f13.net

It looks like they are finally going to allow same sex romance options.  It doesn't look like its not going to be available with your companions but with certain NPCs.  Random casual MMO sex. :awesome_for_real:  Finally, my lady Inquisitor can get her freak on. :heart:

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/blog/20130102

"Topic #4: Same Gender Romance: Any news on this front would be great… Answer: First of all, I want to apologize that this is taking so long to get in the game. I realize that we promised SGR to you guys and that many of you believed that this would be with a companion character. Unfortunately, this will take a lot more work than we realized at the time and it (like some other pieces of content we talked about earlier in the year) has been delayed as we focused on the changes required to take the game Free-to-Play. As we have said in the past, allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of.

Secondly, I want to reveal today that we are adding SGR with some NPCs on Makeb and do intend on pursuing more SGR options in the future. More details to come!"

This is the only topic in the blog I care about.  :uhrr: That leads me to believe there's something seriously wrong... with devs and other mmo gamers.  :oh_i_see:

I hope the gay guys are prepared to have half their flirt options be with fat, scarred dudes no one would ever actually want to sleep with.

Anything for the fade-to-black.

Part of me wants to be cynical and think that they're adding this in since it's not super complicated outside of some script writing and extra voice acting, knowing that it might cause enough controversy to get people looking at the game again.

Won't this be the first MMO with actual "canon" same-sex romance stuff?

Pirates of the Burning Sea had a ~romance~ if I remember right, and I'm pretty sure you could be gay if you wanted. I only got the romance started, though, and it didn't actually occur to me to check (but I seem to recall being able to talk to the ladies if I wanted, I just happened to beeline to the guy giving me Manwhore Vibes :P).

Back when interacting with other players in these things was not seen as some kind of abomination, uo/eq et all had wedding kits you could use to RP marry anyone who would stand still long enough.

You could marry people on our MUD! I married Ingmar. I totally didn't have a crush on him or anything, I just wanted a private chat line with him. FOR PURELY PLATONIC REASONS.

We see how that worked out.

I know, seriously. LET THIS BE A WARNING TO EVERYONE.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/old-republic-to-segregate-same-gender-relationships-to-a-single-planet/

Due to technical limitations the same-sex relationships will be confined to a single planet. They say "initially" but I would guess they'll use Planet Gay to gauge the level of interest and whether it's worth the cost to broaden the implementation.

Also part of a paid DLC.  It's now Pay to Ghey!

Segregate? We're using that word, seriously?  :facepalm:

Ars Technica used that word, but they can be a bit... overly dramatic let's say.

They used the word because Fox News' article - which every site under the sun has been cribbing from for this non-troversy - used it.

I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. At the same time, this could just be from the same factory that's been spitting out all their other spectacularly stupid decisions over the last year.

...

What's spectacularly stupid about this?

The whole "gay planet" thing people are using is retarded.

Gee, maybe you could let them work it into new content first, then figure out how the fuck they're going to add a lot of new voice acting for all of the previous content? Shit, they've probably lost some of the VAs now. I know Tanno Vik's VA is actually dead.

I am still sad about Vik's VA. I really liked his work!  :heartbreak:

It's specifically on a new planet they're charging players to visit thus calling attention to something that used to just be a part of Bioware games that were only ever called out by the conservative right wing press. Maybe it's just attention whoring to do it this way. Or maybe they didn't foresee the PR (though given how long they've been owned by EA now, I can't imagine they didn't foresee it). Either way, I just add this to the list.

Or maybe what Fabricated said. But sure.

I don't see this giant decision failure pile over the last year anyway. You can argue there were lots of pre-release mistakes if you want, and there have been some repercussions from those that affected stuff like the rate of new content, but basically everything they've done since then has pretty much just been reacting to those, or has been real improvements.

EDIT: Actually wait, let me pick on something specific here.


And how many other developers even acknowledged the existence of gay people at all? It's amazing to me that the people who have probably been the best advocates for gay inclusion in Western gaming get more crap for one misstep (not including it from the start) than is given to everyone else *combined* for excluding it entirely. And now, amidst delays caused by layoffs and an unplanned transition to F2P, they finally take steps towards correcting it - again leaving them miles ahead of many/most of their competitors - and they get even more crap dumped on them. Unbelievable.

The way this is being done really just looks to me like circumstance. They're not deliberately segregating people for wanting to enact gay romances in-game, they (probably) didn't deliberately omit gay romances in the first place for any reason other than they just didn't get round to it.

The only things about it that sadden me are that this is still an issue worthy of comment and that gay & straight romances were even considered differently at all. There are very few restrictions on what skin colour your characters have in most games these days, and that's how it should be with their sexuality.

