JE did it so well, you talk to Skye, you shut him down, boom you're done with him and on to Silk Fox. I don't know how many times I had to reject Doc, it was certainly more than once, and obviously you couldn't then move on to Kira, as you should be able to. I don't play male characters so I don't know how it works, but it seems like female characters tend to get the worst LIs in certain Bioware games lately, like in ME2 where you literally can't even have a conversation with that one guy, whose name I can't remember right now, because literally everything is flirting, and your own character flirts back even if you don't want them to. Ironicly, in ME3 if anybody actually liked that and had romanced him in ME2, they found he had left them for somebody else, and they were left all alone. Obviously I didn't have that problem, but for anybody who would actually romance that guy, they still ended up screwed anyway, literally everybody lost with having that character around. Im guessing there are no such problems that any players of male characters have. Thats just all the more reason to treat everybody equally and fairly, its sickening to constantly be hit on by doc, and I don't even remember whether there was a 'neutral' response or not, but I didn't want one, I wanted to be as negative as possible, to somehow get the guy to leave my female JK alone. Its only fair that there be an equal number of females constantly hitting on my character, I think its safe to say that if that happened, and for whatever reason a particular female character wasn't to my liking, I definitely would want to let them down as gently as possible, so I'd put a higher priority on 'neutral' or 'letting them down gently' options for the female characters who hit on you, because generally speaking they arent going to be as incredibly annoying in their flirting comments as folks like Doc, and thus would be more deserving of being let down easy. But ultimately we have to actually 'have' flirt options with those characters before we can decide whether or not we want to go for it, or let them down easily, or shoot them down harshly. Thats the point, give us the same options as everybody else, and I'm sure we'll be plenty satisfied with the ways we can turn down anybody we'd actually want to turn down.

Its funny, as someone whose characters literally ONLY gets hit on by people she isn't going to be interested in, I like the really forceful/insulting ways you can turn them down, and have no need or desire for anything neutral. In regard to an earlier comment about Leliana and DAO in general, yes she was very awesome, and even with the mod that let female Wardens romance Morrigan I still almost always picked Leliana. Leliana is as good an example as any that limits are pointless, because from all the evidence I've ever seen Leliana is clearly a lesbian, yet she can be romanced by a male Warden. And thats all fine and good, because if somebody wants to romance Leliana they should be able to. The same would be true of Morrigan, she should've been romancable by everyone also despite the fact that she seemed more on the straight side (though she all but confirmed having slept with women before, when she talked about how she had to sleep with Templars from time to time, and as we all know thats not a male-only group) . Obviously DA2 did away with those annoying limitations, and that made the game that much better (which, as it turned out, was especially important because there weren't many actual improvements in DA2 overall) . It doesn't really matter what a character's starting sexual preferences are, you can make them like Leliana where they seem to be Lesbian, Isabella where they clearly go both ways, Morrigan who seems more straight, or Merrill who doesn't really seem to be predefined in any way, so long as you've got the same option to romance them that the male players do, all is good. As for the more general comments about breaks in the storyline and it getting boring, try some of the 'warzones', the PvP mini-games which are generally really fun and help you level up in the process. I don't know which class you're playing, so if you've got nothing but ugly and annoying teammates there's really not a whole lot you can do about that except be patient, when I played as a smuggler I leveled up a fair bit with the robot, even though it was clearly inferior, because I didnt want that annoying dude who constantly hits on you, whatever his name was, around. On my SI, obviously your first character is a monster, who was much more tolerable because he'd rather kill you than hit on you (and of course doesn't do either) . In both cases though, patience leads to eventually ending up with an attractive female teammate who is fun to have around. Same on my JK, only you get her even earlier still, you get a fairly entertaining little robot as your first teammate, then the attractive female. Some classes you get your female teammate first, like the SW class that I sadly haven't done yet (I tried it, but just a few levels worth, back when I was trying out the various classes, I never got far enough to have a teammate), I definitely plan to though. The bottom line is that obviously they should've been LIs for both male and female characters, you are completely right that the romances make the game so much more fun, and when there's a romance RIGHT THERE and they won't let you play it simply because you're playing a gender they dont approve of, it makes it a lot more annoying than if there never had been any romances in the game at all, like in every other MMO I've ever played. The romances were a unique, and awesome, selling point for this game, and then to not let you play ANY of them unless you play as a male character (or prefer dudes) is wrong beyond belief. Hopefully they mean it when they say they plan to fix things and make things right, its certainly possible that all our efforts have genuinely caused them to change their mind and finally give us the romances that are already there and would be SO simple to let us enjoy too. But my suggestion to you is have patience, you'll get a female teammate sooner or later whatever class you're playing as (I think the other Jedi class, not the Knight but the other one, has the longest wait, I havent played that one but I'm just basing that on what Ive read), and at that point you can give her 'courting' gifts, eventually you'll get a 'dancing' ability where you can dance together, and by using little things like that you can imagine that you're in a romance with them, even though you don't get the actual romance conversations because you're the 'wrong' gender according to whoever it was that decided to design it that way. Its hardly an ideal solution, but it really is better than nothing, so I'd advise patience, enjoy the little things we do have, and enjoy the main storyline, all of the main storylines I've seen so far have been pretty daggone good (I've played the SI and JK storylines all the way through, the SI one is quite simply epic, the JK one is really good too but the ending is kind've of a letdown, sort of a combination of 'that wasnt supposed to happen' and blandness) . Enjoy the 'warzones', level up until you get your female character (some classes even get more than one), enjoy the story, its a really fun game, what you're actually allowed to play of it anyway. It does have its boring parts, but you're pretty much at the worst of it right now, once you get past 'chapter one' things tend to start really picking up, it seems to me. You get the cooler abilities, the battles seem a bit easier, you still level up quickly, maybe even more quickly thanks to those newer abilities, and again once you get your female teammate, all will seem right with the world. Hang in there, because once you get to level 50 not only do you get to do all sorts of really cool and fun things like that Gree event happening right now, but once you have a second character, you can have them get 'married' in your legacy, and then any subsequent characters can be their children, or siblings, or just more characters to get married, however you want to do it. It definitely gets more fun as the game goes along, and hopefully they'll eventually make good on their promise to give us the romances that we want and should've had all along, and then things will be AWESOME .

