Because bi people, of course, aren't on the LGBT spectrum... >.>

Yeah, I guess they're not as common as all that (except for Smugglers, male in particular). I'd actually like to see a bunch more, both OGR and SGR. And like I said I'm sure I recall a couple that didn't get past Beta stage, so maybe they consciously toned back the number of flirts available.

Honestly, make a male Smuggler and level him to Nar Shaddaa. It might be the same way with female Smugglers, I'm not sure. I really need to knuckle down and actually level a Smuggler beyond 30. Actually now that I think of it I seem to recall someone suggesting we start a database of some kind on Google Docs of existing OGR flirts. Might have been Uluain.

I was responding to yours. 'Some people don't want RL stuff in their MMO' isn't a viable argument. There are too many holes in it. I don't particularly want torture in my MMO experience but it's there, it's part of the game and I've parsed it.

*sighs* I must assume you're either being purposefully dense or unintentionally so. Either way, I'll explain what I meant. People sometimes come in here all in a flap about SGRAs getting into SWTOR claiming that it has no place in the game because of the hot-button issues surrounding it. 'That's RL, we don't want it in-game,' they say, irrespective of why others want SGRAs. I am sick of the argument that this feature shouldn't be in the game just because it's a hot-button issue to many people. If someone wants it removed or excluded and cites 'No RL in-game' but is entirely happy to look the other way on matters like torture then I have no respect for them.

We'd better take humans, war, torture, mail, punches, kicks, the capacity to communicate, clothes and sound out of the game, then, because they're all in the real world too.

I have early access but still haven't played it. From what I've read, though, it seems interesting.

The difference is the matter of inclusion. Adding in SGRAs adds in more options to the game and that's a positive thing. Demanding it not be put in (or demanding it be removed) lowers the amount of options in the game and that's a bad thing. Similarly to not being overly relevant to the bigger picture why someone wants the feature included I feel it's not overly relevant to the bigger picture why someone wants it not included. I'll argue specifics at times but in the end 'I don't want this in' means 'I don't think you should have this option' and to me that's not on. So no, I don't overly care if someone argues about protecting children from sexuality matters or if they argue immersion or population percentages or political agendas. I might find their personal opinions repugnant on a personal level but in a bigger picture view it doesn't matter to me at all. That they're arguing against the feature being implemented and thus demanding people have fewer in-game options for enjoying everything SWTOR has to offer - THAT I care about.

Likewise. It should have been and it would have saved all sorts of trouble. This thread, for a start. I can imagine its existence is a headache for the developers. 'Time and resources,' I think was their reason. I don't have any reason to believe that wasn't true. I know a lot of people think they're lying but I haven't seen any convincing evidence or argument to make me think they were telling porky pies. I don't, however, believe that it's at all a priority to them nowadays. When I put in my bug report I got a reply that said SGRAs weren't going to be in (or 'weren't yet a feature', I can't remember which exactly). I don't recall exactly but I don't believe it gave a reason why. However there were some (heterosexual) NPC flirts that were in Beta that never made it past launch. I don't know whether they thought they'd put in too many; they seemed pretty innocuous to me at the time. I didn't see the whole game during Beta so I couldn't say for sure if there were SGR flirts but I suspect not. And from the look of the forums at the time there definitely weren't any SGRA companion romances in Beta despite there being what looked to me like strong support for them.

I have to admit that personally I don't care why people want it in because that's their own business and I don't have the right to dictate whether their reasons are 'worthy' or not. I don't care if it's a cause to some people, a story-motivated thing to others, a fetish thing to some, an expression of romantic interest to others. Everyone is going to have different reasons for wanting this feature. I don't think anyone here has the moral high ground to say that one reason for inclusion is somehow more objectively valid than another. I want the feature in. I want it in place. I have specific personal reasons for doing so but they're not dramatically relevant to the bigger picture. I want it done well, of course, but if one person wants it in because she gets her jollies watching to boys kiss, another wants it in because they can't relate to a romance if it doesn't align to a certain sexuality and yet another wants it in because they feel it's desperately wrong not to have their sexuality represented, well, that shouldn't matter. It's pointless to fixate on why individuals want the feature because there will always be people who want SGRAs for different reasons. In any case it's not particularly relevant to the larger and more important matter of getting it implemented.

Since before launch, actually. I was in the beta and I reported lack of SGRAs as a bug because it seemed so natural and expected that, as a Bioware game, they'd be there. And I know for a fact that I wasn't alone in that because a fair number of other people have posted that they did the same.

You're using the word 'should'. There's no reason why such stories 'should' be only in single player games. Most players can separate the class story from the non-class stories and cope with the idea that there's not literally thousands of Barsen'thors running around. There is no 'should' here. There are different ways of doing the same thing and the way the SWTOR team decided to do it is by putting main-character stories in a multiplayer game. They lock it down so the class stories can only ever be about one member of that class at a time anyway; even if you're grouped with another of your class only one person can benefit from a class story instance and make decisions in it. So really I'd say they've managed to convey the main-character story in a multiplayer game rather well.

Bravo and exceedingly well-said.

