Request: Hempen Garb - Racial Unlock

[AngelyLowell]

A little story:

A female hyur enter in a cloth store
- Oh Hello!! Can you help me?
- Sure! What can I do for you? - Say the saleswoman
- I want to buy new cloths, something simple and cute.
- We have this Hyur hempen Camise, perfect for you.
- It's cute, but I already have one... Ohhhhh! Look at that hempen camise, I want that! How much? - Say the Hyur looking at Au'ra hempen.
- YOU CANT HAVE THAT! LOOK AT YOURSELF! DO YOU HAVE SCALES? DO YOU EVEN HAVE A TAIL????? LOOK AT THE CAMISE, IT'S NOT FIT YOU! GET OUT OF MY STORE.

Did you thing this is a weird story? Well, it's like I feel for hempen set being race/gender locked.

[Oscura]

What you and those who agree with you have yet to demonstrate is why Hempen alone should have it's racial lock removed. Why not make all gear available to all races and all genders and all jobs? Or is it only because underwear?

To be fair, what you and yours have yet to demonstrate why it shouldn't be unlocked just because it doesn't fit your specific criteria. It's a two way street. Job specific gear is completely irrelevant to the hempen sets. You are creating an argument specifically for your own personal tastes instead of anything based on proper logic or anything with actual numerical support like the incredibly flimsy "fantasia," argument. You cannot prove whether or not people buy fantasias specifically for hempen or racial gear aside for anecdotal nonsense, so it is completely irrelevant. You can keep repeating garbage but it won't turn into gold.

Edit: Also "I'm intentionally not arguing your point." You're ignoring a point because you cannot argue against it, and then stating that there is "no demonstration of why it alone should have it's racial lock removed." You are picking and choosing what you are listening to and more specifically what is and isn't valid based purely on your own bias. The fact that you continue to waste everybody's time by even stating such a thing is just... incredible.

[Ibkee]

snip

You're absolutely right, yet it doesn't answer why this argument is made almost exclusively regarding Hempen.

All we know is this: Racial and gender locked gear exists and has done so since the game began. Some people want Hempen sets to be racially unlocked, which in and of itself is fine, but attack those who disagree with the false moral high ground of "all glamour should be available to all".

I do agree it's going round in circles a bit, so I'll leave it at that.

[Serilda]

All that dodges the point, which is that racial gear exists (indeed gear unobtainable by many combinations of jobs and genders) and this is unlikely to change at this point.

I think the fact that they have deliberately added a NPC wearing another race's underwear in the last patch calls that last point into question, especially in the wake of them going out of their way to post an official response on the previous debate thread. It completely blows apart any argument that the underwear models are special snowflake items that can only be worn by specific races, and seems like a deliberate tease when they have tended to put townspeople in the 'correct' Hempen gear historically.

What you and those who agree with you have yet to demonstrate is why Hempen alone should have it's racial lock removed. Why not make all gear available to all races and all genders and all jobs? Or is it only because underwear?

It's more that it's one of very few examples where items are race locked at all and unlike the starting gear, there's no lore reason for underpants and thermal vests to be viewed as important racial artifacts. I think some of us are pretty vocal about certain other unlocks we'd like to see happen too, except this is something everyone can get behind without so much pushback. Furthermore, it's an incredibly easy way for people to get a large number of new glamour pieces (ten completely new items for everyone!) with close to zero effort from the design team in most cases. In other words, it's a cheap way for S-E to add more content. Being a business, I'm sure S-E appreciates that they can do something relatively easy to please a large number of people.

I also think a lot of gender locks should go, for example, the Werewolf Feet versus Werewolf Legs. All werewolves have both feet and legs and the models aren't especially gendered (in fact, the female boots would hide an unsightly gap on the male legs, while I'm sure someone somewhere out there has a female character and a strange UGG boot obsession). Why lock things for the sake of locking them?

--

Editing my post.

I honestly find it hard to understand why anyone would oppose this (though I appreciate a few do). I tried to work through the arguments but none of them hold up to me.

- I don't want to use the other races' Hempen items.
- You don't have to use them.

- I don't want other people to use other races' Hempen items.
- Everyone has to deal with seeing characters they don't think look attractive now and then. We survive. If you're a roleplayer, you can even use your character's reaction to provoke interesting discussions.

- Catgirls just want access to sexy clothes so that they can be even sexier.
- So what? This is the same as the 'guys just want to wear skirts' moralising nonsense we get in the male bunny suit threads. It's not true for most people; several pieces are perfectly concealing. And even if it is true for some, it's nobody's place to police how and why other people dress their characters. If it's ok for Hyur/Au Ra/Elezen to dress sexily, it's ok for Miqo'te to do so as well. If it's ok for Miqo'te to have a tight t-shirt, it's ok for Roegadyn who want to show less skin to have that option. Whether the player is doing it to be sexy or doing it for some other reason is irrelevant; this is a game, not a church meeting.

- I only play (insert race here) because I can equip special underwear, so giving it to everyone else is unfair.
- You play a race/gender combination you don't like for underwear? Then this is good news. You can be free to choose your character's race for a different reason.

- Giving everyone more items makes everyone look the same.
- Since we can each only wear one item per slot at a time, this should never happen unless one item is substantially better than any other, overriding all matters of individual taste and turning entire servers into armies of clones. And if that's the case, I would think that the amazing item really should be available to everyone and the designers should work on creating other items with similar looks. Making everyone wear ugly gear they don't like to artifically force them to look different makes a mockery of the idea of racial diversity. Nobody's going to mistake my Elezen for a Lalafell even with the same pants on.