I would love the chance to romance Ashara also. I don't know what it is about her, but she's just awesome. It'd be nice if you could get her on the team even earlier, but better late than never...just like adding her as an LI .

The one thing that I liked the best about the whole 'turning Doc down' thing, is the way it GAINS you points with Kira. The jealousy thing is such a nice touch, especially since my character is female and thus not actually allowed to romance her, its really about the only way Kira is allowed to show her romantic interest in my female JK. That type of thing, comments regarding one character having effect on another, is something there should be more of, its really cool. Going way WAY back to the days of JE, you could toy with Silk Fox by pretending you were interested in Sky, and of course in NWN2 how Neeshka was always so jealous of the elf-girl (even if your character was female, which obviously was the key point of the coolness) . The whole jealousy thing, thats definitely something they should keep, and expand on in the future. Its a lot of fun, and it really shows your character that they care .

I don't even understand the criticism from way back then, about DA2. I mean, if somebody (Anders in the case of DA2) is hitting on you and you don't like them, and you turn them down, why do you even care if they give you negative points toward them? Obviously DA2 and SWTOR are different games, but when I was playing as my JK I hated my female JK being repeatedly hit on by 'doc', and I enjoyed it when my responses earned me negative points from him, it meant my responses were having the intended effect. Just like I always liked it when my negative responses to his comments got me positive points from Kira, it meant she was jealous of him and was happy my JK was turning him down, she was keeping my JK all to herself . I like the positive/negative system the way it is, it works really well. We just need to be able to actually enjoy the romances that we want to enjoy, and all is good.

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.

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.

That's why we're here . We see other, extremely popular games doing it, we see there's no reason for this game not to, and we want it in this game too. Also, the fact that this is the first Bioware game AND the first KOTOR game (the 2nd one wasnt made by Bioware, but they used the same basic romance system) to not feature any lesbian LIs at all is completely inexcusable. Its an extremely popular option, thats why its been in every KOTOR game up until this one, and in so many other more modern games, there's nothing controversial about it at all. Ultimately there are so many different ways to introduce this into the game that it should've happened well over a year ago. They can just turn off all the gender-checks that disable the romances and flirts, that's the simplest solution, the one they should've done over a year ago. They could introduce a new race (they seem to like doing that from time to time) that looks and sounds female (like the all-female race in the ME series) and let players choose between male and female at the character creation screen, which would effect nothing about the character's appearance or voice, only who they could or couldn't romance/flirt with. That would actually be the coolest way of doing it, because I mean, who wouldn't want an Asari-like race in the game? The bottom line is theres lots of really good ways to make everybody happy, hopefully they'll pick the best one and implement it ASAP. I'd also like to make a more general, overall point about the game, and the storylines. I've only played 2 all the way through, the SI and JK, so I can't comment on all the storylines (although of those two, I found the SI more interesting, so much fascinating stuff happening, the JK storyline was cool too of course, but seemed a bit too straightforward, not as much uniqueness as the SI one, and also the ending was more satisfying for the SI one but I wont discuss that due to possible spoilers), but the overall point is, the story IS the game. Just as the original KOTOR was a traditional RPG that played like an action RPG, this is an MMO that plays like a traditional RPG. The story is the reason we play. I'm sure there's a fair number of people who only care about the MMO elements, the PvP stuff and such, and I do really enjoy the mini-games, the 'warzones' as they call them, but ultimately we play for the story. Throughout the game, whichever class you play, you're constantly given choices that effect things in your own personal world. Whether or not you save lives, bring about peace, or kill people and bring about war, etc. and in none of those storylines are your choices limited in any way whatsoever by your gender. Obviously the romances should be no different. They're part of the overall storyline, and they should be part of it in any way you want them to be. If you dont want to romance anybody thats fine, but if you do and you want her to be a prominent part of your storyline, that should be an option as well. I wouldn't be playing this game at all, I never would have, were it not for the fact that it was Bioware, which meant great stories, and it was also SUPPOSED to mean romances that I was actually allowed to play, rather than read about other people enjoying them while I wasn't allowed to. My request would be make the romances like the entire rest of the game, gender-irrelevant, and give us more stories as well. We get 3 chapters for each character, its time for chapter 4, and then beyond. The storyline is the cake, the romance is the icing on the cake. I want some icing on my cake, and I also want more cake . Two specific things I'd like to happen at some point in the future, I'd like the chance to become the Emperor for my SI character (possibly the other dark-side classes also, not sure if they would be equally appropriate or not as I haven't played their storylines all the way through yet), and the chance to romance Satele Shan for my JK (I imagine all my light-side characters would like that option, that seems like a pretty easy call even having not played their storylines all the way through yet) . Did I mention that Satele should be romancable by all? I think that would be implied .