I also don't really get the whole "it's the voice acting" reason for it taking so long to implement when it became clear that a significant and/or vocal portion of the community wanted it. I mean... the romance voice acting is already there! Why does it have to be different for a gay romance? Why does it need different NPCs? I only really ran through one romance story line when I was playing but I'm struggling to think of anything that Azshara sad to my big fat male Sith that couldn't also have been said if he'd been a big fat female Sith. There's a distinct lack of gender pronouns in that kind of dialogue and she never once said she though he had a great cock or anything!

Yeah I think the only difference would be the "let's make babies" dialogue in some of the romances, but with the level of technology even that shouldn't be a problem. More than likely it won't even be a problem for us Earthlings before the end of the 21st century.

Was the romance dialogue different in DA and DA2? I don't recall (tbh I only went there with my female chars)

It REALLY depends on the romance. Corso Riggs, for example, is so bound up in fucking stupid gender bullshit, it would be impossible for him to do double duty (for which gay men everywhere should be grateful). He calls you a LAYDEE constantly, talks about how he wants to protect you because you are secretly a delicate, womanly flower, etc. I can't think of any that are nearly as gendered as Corso off the top of my head, but I seem to recall Lt. Boyfriend's dialogue commenting on what a bee-yoo-tee-ful woman I was, and Doc goes on and on and on about how he loves cooch. The ladies were vaguer, thinking about it, but I think Risha is pretty clear that she thinks who she is talking to is a dude.

Kaliyo, though? She's even bi in canon, that should've been an option from the word go.  :heartbreak:  But I suspect they didn't want to have same gender romances for some and not others (which is totally understandable) and ran out of time. :/

EDIT: And yes, the romance dialogue changes in some parts depending on what bits you have in the Dragon Ages. Not a lot, but enough. Two examples off of the top of my head: ManHawke has a terrible dick joke he makes in the Fenris romance that LadyHawke doesn't get to make and Zevran will say different things (you're a beautiful wonan or a handsome man, for example).

Ah OK fair enough, the only other romance I saw any of was Kaliyo's.

Seems with a bit of forethought though they could easily have made them all dual purpose (I know, that even sounded wrong in my head).

Mm, most of them maybe, but not Corso and probably not Doc. Corso would have to have entirely different everything to woo a dude (and while the idea of him simply ceasing to exist instead warms my heart with the thought, I think they REALLY wanted to get that stupid romance archetype in there, and it simply does not work for dudes.).  Doc would maaaaybe work, but given the audience they were shooting for, I think that would've blown up in their faces, given the reception Zevran received when he was "tricking" dudes into sleeping with him. Doc is really relentless in hitting on you, and I just don't see the typical gamer dude dealing with it well at all.

I do hope that one day Tharan can stop hiding behind his beard Holiday and be the swishy gay man I am convinced he was always supposed to be.

Maybe they should have done some pre-planning instead of having to react to everything like it was completely unpredictable.  I realize they have limited resources, but the team has had to do some incredible shifts that could have been avoided or mitigated with a little preparation.

I'm not actually mad about Planet Gay, other than they could have just not differentiated stuff in the beginning and then this wouldn't even be an issue.  It's their own lack of foresight which got them here.  That is what irks me.

[Edit: spelling]

"Lack of foresight" encapsulates a lot of the problems the game has, in my opinion.

Didn't they announce way back that SGR wouldn't be in SWTOR because it was "not part of the SWTOR universe?" It seemed like, at least part of the team, was not gung-ho about SGR originally so that may explain why they weren't added to the game with the initial writing/voice acting.

Adding them after the fact would have ended up with some awkward and poor-quality romances. I remember reading an interesting article about a mod someone had made for Dragon Age 1 that allowed male characters to romance Alastair. It was broken in the ways you'd expect (references to your character being female) but, because it wasn't written with male characters in mind, it also had some bizarre and unintended commentary about gay relationships. You can check out the full article here (http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2010/07/dragon-age-origins-is-first-game-about.html) if you are curious.

They could have written the romances to be gender-neutral but that would have resulted with less authentic and interesting romances. Neither straight or gay players deserve boring gender-neutral romances. Gay relationships have different problems than straight relationships, men and women interact with each other differently. If they had the foresight to leave the dialogue gender-neutral, we wouldn't have ended up with romances like Corso's. Whether you him or not, his romance and dialogue is at least interesting.

If the game continues to be a success I have no doubt that they're add more normal companions in a later expansion and that some of them will have SGR options, hopefully well-written ones. Until then, I'm fine with what they're offering in the expansion.

It wasn't "announced", but there was a comment to that effect from some CM that got VERY quickly walked back and led to them promising to add it.

My own theory, given the context of other Bioware games showing that internally they would have no reason or inclination to leave it out, is that they were probably told "no" behind the scenes by whatever Lucas entity was vetting that sort of thing initially but after the outcry they were able to go back and say "um, you really should let us do this."

There's almost no gay anything in any Star Wars stuff, EU or not up to now, apparently, except where the authors basically sneaked in some innuendo.

