56 réponses à ce sujet

[vertigomez]

^ Oh, I know. That's why I said "not necessarily central to the romance, as Bull's" - because I don't think it HAS to be, or should be in most cases. But I also don't mind if a character does state an explicit preference (whether it's D/s or positions or whatever), any more than I would mind a LI who insisted on marriage before sex.

[Biotic Apostate]

I guess they could do it every now and then. Just no tentacle porn, please.

[nightscrawl]

^ Oh, I know. That's why I said "not necessarily central to the romance, as Bull's" - because I don't think it HAS to be, or should be in most cases. But I also don't mind if a character does state an explicit preference (whether it's D/s or positions or whatever), any more than I would mind a LI who insisted on marriage before sex.

 

I think it would be a huge bummer to feel like you're falling in love with someone only to realize you are sexually incompatible. However, with the Bull romance specifically, I do believe that it is presented as casual sex first, and then goes further from there, so it's not like you aren't aware before you really start falling for the guy. The other relationships have sex as a step in the romantic progression and there are more emotions in play.

[Biotic Apostate]

That's an adorable line.

 

It is. Drunken Kaidan is quite sweet.

[vertigomez]

I guess they could do it every now and then. Just no tentacle porn, please.

I concur.

I think it would be a huge bummer to feel like you're falling in love with someone only to realize you are sexually incompatible.

It would. But it's a bit like Sebastian's chastemance - it may not appeal to everyone, but it's part of his character.

However, with the Bull romance specifically, I do believe that it is presented as casual sex first, and then goes further from there, so it's not like you aren't aware before you really start falling for the guy. The other relationships have sex as a step in the romantic progression and there are more emotions in play.

Yes, it's something that should come up well before you actually fall into bed, if it must come up at all.

[DomeWing333]

I guess they could do it every now and then. Just no tentacle porn, please.

Well, not in Dragon Age. It would be a pretty natural fetish to fit into Mass Effect, though. Not to say that they necessarily should but, I mean, aside from personal distaste, why not? If they happen to introduce alien species with tentacles as a possible LI, it makes sense that sex with that species would, well, involve tentacles. It probably wouldn't even be considered a fetish in that universe.

[vertigomez]

Liara does have tentacle hair...

[DomeWing333]

True, but I think for it to count, it needs to be something more...prehensile.

[Biotic Apostate]

Well, not in Dragon Age. It would be a pretty natural fetish to fit into Mass Effect, though. Not to say that they necessarily should but, I mean, aside from personal distaste, why not? If they happen to introduce alien species with tentacles as a possible LI, it makes sense that sex with that species would, well, involve tentacles. It probably wouldn't even be considered a fetish in that universe.

https://youtu.be/S6eZPkFehDk?t=120 

 

I guess it's just too much. As far as I know, they don't go into much detail about the sex mechanics for Garrus and Tali, I don't expect them to start doing that in Andromeda.

[DomeWing333]

Well, they go into some detail regarding Tali's immune system reactions and how other quarians would used nerve-stimulation programs in lieu of actual physical sex. In any case, I wouldn't expect them to show it, but I could see them bringing it up in banter as a casual kink. Something like:

 

"Oh, you're just on her side because you like that thing she does with her tentacles!"

"How do you know about that?!"

"I didn't. Now I do. And...really wish I hadn't."

[Undead Han]

Toggle and tagging requests trigger me.

 

Where's my safe space?

[Donk]

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with complaints that make mountains out of mole hills.

I understand and respect what people dislike about games. Hell, I even agree with them a lot of the time especially regarding DAI but I draw the line when the complaint brings political/social garbage into it.

I.e the classic Cassandra looks like a man so BW are trying to make straight men gay.

Some of these claims are just beyond ridiculous.

Then there's the people who complain about "Sjw". You can barely venture into a thread without seeing that. These "anti Sjw" people are becoming the very thing they claim to oppose.

[Biotic Apostate]

I.e the classic Cassandra looks like a man so BW are trying to make straight men gay.

Wait, what? Haven't heard that one before. The dummies and their 'views' are evolving, previously it was those pesky dudes like Kaidan and Anders who were trying to convert them to the church of c*ck...

[Donk]

Wait, what? Haven't heard that one before. The dummies and their 'views' are evolving, previously it was those pesky dudes like Kaidan and Anders who were trying to convert them to the church of c*ck...

Oh you should have been here last year! We had this one troll who kept making threads and giving us "scientific evidence" based on her jawline and all sorts of ****. Looking back on it, it was pretty hilarious. Just search the name "Brevnau" and you will see it all

[vertigomez]

Wait, what? Haven't heard that one before. The dummies and their 'views' are evolving, previously it was those pesky dudes like Kaidan and Anders who were trying to convert them to the church of c*ck...