The good news is there's almost no 'rewriting' involved, pretty much the only thing you have to do is change a few pronouns here and there, its not like they're going to change 'i love you' to 'i love you, but you're a girl so I'm gonna need some more gifts before we make our relationship official', or anything like that. Having played countless mods over the years, I know for a fact that the romances work just fine regardless of your character's gender, so long as there's no gender check in the way of your getting to play them. Probably the changes they talked about needing to deal with in regard to the different species will take more time and effort than the changes needed to deal with the different genders. So its certainly something they can do all at once, and super quick, if they're telling the truth about being inclined to do so, which I certainly hope they are. Ive read that other thread, and while the ideas aren't 'bad' per se, they're just overwhelmingly more complex and time consuming than is necessary, there's no way they're ever going to go to all that trouble to change the whole way the romance system works, nor quite frankly should they. The romance system works just fine right now, it doesn't need changing, aside from the whole gender check thing. If they did it like Skyrim and had no gender check preventions we'd have 10 really good romances to choose from instead of 0, that sounds like a pretty awesome system to me. To try to create an entirely new system, housing on various planets for various new and old LIs, etc. just to solve a problem that can be solved by vastly, VASTLY simpler means, its just pointless to even discuss something like that as a serious suggestion. For those that enjoy doing so, that's great and keep having fun doing it, but the best solution is the simplest, let us play the romances that are already in the game. Don't radically change them, don't limit us to one or two, etc. just let us play what we want to play, the same way they do it in Skyrim, DA2, DD, etc etc etc there's nothing remotely complicated about that. Suggestions that are incredibly complicated aren't suggestions any of us really need to make, let's just keep it simple, so we can all get what we want, everybody wins.

In DA3 no, in ME4 not exactly, but still pretty bad. Thats just a guess in both cases, based on the previous games in each series, but the DA series started good and improved to great, the ME series started decent (1 out of 2 female teammates romancable, like DAO) and finished terrible (0 out of 3 female teammates romancable in ME2 and 1 out of 5 in ME3, but with one female NPC romancable in ME2 and two in ME3 for what thats worth) . Ultimately it comes down to the guy making the decisions in the DA series wants to give us as much as possible, the ME guy wants to give us as little as possible, like the SWTOR guy. The level of pressure on each guy in the ME and SWTOR games dictated exactly how much he gave us, they'd give us zero if they could, but they can't. The DA fellow, whose name is David Gaider for those who don't know, has stated quite clearly that those at the highest levels of Bioware don't care what he or any of his equals in the other game series' do with the romances, they can do them the way he did them in DAO, in DA2, or just the way they did it in SWTOR, they don't care one bit (Im sure he would add that they do care when the decisions result in extreme public backlash, like the ME2 and SWTOR ones, seems like a reasonable guess). But the general point is each game has a head guy, and that one guy has all the power when it comes to who is, and who isn't, allowed to enjoy the romances. I remember back when the ME2 controversy came out (the first Bioware game in modern history that had no SGRA whatsoever, other than one NPC which they tried to pretend wasn't even a romance, it shocked everybody at the time), virtually everyone that worked on the game favored the DA style approach, and thats how it was going to be in the game, then the head guy swooped in at the last minute and made them disable all our romances, every last one of them, with the dreaded gender check, thats why there was plenty of evidence of the romances still on the disc, bits and pieces here and there. The Devs made it as clear as they could, without losing their jobs, that they disagreed with the guy's decision and fought to keep the romances in, but ultimately the one guy had all the power and he abused it to our tremendous disadvantage. The DA guy will always give us plenty, that will never be a problem, he's made that perfectly clear. The ME and SWTOR guys will always give us as little as public pressure, or lack thereof, allows them to, they've made that perfectly clear as well. Thats who they are as people, thats what they believe in. Thats why we can't let up, if we let up thats when it ends, we've gotten all we're gonna get at that point, other than in the DA series which will always be good. Its ironic and sad, if the romance decisions were made as a team, by the folks working on each game, we'd be happy with the results in all of them. Most of Bioware is on our side, including most of the people working on each game, but ultimately the decisons of which romances do or dont get gender-checked away are made by one person, the guy at the top of each game. Nobody else's opinion carries any weight at all, except when the pressure gets so huge that somebody higher up orders them to do something to put an end to it. If the head of the ME or SWTOR series changes, we'll likely get romances-o-plenty in that given series. Until then, we're only going to get what they feel is absolutely required to avoid bad press, that's why what we're doing by constantly asking for fair and equal treatment is so important. But DA3 will be awesome either way, that's a given.

