As it's Valentione's Day, I ask do we even need in-game marriage; period!

[Calyanare]

Trion didn't get any flak for implementing a marriage system that was inclusive to same-sex couples, and iirc Lucent Heart also had a same-sex marriage system and they got no flak for it either, because IT WAS NEVER MENTIONED. {snip} No harm done to either side, no side will get their feathers ruffled, no one will make "defamatory articles" questioning SE's decision. It's inclusive for all types of couples and it's also a quiet announcement. Win-win.

I'm not entirely sure you can compare these situations. Rift went F2P ages ago, and I've never even heard of Lucent Heart. Right now, FFXIV is one of the most popular new P2P games. For the "include it but just don't talk about it" strategy to work, you have to be out of the media spotlight.

Again, I've never heard of Lucent Heart so I don't know anything about it, but I played Rift for about a year following its launch (and quit before it went F2P), and this thread was the first I heard of marriage in that game so I assume it's a relatively recent addition. The articles about marriage in Rift I assume went something like "Hey, remember that Rift game we all played for a while 2 or 3 years ago and is now F2P? They added marriage!" FFXIV is still a new game being actively reported on by the media, though, which is why adding marriage would attract lots of attention no matter how the company chose to announce it, particularly because the controversy about it here in the forums is so well known.

So my opinion is that if we want this to happen, we should let it die. Quit talking about it and stirring up controversy so that they can quietly add it, because that's the only way it will be able to be inclusive.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I'm not entirely sure you can compare these situations. Rift went F2P ages ago, and I've never even heard of Lucent Heart. Right now, FFXIV is one of the most popular new P2P games. For the "include it but just don't talk about it" strategy to work, you have to be out of the media spotlight.

Once again, them being in the spotlight or no doesn't mean they couldn't make a quiet "hey we have a marriage system now, yay" announcement. Being in the spotlight doesn't mean anything, they DO NOT have to go into super big details about how inclusive or exclusive it is. At most, they'd just tell HOW one gets married, without specifically mentioning gender pronouns into it. Stuff like "Well, two players who want to get married will go to [insert area here], exchange [insert key item here], and will now be married (and/or if they decide to implement some kind of bonus from marriage, they will now receive [insert bonus here] whenever they party together)."

It's very simple. They're still saying plenty about how the marriage system would work and how one would go about doing so, without actually mentioning specific gender pronouns like "two males, a male and female, two females". It's just "two players." Gender-neutral, allows easy explanation of the marriage system without potentially causing some kind of pathetic uproar by homophobes who think a same-sex inclusive marriage system will ever affect them in the first place.

This is not as big of an issue as everyone is trying to make of it. SE, even if they're in the spotlight right now, have plenty of options when it comes to explaining a marriage system without mentioning that it includes same-sex marriage options, or even mentioning what genders can even get married at all. SE has options to implement one without mentioning specifics about what genders are able to get married. It's players who are so against a marriage system they likely won't even use themselves that are the problem, not SE being in the spotlight of online gaming right now.

[Naunet]

Again, I've never heard of Lucent Heart so I don't know anything about it, but I played Rift for about a year following its launch (and quit before it went F2P), and this thread was the first I heard of marriage in that game so I assume it's a relatively recent addition. The articles about marriage in Rift I assume went something like "Hey, remember that Rift game we all played for a while 2 or 3 years ago and is now F2P? They added marriage!"

Actually, Rift's marriage system was added well before it went F2P (and it hasn't actually been F2P for that long, fyi), so this entire paragraph of yours is inaccurate, and the conclusions you draw from it are invalid.

So my opinion is that if we want this to happen, we should let it die.

They've voiced their hesitance. That alone is reason enough to not let it die, because if we do, they may implement it with restrictions.

Was never a problem in FFXI, but then again, XI comes from an era where people didn't complain about their decisions (I'm a female playing a male and my husband is also a male type of decision.) So in reality, it really isn't and wouldn't be a problem it just would happen to disallow people who made the conscious decision to play the opposite gender - Not SE's fault in any shape or form unless you can give full detailed reasoning as to how SE influenced their decision of: "I think I'll play a male character!"

Ah, the "kids these days" argument. That doesn't actually work as a legitimate stance, you know. What is wrong now was wrong then. I'm sorry you folk didn't have it in you to speak up for something you wanted.

[Calyanare]

Actually, Rift's marriage system was added well before it went F2P (and it hasn't actually been F2P for that long, fyi), so this entire paragraph of yours is inaccurate, and the conclusions you draw from it are invalid.

Just because I'm not sure when a game I quit playing more than 2 years ago went F2P doesn't make it invalid. At the time I left, Rift was hemorrhaging subscribers left and right, and had just had a big server merge that was widely publicized as being its death. After that none of the gaming sites I read even mentioned Rift at all until the marriage world record attempt thing happened, so my conclusion isn't invalidated by the fact that Rift wasn't F2P yet by the time it happened. It was considered to be a dying game by most, so it could only benefit from any publicity other than a "we're shutting down the servers" message. I'm sorry I didn't feel it was necessary to do research for this post, but the facts being a little off doesn't invalidate the point I was trying to make.

