I love the new Alliance raid but why they only added the female verison of the DNC AF?? Where's the Male verison??
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I love the new Alliance raid but why they only added the female verison of the DNC AF?? Where's the Male verison??
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Males are females now.
If males wore the male version then you'd get people saying "Why is this gear gender locked?" Can't make everyone happy unless they released 2 sets.
Because the FFXI raid gear is based on NPCs and the 'DNC' attire is Lilisette's appearence from FFXI Wings of the Goddess - she just happens to wear FFXI DNC AF1 (which wasn't surprising given that was the expansion which added DNC to FFXI). Really they may as well have not even bothered.
It's kind of annoying that the Dancer-looking gear are named Mayakov, but Mayakov in FFXI had the male DNC AF1 armor, which neither of these DNC sets is...
https://www.bg-wiki.com/images/6/63/Alexei_Mayakov.png
Well not quite. For one it's named after Mayakov, Lilisette and Portia's dance troupe(and master). For another, one of the sets is based off the Etoile relic set, which Lilisette does not wear(nor does any Mayakov dancer). The only part of the sets that relates to her is the feather hairpin, which is how they aimed to justify not putting in both sets.
The only real NPC set we got was Zeid's for the tanking/maiming sets, as his armor other than the boots in XI is entirely unique to him. The "Shantotto" set we were given is actually just the Tactician Magician Coat set, while the white variant is just the Errant Houpelande set, though they again changed the headpiece from a steepled hat to Chun Li hair ribbons that aren't even from XI.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbn...kt76dbesm@jpeg
wooo! So is the 2nd gear set masculine or feminine???
Although yea, the two dancers have the same outfit on as well.
Actually it's not just the hairpin, her gloves and shoes have fewer straps than the AF, and the sleeves have fewer ruffles.
https://i.imgur.com/CVVWBgZ.png
I'd say 2 out of the 4 gear sets are distinctly feminine. I say "2" because the healer/caster set is only 1/4th but the aiming/scouting is at least 3/4ths.
This is obviously because of the NPCs they decided to represent. The healer and caster sets are available to XI players as the Errant set and perhaps the Tactician Magician set respectively, but the latter is probably best known as Shantotto's trademark outfit (the white/Errant version being used later for her "good" counterpart). And yes, Lilisette wears the female version of DNC's artifact gear. Prishe... is self-explanatory, but the outfit was unique to her. The healer/caster set would be neutral enough, but they decided to add two hair ribbons on both sides on the player's head as the headpiece, because... Shantotto has those pigtail things? The DNC artifact set and their differences has been shared before, but between the skirt, midriff and shorter tights; anyone who's played XI could tell that it is the female version.
This is kind of why I don't particularly care for how they keep using specific character cosplay gear. I don't know if I want to go digging in these forums right now, but I recall seeing way more people hopeful for classic FFXI armor sets than people asking for their NPC's outfits in the original FFXI Alliance Raid hype/wishlist thread. But hey, there was calls for DNC artifact, so we go that... Only because Lilisette wore it, clearly. Same can be said for the Errant/Tactician robes... This actually has kind of killed my hype for the last XI alliance raid, because now I fully expect them to pick 4 more NPCs to have us cosplay, or even just pick another boss and theme the gear off of them like the Ark Angel set from part 1. So much for me seeing Noble's/Blessed Briault for healers in XIV...
On a related note, I do find the designer devs in a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" situation about the male/female issue. I still remember the backlash over Dawntrail AF having discrepancies between male and female models... And now that they don't have that here, they predictably get hit with criticism from the other side... Yeah, yeah, Goomba fallacy and all that... But you just know if it fitted differently on male and female characters, somebody would run in here saying how they wanted theirs to look like the opposite sex's version. NGL, I'd have preferred to have the male version too, but sometimes we just gotta take the L. Just like the Ninjas and Vipers... :rolleyes:
Oh interesting. I never noticed the missing lace work or one less frill per sleeve. Her shoes are also red instead of black. Still though, it's truncated Dancer AF, and the alt colors are still Etoile. I guess they removed a frill because they did a lot of unique poses for her and active dancing cutscenes, and wanted her to clip less when bending her arm, like when she throws a peace sign sideways beside her eyes.