I agree it can be legitimately viewed as a compromise but I think in terms of 'best design', well, that entirely depends on your definition of 'best'. If the design you're going for is the most inclusive design in which the player can have the biggest impact on the romantic story then herosexuality probably is the best design. Frankly I feel that while in the case of SWTOR in particular it probably would be a compromise, in general terms herosexuality doesn't need to be a compromise in the slightest. The rules are different for interactive stories than for static stories, and there's different levels of player interaction. Say they made a game with a character - we'll call them Alex because it's nice and gender-neutral - who could be romanced by a PC of any gender available at character creation. The overall story is well-written and well-paced, it's intriguing, it's got tension in the right parts and lets the player relax and explore at other points. Just funny enough without being too comedic; just sad enough without being so tragic it's ludicrous. The player takes a shine to Alex. Heretofore Alex has shown no interest in the player, nor has Alex related tales of exploits with anyone previously. The PC initiates romance with Alex - maybe successfully, maybe not. At that point the player is, in effect, writing part of the story - the part where the PC and Alex either get together or crash and burn. It also determines the sexuality form of the relationship they enter into - heterosexual if they're the opposite gender, homosexual if they aren't. Either option is just as valid because that's what the story does, it gives the player that power. It's an interactive story. While some interactive stories would give enough control to determine a relationship but not the sexuality form of that relationship, this one does. That's not necessarily a compromise and it's certainly not a design flaw. It's an interactive story that has a different level of functional player control. Hell, in some games (such as Deep Space 3, which I played only recently) the player doesn't even have control of major plot choices, relationships or even dialogue. And that's not a design flaw either, it's just a story told in a different way (though the story is static in DS3's case - it doesn't change no matter how many playthroughs you try because there are no actual choices to make).

I think (and fervently hope) that you're wrong regarding a preferred gender for classes. As far as I can tell gender is entirely irrelevant for gameplay and story purposes with the single exception of romances. This is one of the reasons I think herosexuality makes the most sense. Not only that but as you point out there are many concessions made for mechanical purposes. Lightsabers, for example. Herosexuality not only seems to be a sensible one but a very workable one.

Again, I disagree. Herosexuality is a way of presenting an interactive story and has no impact on story quality. Well-written content including herosexuality will still look well-written. Fan-fiction is not interactive and cannot be held to the same criteria.

I agree with so much of this post, Slaign, that I can't even form a decent response to it. Kudos.

No. It wouldn't make for a better story. It would make for an equally fleshed story told in a different way. Story quality is not the same as story form.

That's a fair point, and one that's been voiced many times, but the tricky thing is: who says what personalities 'fit' a given sexuality? People aren't neat and regular. They don't fit into universal patterns. My oldest brother is gay but most people would never pick it (unless they saw him with his partner). I'm bi but most people don't pick that. What is a 'gay personality'? The thing is, you see, the only reason people connect specific sexuality with overall personality is because in most places of the world non-heterosexuals are seen as being 'different' and are whitewashed with templates for what their 'acceptable' behaviour is. I don't see why Doc can't be bi, Kira can't be a lesbian, Mako can't be a transgendered female heterosexual. Why not? It could easily be made to fit all their stories.

I like mini romance stories. Good for head-canon.

I try and satisfy myself with simply knowing it's there. Sometimes it even works.

I suppose to be completely fair nobody can have the full story until they play it through after release. The devs might change things between now and then.

To be honest I'm all for herosexuality because it makes the most sense in terms of efficiency and inclusion but I think the statement made at the Guild Summit last March will still apply. I don't think they want to do that. While I know staffing has changed (to say the least) I doubt the basic premise behind that statement (the arguable belief that herosexuality isn't good writing) will still hold firm. If we could just get the writers to actually talk to us about it then we wouldn't be so in the dark about a feature they said they intended to be in at launch.

Whether BW:A owes the LGBT community anything or not is one thing but throwing the word 'entitlement' around does nothing to further your point of view. Wanting equality is not the same thing as having a misplaced sense of entitlement.

Do you know, I have the feeling you're insinuating something here but you haven't made it particularly clear. Because, as Slaign and others have pointed out, resources are not such that the whole lot could be put in all at once. It's ridiculous to assume they could do that. We should certainly have seen OGRAs and SGRAs in at launch but we didn't. I'd love to see polyamorous options implemented but the majority of the classes don't even have two options for both genders to choose between; for my JK it was Doc or nobody. It'd be great if transfolk were represented fairly but from what we've seen of how they've dealt with SGRAs (and, many would argue, OGRAs) it's unlikely we'll even see transgendered NPCs, let alone companion or PC options for the same. We know (or at least suspect with reasonable certainty) that the writing team, PvP team, PvE team etc are, in fact, different teams so there might not be much (if any) resource conflict in the sense of people working on their respective areas. But I'm willing to bet that the writing team has a very specific restriction in terms of money, and there's no doubt that the finances of the game are tied to subscriptions and micro-transactions through the Cartel Shop. By its very nature the available money BW:A will have access to is both finite and available at a restricted rate. Bit by bit, baby steps, is the only way it's feasible to realistically implement these features. They have the money for part of it, they work on it and put it in. They get the money for the next part, they work on that and put it in. And all the while the teams have to talk to the finance guys to convince them that their department needs more money. I'm not sure how I can make that point more clear.