I too am someone who generally dislikes MMOs, I think thats a large part of the appeal of SWTOR, it is an MMO that plays like a single player RPG. Kind've like how the original KOTOR, WAY back in the day, was a traditional RPG that played like an action RPG. You appeal to a much wider range of people that way, and its still super fun. Clearly SWTOR has those MMO elements, the group quests, the PvP, stuff like that, and they are likely as much or more fun than any other MMO as well, but the primary draw for me, and probably a majority of players, is the storyline. Obviously that includes the romances, which is why there are 20 of them in the game, and while I've never heard a number on the total number of flirts its probably well over a thousand, and that might be an understatement. The fact that we aren't allowed to enjoy ANY of them is simply mind-boggling, and its why most players are upset. That, and the fact that its so easy to turn off the gender checks and solve the issue, but they pretend its 'unexpectedly hard', so hard that its taken them well over a year and theres still no end in sight to the waiting. As someone who is, unfortunately, an expert on this topic due to years and years of experience using mods to enjoy romances that are gender-checked away, there is literally never a romance that needs to be rewritten or changed in any meaningful way whatosever because the main character is really a female. Whether its the Bastilla and Female Revan, Morrigan and Female Warden, FemShep and Ashley, Jack, Miranda, Tali, I've literally played them all, and many more. The only one that is at all annoying is the Morrigan one, because of the unusual number of male pronouns in that one, but even that one is awesome (particularly if you have the Morrigan DLC, and get the happy ending, with Morrigan and the Female Warden going through the mirror to raise their child and have their happily ever after) . And the reason that one of the very first mods that came out for DAO was the mod that let you romance Morrigan as a female Warden is, in addition to the fact that it was one of the most wanted, it was also because it was one of the easiest to do. It is just SOOOO easy to get rid of that gender check and let everybody enjoy the romance, it isn't 'unexpectedly hard', it doesn't take years, it took about 2 days for a modder, a guy who isn't even a professional getting paid to do it, to put the Morrigan one out there, and it might not've taken him that long to actually do it, it might've just taken him that long to do it, figure out where to upload it, etc. Thats the key point behind all of this, how easy it is to do if they would just do it, instead of pretending its hard and making excuses while doing nothing. Of course it would be much harder if they wanted to write the romance storylines completely differently depending on which gender you were, but that is not only completely unnecessary, quite frankly its downright absurd. The romance is the romance, gender doesnt really play a role, once you'd played enough of these romances via mods you realize that isn't even slightly an issue. Of course it would be nice if they threw in a line about your character's gender at some point, that's always nice in any storyline in the game, and certainly it would be particularly appropriate for the romance storylines, but that's something they could add in later if they wanted to, thats not an excuse to give us absolutely nothing for well over a year. They could make the romances available right now, and if they want to add gender-specific aspects to them down the line that'd be great, and they'd obviously be able to do that as well, whenever they liked. So hopefully they'll finally do that soon.

I agree with what I believe was the sentiment behind the earlier post, which is that it's disgusting to have to play a male character to romance the female character of your choice. Thats true, it is. I can't bring myself to do it either, I couldn't even get as far as even beginning to try, so the earlier poster at least did better than me. Its not an insult about men in general, its that this is an RPG where you're allowed to play as a male or female character, and as such if you want to play as a female character you shouldn't be penalized in any way, especially in such an extremely important way. It's funny, I've played two characters to level 50 now and I don't even know what a 'chiss' is, I'm sure Ive met some and simply forgotten them, but it gave me an interesting and humorous idea for how to solve this whole thing. Not that it's complicated or anything, they could fix it super easily through any number of means, but this is yet another one. Suppose they created a race like the Asari from Mass Effect, who look and sound female, but like how that hilariously dumb fellow tried to say they 'werent female' even though they're explicitly stated as female in the game itself, you could take this race and let them be played as either male or female. Either way you get someone who looks and sounds female, but essentially by choosing the gender you'd be choosing which gender you want to romance. Obviously its much, much simpler to just get rid of the gender checks on the existing romances, but this is just yet another way to solve the issue on top of all the other obvious ones. Also, it would be pretty cool to have an all-female race similar to the Asari in SWTOR, you can never go wrong by adding an all-female race, whatever game you're talking about really .

It doesn't really matter if they fix things one patch at a time or all at once, I don't care if they fix the companion romances one or two classes per week, or all at once, so long as they do it. Same with the flirt options, I don't care if they do it one or two planets at a time, or all at once, that's all irrelevant, the point is simply that we want them to do it. I doubt that even if they did it all in one patch it would make the patch all that big, since really all they're doing is removing the gender checks for the romances and flirts and adding in a bit of VA, hard to imagine that making the patch all that insanely big, but even if it did who cares, we've waited way over a year, waiting a couple weeks for the patch to come in parts wouldn't be a big deal. As for the whole 'politics' thing, everybody's got an agenda, including the trolls. There isn't anybody who doesn't. The original decision to not allow us to have any romances was due to an agenda. The reason they haven't fixed it yet and given us what Skyrim, DA2, etc etc gives us is due to an agenda. Yes, some of the articles written also have an agenda in the other direction, but one part of them I agree with is the criticism, because its been way over a year and they still havent fixed this even though its super easy to do, so while we'd all love to believe they're telling the truth when they say they're still planning on doing it, the fact is they've brazenly lied about how 'unexpectedly hard' it was to do, when all it takes is disabling the gender checks, changing the occasional pronoun, and adding in the main character's voice, there's nothing unexpectedly hard about that. Now, just because one guy is a liar doesn't mean everybody that works for the game is one too, of course not, most are on our side, but it does mean you have to go on the assumption that they're not going to give us anything at all unless absolutely forced to by bad press, because that's the way its been so far, just lie or stay silent and give us nothing until the bad press gets so bad they had to do 'something', and by something they gave us about as little as humanly possible. I have an agenda also. My agenda is fun. That is the agenda that Skyrim, DD, Fallout NV, etc. had. They weren't about being pro or anti SGR for political or any other kind of agenda reason, other than the fun agenda. What they did was because it made the game more fun. When people can play any romance they want, thats WAY WAY more fun than when they cant. Its also easier for the game designers to make it that way, which gives them more time to make the game better in other ways also. Games are supposed to be about fun, not taking fun away to promote an agenda. Thats what we want, we want the same romances and flirt options as everybody else, because its a lot more fun. And the fact that it would be SO easy for them to make that happen is what is the most frustrating part of the whole thing. That they've gone to such trouble, and told so many lies, etc. just to keep us from enjoying the same romances as everybody else, instead of just making the romance storylines the same as every other storyline in the game, its just crazy. In any other storyline in the game, you can play it regardless of gender. You might get your gender mentioned, you probably won't but you might, but either way you're allowed to play it, and enjoy it no matter what your gender is. To make the romance storylines unplayable is beyond stupid, it was done because of an agenda, and that agenda obviously isn't a pro-fun agenda. All we ask is that they make their agenda what it should have been all along, a pro-fun agenda. We know that most of the devs agree with us. Its the same as it was in the Mass Effect series, they aren't the ones making the decisions, but most folks at Bioware are on our side, even those in the SWTOR team. If/when the head dude decides its not worth all the bad press to keep us from enjoying the game the same as everybody else, we'll get the romances we want and everybody will be happy. They don't even have to make an official announcement, they can just slip it into their regularly scheduled patches that fix other various things that either add to the game or need fixing in the game, I don't care exactly how they do it, I just want to enjoy the game the same as everybody else. Thats it. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