- It would destroy the game's established lore if people could wear different underpants.
- Proven false by NPCs ignoring the lock. Also, Yda's non-race-locked cash shop outfit borrows from one of the Hempen models, so players can ignore the lock too in certain circumstances. The only 'lore' justification is that the Highlander talismans are meant to be cultural, but if we start citing real world examples of cultural attire repurposed for fashion we'll be here all day. It's some bits of wood tied together by string. Anyone can make their own version of that.

- S-E won't do it because they made them race-locked in the first place.
- I already posted a response from the devs saying that the requested had been forwarded; now I'll post an excerpt from the JP forum. This is more attention than most other issues tend to get from the devs!

着用した際、種族ごとに異なるグラフィックになる、カミーズやアンダーシャツなどの裝備については、前向きに検討を行っています。

So as of last month, they were looking into the equipment which has a different appearance depending on the player's race, such as the Hempen Camise and Undershirt. The context of this dev response is a reply to a player who queried the question asked at the European Fan Festival; Yoshida was asked to unlock the Hempen sets but the translator didn't recognise the English names (they aren't called 'Hempen' in Japanese) and asked the wrong question. The poster of that thread corrected the error and requested that the race-locked visuals be made available to everyone; in response the Japanese team went out of their way to reply that it was being looked into.

I would say that all signs are good for unlocked Hempen appearances in the near future.

[Fawkes]

You're absolutely right, yet it doesn't answer why this argument is made almost exclusively regarding Hempen.

All we know is this: Racial and gender locked gear exists and has done so since the game began. Some people want Hempen sets to be racially unlocked, which in and of itself is fine, but attack those who disagree with the false moral high ground of "all glamour should be available to all".

Because those people recognize that some people want race-locked gear and leaving the starter set locked is fine so that those people still have something. They are being polite.

I'm all for unlocking them though, most of them are just a white shirt and black pants or red skirt, none of them ever really seemed that racially themed to me. The miqo'te tribes don't have a bunch of cat girls in miniskirts, they all wear subligars, so that seems more like our racial outfit. But other NPCs wear subligars too so it wouldn't make sense to lock those.

[Magic-Mal]

All that dodges the point, which is that racial gear exists (indeed gear unobtainable by many combinations of jobs and genders) and this is unlikely to change at this point.

The fact I used Highlander female Hempen, which didn't exist in 1.0, as an example clearly went over your head.

Clearly it went over your head. Whether or not Highlander Female existed in 1.0 has no impact on 2.x to now because they'd have to adhere to the 1.0 coding that's already in the game that they didn't remove. Which involves the sake customization locks and hempen locks. I like how you completely glossed over all the things you were wrong about and claimed it went over my head though.

EDIT: Also you seem to just be completely cutting out the visual evidence that it IS likely to happen for no reason.

Why not just say "I don't want it" and leave it at that? Because that's all you have to stand on. The arguments are bogus.

[Alacran]

My question: If the creators who put in the time and work to make the races small clothes different, why is their vision of the game visual aspect any less important than one who wants it changed? It was created this way for what ever reason, it took time to do so and was done on purpose, so why must it be changed?

In my opinion (as unpopular and unimportant it is) i would like to see more of the racial gear upgraded (hempen and starter gear) a bit more armor, some more details, maybe even different material, designs or forms that are inspired by the originals. My adventurer is now more powerful and mature in my head canon, i would like to see a set just for male Highlanders that could and would show off this growth, same for my female Highlander alts, that just so happen to have the build i favor in female character.

As far as i can tell the Highlander race as a whole seem to enjoy showing their physical attributes, are very strong and live in a hot, harsh, almost barren environment, (hence to me) small clothes was made more crude and rugged allowing for more resources to be used for construction of armor, shelter, ect... This however is only my thoughts and not reference to any in game lore (to my knowledge).

For my part, a story exists there (even if only in my head). FFXI had us quest for RSE at one time, iirc there was no lore tied to it but it's form was just a recolor of the starter set, at the time i was a bit disappointed that there so few changes made to these new variants of the gear. However even then i recognized as something made by the developers to differentiate the races. It was how they wanted us to perceive them with out having to hold our hand and tell us tale of how our Highlander ancestors were the first to make bondage gear that would be the envy of near every cat ...girl... in the future.

Idk, i hate the idea of these hempen sets on lala, seems disgusting really, for as much as the ...female... characters desperately want it don't the cats and lizards out there realize how difficult it's going to be to fill out that getup.

tldr: I actually want an expansion to RSE, it's fun to see what other races equipment may say about the culture of each race.

[Skivvy]

People seem to have a strange hangup about miqo having the option to wear the highlander straps.

[Serilda]

My question: If the creators who put in the time and work to make the races small clothes different, why is their vision of the game visual aspect any less important than one who wants it changed? It was created this way for what ever reason, it took time to do so and was done on purpose, so why must it be changed?

They also had the vision to release a game without female Roegadyn, male Miqo'te and female Highlanders. Same logic deep down - modelling an outfit for one race would take less time than modelling it for several, just like not having an entire race/gender combo saved time. Underwear used to be a relevant part of the game's equip design. Now it's just another glamour, and one that already been designed ready for adaption to other model sizes. Why keep doing things in a flawed way just because of tradition?

If it was actual racial gear like those nice oversized earrings the NPC Elezen get or some kind of tail decoration, fair enough, though even then they've shown they can do it with having different models on different characters to reduce the amount of unwearable item bloat and frustration.

For the example of Hyur needing skimpy clothing due to their background, there are plenty of Miqo'te who live in deserts and inhospitable environments (such as the exact same environments inhabited by Highlanders). It's just such a weird thing to want to block.

[Tiraelina]

...

They also didn't have class restrictions originally and tails didn't just clip through everything. Just because you don't want any gear to be part of a races flavour doesn't make it flawed.