I noticed something interesting last night, as I was looking at the 'Legacy' options that my characters had. I had wondered, but never actually bothered to check to see, and sure enough, no gender check! So I have the option to have my female Sith and female Jedi be married if I so desire (still toying with the idea, but I really want my female Sith Sorcerer with Ashara, and my female Jedi Warrior with Kira, not with each other, although its certainly an appealing backup plan). There is literally same-sex marriage in the game, RIGHT NOW. It seems like getting rid of the gender check for the romances that are already in the game, in addition to being quite simple and something that should be done ASAP, would also be less controversial than what's already in the game. Just an interesting observation.

We all know that it takes days or even hours, not a year, to disable the 'gender check' for the romances in the game, so time has nothing to do with why it hasn't been implemented yet, its just because they dont want to. But I'd like to offer a pro-active suggestion. Since obviously they are afraid of negative feedback for implementing this option, there's a super DUPER easy way to avoid it, it's super obvious but I've never heard anybody suggest it, so maybe this is one of those 'hidden in plain sight' deals. You know how they have companion gifts? I always like those by the way, thats a cool part of the game. You know how one type of gift is a 'courting' gift. Suppose they made that the 'trigger' for the SGRAs. You simply give the LI you want to romance, but up til now haven't been able to, a 'courting' gift, and that activates the romance, you can now romance them the same as any other LI. It would take away any and all complaints, because if somebody says 'Oh no, I've been hit on by (fill in the blank), this is terrible!' you can laugh at them and say 'Well why were you courting them in the first place?'. Anybody who doesn't want SGRAs in their game still wouldnt have them, because they wouldnt be giving courting gifts to an LI they werent interested in, and those who do want them would finally have them, because courting gifts are super duper easy to get and give to the teammate of your choice. Of course the easiest thing to do is to just disable the gender checks and give us the SGRAs tomorrow, and I'd certainly enjoy it if they did that, but if they wanted to take a few days and do it the way I suggested, that would probably be the better way to go for them, in terms of making everybody on both sides happy. But whatever they do, hopefully the pressure we're putting on them will force them to do it soon. PS, on the topic of companion gifts, until they do fully activate the romances for the existing teammates, they could at least make them respond to our courting gifts in a more positive way, 'as if' they were in a romance with our character. You know, the little things they say when you give them a gift. That wouldnt require any new voicework or anything at all, it would just be a nice little piece of the romance to experience until we got the whole thing. Maybe somebody could make that suggestion to one of the higher-ups, that'd certainly be something they could do in virtually no time at all and wouldn't make anybody unhappy.

Its sort of ironic, the things I would most want in an Expansion are another Chapter of each Class's Storyline, and the ability to romance the female LIs in the game with my female characters. They've now said this expansion doesn't have the first one, and the second one is just one big mystery because they didn't say one way or the other. Also, they named this 'expansion' (if you can even really call it that) after the Hutts, and I don't even particularly care about the Hutts, so that's not exactly a selling point either. Most of the game is so great, and it's so obvious what the fans want to make it even better, why is it so hard for them to just focus on that? The class storylines, the romances, that's what we want. They're what make the game unique, they're why we play. I don't really care if you add one or ten or zero planets, focus on what makes SWTOR unique and awesome, that's what will keep us coming back for more, it doesn't really seem like this expansion does that based on what we've heard so far, I hope to hear better news soon.

Whats amazing is how simple this is. Yes, it should've been in at launch. Its also something that doesn't require much to put in anytime they feel like it. Its not like they have to do any new writing at all, the romances are already in the game, its a simple case of the romance options having been disabled for certain players, so un-disabling them would solve everything, with the possible exception of any need to change pronouns (and having not had the opportunity to play the romances, the wording may already be gender-neutral so even that might not be necessary). Its one of the simplest improvements to the game they could possibly make, thats why you have to assume they arent doing it because they simply dont want to, certainly they've had over a year to do something that should take more like hours, maybe a couple days if there's a fair number of pronoun-changes necessary in a given romance storyline. Thats why this pressure is key, to get them to change their minds. Without any of us speaking out, they'll never ever do it, they've made that perfectly clear. And that doesn't mean that most of the folks that work on the game don't want it in. We know the team that made ME2, for example, wanted SGR, and they put it in the game, but the head of the team overruled them all and made them remove it (they left parts of certain romances in, either by accident or, more likely, on purpose to show they wanted to and tried to put them in). Thats the general attitude of the VAST majority of the folks at Bioware, inclusion and freedom for the players, Its most likely the same deal here, just one or two people at the top keeping the good folks who want to put it in, from simply adding it in. Its really just extreme unluckiness on our part, that the few folks at Bioware who are against us happen to be the ones at the very top of certain games, specificly ME and SWTOR, I don't know enough about SWTOR's higher ups to even know their names, but if you know who the head guy is, he's almost certainly the one who doesn't want it, and won't let anybody put it in. Anybody else you talk to is probably on our side and just can't say so publicly, because they like having a job, and being able to pay their bills and such. So let's be sure to be nice to whoever we might speak to, that person probably would add it in tomorrow if they were allowed to, and everybody here would be happy, and they would be as well. I do believe that the pressure we're applying is going to cause the head guy to relent and at least give us something, whether its the full treatment that we want and deserve, or just a small token something that he hopes will be enough to get the pressure off, remains to be seen (though the logical guess is it'll be the latter, of course I'm hoping for the former), but clearly the more pressure we apply the more we'll end up getting, so let's keep up the great work, and kudos on all the awesome stuff that everybody has already done.