I loved the DAO/DA2 dialogue as well, and yes I always imagined that Bethany and that girl you rescue from the crazy Templar and crazy-Anders in act 2 and help reunite her with Bethany, are in fact a couple. Hard to see that kind of dialogue in SWTOR though, since you only have one companion at a time, not two, but I guess they could have the occasional on-ship little scene or something. There's something really good that hopefully will come out of this whole 'everybody dislikes the way they're doing things' backlash Bioware is getting, and that is that it is making it even MORE obvious what they should've done all along, and should do in the future. It was already mighty obvious, they could've looked at DA2, Skyrim, Fallout NV, DD, etc. but apparently they didn't. There's a reason why Skyrim was unfathomably popular and their romance system wasn't the slightest bit controversial, its because none of the characters are forced to be straight or gay, nobody is anything other than what you want them to be. If you want an all-straight world, you've got one. If you want an all-lesbian world, you've pretty much got one, etc. the idea of taking options away from players instead of giving players options is dumb at best. Everybody should be able to play and enjoy the game their own personal way, and most games nowadays give you that ability. There's no reason to pre-define any NPC's sexuality, all you're doing is taking fun away from people, whether its a few people or a lot of peope, why would you want to take fun away from anybody when its literally easier to give the fun to everybody? If they had just done it like Skyrim or DA2, let the players romance any LI they want, there would be no controversy. People vocally oppose adding SGRs to SWTOR because its seen as pandering to people other than them. Nobody vocally opposed SGRs in the other games, because they were done in a way that gave everybody what they wanted, right from the get go. Everybody had what they wanted, the ability to romance whoever they wanted, and they didn't really care that others had that same option. By doing things horribly, unfathomably wrong right from the get-go, the SWTOR folks stirred up a hornet's nest and are currently getting stung. The sooner they make all the LIs available to everybody the sooner the controversy will be gone. Its easy enough to do, and now they have more incentive than ever to do it.

I haven't played with Jasea yet, and when I had Ashara I was light side so turning her dark side wasn't an issue, but I agree with the option to turn either one light or dark during your romance, as long as my female character has the same opportunity. Options like that are cool, its always fun to have the option to turn characters light or dark side, I wouldn't mind if they expanded those light/dark options to include more romances if those are the only ones, again so long as female characters get that same option. We female characters should have the exact same opportunities the male characters have, we do in every other aspect of the game and there's no reason why romances should be any different. Equal treatment, its not a hard concept, its the point of this thread and its what the vast majority of players want, hopefully it'll become reality sooner rather than later.

The point of comparing SWTOR (or any other game) to Skyrim in terms of romance, is to point out that Skyrim did it right, they let you romance anyone you want to, and that the reason they did it is because its easier to do that than to put artificial gender-limitations on any given romance. Obviously Skyrim's romances were not 'deep' by any remote stretch of the imagination, but if you've played previous games in the series you know that there werent ANY at all, so it was a huge improvement over nothing. Nothing, that sounds familiar...oh, because that's what we got in SWTOR . Seriously though, the point is you have to go out of your way to keep people from romancing anyone they want to, you have to put in gender checks, and Skyrim didn't, that's what everybody likes about it, not that it had the world's best written romances, just that we get to actually enjoy what's there, unlike in SWTOR where the romances may be awesome for all I know, but I wouldn't know, because they don't let me enjoy them, so that's a lot worse than Skyrim regardless of how poorly written you think the romances were. Skyrim, DA2, DD, the Sims, etc. thats the future of gaming-romances, because that way everybody wins. You get to romance whoever you want to, and its easier on the folks that make the game to do it that way, everybody is happy. Obviously there are still some holdouts, its annoying to have a great game like SWTOR ruined by somebody who doesn't like the idea of my female Knight (who I've been playing the most recently) romancing Kira so much that he literally spent time and money putting in gender checks to prevent it, time and money he could've spent actually making the game better in some way. Thats very annoying, thats why we want them to get rid of those gender checks, so we can enjoy the romances the same as anybody else. And thats why we're happy with games like Skyrim, because even poorly written romances, that you're actually allowed to enjoy, are better than the best written romance of all time that you aren't allowed to play at all.