The removal of the lace is to show more skin. Huh now that I look at it, the Etoile variant in XIV is colored incorrectly. Oh well.
The second set is based off of Zeid's unique armor, and the face plate in particular is meant to cover a Galkan skull(huge man). The brown chin guard is also supposed to be much closer and flush with their chins.
http://img.atwiki.jp/kemotar/attach/203/2688/zeid16.jpg
For what it's worth, his boots are just Darksteel Leggings, and his pants are a common type of chainmail brais of which there's several variants. I believe his are the Royal Squire's Breeches (though he may have a custom tail sleeve, can't get a pair to put on my galka to verify atm).
I personally like what people call the ‘female DNC AF’ for my male middie. Something graceful & sensual but doesn’t look like they’re going to trip themselves as they’re dancing. The same can be said on ‘male version’ but I personally prefer the female’s.
If we split them again by gender, we’ll get yet another Neo-Ishgardian/NieR gear situations. It’d be nice if there’s a /visor-like function to alter the top looks, as I can also see what more I can do with mix-matching if only they let me access the ‘male version’ of the artifact at the same time. But alas this is abhorrent in their book :(
Inb4 someone comes and says that "romans wore togas = wear your damned mini-skirt and like it, you scum"
As always, I’d like to remind people that the virtual fictional world we’re talking about literally contains potions that can immediately re-gender someone. I really don’t think Eorzeans give much shit about ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ when it can literally change overnight lol.
I really don’t think Final Fantasy is meant to be reflective of reality in the first place…(despite how foam-mouth crazy they are to insert modern clothing into the game lol). Are we really complaining that this fantasy game isn’t adhering the traditional conservative views of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ as defined in the real world?
Like, you can literally teleport yourself across continents in an instant and talk to animals but it’s the fact some clothes are a bit feminine that’s just too much to handle? Really?
It's still a valid question though - Especially since the dancer AF *does* come in both male and female version.
And while we can brush it off that they picked a specific NPC design here that is based on it, the close resemblance could have invited SE to consider maybe a version you could freely change - Giving Lilisette's design as the female option, and Alexei Mayakov's as the male one.
To be fair, on a lore writing sort've note, it's more so a game-play contrivance. While it would likely be absolutely possible to glamour or even completely restructure your body on a biochemical level via magic... without consequences, or stakes, it sort've falls flat.
Not reflective of reality - no - that's the point of fantasy, -but- when you ascribe everything to convenience and contrivance, relatability from a writing perspective becomes nil. You need some form of grounding or otherwise fantasy is pretty superfluous.
I wouldn't put it down to just 'conservative' views, or whatever you mean by that. Femininity and masculinity in terms of how that's applied to clothing, various, inexplicably, across so many cultures that it's a lot to take in - and most of that is built on the necessity of the time.
In my mind, I don't care what people wear. I think it's silly to moan about gender locking. I also think it's silly to moan about every piece of fabric that's released. Wear something that suits your character and that you like - more options are GOOD - but they're not always mandatory.
I'm talking from the perspective who enjoys reasonably adrogynous male characters with a lot of exposed skin and muscle. There's a huge wealth of variety in gear. That people do not take advantage of. Again - more options are GOOD - but the level of argument you get on this discussion board are beyond ridiculous.
I’m not a fan of this kind of inconsistency with gender differences in gear. Like okay, the alliance gear is supposedly based specifically on a female NPC’s outfit despite there being a decent male counterpart already designed…but the PVP gear puts pants on the guys even though there are two variations of the set where one version could have had them in the shorts and vice versa for the girls. (I know it’s for differing dye channels but even then those are still kinda useless). Make it make sense.
I'm really happy that they chose this to be the new aiming set...
But I feel disappointed with the actual execution. The "skirt", that is more like a waist draping, is so ugly ingame. It flares out and is stiff, unlike the source material seen on this image where the draping is form-fitted to the hip.
You want what??
https://imgur.com/VpAzNWU.png
man where did this army of gender essentialist dudebros come from
It's probably in part that it needs to accommodate a bigger variety in bodies and poses. If they wanted to keep it faithful to the original, it'd need a lot more manual adjustments and/or would cause a lot more clipping than XIV's soulless assembly line mentality for new gear would allow for.
There's no such thing as a "male" dancer.