Add Sexuality Selection Option to Character Creator

[SunlightCatcher]

Players should have the option to pursue same-sex romance from the beginning of the game. The addition of combat styles, the new animations on starter planets, as well as the recent updates to cutscene lighting and updated graphics on starter planets have demonstrated that the devs have an interest in bringing new life and replay value to SWTOR's origin content. This is excellent, and an excellent addition to this would be adding an option to select your character's sexuality when you create them. One that would allow the player to select if they would like their character to have romantic dialogue with Men, Women, Both or Neither. Then the player could romance NPCs of their chosen gender, including origin story companions, so a female Sith Warrior could romance Vette, for example. Though it would certainly be a lot of work, it would be a very worthwhile and valuable refresh for SWTOR.

[VegaMist]

"Sexuality" has nothing to do with "character creator". All flirt options are dialogue driven. What you are asking would require a re-write and a re-make of original stories, not to mention a re-recording of multiple dialogue lines throughout the said stories, which is unrealistic to say the least.

Edited November 8, 2023 by VegaMist

[cannibithobbal]

Adding a sexuality option would not fix the problem of not being able to have same-sex romances in class stories since the content for it does not exist.  I would LOVE for the devs to go back and write and record new dialogue and add new animations to allow those pairings in base game, but with the budget they have that is not likely to ever happen, sadly.  (if it was, they surely would have done it already)

Also, I usually don't decide for sure a character's sexuality in my head until they are partway through the game and trying out romances to see what feels right for that specific character, so forcing you to choose that in character creator would be more limiting, not provide better options.

 

[SteveTheCynic]

13 hours ago, SunlightCatcher said:

an excellent addition to this would be adding an option to select your character's sexuality when you create them

That option, in and of itself, would (as noted by @VegaMist) add nothing to the process, because as it stands right now, your character can choose, at each moment, how to proceed with dialogue options, taking the flirts you want to follow and taking alternatives when you don't want to follow them.

So it becomes a request to make the early content support same-sex options for origin-companion romances, which is a recurring request, and has to be considered in the context of the twelve years of people asking for it versus the non-existent action on it.

Regardless of that, think of the poor player who chooses "straight female" on creation, and is then frustrated when he/she plays through to KotFE and doesn't get the romance-Lana options.  Er.  Like a certain @SteveTheCynic that you might have heard of.  My first "real" (not-insta60-token) character was a female Trooper who had theretofore been straight (note: not faithful, seeing as how she romanced both AJ and TS along the way), but for complicated personal(1) reasons launched a relationship with Lana in the swamps of Zakuul.

(1) The person in question being me rather than my character, following a conversation with an old friend over lunch in Paris(2) after Mrs Cynic passed away.

(2) That's less exotic than it might sound.  She lives in Paris, and I live 150 miles or so away, that is, an hour on the train.

[sundancebill]

I'd likely quit if they made 'pronoun selection'  a mandatory part of the character design process.

[cannibithobbal]

7 hours ago, sundancebill said:

I'd likely quit if they made 'pronoun selection'  a mandatory part of the character design process.

at the risk of being pedantic, you choosing a "male" or "female" character decides what pronouns NPCs will refer to them by, so it basically already is 😄

[evassister]

I don't think having a sexual orientation is necessary. As for pronouns, this is a big galaxy. I wouldn't mind having a choice, even strictly for social purposes.

[jyork]

We deal with woke culture in every aspect of the real world ... this is an escape ..... considering you can same sex romance in the story can we leave identity politics out of A GAME! 

 

[evassister]

You do realize that there is lore of cultures with far more complicated gender identities already in star wars, right? You might want to reexamine what you just said there.

[DreadzKaiser]

let's be honest, the lore of cultures is just stuff in the lore tab most players don't read.

pronouns would take effort to implement that is best spent elsewhere, and honestly it'd be to no real benefit to the game.

At best it'd do nothing, at worst it'd piss off players that they choose to spend time and effort there of all places when there are more important parts of the game in serious need of TLC, regardless of how you feel about "Woke" nonsense.

I don't care one way or another about identity politics, but I'd rather it stay out of the game entirely.