Sooo many people who 'accidentally' ended up in the tent with Zevran.

"I JUST WANTED A MASSAGE!"

[Biotic Apostate]

Oh you should have been here last year! We had this one troll who kept making threads and giving us "scientific evidence" based on her jawline and all sorts of ****. Looking back on it, it was pretty hilarious. Just search the name "Brevnau" and you will see it all

I've seen glimpses and it was pretty amusing. At least we got gems like these

 

 

Sooo many people who 'accidentally' ended up in the tent with Zevran.

"I JUST WANTED A MASSAGE!"

"What do you mean Anders is flirting with me, I CANNOT LOSE APPROVAL, I HAVE TO ROMANCE HIM NOW, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME BIOVER!"

[HuldraDancer]

Sooo many people who 'accidentally' ended up in the tent with Zevran.

"I JUST WANTED A MASSAGE!"

 

To be fair it wasn't like he said it was a massage he learned in a wh*re house or even asked what were to happen if it went pass the massage or give the players the option of even saying 'it won't go past a massage'. 

 

Oh wait....well it's not like they should be expected to read or listen when a character talks to him or look at the options they are given. It's still Bioware's fault somehow when you apply the mental gymnastics hard enough.

[vertigomez]

I've seen glimpses and it was pretty amusing. At least we got gems like these

 

Gyyuuuh, the memories. Baaaad memories.

"What do you mean Anders is flirting with me, I CANNOT LOSE APPROVAL, I HAVE TO ROMANCE HIM NOW, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME BIOVER!"

Laawwwd, I remember that. I didn't even know it was a thing at first because I always play a flirtatious Hawke who shamelessly hits on the entire party until I settle on a LI, so I told Anders he was sexy, got some friend points, and moved on with mah life.

To be fair it wasn't like he said it was a massage he learned in a ****** house or even asked what were to happen if it went pass the massage or give the players the option of even saying 'it won't go past a massage'. 
 
Oh wait....well it's not like they should be expected to read or listen when a character talks to him or look at the options they are given. It's still Bioware's fault somehow when you apply the mental gymnastics hard enough.

I know, right?! It was absurd. He asked if you were suuuuure, and if it was okay if it went beyond a massage, and that these were "the kinds of massage techniques you learn growing up in an Antivan whorehouse" - C'MON BRAH.

[Biotic Apostate]

Laawwwd, I remember that. I didn't even know it was a thing at first because I always play a flirtatious Hawke who shamelessly hits on the entire party until I settle on a LI, so I told Anders he was sexy, got some friend points, and moved on with mah life.

Well, clearly you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to kill him for flirting first and, in the case of mHawke, for assuming you're *gasp* into men. And then resent Bioware for a minimum of 4 years.

 

I kinda wonder if the complaints were the reason Steve had so many checks...

[nightscrawl]

^ To be honest, I think the Anders issue coalesced as a result of multiple factors which upset different people for different reasons.

 

The first were the homophobes, and the merits of those aren't worth considering.

 

But then there were various other aspects related to gameplay.

 

There were the rivalry points for the rejection. While being concerned about -10 points is a bit silly on the face of it, particularly since you can make up for it many times over as the game goes on, part of the player concern does rest on Bioware for that. They did a very poor job of explaining the F/R system in the first place, and in informing the player that rivalry is not a bad thing, but simply an alternate way to interact with a companion. On the heels of the DAO approval system, being concerned about negative points is not unjustified or unreasonable, especially since this conversation happens at the beginning of the game and the new player is not familiar with how everything works.

 

The paraphrase system further exacerbates the problem, since you don't know exactly what your character will say, and the sometimes extreme variation of the tonal responses only adds to the frustration. Furthermore, the player simply cannot say, "Not interested," without sounding like a total a-hole for picking the red option, which many players find unduly harsh and unnecessary. The DAI NPC rejections were the right way to respond, that DA2 red choice was not.

 

For that particular conversation, the red response, total rejection, is too negative and harsh. Unfortunately, the blue response, being sympathetic, is also seen by Anders as encouragement. Even without hitting the , he will flirt even if you take the blue response. The only truly "neutral" response in that case which does NOT earn a flirtation is the purple response. In the purple case, this also leads to rivalry points because that goes down the anti-mage path in the conversation -- I do like the "You're starting to glow again" remark, heh.

 

The purple is always the path I take, even on a romance play, because I just don't like the romance conversation at all, so I prefer to leave all that for Act 2.

 

At one point in the height of DA2 posting, I wrote out a very involved post explaining all of this and the red=bad phenomenon.

