Blue humanoids with the red eyes.

I'd make an awful politician with a very short-lived political life, actually, and I suspect you're not actually reading what I'm telling you. The person you're accusing of discrimination made no blanket statements about men. Believe me, I'm one of the first to jump on discrimination against women OR men (I don't believe in such a thing as 'reverse discrimination' - a person is discriminating or they're not), and I don't believe it's happening in this case. If Samy_Merchy had said 'I tried making a male character but all men are ick' I'd fully agree with you, but she didn't.

Did I say I condoned being rude or attacking the developers? Call me crazy but I don't recall doing so.

I didn't see it in beta. If ANY of it is recorded then it never made it into the game files (those things will have been datamined like nobody's business). I don't think it'll be easy and I haven't been given a convincing reason not to believe that time and budget constraints weren't amongst the reasons it was left out. I think it was perhaps unwise to put OGRAs in and leave SGRAs out but I can see the other side - if they had OGRAs done but not SGRAs and decided to leave them both out, then later down the track decided to add OGRAs in (because they were made) and not SGRAs (because they'd run out of money) one can imagine the uproar. I'm willing to wait and see what Makeb brings. As I've said seevral times I think it'll be interesting as much for how it's presented as for what precise content is presented.

Congratulations on entirely missing the point. The post you're quoting was directly related to a blog post by a games developer on how people try and get information out of developers and are rude about it. I stated we tried being polite and it didn't work. I never said they were under some kind of contractual agreement to keep us informed. Which, of course, you're aware of.

A lot of good points but one sticks out: 'say nice things.' We tried that. For a long time we tried nice things. It got us exactly nothing. We only got one question answered at the Summit because it was sprung on the dev team. No, I don't think they're out to get us, nor that they're inherently homophobic or even bad people. I'm sure they were overwhelmed at what it takes to run an MMO and underestimated the scope of their project - but communication with the pro-SGRA crowd was horribly mismanaged and there's no way around that.

On the bright side, getting bumps is good.

'Expect'? I don't know, that's down to individual interpretation I suppose. I'd like them to, personally. I can't see any way they're going to maintain even a pretence of equal representation if they don't adjust content from base for both non-companion Flirts and companion SGRAs. Equal representation requires representation to be, you know, equal.

>.> No, that male companion stories aren't worth putting morality mechanics into along the order of Jaesa-style decision-making. <shrugs> In the Star Wars universe people - good people, righteous people - are corruptible by the Dark Side and redeemable by the Light Side. In the majority of the cases where a Force-using companion comes onto the PC's team it's as a peripheral or outright student position. A Force-user's Master certainly should be able to make an impact on their morality compass. That's one of the reasons I think that stretching something like that out over an entire chapter would be better. While hers is the only of its kind I've seen with Jaesa it's essentially one or two decisions in as many encounters that make all the difference. Now imagine her having her moral compass guided (or bent) over the course of a whole chapter. Imagine a Dark Side JK bending Kira, or a Light Side JC fending off Dark Side temptation to protect Nadia from corruption as she learns what it is and how to defend against it herself. THAT is the kind of moral compass story I could get into.

There are negative counter-implications, too. While you're clearly (and perhaps correctly) implying that the writer team feels that women are more, shall we say, malleable than men (and thus the female NPCs can be bent to the wills of the player and the males can't) there's another side of the coin that, equally, I think hasn't been considered. The Force 'alignment' function is, to me, a sign that the writers wanted to put something complex, interesting and dynamic (one might even say 'intimate') into the companions' stories. Why can't male companions have something like that? Providing that functionality to both male and female companions would address both inconsistencies. I enjoyed the decision-making process that led to my Jaesa's inclinations. That was fun to play through - really fun. I would've loved to have seen that process (perhaps stretched out a bit more over an entire chapter, so you can slowly redeem or corrupt a companion over a stretch of time) for all Force-using companions.

Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm nonetheless interested to see how they're dealt with. Not so much in a mechanical manner (I mean there are only so many ways the engine can respond to player input) but in the implementation of availability, as it were - whether they'll be intended as exclusively same-gender, for example, or whether they'll simply throw in [Flirt]s that are available to both genders. I'm expecting a mix, of course. Then there's the writing. How the opportunities are written is a pretty key thing. Will the writing flow as if same-sex relations are so natural that neither character really blinks? 'You like me? But I'm nobody special,' has a very different feel to 'You like me? But I'm a boy.' The writing sets a cultural overtone for same-sex relations in general, not just for that one instance of flirtation. That's one of the reasons I'm so much more positive about [Flirt]s coming with Makeb than I could be. No, it's not full SGRAs (and it arguably should be), but it's an opportunity for BW:A to let everyone know where they stand on SGRAs' validity within the SWTOR universe in an in-character, in-game manner. Whether they take that opportunity or not, well, that's another matter of course.

I don't see anyone pro-SGRA in this thread accusing anyone of being 'evil' simply because someone disagrees with an opinion. Wrong? Certainly. Some people's opinions do strike me as being 'wrong'. Of course they do. If they didn't I wouldn't oppose them. When someone comes into this thread saying that there should be more work done on OGRAs before SGRAs are even looked at then yes, I think that's wrong and I'm going to say so. And yes, I do think it's an entitled viewpoint and no mention of 'chill pills' by the person I was quoting is going to alter the fact that they were saying outright that SGRAs should wait until non-romance stuff and further OGRA content has been implemented. And then only a 'maybe'. Is the person I was responding to 'evil'? No, and I never suggested that they were. Funnily enough the pro-SGRA crowd is always on the receiving end of that particular judgement. It's an opinion, it's one I oppose and it's one that I think is outright wrong. Not because it's different from mine, but because it comes from a position of privilege, because it's completely blind to the idea that pro-SGRA players might want the same opportunities as pro-OGRA players, and because the view that we should have to wait not only for non-romance features but also for the expansion of existing OGRA features is an entitled viewpoint. This is a very bad idea. Putting those two threads together would result in the biggest flame-fest since the mods decided to separate the pro- and anti-SGRA crowds. And before you start saying the two crowds are 'just as bad as one another' or anything similar, we're not intending to deny people features. We just want features implemented and expanded upon. We're not trying to get them to take OGRAs out. The majority of us, I'm willing to bet, have no problem with OGRAs being expanded upon, we just want SGRAs implemented as well, alongside, as they should have been at launch. Those opposed to SGRAs want to deny features outright. The two viewpoints are directly in opposition.

I don't think F2P restrictions should necessarily be eased up. it's a very big game with a hell of a lot of content. Letting free players see the whole lot would make subscriptions entirely pointless. The devs would run out of money very quickly and then bam, nobody's got the game to play, free or paid. Having said that maybe the F2P restrictions COULD be less restrictive, I honestly wouldn't know as I've been subscribing from launch. Not to put too fine a point on it but How About No. SGRAs have been a concern since well before launch. Don't try to use age of complaint as a factor that's even slightly valid because SGRAs will beat a lot of other issues based on that alone. So once the already-extant OGRAs are tweaked in a manner that you find more pleasing 'then maybe same-sex romance can be looked at'? How damn entitled do you want to be? 'What I have must be perfect before anything even close to similar can be looked at for you, and even then it's only a maybe'? No. That's not even close to suitable. I suggest you have a good long look at your own internal priority queue and ask yourself why it is that we aren't allowed anything, imperfect or no, before you get even more of what you already have.

Because it's something s/he wants, and SGRAs aren't.

I'm quite looking forward to seeing how the SGR flirts are dealt with in RotHC. While it's not full SGRAs it'll at least be a snapshot of how they're intending to approach the whole matter.

I'd like them to plug in a slider system. Height, Body type (endo-, meso-, ectomorph), body weight, muscle mass. That'd side-step this whole argument by giving people considerably more variation; if you end up with an 'idealised' form then that's your doing, not the game's. Hell, a Sims 3 style system would work. And, you know, some furniture that works. Oh, and full SGRAs.

