Pretty foolish to waste emotional energy feeling disappointed about how they didn't spend their money better if you can't actually think of an example of how they could have spent it better. What they're doing with Makeb is what they should have done with the core game: Including SGR from the ground up instead of trying to staple it on afterward, reducing the cost of implementing it to nearly zero. The resources spent on this are a couple hours of recording time. What could they have done better using that resource? They could not have used it to add new quests, new flash points, or new war zones. They could not have used it to change space combat. They couldn't even have used it to make cosmetic changes to interfaces.

Pay careful attention and you'll notice that despite how comforting it may be to think the majority is on your side, you don't. No, demanding the give an explanation for something they haven't done is complete nonsense.

Dorne might have issues. There isn't really any canon on how various factions or organizations deal with issues like this. Everyone seems pretty into equality in terms of everything except race, with fantastic racism being widespread. But still, I could see the empire as having really strong do your duty, raise a family, type attitudes for the common person. Especially with that historical near-genocide and having to build up the numbers to come back from it thing. And she's so very proper. Same thing for some other strongly "imperial" characters, I think. So probably Quinn. Sith on the other hand, I have trouble seeing them having any difficulty at all with just about any kind of sexual practice. Give in to your passions and all that. Yeah, they're into strong lines of force users, but they seem less interested in achieving that through strong, traditional family values and more interested in overt eugenics. Kira just seems so infatuated with the Jedi Knight regardless of the Knight's gender... Most characters I've got no idea, though. Because the issue basically never comes up, its hard to get an idea how any given person would feel about it... The easiest implication to read from that is that the issue never comes up because it's not an issue and no one cares, but the argument that there must be people who are accepting of homosexual relations in the galaxy because it's so vast and varied runs the other way... it's so vast and varied, every prejudice imaginable must exist somewhere. I mean, there are probably planets where they burn left-handed people at the stake. And planets where only the exalted lefties are permitted to hold government office.

Ah, too bad that exchange with Variden got deleted just as we ended up back on topic: So anyway, the core of the objection to the point that companion characters of fluid, moldable characters and not people, as evidence by the fact you can choose their apparent race, was that when it comes to sexuality, a majority of players may not be able to figure this out, and instead interpret the situation as the character choosing to change their sexuality to please the player character. First of all, there's the matter than quite a few people think some of the companion characters are bisexual. You can talk about confirmation bias if you want, but it's meaningless. If significant numbers of people interpret a character's sexual orientation as bisexual (and others disagree) then that character's sexual orientation is not clear. The psychological phenomenon that lead people to their respective conclusions are irrelevant. From what little information we've got on this, it sounds like some existing companions are going to be romanceable by player characters of the same gender. Some of those seemingly bisexual companions will be confirmed as bisexual. There's no change here. We go from not knowing the character's sexual orientation to knowing it is bisexual, but the character doesn't change. We just gain new information. Since there's no change in the character's sexual orientation there can't be any appearance of a decision to change it. No problem there. If a situation should arise such as say... in some iterations of game playthroughs Corso is gay, well then in all likelihood Corso was always gay within that little microuniverse. You seem to think a majority of players will be too stupid to figure it out, and will instead think Corso has chosen to change his sexual orientation. There's a few reasons that's easily overcome, though: -This is still a game where you can choose Corso's apparent race. This is clearly something that is not possible in the real world. It plainly establishes that the companion characters are fluid and molded to the desires of the player. It's a pretty big hint. -Even if a majority of players are too stupid to figure it out, a majority of them don't need to. On any given playthrough Corso will be either gay or straight, and within that context his sexual orientation will not change. The player does not interact with other Corsos from other players' games. If a majority of players don't observe the difference there's no implied change of sexual orientation and so no implication Corso chose to change his sexuality. -If a majority of players are likely to play more than one smuggler and notice the difference, or pick up on it through forums, guides, YouTube videos etc, well, big studios are often accused of assuming their customers are morons and spelling things out in a way that is so obvious it is painful. A snippet of dialog, perhaps referencing past lovers, failed relationships, unrequited love, or similar, could firmly establish Corso's sexual orientation as static within each arc and point out conflicting character histories across playthroughs. A nice, obvious, brick to the face with a note on it explaining that as far as you're concerned, Corso always was straight/gay.

