Question and concerns about the vanity sytem..

[LioJen]

It's not so much about immersion breaking, as it is about breaking the artistic identity of the game. FF games all have a distinct aesthetic style to them that the whole game follows, and as a result the games have a unique look and identity that is instantly recognizable. You can look at ANY character from FFX, and know that their clothing style is from Spira. Same thing with nearly every FF, and it was one of my favorite things about XI's armor and clothing designs. Despite being very different amongst each other, the armor sets in XI all followed a similar design philosophy and they all looked like they belonged in that world. While every character was not a special snowflake donut steel, at least they all looked like they were residents of Vana.

Right now XIV is painfully short on such a design philosophy and letting everyone run around in completely out of context and unrelated costumes will only hurt its identity further.

In a way this is a result of the game design (and society in general) shifting toward a more individualistic mindset where everyone has to be unique and special and be able to do everything by themselves. Whereas older games like XI had everyone look similar because the game was focused on being in a group, and the group looked appropriate together. You were part of something larger than yourself, rather than being the center of your own little world away from every other player.

As far as the vanity system goes, I would prefer they simply design better standard armors and revamp the dye system to allow us to mix and create an outfit which still fits the atmosphere and identity of the world of Eorzea. Don't break the identity of the game and the world and turn it into every other fanservice-based paperdoll MMO. It's already suffering from being generic as it is, the least you could allow SE is to keep its artistic dignity. If you didn't want to play a character who looks like they come from Eorzea, why did you play a game set in Eorzea?