 

 

Bit of a subject change, but still with Anders. I quite like the rivalry path for him and it is my preferred way to play, but the rivalmance is just nonsensical. This is due to there being no nuance to the F/R system; the game, and thus Anders himself, behaves as if you are anti-mage or pro-templar if you are rivals, when you might simply disagree about his extremism, or his merger with Justice, and not about mage issues in a general sense. You can of course headcanon it to say that that is part of how Anders is as a person; he is extreme. But that ignores the fact that it is also an issue with other relationships as well, like with Fenris and conflicts with mage issues and slavery and assumptions that the games makes on those.

 

I find this failing with most of the rival relationships, which is unfortunate, since it's a great concept that I feel could have been better developed and implemented. In fact, if it had been better received, perhaps it might have been even better in DAI.

[Biotic Apostate]

I can understand not being ok with the rejection options (and their tone), but it really has little impact (and not what the bulk of criticism was about). You can max his friendship out like 3 times in the game. Even if the rivalry system didn't get enough explanation, it's not like you have to go down the rivalry path after you reject him. The criticism I've seen was mostly from people who finished the game, and knew about it.

And as far as I remember there was an option to end the romance without rivalry points. Or you could choose 'never thought about it,' and just leave it at that. The romances need a few checks, so you could do that without any penalty or lock-in.

The most vocal group, from what I've seen, were the homophobes, and people who were mad Anders flirted first. Which was pretty unfair considering female companions did that before (like in ME1, I already knew 3 would have gay romances, so I decided to not romance anyone in the first two, which is why I was very surprised, when Liara flirted with me and then said 'oh, but I know you and Ashley have a thing' and I'm like ???).

 

Concerning rivalry, I think the problem was that they counted the points wrong. If they assigned the most points to templar vs. mage choices, instead of personal conversations, there would probably be less weird situations. The concept is nice, but I think a rivalmance that takes all of the choices under consideration would be way too complicated. I don't even know how a middle ground would work with Anders. In the friendmance he does what he does, but is generally ok, in the rivalmance he's a suicidal husk of a person. A nuanced f/r system would be extremely hard to implement.

[vertigomez]

^ To be honest, I think the Anders issue coalesced as a result of multiple factors which upset different people for different reasons.
 
The first were the homophobes, and the merits of those aren't worth considering.
 
But then there were various other aspects related to gameplay.
 
There were the rivalry points for the rejection. While being concerned about -10 points is a bit silly on the face of it, particularly since you can make up for it many times over as the game goes on, part of the player concern does rest on Bioware for that. They did a very poor job of explaining the F/R system in the first place, and in informing the player that rivalry is not a bad thing, but simply an alternate way to interact with a companion. On the heels of the DAO approval system, being concerned about negative points is not unjustified or unreasonable, especially since this conversation happens at the beginning of the game and the new player is not familiar with how everything works.
 
The paraphrase system further exacerbates the problem, since you don't know exactly what your character will say, and the sometimes extreme variation of the tonal responses only adds to the frustration. Furthermore, the player simply cannot say, "Not interested," without sounding like a total a-hole for picking the red option, which many players find unduly harsh and unnecessary. The DAI NPC rejections were the right way to respond, that DA2 red choice was not.
 
For that particular conversation, the red response, total rejection, is too negative and harsh. Unfortunately, the blue response, being sympathetic, is also seen by Anders as encouragement. Even without hitting the , he will flirt even if you take the blue response. The only truly "neutral" response in that case which does NOT earn a flirtation is the purple response. In the purple case, this also leads to rivalry points because that goes down the anti-mage path in the conversation -- I do like the "You're starting to glow again" remark, heh.
 
The purple is always the path I take, even on a romance play, because I just don't like the romance conversation at all, so I prefer to leave all that for Act 2.
 
At one point in the height of DA2 posting, I wrote out a very involved post explaining all of this and the red=bad phenomenon.

I definitely agree that Hawke's letdown was too harsh. It should be possible to say, "not my type" or "I don't swing that way" without being a dick. Whether you got rivalry points or not... I guess that would depend on how sensitive Anders is.

Sometimes I wonder if rivalry would have been better received if it hadn't been red. Is that silly? But I think the association of blue with friendship and red with rivalry made it seem a lot more "bad" than it was. Not that it couldn't be bad, but sometimes it was just plain disagreement.
  

Bit of a subject change, but still with Anders. I quite like the rivalry path for him and it is my preferred way to play, but the rivalmance is just nonsensical. This is due to there being no nuance to the F/R system; the game, and thus Anders himself, behaves as if you are anti-mage or pro-templar if you are rivals, when you might simply disagree about his extremism, or his merger with Justice, and not about mage issues in a general sense. You can of course headcanon it to say that that is part of how Anders is as a person; he is extreme. But that ignores the fact that it is also an issue with other relationships as well, like with Fenris and conflicts with mage issues and slavery and assumptions that the games makes on those.
 