That is, indeed, indisputable. That's fact. No, we don't. Some people can assume that but we simply don't know what movement they've put toward it because they haven't released that. We all know they haven't put them in-game yet, that's all. Anyone who plays MMOs knows what it often means, and that might be true in this case or it might not be. We don't have enough data to say conclusively one way or the other. This is all speculation - and it might even be accurate speculation - but don't try to say it's solid fact because it isn't. SGRAs are not in the game yet. Whatever effort has or has not been put into SGRAs it has not yet resulted in their inclusion in the game. Communication with EA/BW:A has been poor (to put it mildly). As a general consensus most people (probably all) who want SGR content want it as romantic arcs with companions. That's not coming with Makeb and there's no projection on when it's coming. THOSE are the facts. And that's not optimism, it's just factual truth. As I've said, you might be absolutely spot on with your assumptions but that doesn't make them facts, and you might be wrong.

No, that's an assumption you're making based on what EA/BW:A has visibly done. And you might be right or you might be wrong. But either way, whether it's a fair call or not, it's your opinion. It's not fact and people can quite validly disagree with it.

Then don't let him play. Your parenting decisions are your responsibility, not EA/BW:A's.

Maybe, maybe not. Either way 'efficient' and 'suitable' aren't necessarily the same thing. I don't personally think this is the road they'll take. If it were then I think chances are good it'd have been slated for inclusion in Makeb rather than the non-companion flirt option they're taking. They seem set on doing things A Certain Way (which they won't elaborate on) and from the Hickman update it sounds a lot like 'the most efficient way' isn't on the cards.

I know a lot of people are stumbling over one or two parts of the Hickman update, but I'd like to state my piece on it. The update doesn't hint at all that SGRAs won't be in for companions. Nor does it hint they won't be in for existing companions, nor does it state that people are being 'thrown a bone' or being told to 'make do' with non-companion NPC flirts when OGRAs exist for companion NPCs. What it does say, and the only thing it says for sure, is that companion SGRAs will not be in the expansion, and that non-companion NPC SGR content (presumably flirts and/or Azalie-style hookups) will be in the expansion. We can stumble and argue over the minutiae until the proverbial cows come home but in the end that's all we've been told (along with an acknowledgement that we've been waiting, an apology for the same and an admission that the companion SGRA content has, at the very least, been delayed). The bottom line is that we need more information. Everything read into the update or assumed from the usage of 'will' instead of 'would have' and similar is speculation. Just speculation. Maybe it's accurate; maybe it's not. But it is still just speculation. If you're determined to be disappointed I say: go for it. If the worst the dev teams get from the nine months of silence we've endured is a bit of snark and a general 'I'll see it when I believe it' attitude they're getting off light, and I believe they know that. If (like me) you've decided to take the Hickman update in a positive light then let yourself be positive! Don't be forced into a negative mind-space because others are too hurt over the silent treatment to really take BW:A at its word just yet (which, in my mind, is perhaps fair enough). Everyone is going to react to this a little differently and that's fair enough. Even people determined to throw unreasoning fear and hate at SGRAs. Let them hate. Let them demand this content not go in; the fact is their attitude is irrelevant. It's going in. The only questions are how and when, and both of those questions are partially answered already. Don't fight. Flag the hate and move on. As Terry Pratchett once wrote, 'Nil Illegitimus Carborundum'.

Yeah. I think your hesitation to be too optimistic is probably quite understandable, considering how long it's been since the last update.

To be fair I don't think they're implying they should be considered so. I think they're getting some content out because it would be wrong to continue to withhold it, and they can't have the whole lot done because someone made a judgement call about how much effort and cost it'd take, and got it wrong. To me that suggests that they're taking SGRAs very seriously, and want it to be a quality feature before releasing it. But then I am a critical optimist.

Actually, I don't think there's any implication that current companions will or won't be getting SGRAs. I think the only implication is that there WILL be companion SGRAs in the future; they've rather carefully not indicated anything about WHICH companions. Again, we really need more information.

Plus several of the VAs have actually done same sex content in the past for Bioware - Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect both spring to mind.