Its nice that somebody wants our suggestions about companion interactions. Of course its easy enough to say 'more', because really thats one of the most, if not THE most, fun parts of the game, interacting with the characters that you like. Thats sort of the whole point behind the SGR thing anyway, but just getting more conversations in general would be a plus. In addition to that, it would be nice to have more of those little 'random comments' you get when you click talk on the character you're with in the field, a wider range of those would be nice, perhaps one or two of those comments could depend on your light/dark attributes, like say you've got major light side points and you're talking to a light side teammate, her random comment might occasionally be a compliment about how 'good' you are, and of course if you're on the dark path her comment might be something more negative, about how she doesn't like the way you've been acting lately, and of course vice-versa if your teammate is a dark side teammate, stuff like that. Just little things like that would be really cool. Another thing that might seem minor but would have a really big impact, would be if they could make the comments when you give your companion a 'courting' gift the same regardless of gender. I mean, if you're giving somebody a courting gift, you're courting them, you'd like a romantic reply, that's the entire point. Nobody would object to that, because nobody who dislikes the concept of SGRs is going to give a courting gift to a member of the same gender. Thats something they could do for current companions right now, it would be insanely easy to do, and it would go a mighty long way toward making you feel like you've got an actual relationship going, even without the romance conversations that we want to have and currently cannot. Of course it should always be mentioned, we want those gender checks removed ASAP so that we can have those romance conversations, the same as anybody else, but until that happens the ability to get an 'i love you' or whatever in response to a courting gift would be a REALLY REALLY nice step in the right direction. If I could only make one suggestion, that's what it would be, because that really would make it feel like they have SGRs in the game, and in a way they would be. Not that it would be a substitute for anything, but it would be a really great step in the right direction.

I agree that it would be nice that he used words like 'delayed' instead of 'cancelled' except for the fact that he also said it would be way harder to implement them than they thought, when the reality is all you have to do is get rid of the gender check, clean up the occasional pronoun, add the character's voice (the LI's voice is obviously already in the game) and there it is. There isn't anything hard about it. Someone mentioned 'jealousy scenes', obviously thats something they could add if they wanted to but arent the least bit necessary to the romance itself. If you romance somebody, you romance them, it doesn't 'have' to relate to any other character, of course those scenes are always fun to see, just like its always nice to have your gender/race mentioned by somebody in the game, but its not actually necessary. If they added the romances to the game, then said 'going back and adding in jealousy scenes will be hard, we're going to delay that', then that would make sense, and better still it would actually be true, unlike what he actually did say which wasn't the slightest bit true. The bottom line is that he put in a gender check specificly so we couldn't play these romances, and now he's pretending its 'really really hard' to get rid of it, when in reality he just doesn't want to. Why would he? He put it in for a reason, he doesn't want to get rid of it for the same reason he put it in in the first place. Because he doesn't like this sort of content, and doesn't want it in his game. The only way to overcome that is with enough pressure so that he would rather have it in his game than continue to be annoyed by people asking for it. If somehow a couple of flirt options with NPCs on a planet you have to be level 50 to reach satisifies enough people and they don't keep asking for what we rightly should have, and were promised, then he wins, and he keeps them out forever. Its as simple as that. Hopefully that isn't what happens, I know for my part I'm going to keep asking for what we were promised, and for what virtually every modern game now has, the ability to romance any LI you like, and I hope everybody else will also.

You don't really get much conversation with Jack in ME3, I think the 'girls club' thing is about gossip and such, its so innocuous I can't even remember if its in ME2 or ME3. She isn't straight, and she doesn't 'shoot down' FemShep, they just cut out the romance at the last minute so her conversations just abruptly end. Kind've like with Tali, who tells FemShep she wants to sleep with her (her species version of it anyway) and FemShep simply isn't given a chance to respond, again because the head ME guy forced them to take her romance with FemShep out of the game. This is the way a few at the top of Bioware operate, the VAST majority support SGRs, but like, the head of ME forcing them to remove all the SGRs from ME2, and the head of SWTOR not allowing any, they're in the minority in the company, but they have all the power in every franchise except DA right now. The head of the ME series was so hilariously bad at defending his decision (first it was because he 'wrote Shepard as straight', which was obviously untrue because in ME Shepard could be a lesbian, then he was asked specificly about why FemShep players couldn't romance Tali, he said it was because he wanted the romance to be 'fun and innocent', that one reached new heights of insanity and offensiveness, I think he stopped even trying to make excuses after that, thats why he put in NPC romances in ME3, hoping to get folks off his back and make him look 'inclusive', while keeping all the female teammate LIs (except Liara, who had been available from the beginning) from FemShep in ME3 just like he did in ME2. The only actual teammate LI he added, and only because he had to add one, was a dude, and of course the only reason he did that is because that dude was dead for the vast majority of players. Obviously the statement about it being 'much harder than he realized' to implement SGRs with current companions is untrue, because you just have to get rid of the gender checks, its one of the easiest changes they could possibly make to the game. But at least there was enough pressure that he felt the need to make something up. Hopefully we can keep up the pressure until finally he relents, pretends he worked REALLY REALLY hard to add them to the game, and does away with the gender checks so we can finally enjoy the romances. People will think he worked for over a year instead of the hours or days it actually takes to make the changes, he will look like a hero, and we'll all be winners.

