An Alternative to Player Marriage

[Arcell]

Gonna bump this with Nix's post:

I've been thinking on this topic a lot, trying to find better ways to make this work for the entire community without having it crush anyone's toes so-to-speak.

This is my original post from Page#2:

I think they could dodge a lot of bullets if they didn't call it 'marriage' but tried a different name like bonding, handfasting, pairing etc then allowing the same sex union.

I'm not against same sex marriage at all, but it'd kinda shy away from the stigma of folks getting their underwear in a twist over marriage not being shown in a traditional (to them) light.

Personally I would love to see same sex unions, as one poster mentioned earlier; there are a lot of people who play characters that don't properly reflect their r/l gender, so to leave them out of something like this based on aesthetic choice wouldn't be cool.

Reading through this thread gave me an idea, let's say we built on this and instead of it being a marriage in the sense that it's a partnership of two people in love, why not make it so it can be a pact between friends who are sworn to protect each other etc.

Square could advertize it as a Pact / Bonding / Pairing etc, but it would be up to the individual adventurer to define what that pact means, whether you are married to each other or whether you are best friends and so on but for everyone the ceremony would be the same - you would just swear a pact of allegiance to each other, or if it's player controlled then do as you will. Having a ring or amulet to show that you are bonded to another, with their name would be pretty neat too!

The cathedral could tie into this, having it as a place where you can swear your allegiance to each other before the twelve (and the respective priest)

I'm curious on what everyone's thoughts on this are?

For me I think it would be a great solution, I think it could appease those who are against SSM and those who are for since it's up to the individual player to define what their pact means to their bonded partner.

Have a great weekend guys, I'll keep my eyes open on here!

To be honest, this kind of seems like our best bet atm. Using the word marriage is tricky for them as a company so instead of forcing them into an uncomfortable situation we can ask that they do something that would likely make most players happy. They avoid the PR issues, we get a feature without gender restrictions. Everybody wins..

The NPC idea is okay but this allows us to keep the marriage framework and put it on something else.

[Inaaca]

Here's an idea: If marriage will be implemented why not make it so that players can only marry npcs instead of other players. You can still have same-sex marriages(as long as it isn't like dragonage when your party members hate you because you don't swing that way lol). The roleplayers will be happy. No drama. Everybody wins!

I'm sorry.. but no. People want to interact with other people when it comes to that level of intimacy. Marrying a computer character would take in game marriage to a whole new level of sad. Just taking into account the depth of interaction, how could you possibly care as much for an npc as you could for an actual person? You can't even compare the two.

Gonna bump this with Nix's post:

To be honest, this kind of seems like our best bet atm. Using the word marriage is tricky for them as a company so instead of forcing them into an uncomfortable situation we can ask that they do something that would likely make most players happy. They avoid the PR issues, we get a feature without gender restrictions. Everybody wins..

This however, I think is a brilliant idea. Take the concept of marriage but rebrand it something else. Let the definition be up to interpretation and lose all the stigma associated with traditional marriage. Perfect.