[evassister]

Being courteous to another person isn't nonsense. I never said they had to change gameplay, just add an option similar to titles. 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Don't see the need for this, sexuality is based on what flirts you choose to respond to. 

In real life your sexuality doesn't control other people and whether or not they will try to hit on you, it's only your response that does that.

[MortenJessen]

If we remove all the politics (and policies) from the debate, do the people who suggets this woke crap even understand the level of work required for coding, and the man hours needed for voice acting, for this to work??

Out of swtors nearly 200 million dollars budget, nearly HALF went to voice actors and coding of already existing choices that needs multible lines of responce, including romances. And realism aside (that kind of money just dont exist for swtor anymore), to carter for a few woke millennials who cant read a history book with out dying (here, have mine), the benefits of a change has to be justified by gameplay. And tampering with original source code in that part of the game, has more impact on other parts of the game than most of us understand, so I rather they dont start tamper with it, knowing BW/Broadswords attitude towards things that are not broken (NUKE IT) and fixing stuff they "did not break" (PLAYERS ARE LYING, BUUHUU) (as in, they never acknowledge anything, even less come around to fix it).

Edited November 15, 2023 by MortenJessen

[SunlightCatcher]

On 11/7/2023 at 7:19 PM, cannibithobbal said:

Adding a sexuality option would not fix the problem of not being able to have same-sex romances in class stories since the content for it does not exist.  I would LOVE for the devs to go back and write and record new dialogue and add new animations to allow those pairings in base game, but with the budget they have that is not likely to ever happen, sadly.  (if it was, they surely would have done it already)

Also, I usually don't decide for sure a character's sexuality in my head until they are partway through the game and trying out romances to see what feels right for that specific character, so forcing you to choose that in character creator would be more limiting, not provide better options.

 

You're probably right about the amount of work. Same-sex class romance stories are really what I would love to see, and a part of me still wants to hold out hope that it is an option, especially because only a handful of companion dialogue lines actually reference the PC's gender directly, and most of the re-recording would be done by the 16 PC VAs they need to get back for every expansion anyway. Plus they made new cutscenes for the starter planets and the Essles/Black Talon flashpoints a while back, and unhooking base game flirt options from being triggered by the PC's gender seems doable to me. But it is still probably a pipe dream - which is too bad, base game SWTOR is some of my favorite content in the entire Star Wars franchise and I would love to see it improved on and given some love by the devs. 

[SoyElSenado]

The problem with them adding pronouns to SWTOR is that they'd only be able to add "he/her" and "she/her." "They/them" would not be an option, as the vanilla story content is fully "gendered." If it were just relegated to an in game title, unfortunately I think a lot of players would just meme with it and turn it into a joke. Still, if the community for whom that is important really wants pronoun player titles, why not? It's kind of sad to read people saying they'd quit a game because of pronouns... screams "snowflake" to me tbh.

Ultimately though there's really no way to escape that the only way to incorporate a lot of these suggestions is to recode/rerecord a lot of the vanilla story, and I doubt that is anywhere on the horizon for the short-medium term.

Edited November 16, 2023 by SoyElSenado

[BulbulusTheGreat]

On 11/8/2023 at 1:16 AM, VegaMist said:

"Sexuality" has nothing to do with "character creator". All flirt options are dialogue driven. What you are asking would require a re-write and a re-make of original stories, not to mention a re-recording of multiple dialogue lines throughout the said stories, which is unrealistic to say the least.

not to menton the VA's, if they add same sex romance with for example jaesa they'd probably need to get her VA for new dialogue for said romance, at least if you want it to be special and not just rewrite of previous romance same goes with everyone else, imo. its never happening becuse of the resources that they're already struggling with, its why we have same sex options in the DLC's

[BulbulusTheGreat]

On 11/14/2023 at 10:56 PM, DreadzKaiser said:

let's be honest, the lore of cultures is just stuff in the lore tab most players don't read.

 

idk about this one, i for once always read something new (or old if i see it for first time), its pretty story driven game after all but yeah i don't think pronous thing would work mostly becuse they won't bother to rewrite everything, i only see it happening with new lore additions but even then its not really a priority.

Edited November 16, 2023 by BulbulusTheGreat