Mostly the word 'more' would apply to my suggestions, as the game is generally quite awesome right now. The only exception is that my female characters never get anyone to romance, because I'm not interested in romancing dudes, I'd like to be able to romance the same characters I could if I was playing a male character, the way it works in other games like DA2 and Skyrim. Also, along similar lines, please cut back on the dudes hitting on my female characters, and replace those with female characters also, that would be so very much more pleasant. Its especially bad when playing as a female smuggler. You'd think there would be a ton of women to flirt with, but there arent any at all, instead you keep getting hit on by dudes, over and over again, its almost enough to make you stop playing your character altogether, that desperately needs an improvement. Other than that, pretty much everything's great, I love the storylines, they're so awesome, I'd like to see more of those, and I like the whole group-finder thing, thats REALLY REALLY helpful, it adds so much enjoyment to the game, I can do the Flashpoints now that I never could before! I hope they can expand that to include the whole 'world bosses' thing, as I've never been able to fight one before and it sounds pretty cool. And just in general the whole 'planet' mission thing, I literally have never been able to get a group for a planet mission of any kind, maybe its easier at lower levels, but when I sign up for flashpoints and planet missions at the same time, I literally always get a Flashpoint mission first, and when I leave off the flashpoint missions and only sign up for the planet missions, I just never get anything at all. So maybe do something to make it easier to get in the planet mission groups also, that'd be swell. The bottom line is I love this game, the PvP games are awesome and super fun, the PvE storylines are amazing, just keep on making it better and better!

I think the whole 'changing pronouns is bad writing' thing is just an excuse to give us nothing at all. Its basicly what the ME2 fellow said when that whole controversy came up. Why can't we romance Miranda, Jack, and Tali as FemShep? The guy basicly said 'well, we wanted to include them, but we really wanted to do it right, not just make FemShep's romance a copy of MaleShep's romance, we really wanted it to be unique and special'. We know how sincere he was by the fact that not only did he give us nothing at all instead, but it was the exact same deal in ME3, no FemShep romances for any of those characters once again (they threw in a couple minor non-teammate romances into ME3, which was better than nothing, but not by much). They really made those romances special, they're the only ones you have to have a mod to play. That's not a good kind of special . Of course it was just an excuse to give us nothing, and that's what they're doing again here. The simple reality is that the romance is the romance, and changing the pronouns in the romance storylines is exactly the same as changing the pronouns in any other storyline in the game, doing it isn't bad writing, its 'not' doing it that is bad writing. I just want to be able to enjoy the same romances everybody who plays as a male character can, I don't really care about 'unique' or 'special' dialogue just for my gender, heck you barely get any special dialogue based on your species, that's actually something I'd like to see a little more of. I hope that with all the pressure they're getting they'll finally do the right thing, don't just throw us a tiny little bone like ME3 did with the non-teammate 'romance' stuff, make all the female characters, who can already be romanced, be romancable for all of us. All they need to add is the voicework for the main character (which may already be done for all we know, and they simply chose not to put it in the game), obviously the character being romanced already has their part of the romance fully voiced. I would much MUCH rather have them do it that way, than make some kind of token lesbian character that I may or may not even like. Even if I did end up liking the token new character the best, ten or so different options sure beats just one . So yes, by all means add new female characters, the more the better, and make them available to everybody, but don't forget to make the ones that are already in the game available to everyone as well. Then we'll all be winners.

This is definitely and by FAR the best MMO I've ever played, no doubt about it. If there's one thing I would complain about, it would be that my female characters constantly get hit on by dudes, and never by women. I like that this is the first MMO to have romance options, and certainly it works great if you're playing as a male character, tons of great options, no doubt about it, two thumbs up. They just need to do a much better job for those who prefer to play as female characters, I'd say we shouldnt have any fewer female romance options at all, but at the very least the number shouldnt be zero, its just terrible. Thats the one flaw I see in what is otherwise a really awesome game.

For me the worst part, by far, of the romance options for female characters is that they took away all the female romance options. You are hit on, and are given the chance to hit on, quite a few dudes during the course of the game, but the very best you can do is 'super duper' vague romance options with the ladies. I cant help but find it a bit strange to see people complaining about a supposed lack of male romance options for female characters, when I'm quite sickened by how many times my female characters are getting hit on by dudes. The best way to solve any perceived problem regarding lack of romance options would be to do what every other game with romance options, particularly Bioware games, pretty much always do, and that is give us both male and female options. From what Im reading here, there are a lot of female characters in the game that one can flirt with as a male character, make those flirt options available to everyone and you won't have anybody complaining that we don't have enough romance options, everybody wins.

For me the main issue is something that was only briefly touched on earlier in the thread, and that is the unwanted advances. As someone currently playing a female Smuggler, I'm quite disgusted by the fact that she keeps getting hit on by dudes, and never the ladies. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if there were an equal (or even better, higher) number of women hitting on her, or at least women that she could flirt with. Its incredibly frustrating to have to put up with all the sickening stuff, knowing that I 'could', and should, be able to flirt with the female NPCs instead. Most of the games out there these days, whether its the ME and DA series, Fallout NV, Skyrim, etc. generally handle this extremely well, its not even an issue unless they make it one by doing it completely wrong, as sadly they have done here. Just stop constantly trying to force dudes on us, and let us romance the ladies if we prefer. Its really quite an easy solution to a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

I like the Galactic Trade Market, Ive used it and bought 2 items from it, its neat how they send them to the mailbox. Its fun, its cool, I like it!