Ah yes, there's no shortage of people who are perfectly okay with being fair and tolerant, but are very concerned for the feelings of a vague someone else out there. If someone else has point to make they out to make it themselves. If the point is "I'm afraid of gay people!" Well... ...Hell if we let women vote politicians will start pandering to them, and next thing you know it'll be illegal to fire a woman for being a woman or to **** your wife. Not all positions deserve equal consideration. EDIT: Huh. Forum censor. Go figure.

I do have to echo Nozybidaj on that and ask why it would seem forced if they just "flipped the switch", though. If that was good writing when it was about a heterosexual romance and it didn't seem forced then, I'm having trouble figuring why it's now bad writing if the same stuff is applied to a homosexual romance. ...I'll grant it's lazy writing, in the sense that it's much less work. But Bioware voiced concerns about budget problems, so less work should be a good thing. The best justification I can imagine is that for players who romance the same companion using both a male and a female character, they want the content to be different, and they're trying to actually add to the game here. The other thing is some of the stuff involving ship-board drama caused by romances with characters disapproving of your romantic choice and/or giving you "No, choose me!" that we've talked about. It potentially gets an order of magnitude more complicated with the number of romances doubled.

Okay, all caught up. Wow, get busy for a week or two and catching up on this is quite the task. ...there was good news in there, though! I was getting all set to cancel my subscription 'till we heard something substantial. Seems to me like an apology for the initial omission and lack of communication would have been appropriate. Expected, even. I'm a little miffed that they didn't. But I'm not actually gay and was outraged over moral principles/I'm a surly git and for the most part the actually gay and bisexual participants of this thread seem happy with the response. So I'm gonna go ahead and take that as a reasonable way to feel about this rather than rushing off on some crusade on no-one's behalf. I will say, to the people who are not happy and have left the game at this point: I'm surprised at the level of positive reaction to the information we got. I'm glad to see it, but I think I can understand why it's not good enough for some people and I don't think your reaction is unreasonable. EDIT: And a relationship with Aric is way less creepy than one with Elara, anyway.

...and you made use of the term "entitlement." No one is of the opinion that Bioware MUST answer, that it is the law or that karmic forces will destroy them if they don't obey our whims, or anything like that. But not answering is firmly outside the bounds of "polite." So while I am not entitled to an answer, Bioware is not entitled to my money. What is so terrible if I cancel my subscription? What is so unreasonable about that? For that to be unreasonable or unjust it would have to be true that Bioware is entitled to my monthly subscription fee. They are not.

Except that it would be exactly for that reason. What is "far more important to overall gameplay," is nothing more than a matter of opinion. You're threatening to quit if the developers' opinions on what is most important to gameplay should differ from yours, if they should give a higher priority to people who want different things than you than you think they deserve. Now that's your right, but it doesn't make your opinions into facts. What's with people being so fond of the accusation "Passive-aggressive" lately? If it's anything, it's regular-aggressive.

A terrible fate!

Ah, you're asking for special treatment.

We're the wronged party? I guess I've heard that between evil an incompetence, never assume evil. I've seen enough staggering incompetence in my day to give it credence. I guess they could just be that bad at communicating. The best case scenario in my mind right now, is they're working on it, but are caught between being afraid of upsetting the GLBT community, being afraid of upsetting people like FRC, and so have taken the standard corporate route of a middle ground that angers everyone. By being totally silent, in this case.

No. For "Yous" and "the rest of us" the waiting is not the same. The majority of the community has been given romance content to interact with. While waiting for further content, they can pursue the content they have. The GLBT community has been given nothing, and no explanation as to when they might expect to receive something or what it is they should expect to receive. "Yous" does not wait "like the rest of us."

Except they haven't. Since's there's more or less a single script for 95% of companion dialog, including romancable companions, regardless of player gender, romancable companions often seem to be hinting at interest. Though I think that Corso's basic character write-up indicates he's straight (in retrospect, I guess I don't actually know of any studies linking the behaviors I'm thinking of to sexuality, I could be way off) a lot of people playing male smugglers have commented they feel like there's a little bit more than "bromance" going on there. To me, it seems like Kira's into the Jedi Knight, regardless of the JK's gender. I saw the first four minutes or so of bounty hunter gameplay. It seemed like the female bounty hunter was immediately interested in Mako, if for no other reason as she has he same script as the male bounty hunter. The characters haven't really been written as straight at all. It feels like they've been written as "herosexual," but then someone flipped the "no *****" switch. Granted that may simply be an artifact of the amount voicework and writing that needed to be done and totally unintended, but it is the state of things.

