There was an intelligent and thoughtful post on the Steam boards concerning this issue and suggesting a theory as to the cause of the problem. I have a fair amount of experience coding and modding computer games, and the coding theory advanced in the post makes sense to me (does not mean it is correct). I am unsure of the rules concerning linking to other boards, so I have just quoted the full post below.
Quote
Romance System is Broken The main issue is that Larian...for some reason decided to "reinvent the wheel" and instead of simply making the "Romance" only start after the PC initiates like EVERY OTHER RPG UNDER THE SUN.
They made it tied directly to "Positive Approval" basically for the AI if they like you, that means they "Like Like" You.
Also the entire narrative people keep saying "Just say no" is incorrect. Each origin companion has 3 "intimate" triggers spread across their approval gain. If you are like me and 90% of the rest of players you keep the same few members of your active party.
If a companion goes over more then a single approval trigger without initiating conversation (You can easily max out approval in Act 1) they will then have ALL their triggers activate simultaneously and stack for each long rest.
Because you can only have 1 "event" per long rest these events are left in a sort of "queue" until you eventually activate them. However once they are "queued" they can't be changed. So lets say you have 3 conversations with Gale queued, if you say "No" to Gale in the first event, it will NOT CHANGE the other 2 events that are already queued.
This means he will still "hit" on you, and act as if you never said "No stop." because at the time that those conversations were queued, you hadn't said "No" yet.
While I don't think this was done on purpose by Larian, it is a major oversight of basic RPG game design, that really shouldn't have been an issue.
And yes, all the people yelling: "Just say no" or "Just learn to read" are as dumb and uninformed as they sound.
Regards,
Hem
Edit: I have posted on these boards that I have decided not to purchase the game, but the truth is that I really want to play this title… I just can’t arsed to be harassed by NPCs in a video game. Just so others here know where I am coming from: I am an older straight guy, but I don’t freak out over appropriate well-designed LGBT content, and I have many dear friends IRL who fall under that moniker.
The post I quoted above gives me hope that the romance content wasn’t intentionally designed as it currently functions. Heck, I might buy the game so I can mod a fix to share with the community. lol!
Last edited by Hemingwey; 20/08/2303:12 PM. Reason: add some context