Looks like we got news, not 'good' news, but news, so each person can decide for themselves whether to be happy with the fact that there is news, or unhappy with what the news actually was. ZERO companion romances, because of the 'unexpectedly large' amount of time to do them...when it's as simple as getting rid of the gender checks. Obviously most people don't understand that, the casual gamer will believe them when they say things like that because they don't know any better, but the bottom line is they want to give us as little as possible, and for us to be grateful for it. Every other aspect of the game requires no gender check, all the storylines/cutscenes/quests etc. are exactly the same whether you're playing as a male or female, because there's no gender check. Thats the way it would work with the romances as well, if they wanted them to. They obviously don't. What they're giving us, is the removal of the gender checks for NPC flirts on a single planet, that you can only visit once you're level 50, and paid 10 extra dollars for. Whether its 'a couple' or 'all' of them is not known at this time. Is it better than nothing? Sure, I'm happy to have something instead of nothing. Is it 'much' better than nothing? Obviously not. I was just playing my JK last night, and she was constantly getting hit on by this really annoying dude (who later becomes one of your teammates, whether you like it or not, which I naturally don't), while of course I was hit on not once by Kira or anybody else remotely worth being hit on by. It's downright sickening. And their removing the gender checks on flirt options with maybe one or two (we dont even know how many) female NPCs on a level 50 planet is supposed to be their way of making everything better? If that makes some folks happy, then not just good for them but GREAT for them, because it takes so little to make them happy they must be happy all the time . But I want the gender checks removed not just on one planet, and not just on some NPCs. I want the gender checks removed on the companion romances, and eventually the flirts on every planet. That is what would make me happy, and I suspect the same is true for most folks, particularly those in this thread. To answer one of the previous questions, I wouldn't mind if they patched in the romances one class at a time, and the flirts one planet at a time, so long as it was all done in a reasonably timely fashion. Of course 'reasonably timely' went out the window a long time ago, but you know what I mean . The bottom line is we got some news today, horray for news, now the next thing we're waiting for is GOOD news . Hopefully we won't have to wait as long as we did before.

You're exactly right that it cost more to exclude SGRAs. All the other storylines play out exactly the same whether you're male or female, aside from the occasional pronoun difference and very rare acknowledgement of your gender or race. That's because its easier/cheaper for them to do, while still being plenty of fun for the players. SImply applying that exact same model to the romances would've been exactly what we wanted, and it would've been the same result, cheaper and easier and still plenty of fun. Of course you always like it when they throw in those little references to your gender or race, but just like in the rest of the game, it isn't necessary for it to still be plenty of fun. And I certainly wouldn't want to be denied the ability to do any of the other storylines/quests because of my gender either. You're also right that it was done due to an agenda, a preference by the head fellow or fellows, to not have SGRs in the game. They went to a lot of trouble to make sure that we didn't get any romances at all, or even any flirt options. The idea that they wouldn't even let us have flirt options, thats a lot of trouble to go to, keeping all that out for us. Its like I said before, and others have said, just give everybody the same options, its easier, its cheaper, and everybody is happy. Thats why they do it that way in other games, whether you're talking about Skyrim, DD, Fallout NV, DA2, whatever, making the romances (and flirts) available to everybody is SO much easier and less expensive than doing it the way these folks have done it, and it's a lot more fun for a lot more people. Adding time and expense and taking away fun options isn't something that normally is done on purpose, you only do that if you have an agenda. Hopefully the criticism and pressure they're receiving will ultimately cause them to relent on that agenda, I'd say there's a real good chance that it will, especially when you look at the Legacy system. Yes its virtually meaningless, but if the same folks who made the decision to keep the SGRs out a couple years or so ago, back when the decision was first made, were still in charge and still as determined to keep all SGR content out of the game, it wouldn't have been all that hard to add in something to prevent us from marrying characters of the same gender. Certainly they've shown that willingness to spend extra time and effort to take away those types of fun options before, they would've simply done it again if they were so inclined. It suggests that somebody else may be in charge of these types of decisions now, or simply that the pressure is causing them to change their minds. But whatever their reasons, the Legacy system is proof that things seem to be changing in the right direction as it relates to romance options in the game, its something to help keep us thinking positively as we look toward the future.

