Juda needs to be flirtable PERIOD. No love for my Guy Bounty Hunter either.

When they were talking about which companions will be romancable and the decision making process on which companions would have romance options, the developer at the podium said something along the lines of "Not every companion we wanted to be romancable was" and a developer at the table said "...Blizz..."

Aren't we owed now a Picture of Blizz with Kittens and Puppies? I really want to see this. Did you catch the Blizz joke when they were making the announcement?

Yay they answered. "This Year!" Hooray. I did ask. It sounds like a lot of people did. Hooray. Now to get a transcript.

Since my phrase statistically insignificant has been used to make so much hay, please take a moment at WHAT population I was applying that term to. It was applied to users that prefer same sex romance exclusively and wish to use a "no straights filter" in their game play. I have read thousands of posts on the topic of same sex romance and the various reactions to it, and those wanting a "no straights filter" in the absence of same sex romance is so small I don't remember a single instance, but I allow that there may have been a player that did wish this and I simply forgot, or the signal got lost in the noise, but my memory is pretty good and I have read said thousands of posts in a very short amount of time and so I infer that THIS type of player at least represented on the forums is statistically insignificant (estimate 1 or 2 posts out of over 4,000) at least as it seems to me. To me statistically insignificant means a statistic that can be safely rounded to zero. Which from my reading of this topic and related ones is the percentage of players who want a "no straights filter" and only a "no straights filter". I think that the percentage of players (no matter how small) that want same sex flirting and romance in Star Wars The Old Republic cannot be safely rounded to zero. Anyway we are not asking for equality because our numbers demand it, but because its the right thing to do.

This thread is not about getting Same Gender Romance Arcs in the game right now, its about a desire for some communication and clarification sooner than 6 months after it was announced.

I suppose we can also point to the movies and see all the times Luke and Han used a datacron to become more powerful. Boy I just love that scene on Balmorra in the original trilogy. Man I just can't get enough of those games of Sabaac and Pazaak Han and Lando used to play. I love the detail in the movies about how Jedi were divided into Guardian, Sentinel and Consular roles. Its a good thing that games NEVER add anything to what existed on the screen.

I really don't have anything substantial to add that I have not already said before. I really really want to see this content in the game and I strongly desire just the teeniest tiniest hint from Bioware that we have not fallen off their radar. I wonder if all the canceled subscriptions are making an impact. I will for now keep my subscription as some of what is keeping me in game is the social element of playing with my friends and guildies, and I like Star Wars. But while I do keep my subscription I will continue to ask Bioware for communication about the inclusion of this content. And now I can give my refresh button a rest as I will be subscribed.

Well my Bounty Hunter is turning out to be a much nicer guy than I originally envisioned since every time I choose a light side decision I gain affection with Mako. But That Sith Lord? Yeah I got some DS points trying to make HER happy.

Today on my Bounty Hunter I finished up the main chains on Balmorra and I was surprised to get a lot of flirt prompts with a certain Sith Lord. My character is male, and the Sith Lord Female, but it occurs to me that it would have been very believable if there were same sex flirting between her and a female player. It would make perfect sense, and there is no reason why it should not be in there. Still I am up to level 22 on that guy, and none of the male NPCs really do it for me. But then again out of all the NPCs that I have come across I only wanted to flirt with 3 (Counting Mako) and one was Juda on Hutta who is awfully flirty but you don't get any [Flirt] prompts no matter what your gender. I take that back. The Playboy in the Cantina in Balmorra is kind of cute, but I would not really want to pursue anything with him, just break his heart so he knows how it feels...

That reminds me, think they are hiring?

I was just riffing on back of the envelope for that scenario. I am a programmer by trade, with 34 years experience (Its a bit of a cheat I wrote my first computer program when I was 6 years old) But you would be surprised at just how difficult what someone would think is an easy task is. Then there is the old trap of any good programmer of giving a customer exactly what they asked for instead of what they really wanted.

Well you admit you are not a developer. What we have now is a gender awareness in NPCs which allow for any personal pronouns to be correct as well conversation trees on who can [Flirt] with who. From a developer's point of view the conversation trees are probably gender blind beyond the first branch where you can take a flirty response. So what you propose is not as simple as flipping a switch somewhere in the computer bank. Each character's attributes are stored in some sort of database. Each of these takes a finite amount of space to store. If we were to tack on an orientation field in this database (which in some peoples preferences has 3 possible settings, some 4 but I imagine it can get even more complicated if we added things like "you like Twi'Leks but not Zabraks" but I digress at the least 3 different settings) So we have to have these definitions stored somewhere and then for each and every character and a field holding this value. Now I don't know how they have the character database on the backend optimized but the addition of an attribute may be handled elegantly on one case, on the other end of the spectrum, it could lead to all sorts of balancing issues and latency (doubtful, but worst case scenario) With the number of players times the number of characters this is no small amount of data to be added. Then you have to add an orientation awareness into all NPCs (a software GAYDAR not even the Force could be so accurate) This would not be a substitute for gender awareness which is already there, but a whole other set of conditional statements to govern the availability of certain conversation trees. When nesting conditionals it does not become twice as complicated per nest it becomes exponentially more complicated per nest. This would likely introduce any number of bugs which all the people who come in this thread and complain that there are more important things to work on will come back to topics in the Story and Lore subboard where we are discussing romance and blame the whole new set of bugs on us. Now I hope you see why it would be much simpler for NPCs to be orientation-blind and just flirt with anyone.

It occurs to me that this would be less of an issue if there was a mechanism for player character courtship and partnering. I remember in Star Wars Galaxies you were able to do so by exchanging rings (For Rebel players the ring to use was the Rebel Signet Ring which had nice buffs and if you used it to marry someone it never took damage) (come to think of it I think you could actually marry two people if you wore a ring on each hand). But the roleplay in this game is not really geared for player to player. They have these (very engaging!) story lines but we are a bit on the rails. This game feels like a multiclass KOTOR 3 where someone can swoop in and kill your objective before you get there. Ofcourse KOTOR 3 would not have a subscription fee. I have paid my sixty dollars entry fee and my continued subscription for the privilege of posting in these forums. But why was I given half a game?

Say what time of day does the Q&A Blog get posted? I might want to set an alarm so I don't miss a moment of being disappointed for another week.