying, "hey, my character's so rock!" or "I love my character(class)"? if not, how do you say about your character?

 

Here's my point of twist mind.

I played a female character because i love to see how epic looks she does as lightsaber or shooting a guns/snipers fight. But since this SWTOR have offer as romance able NPC, my character is a female character and "it's" cannot flirt or romance to female but a male npc, what about I'm as irl male.

 

I'm no RP or fan of star war Lore, but know this, they offer a "romance able" to your "Jedi" class, isn't that crossed the line?(surly, that would lead to dark side but dude, you are a "JEDI" for god sake!) and here's another one, I have seen many stupid player name in-game character and these are no related to star war theme.

 

Then again, I may not fan of star war lore but, know this, since your character in game romance has nothing do with "Star War" themes because of lacking family Trees, Your character's name will going to be ignore as in star war movies or story, so why not, SGR too? remember, it's only the games.

 

I think SGR should be add to PVE, PVP server onlly, but not RP,RP/PVP, because those people who are fan and love the Star War themes, and don't want to ruin the star war aspect. So i don't see why not. The reason why i am choosing a PVE, PVP, because those ppl who play on PVE will only like to see your character epic fight to these monster, beating a JEDI and Sith in no sense way, etc and same goes to PVP by repeating killing enemy player without reasonable, so why not SGR too, no need to be in sense of star war themes but RP server, leave these alone, they are deserve to respected it.

 

That's my mind twisted here.

(my eng grammar may be bad but I will edit it.)

Edited by Stunblade
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Though I could drop by here, so, "SGR"? go for it. I honest love playing a female class, even though I'm a male irl. Is your character a male? isn't that gay by saying, "hey, my character's so rock!" or "I love my character(class)"? if not, how do you say about your character?

 

Here's my point of twist mind.

I played a female character because i love to see how epic looks she does as lightsaber or shooting a guns/snipers fight. But since this SWTOR have offer as romance able NPC, my character is a female character and "it's" cannot flirt or romance to female but a male npc, what about I'm as irl male.

 

I'm no RP or fan of star war Lore, but know this, they offer a "romance able" to your "Jedi" class, isn't that crossed the line?(surly, that would lead to dark side but dude, you are a "JEDI" for god sake!) and here's another one, I have seen many stupid player name in-game character and these are no related to star war theme.

 

Then again, I may not fan of star war lore but, know this, since your character in game romance has nothing do with "Star War" themes because of lacking family Trees, Your character's name will going to be ignore as in star war movies or story, so why not, SGR too? remember, it's only the games.

 

I think SGR should be add to PVE, PVP server onlly, but not RP,RP/PVP, because those people who are fan and love the Star War themes, and don't want to ruin the star war aspect. So i don't see why not. The reason why i am choosing a PVE, PVP, because those ppl who play on PVE will only like to see your character epic fight to these monster, beating a JEDI and Sith in no sense way, etc and same goes to PVP by repeating killing enemy player without reasonable, so why not SGR too, no need to be in sense of star war themes but RP server, leave these alone, they are deserve to respected it.

 

That's my mind twisted here.

(my eng grammar may be bad but I will edit it.)

 

 

Okay, I want to make sure I understand this. The wording of your post was very confusing, so here's my take on it:

 

You feel that SGRs should be only on PvP and PvE realms since they ruin RP by trashing existing lore. You do realize that homosexual relationships exist in the Star Wars EU(Extended Universe) and even in BioWare's games since 2003, correct? KOTOR, for example, had a lesbian SGR available in it.

 

If you want proof that homosexual relationships exist in other areas of the EU, here's an example:

 

11) Is SGR even canonically in Star Wars?

 

 

 

Yes! There are plenty of examples of SGRs in the Star Wars IP. In the games, it began with original Knights of the Old Republic in 2003, with the companion Juhani, who would only romance female Revans. There was also a same gender romance in the books as well, with Goran Beviin, who's husband was Medrit Vasur. Goran was first featured in the e-book Boba Fett: A Practical Man. The two of them were later fully realized in the book Sacrifice, both of which were by created by author Karen Traviss. They are officially recognized as canon by Lucasarts.