Once again, them being in the spotlight or no doesn't mean they couldn't make a quiet "hey we have a marriage system now, yay" announcement. Being in the spotlight doesn't mean anything, they DO NOT have to go into super big details about how inclusive or exclusive it is.

But don't you see that because of all of the well-known controversy about it since it was originally mentioned, that "But is it inclusive?" will be the first question anybody asks? It's not like people will just go "Oh, cool!" and be pleasantly surprised if they happen to try it and it works. Even if SE doesn't announce it themselves, the first people to find out it does work (within about 5 minutes after it's live) will slather the information all over the place ASAP, causing people who don't like it to try to arrange boycotts and possibly blocking their launch in some countries (if it is gender-blind).

This is why I think we won't get this feature for a couple of years yet, unless people shut up about it. It's too controversial for them to take a gamble on.

[Alaray]

But don't you see that because of all of the well-known controversy about it since it was originally mentioned, that "But is it inclusive?" will be the first question anybody asks? It's not like people will just go "Oh, cool!" and be pleasantly surprised if they happen to try it and it works. Even if SE doesn't announce it themselves, the first people to find out it does work (within about 5 minutes after it's live) will slather the information all over the place ASAP, causing people who don't like it to try to arrange boycotts and possibly blocking their launch in some countries (if it is gender-blind).

This is why I think we won't get this feature for a couple of years yet, unless people shut up about it. It's too controversial for them to take a gamble on.

I've never seen MMO players who were upset that the game catered to other people, you know not only them, actually band together and boycott the game over a fluff piece. Or any game. Of course, I've heard of organizations officially recognized as hate groups who are full of extremely bigoted people do this (One Million Moms, a sub-organization to the American Family Association, attempting to boycott JC Penny over Ellen Degeneres being in their ads, for example). Yet, those were ineffective. If this was true of MMO players, then every major patch for anything would herald a random exodus of the five or ten players who get their underwear in a bunch over the simplest things and complained endlessly about it on the forums.

If people at large would be as frothing at the mouth as this, then RIFT would have actually had a lot of negative press surrounding it's marriage system if it does, in fact, allow same-sex couples in it (because... people still play it actively, and it had a larger population at the time that system was introduced... and if a marriage world record from that game gets reported on, surely anyone who held extreme positions about how gay/bi people don't deserve game fluff marriage would have commented, posted their own articles on it, and go on idiotic rants about how they're offended other people get to partake in a fantasy system).

And yeah, people should shut up about it. Namely the people who get upset other people want to enjoy a game system from a game they pay monthly for, just like anybody else. Surely if they shut up and realized that their argument is, more often than not, thinly veiled bigotry (I don't like your kind/think your kind is wrong/don't care about the issues of your kind I am more important and deserve more privileges), there wouldn't be any controversy in the first place.

If Enix decides they don't want to cater to gay/bi people as well as straight people, then I agree that they should simply forgo the entire system together. Much better than implementing it and saying "only for straight couples" granted, straight people don't need more things exclusive to them: it just boosts their entitlement and spoils them more.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

But don't you see that because of all of the well-known controversy about it since it was originally mentioned, that "But is it inclusive?" will be the first question anybody asks? It's not like people will just go "Oh, cool!" and be pleasantly surprised if they happen to try it and it works. Even if SE doesn't announce it themselves, the first people to find out it does work (within about 5 minutes after it's live) will slather the information all over the place ASAP, causing people who don't like it to try to arrange boycotts and possibly blocking their launch in some countries (if it is gender-blind).

This is why I think we won't get this feature for a couple of years yet, unless people shut up about it. It's too controversial for them to take a gamble on.

I actually haven't heard a single thing about this forum's apparent problem with LGBT-related issues, so I highly doubt the rest of the world outside of these toxic forums even knows how much of a fit people throw here about it. So no, I doubt the first question asked would be "are same-sex marriages available too?"

Any actual noteworthy gaming site or interviewer worth their salt will be interested in how the system WORKS, how marriage is actually done (where to go, what you need, if there are bonuses to being married, etc), not "but can da gaes murry 2?" I literally have never seen a single thing mentioned on reputable gaming sites or discussion boards about the "LGBT problem" in FFXIV's forums, because no one actually cares outside of these forums about the issue. Either they just don't care if it's an issue at all, they don't care if SE implements more LGBT-friendly stuff, or they don't even know about the "issues" in the official forums at all.

So no, my point still stands. SE can easily explain and hype the marriage system to gaming sites without actually mentioning it's inclusive to same-sex couples.