Take a step back and look at the nature of the "threat." The threat is that if EA/Bioware continues to fail to communicate and be unsupportive of LGBT issues, that people will attempt to create the impression they are noncommunicative and unsupportive of LGBT issues. It's "Do X (or don't do X) and I'll tell people about it." It's only a threat to someone who's doing something wrong.

There are other methods by which pressure can be applied. There was a quote from an interview with a gaming site where the interviewer asked about this issue and got the "eh, later" response. Raising the issue with that type of media would make it much harder for Bioware to ignore the question. It's much harder to ignore people and dodge questions in a media channel you don't control than in a forum you do. If it kept on happening they might realize they're doing their ugly little ignore-the-question dance in front of their entire prospective market instead of just the people they're snubbing. I don't know if any gaming sites have the guts for it, but if an interview went along the lines of... Interviewer: <Question about SGRA> Bioware: <dismissive dodge> Interviewer: Well, since you're not willing to answer my questions I guess there's not much point in an interview, is there? ...that would really sting. Unlikely unless they end up dealing with someone personally invested in it, of course, but this sort of thing is an advertising venue. I don't think they want the risk of something like that happening.

Are we at the point where the appropriate response is "The cost of the game a subscriptions fees I have already paid are the only money Bioware will be receiving from me."? ...that response almost certainly came from someone in a customer service email queue that has as much information and pull as we do. But still, if they're going to take an authoritarian stance like that: They're the adult, the rest of us are misbehaving children who need to learn their place... One way or another it feels like they should be reminded of the reality of the relationship.

I'd like to know what the plan is for inclusion of same gender romances. Are we going to be able to use existing companions or is there a plan to include new ones? Quite a few people are reluctant to make alts as they are afraid they will level past whatever content is implemented.

Blarg! Well on one hand this kind of thing is about fantasy and wish fullfilment and such, and a lot of people want that. On the other hand, I find it really difficult to image any of the main character classes wanting that. They aren't exactly normal people.

Oh, hey, I think you figured out why they're afraid to talk about it.

Anyone else a fan of Extra Credits? They talk a lot about how games are not books or movies, and so certain things should be presented differently because they come across differently in a different medium. I think this herosexual thing falls under that heading. The more I think about it, if this were a novel or a television series, deciding a handful of characters (who weren't originally written that way) are bisexual now to meet some kind of quota would be lazy and shallow. But this is a videogame and honestly, in every other respect, the universe revolves around your character. The affections of your companions might as well do the same.

Star Wars tends to have pretty clear cut morality, good guys vs bad guys. This game reflects that to a large extent. Individual characters can play against type, but the Republic are the good guys and the Empire are the bad guys. ...though a case could be made that It's more a case of black and gray morality, and the Republic isn't exactly the shining paragon of goodness, truth, and light it claims to be.

Unfortunately, we've got hundred of pages of speculation and no communication. No one knows the answer to your question.

It's true that people will never be satisfied with endgame PVE or PVP balance, but to be fair, that's human nature. However much we have, we want it more and/or better. The key to happiness may be wanting what you have, but the key to progress is striving for what you want. But to be even more fair, that dissatisfaction and attempts to cater to it are a normal, stable part of an MMO. It's almost a certainty that before launch Bioware hired a permanent, full time staff dedicated to these issues. They'll be working on it as long as TOR remains viable. Because we're still in that shaky, early post-launch phase, that staff is probably being encouraged to take overtime. There's no need to draw attention to that kind of thing. I'd be willing to be quite a bit of money there are people working on it this very second as I type this post. What is less clear is what's being done to correct the oversight of there not being any same gender romances available in this game. Is anyone working on that?

Well, I must say that I find the earlier arguments that it would be better for Bioware to wait and implement same gender content well than hack it in and clean it up later were convincing. Particularly in light of peoples' concerns about moving past the romance content of the game and not being able to access it after its implemented. Because this is Bioware, and they frequently produce amazing things (the game is great, on the whole) it may be that they're going to deploy such awesomeness that we'll feel foolish for ever having questioned them. But I doubt it, because I can't imagine an excuse for their silence.