Originally Posted by
MariaArvana
It's far more complicated than that.
The gear system in this game is essentially Legos. Underneath our gear, there isn't any base model; its an empty void, we don't have a base model the gear is mapped over. When you equip a new set of legs, it's the equivalent of removing a Lego person's legs, then attaching a new set of legs. This means that if skin is showing on an armor piece, it also has to be manually added in by the devs; as if they don't it would only create a see-through/empty void in that area. The only thing static about our character model is that we all have a bald, base head before any facial features, hair, tatoos, etc. Everything else about our character model is 100% modular.
Which means anytime they create a new piece of armor, they must model it to fit every single body skeleton type in the game. For females, that's only two. For males, that can be up to an additional four body skeleton types based on the armor piece.
For the most part since male <-> female lalafell are extremely similar with only minor modifications to their skeletons, but since it'd look super bad to say 'females and male lalafell only', male lalafell just gets ignored too.
And yes, it was pretty eye-opening when I first read how gear operates in a few discords. It explains why they're so happy to do female stuff given getting it working on one gets it working on every single other one besides lalafell, while they're averted to doing males unless necessary. Their model system basically favors female characters tremendously.