 

I'm not sure how removing a RP element from RP servers makes any sense at all. Don't want to participate in SGRs? Don't click the option. Done. :D

Edited by natashina
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Though I could drop by here, so, "SGR"? go for it. I honest love playing a female class, even though I'm a male irl. Is your character a male? isn't that gay by saying, "hey, my character's so rock!" or "I love my character(class)"? if not, how do you say about your character?

 

Here's my point of twist mind.

I played a female character because i love to see how epic looks she does as lightsaber or shooting a guns/snipers fight. But since this SWTOR have offer as romance able NPC, my character is a female character and "it's" cannot flirt or romance to female but a male npc, what about I'm as irl male.

 

I'm no RP or fan of star war Lore, but know this, they offer a "romance able" to your "Jedi" class, isn't that crossed the line?(surly, that would lead to dark side but dude, you are a "JEDI" for god sake!) and here's another one, I have seen many stupid player name in-game character and these are no related to star war theme.

 

Then again, I may not fan of star war lore but, know this, since your character in game romance has nothing do with "Star War" themes because of lacking family Trees, Your character's name will going to be ignore as in star war movies or story, so why not, SGR too? remember, it's only the games.

 

I think SGR should be add to PVE, PVP server onlly, but not RP,RP/PVP, because those people who are fan and love the Star War themes, and don't want to ruin the star war aspect. So i don't see why not. The reason why i am choosing a PVE, PVP, because those ppl who play on PVE will only like to see your character epic fight to these monster, beating a JEDI and Sith in no sense way, etc and same goes to PVP by repeating killing enemy player without reasonable, so why not SGR too, no need to be in sense of star war themes but RP server, leave these alone, they are deserve to respected it.

 

That's my mind twisted here.

(my eng grammar may be bad but I will edit it.)

 

The problem is, Lore wise, TOR gets a lot of things wrong. Also, a Jedi shouldn't be darkside for romancing anyone. Romancing anyone in the Star Wars universe isn't about Lightside or Darkside. The Jedi try to forbid it, as loving someone can cause people to do some bad things, and these are people with OMGWTFUBERPOWERS!

 

Not to mention, the Jedi don't even keep that rule in effect all the time, and last I knew, during this time period, that rule shouldn't even be in place.

 

And to go along with more LORE, no Chiss would have called themself Smurfette (who's a blonde anyways people!), and we wouldn't have all these genre swapping going around that we see people do on RP servers anyways. :p RP server in TOR means nothing if the devs aren't willing to enforce it. All RP does is give RPers a server to point to and go "OH!"

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So, another idea on how to implement SGR with companions came to mind! It's quick and dirty, some may not like it one bit (maybe a lot).

 

NEW SKINS for companions that turn them into the opposite gender. But what about the voices? Have some people in the office stand up and do some voice acting.

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i neither for or against sgr in tor. but i think if they introduce old companion its should be a optional download or free in the market..just my opinion on a way to appease everyone

 

It actually could be one of those 'marketplace' things, because one thing that struck me as particularly odd, is that you can literally change the race/color of your teammate, and nobody gets upset. I mean, for example, I like Mako being asian, I don't change her, but while I have no problem with somebody else using the 'customization' to change her to a different race, you'd think 'somebody' would be complaining about that being racist or something. But they don't, and that's good. Because its all about customizing your teammate any way you like, even if it isn't exactly 'politicly correct' to do so. So if you can use the customize option to change someone's color/race, there is absolutely no logic whatsoever why you couldn't use the customize option to allow players to change their teammate's romantic preference. And that's yet another way in which everybody wins. Your mako likes your male character, my mako likes my female character, she's not straight, she's not a lesbian, she's not bi, or anything else you can think of, she's just mako, she's whatever you want her to be. That has always been the point behind the way teammates were designed, to be very customizable, so you can truly make them your own unique teammate. This would just be one more form of customization, and quite frankly it would be a lot less controversial, theoretically anyway, than changing somebody's skin color/race. If people ever decided to take that seriously, they could get REALLY REALLY mad over something like that, race is a way more sensetive issue than two women in a romantic relationship, but happily they don't get upset about it, because its not done in any negative way, its just designed to let you customize your teammates in any way you want, and thats always a good thing. I think customization options generally have a price (though you get one for free at the beginning) so I'd say yes, the romance customization 'should' be a free option, but I wouldn't even mind if they charged for it, the same way they do for the other customization options (it isn't real money, or 'cartel money', its just regular pretend, in-game money, no big deal), however they wanted to do it would be fine with me. It really is amazing how many different ways there are to implement this, and yet we've waited well over a year for them to pick one and do it. Hopefully they'll finally pick one soon and get it done.