Clearly they've never been to the NarShadda Cantina on our server.  :why_so_serious:

Man, seriously.

The CM in question was Ashen Temper, by the way.

Can you just stay away from talking about what gays do or don't want and how ours compare to straight relationships please?  Pretty, pretty please?  ToR is enough of a slap in the face, and we're teetering on the edge of a rage induced rant.

Thanks.

No.

As a gay male I don't just want copy-pasted relationships with the gender pronouns changed. I'm free to express that in a post and I'm certainly not going to change what I post to cater to you. Your only contribution to any thread I have read on F13 has been to stifle conversation. If you have a problem with my post, either elaborate on what you disagreed with in it or fuck off.

I actually agree with you here, but the promise of a Corso-free world almost makes me wish we had the gender-neutral romances instead.  :why_so_serious:  But then I think there wouldn't be the Doc romance either, and I'm back with ya.

Let's not shit the thread up, k? No one gets to be spokesperson for all the whatever, unless you can prove you were elected as such.

And I would have preferred gender-neutral romances, not like any of the ones in ToR are that well written.

People still care about this shit? Really?

Well, I'm not sure on other MMOs but off the top of my head....
http://www.wowhead.com/item=87530

http://www.wowhead.com/npc=62935/kama-the-beast-tamer
Lesbian panda NPC mentioned casually in a throw-away line in a fluff item. There's also a few NPCs that might be, or might just be heterosexual life partners or something (Kinelory & Quae, for example) and the lesbian NE Sentinel in Dragonblight (but the flirtee in that one doesn't seem at all interested). There is also the pair of druids in Firelands but again that's possibly only supposed to be a bromance instead and the shippers are (of course) just taking it too far.

As a lesbian, I don't want copy-pasted romances, either, but I still disagree with most of what you said.  I won't elaborate here.  Nor do I want to stifle conversation.  But I will ask people to stop saying offensive shit, especially if it's stuff I'm inclined to rant at length about in a place it doesn't belong.

If you want my feelings, feel free to start a thread in politics where I'll be glad to eviscerate what you said.  This isn't the sub-forum for it.

Lots of griping about the same sex romance in the game tonight.  From folks who knew there was going to be same sex romance in said game.  People are funny.

Surely they couldn't be trolls trolling.

We were laughing in guild chat about all the "accidental gay" people were getting.  Since the flirt options aren't very straight forward in some parts.

No to reopen a debate or anything, but I just wanted to add that there's nothing wrong with gender-neutral romances. Sure, I see "your" point and I see why it works for you. But you are enforcing and reinforcing the gender binary and well, sorry, some feel really uncomfortable with that. So my only polite invitation would be to, eventually, if possible, consider that there's more than gender stereotypes and "men and women interact with each other differently" out there.

Thanks  :heart:

I think there is plenty of room to please everyone really. Some of the relationships already in the game could easily be gender-neutral, it's just nice to not restrict the writers to having to write every relationship as gender-neutral.

On-topic: I have not hit level cap or played the expansion, how did the SGR stuff turn out?

The main Republic chick is bisexual because God forbid a woman not be available to the men who also want to hump her. In fact, all the women I've seen with flirt options in the expansion are bisexual, wheras Mr. Empire Dude is not only the only dude ANYONE can flirt with that I've seen, he is gay, so female characters interested in dudes are shit out of luck on both sides. It's an imbalance I find bizarre. Both main people gay, or both bi, okay sure, but ... it is perplexing that straight women have zero people to flirt with in this expansion, but there are a bunch of bisexual ladies to flirt with (although I believe you only get kissyface with Main Republic Lady and Empire Man, so I assume those are the only ones people "count."). Even more frustrating, the gay dude gets shuffled offscreen halfway through the Makeb storyline, never to be seen again, while the Republic lady is there throughout, even allowing you one last chance to hit on her during the final conversation.

So basically, from this (narrow) angle, the expansion is fine if you're into ladies, really pretty obnoxious if you're not.

Also "romance" is a little excessive as a word to describe it; it is normal planet story level stuff rather than companion level stuff.

Yeah, the same sex romances have been pretty much a let down so far.  I was hoping my female SI would have some options with the woman that shows up with the gay Sith lord but nothing. :heartbreak:  Since my highest female Republic toon is under level 20, I don't think I'll ever see it happen.  And I agree, it was kind of a cop out to make the female bi but the male gay only.  I guess that reflects our society where its much more ok for a woman to be bi than for a man.  I'm still pissed my male BH sent the Sith lord to his death so soon.  I was hoping to see how it progressed from just flirting and see if it went further.  It might have pissed Mako off, though, since we had just gotten married after we reached Makeb. :awesome_for_real:

So yeah, when you shuffled him off? You missed one (1) more conversation with him, then he goes away anyway, never to be seen again.

I'm so glad I'm not playing.  I would have fumed over those 'options'.