The Reid quote from a while back, about how the reason they arent in the game is because they needed more time to 'really do it right' was just absurd. Not sure if I read that guy isn't around anymore or not, certainly wouldn't be surprised if he isn't (hard to keep up with everything going on these days), but all the talk about needing 'more time' to do the 'writing' and the 'cutscenes' etc is flat out untrue. The romances are in the game. Our ability to play them is not. We dont need, or want, special new writing or cutscenes to explain why XYZ character likes us, we just want to enjoy the same romances everybody else can, the exact same way that they do, we want our characters to be treated the exact same way everybody else's are. There's nothing remotely complicated about that. It cost them more time and money to keep the SGRs out of the game in the first place, the reason folks like Skyrim and Fallout NV and DD and DA2, etc. let you romance anyone you want is because its EASIER to do it that way. There are so many ways that this topic gets taken in bizarre and complex directions, but there's nothing remotely complicated about it. That Reid fellow's quote read as if he wanted us to believe the romances needed a complete rewrite in order to let us play them, complete with whole new cutscenes, etc. Either he's unfathomably ignorant, or he thinks (or hopes) that we are, but neither of those are the case. We never asked for anything other than the ability to romance the same characters everybody else can, the same way they do. That doesn't involve rewriting anything (except possibly a pronoun here or there, that may or may not be necessary, I wouldn't know for obvious reasons), it just involves getting rid of the gender check that prevents us from romancing whoever we want. Its something they could include with any patch anytime they release a new patch. People who try to make it sound more complicated than that are generally folks just looking for excuses not to have any SGRs at all, or at the very least as few as possible. Its not complicated, its never going to be complicated, and anyone who tries to fool you into thinking it is has an agenda, its really just as simple as that. I don't want to just focus on the negative, so I'd like to add a positive idea that I had recently. We know they're going to add new characters at some point, and I have a suggestion for one for the Sith Inquisitor. To avoid spoilers, lets just say, there's a female character in that storyline that gets trapped in the body of a monster, it would be pretty cool if you could do a quest that lets her find a new body, and then you could romance her. Having the option to choose between romancing her or Ashara would be mighty awesome, they're quite the contrast, and both are well developed and interesting characters. Things like that would add tremendously both to the storyline itself, as well as replay value. Hopefully they'll take that into consideration once they finally get around to continuing our Class Storylines, that'd be awesome.

Of course its on them. They said it was coming post-launch, and its been over a year post-launch and it still hasnt. Thats not on anybody else 'but' them. Of course you could play word games and say we should wait 5 years since that too is 'post-launch', but any sane person would've expected them in weeks, possibly a few months if you were extremely pessimistic, but certainly not over a year. Teammates are extremely customizable, thats one of the drawing cards of the game. This form of customization obviously isn't hard to add, it should've been in at launch, and could be added anytime they like very easily. They've promised that they will, and they haven't lived up to it. Blame belongs where it belongs, there's no way around that.

I agree completely with that. The absurdity of this whole issue is truly astounding, for a number of reasons. I imagine most, if not all, folks here know about Skyrim, and how not only can you romance anybody you like, you can marry anybody you like. This was a major, and obviously very positive, departure from all the other games in the series, which to the best of my knowledge didn't have any LIs at all, they were just traditional 'story and combat' games. When the head of the game was asked about the issue, he was asked why he wasn't making a big deal out of the fact that you can romance, and marry, anyone, and his answer was simple. They weren't making a big deal out of it because it isn't a big deal. That's exactly right, as it should be. Of course in all likelihood, the main reason they did things the way they did them wasn't for any other reason than maximizing fun while minimizing work. Its literally easier to make the romances available to everyone than to say 'this romance is for player A, this one for player B, this one for player A, this one for player B' etc. Thats why its so insane that SWTOR has done things the way they've done them, they've literally worked harder to keep us from enjoying the romances than they would have if they'd simply let us enjoy them all along. Thats why I don't tend to say things like 'give us SGRs' or anything like that, I say things like 'stop disabling the romances', because we're not asking for anything special, we're not asking for them to go out of their way and create special all new characters, or separate romance paths, or anything like that (of course we'd enjoy new characters to romance 'in addition to' the existing ones, we just dont want them 'instead of' the existing ones), we simply want them to stop actively preventing us from enjoying the romances that are already in the game. As I mentioned before, when they added the 'legacy' system they could've actively prevented two characters of the same gender from being regarded as a 'spouse', but they didnt, because to do that would've been insane, it would've meant more work for the team creating it, and less fun options for the players. Its the same deal with the romances, it took more work to keep us from playing them than it would have to allow us to play all of them. Its just crazy stuff, its why almost nobody does that sort of thing anymore. The key for me is, we were never asking them to do 'more', we were actually asking them to do 'less' (although you could say that at this point we're asking them to do a little bit more, just enough to undo what they did in keeping us from playing the romances in the first place) . I do predict, based on the legacy system, that any characters they add in the future that are LIs will be made available for all, whether they'll be doing it as a response to our asking or simply because they have fewer workers now and can less afford to waste time keeping us from playing the romances is anybody's guess, But this whole issue, at its core, is one of their own making, not because they 'didnt have enough time to implement it', but because they took MORE time to prevent it than they would have taken to allow it. Hopefully they, as other gaming companies already have, learned now that wasting time and energy preventing us from enjoying the various romances is just a really REALLY dumb idea, it doesn't really make anybody happy and it makes quite a lot of folks unhappy, and shouldn't be done anymore. On a much more positive note, Merry Christmas everybody!

I'm pretty sure they're already calling back the original voice talent, to do this expansion (if they arent it sure isnt much of an expansion, haha), so while they're there having them record the romance lines wouldn't take much time at all. Also, you're assuming the lines arent already recorded and simply were never used, they may be already recorded and ready to put in the game once the green light is given. But aside from all that, obviously if they add whole new characters to romance they 'still' have to bring back the original voice talent, AND they'd have to bring in new voice talent to do the other half of each given romance. Its much simpler to simply make the existing characters available to all, because then you obviously wouldn't need new voicework from the character you're romancing, their romance lines are already in the game. You'd just need the voice of your character saying the lines they should've been able to say all along. Its a common myth, but a myth nonetheless, that somehow its easier to make whole new characters than simply disable the gender check for the existing ones. Its vastly, VASTLY easier to do the latter, as a quote mentioned not that far back in this thread from David Gaider stated. He was just stating the obvious, if folks actually thought about it they'd figure it out for themselves, David just made it easier for everybody to understand .