I find this failing with most of the rival relationships, which is unfortunate, since it's a great concept that I feel could have been better developed and implemented. In fact, if it had been better received, perhaps it might have been even better in DAI.

Agreed on Anders, but I didn't see quite the same issue with Fenris - not because it doesn't get a little nonsensical, what with ending up firmly neutral if you're consistently pro-mage but anti-slavery and you drag him everywhere... but because it's not made a point of in conversation in the same way it is with Anders.

Rival Anders definitely thinks you're a pawn of the Templars even if your only disagreement with him is his merger with Justice or his methods. Friend Anders thinks you support these decisions.

But even if you've gone around smuggling apostates with him in the party, rival Fenris doesn't automatically assume you're a slavery apologist. His conversations are very vague ("you and I don't always see eye to eye"), so while there's still a lot of annoying shuffling around to get him to either 100% friendship or 100% rivalry, there's no assumption that because you're one thing, you must also be this other thing.

I remember making a thread asking if it was possible to be pro-mage and rival Anders, but the general consensus was NOPE. Some people thought it fit his character (especially considering Justice), and others thought it was more of a failing of the friendship/rivalry system. I'm still not sure what I think.

[nightscrawl]

@ Biotic, I addressed most of that in my post, earning back the points, and so on.

 

After release, I do recall that a goodly portion of the complaints were from the entitled "straight male gamers," but as the months, and years, wore on, they became more varied. I read most of the threads and participated in many. I explained my purple=neutral path more times than I can count, even resorting to copypasta on some occasions.

 

My ultimate point was that the objections weren't all homophobic in nature and I think that the game design itself had an impact on the reaction as well. And there were a LOT of people who were upset that they couldn't offer a nicer rejection. That didn't always come down to points, either, but of being made to feel like an a-hole because the game offered such a poor option for that dialogue.

[Biotic Apostate]

I never said it was all homophobia, but in the end that kind of response was the most prevalent and buried any valid criticism. As was any non-idiotic criticism of Cassandra's look (she did look very different, but so did Varric - style shift and all that), and any nuanced DA2 criticism. It was hard to have a conversation about what worked and what didn't, because responses like "BW sux, EA killed it" were everywhere.

Certainly didn't help that I've seen this comic linked again and again

http://images4.fanpo...844-625-790.png

[nightscrawl]

I remember making a thread asking if it was possible to be pro-mage and rival Anders, but the general consensus was NOPE. Some people thought it fit his character (especially considering Justice), and others thought it was more of a failing of the friendship/rivalry system. I'm still not sure what I think.

Well, it sort of is possible, but requires you really plan ahead and be willing to switch followers around from quest to quest, and even in the middle of a quest. I got Fenris AND Anders to rival in one play, and boy was that a pain in the ass.

It also requires that you role-play in a rather specific way: as a moderate mage, being neither for complete mage freedom, nor for the vice-like control and abuse practiced by Kirkwall's Circle. For example, you could give Feynriel to the Circle because you are concerned with his dreams, know that the Dalish don't like "half breeds," (thanks, Merrill) and think that the Circle is the best way for him to learn to master himself and deal with the problem. Feynriel himself is iffy about the Dalish ability to help him. You can get rivalry points for sending Idunna to the templars -- she used blood magic on you, f her. You can get rivalry for suggesting that Fenris might have a point in the gallows conversation. Disapproving of his merger with Justice -- "Spirits aren't meant to inhabit human bodies, that's what demons do," -- also nets you a lot of points, while, to my mind, not diminishing your bona fides as pro-mage.

For both men, it's a lot of +/- 5 or 10 that you have to juggle in a strategic way, but it can be done. You can rationalize or RP your way through many of the choices, even down to taking the rock demon's deal in the Deep Roads. Principle is all well and good, but no one seems to have any sort of plan, so taking a deal doesn't seem that egregious to me, particularly when the ask seems simple and the thing attacks you regardless. Your reward is -10 for both guys.
 
 

It was hard to have a conversation about what worked and what didn't, because responses like "BW sux, EA killed it" were everywhere.
Certainly didn't help that I've seen this comic linked again and again
http://images4.fanpo...844-625-790.png

 
That certainly is true, and remains so. =/

 

[edit]

I should add that I'm not a fan of exaggerated things like that, since you know, that doesn't actually happen in the game. I'm a big proponent of the icons, not because of however the NPC will react, but I want to know what my own character's intention is with a line that is meant to be a flirt.