Romance for our commanders!

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

Y'all should take a look at how SWTOR treats romances between NPCs and the player character, I think. There are opportunities to flirt with people you encounter, and you have companions (a bit like heroes from GW1) who can, in some cases, be not merely flirted with but properly romanced, all the way to proposing marriage in some cases.

[TheLadyOfTheRings.9148]

I'm not sure I want the commander to have a romantic interest/partner. At the same time, if anet did that I wouldn't be mad about it. I have a story for my main, and she's not the commander, she doesn't fight in Maguuma, she doesn't kill Balthazar, etc. There are many aspects of the gw2 story that I don't include in her story. A hypothetical romantic interest/partner would just be another aspect I would ignore.

[Danikat.8537]

I wouldn't mind it, as long as it was a side-story I could choose to play or skip. But for all of the reasons already raised it's something I'm unlikely to do (which is why my first priority is the ability to skip it). I have 11 permanent characters and they're all very different people, not just because of their race, profession etc. but also because of the personalities I imagine them having. There is absolutely no way they would all fall for the same person.

 

Even if Anet added 11 different options I doubt I'd find believable matches for all of them, as other people have said they'd probably need to add large numbers of options if they want everyone to have at least one they can find acceptable, let alone like. (Although with some of my characters finding someone they would date who I like is probably an impossible challenge, some of them have truly terrible taste and/or judgement.)

 

Personally I'm fine with leaving romance options for players imagination, fanfic or role-playing. In that realm it can be fun - one of my GW1 characters had a massive crush on Koss (see the aforementioned terrible taste) before finding out he was taken, then ended up in an RP relationship with a friends warrior who bore more than a passing similarily to Koss. None of that was in the game of course, but that didn't stop it being in my version of the story.

 

> @"Cuks.8241" said:

> The first step would be not calling him/her commander. It is such a professional rough title you can't really get any personal involvement with someone you and everyone is calling commander.

 

What would you call them instead? Bearing in mind it has to be the same for every player character, to accomodate the voice acting. Anet tried having the members of what later became Dragon's Watch call the PC "boss" and enough people asked them to stop that they went back to using "commander" instead. The problem with more familar names - whether that's a persons actual name a nickname - is they tend to be at least somewhat unique to that character. Even if they somehow skip straight from 'Commander' to a generic pet name like 'love' or 'honey' there's a good chance it would seem out of place for some characters or pairings.

[Zephire.8049]

No thanks, I'd rather resources be spent on other things because this is way more likely to backfire than be neutral let alone a positive.

 

RPGs can be modded so you can get around romance restrictions that the devs put in. You can't mod an MMO without getting banned which means Anet would either need to decide who each PC can romance or make each romance available regardless of PC. So that automatically means 2 options per race of the commander. But wait, what if your commander is fine dating other species? Now each race needs to be available to the PC to romance including gender.

 

To make it feel personal, you need to add custom dialogue referring to the PC's gender and race, if not their profession as well. Difference races value different things so you can't just copy-paste responses because then you might get weird combos like an asura praising a norn for their intelligence, a norn praising a sylvari for their strength, or a charr praising a human for being agnostic. So that would have to be multiple custom responses for each romanceable NPC for each PC combination and vice versa. Even without voice acting, that would be a lot of writing and a lot of scripting in the code.

 

But there's more!

 

Some people feel really strongly about what their character(s) are like and who (and if) they'd be into dating so even if all of the above is done, a good chunk of people would end up pissed off because none of the romance NPCs are the type their character would be into so now all this time and money went into developing romance options and they _still_ get nothing out of it. And players whose PC isn't into romance or it's not a priority for them right now also get nothing from such a large update.

 

Anet would also very likely have to create brand new NPCs or use minor ones because they couldn't use major characters as that would affect the canon. People still complain about Dragon's Watch and how it's way harder to connect with them compared to Destiny's Edge (even though by this point DW has existed for years longer in-game) so either the romance NPCs will take years to develop or show up and suddenly your character is into them and they're into your character. Either you get burned out waiting for the updates or you're annoyed at how forced it is.

 

And if there are locks on race/gender, you now have to roll a character not because you like them but because at some point in the story you'll be able to romance an NPC even if you dislike the race and/or gender.

 

Single-player RPGs have the luxury of incorporating romance from the design phase and controlling the player character. Some MMOs have tried it but the options are limited and it falls flat. It is better for everyone involved—including the devs—if MMOs don't add romance options since that's what headcanons, fanart, and fanfic are for as it's literally impossible for an MMO to make everyone happy when it comes to something so personal.

[Tsakhi.8124]

I'm not going to lie, if there were an opportunity to date Laranthir, I would in a heartbeat. <3

[Loboling.5293]

> @"White Kitsunee.4620" said:

> Okay, but only if the community gets to name our offspring, and our offspring goes on a long charecter arc where no one likes him but anet keeps trying new ways to make people like him.

>

> Cast your votes below.

 

We didn't get to name Braham... What are you talking about?...

[Teratus.2859]

I don't see PC romance adding anything relevant or important to the existing story.. if anything it'll probably just lead to a lot of people whining because the romantic partners they want are either not available or already taken.. (Kas and Jory) plus there's the race element which might encourage some weird behaviour..

Frankly this seems like a very big investment for something completely not worth the trouble >.<

 

If you really want romance in Gw2 i'd say the best way to do it is to join or create a Roleplay Community and keep requesting some kind of in game marriage system like other MMO's have, this would ultimately fix any and all issues with dating NPC's and be far far easier to put in the game.

There's already cosmetic elements in the game for roleplaying this such as the Wedding outfits and that spot in LA.. I believe there have been players who have thrown weddings there in the past.

[Talindra.4958]

Err no lol..i play with my partner.. so technically my character is my partner character's romance lol no third party involve pls

[Yggranya.5201]

> @"Steve The Cynic.3217" said:

> Y'all should take a look at how SWTOR treats romances between NPCs and the player character, I think. There are opportunities to flirt with people you encounter, and you have companions (a bit like heroes from GW1) who can, in some cases, be not merely flirted with but properly romanced, all the way to proposing marriage in some cases.

 

Hey, as long is i can say "no thanks" it's not my problem. I still doubt anet would do something like this.

[Felipe.1807]

I think its better to keep this kind of stuff to single player games, to much effort to get it done right

[sorudo.9054]

this game as as much an RPG as doom, as in not at all.

so unless they are doing a complete overhaul to make the RPG part actually work it's simply not gonna happen, you need companions for such things to happen for one.

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

> @"Yggranya.5201" said:

> > @"Steve The Cynic.3217" said:

> > Y'all should take a look at how SWTOR treats romances between NPCs and the player character, I think. There are opportunities to flirt with people you encounter, and you have companions (a bit like heroes from GW1) who can, in some cases, be not merely flirted with but properly romanced, all the way to proposing marriage in some cases.

>

> Hey, as long is i can say "no thanks" it's not my problem. I still doubt anet would do something like this.

 

You can, in SWTOR, take options that are *not* flirting, and the choices that lead to flirtation and/or romance are *clearly* tagged with [Flirt] in the dialogue choice menus. And yes, for me, too, that would be an essential component of any such thing.

 

I also think it's somewhat out of place here in GW2.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

There's always that NPC at Dragonbash who seems really into the commander...