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I didn't know it's exit, I wonder what's stopping em for available SGR in this games? beside, aren't current's business era is better accepting as same gender sex adversity than 90's? look at mass effects, fable, Grand Theif Auto, the ballad of gay tony!, um, what's else? oh yeah, Allods Online :D

SO, SGR? go for it. Nothing stopping u from choosing a flirt optional. :rak_03:

Edited by Stunblade
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I don't support SGR in this game, or to phrase it better I don't support them wasting time on it at all, not until the mountain of *needed* fixes are applied.

 

That being said, video games are supposed to provide players with abilities and such that don't exist in the real world and emphasis them, and seeing as SGR does exist, it seems odd it wasn't a natural part of the games development.

 

No gay people working at Bioware? I doubt it lol

Edited by Talarchy
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I don't support SGR in this game, or to phrase it better I don't support them wasting time on it at all, not until the mountain of *needed* fixes are applied.

 

Every time they introduce a fix, something else will invariably break. That's just the nature of the beast. If we were to take your comment here to it's logical conclusion - nothing new would ever be added to the game, because there's always something needing fixing.

 

Also, as has been said before, there are multiple teams working on the game doing different things. For instance, they don't need the writers, artists, animators, and voice actors working on fixing game play system bugs.

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I don't support SGR in this game, or to phrase it better I don't support them wasting time on it at all, not until the mountain of *needed* fixes are applied.

 

That being said, video games are supposed to provide players with abilities and such that don't exist in the real world and emphasis them, and seeing as SGR does exist, it seems odd it wasn't a natural part of the games development.

 

No gay people working at Bioware? I doubt it lol

 

As another poster has said there multiple teams working on all aspects of the game. Also I respectfully disagree that it would be a "waist" of time but rather a welcome addition to our character development. Also if it is presented to you and you do not wish to see it just do not participate in the conversation or avoid those options.

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I can already state that it isn't going to be like DA2, in the sense that you there will be no affection loss if you choose to ignore the flirt. So I honestly don't see what the issue is. Then again, I haven't seen the issue with this in the year or so since I started posting about this. Edited by natashina
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Hmmm...you know, if they ever do make the companions romancable, they may want to introduce a gender swap cartel market item, as I know a few people who would have rolled same gender if it was possible to romance same genders, but instead rolled up characters of the opposite gender, so they could romance the companion they wanted to romance.
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im not saying ill do sgr but i do have few female chars. and currently only have 8 slots used so i wont mind if say i wanted to be jk female romancing kira having to make a new character. the only character i can mostly likely be romasncing a girl if possible is my trooper
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I can already state that it isn't going to be like DA2, in the sense that you there will be no affection loss if you choose to ignore the flirt. So I honestly don't see what the issue is. Then again, I haven't seen the issue with this in the year or so since I started posting about this.

 

What prompted this ? some posts got deleted ?

 

Anyway, if you're referring to Anders giving rivalry points when he got shut down, yeah, I remember the outcry was amazing on BSN forums, but that was more about for the sake of raging than anything else, since you could avoid the romance without taking rivalry points.

 

And on TOR , most "disapprovals" during conversations are by -1, which are hardly set backs considering a 10 thousand points bar. Those "minus" are so little but they add a lot, at least to me. I love it when they pop up during my Trooper's usual rude remarks while questing with Elara :o

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