Its time to remove job-based glamour restrictions.

[Iscah]

As a male AuRa Healer i can either look like a crossdresser or glamour non healer gear.
There are 1 or 2 Healer robes that don´t look awful on males, but thats it.

Personal taste is going to vary, but considering that male Auri "traditional dress" - as the lorebook describes the starter gear - involves a skirt and midriff-baring top... well, canonically they're not exactly adhering to (modern Western) masculine dress in the first place.

I realise it's different if you're dressing the character in clothes you want to wear, particularly if it's your primary character, but I do have a male Raen alt and I feel like he suits all the weird glamours that I wouldn't put on my other characters. But then again I'm approaching it as 'character design' and thinking "what would he wear?" (A: things that resemble the design of the starter gear) and not "what would I wear?"...


But I do find their unusual body proportions make a lot of gear fit them oddly because of how it's scaled rather than re-modeled for different characters. Wide collars end up a lot bigger and bulkier than they do on other races. Tight-fitting collars are better and lower necklines avoid the issue.


Though I don't really understand why it's an issue to have to glamour non-healer gear if it makes your character look good? You can still build sets that look like healer sets without necessarily using healer gear. Or combine a generic body piece with healer gear in the other slots for something that's still uniquely a healer costume.

If I can show off some examples I'd made with my Elezen alt... RDM with all caster/RDM gear except shirt; AST with only relic sleeves and all-class gear; WHM entirely with Lv1 glamour gear except the crown. In all cases I think it works as looking distinctly like that class, and (other than the WHM) relies on gear that is specific to that class, without being limited to only using that class-specific gear.

Bonus: my Au Ra as SMN using the Lv50 relic pants/skirt and Pagos shirt, which is maybe not so instantly summoner-ish but it's a bit like the Lv70 relic drapey-shirt-thing (aetherial tattoos and all) though without the stab-you-in-the-face pauldron.

Bonus bonus: stealth healer (for sneaking into imperial castrums), deliberately going against a normal "healer look" while still using healer-specific gear where possible. As well as the Ironworks scope, it uses the Makai healer gloves and boots. May upgrade to healer-specific pants if I can find some that look right.


I do also wonder if there's an issue of people wanting to stick to - or simply looking from the perspective of - "modern fashion" rather than the fantasy setting gear? Because that affects the sense of what is 'male clothing' a lot. eg. I recently got the Rabanastran mage's tunic, and when I tried it on my female character, I think she looks like she's wearing male clothing. That's my instant reaction looking at it. But I'm sure other people must say "it's femininine! it's like a dress!"

I feel odd dressing my characters in modern-looking costumes. (well, other than that stealth one for a joke, but still looks odd outside of running MSQ roulette.)


As much as the glamour restrictions are annoying, I think I do enjoy the challenge of working around them. Up until there's that one thing I really really want to equip, anyway....

[Laphael]

Personal taste is going to vary, but considering that male Auri "traditional dress" - as the lorebook describes the starter gear - involves a skirt and midriff-baring top... well, canonically they're not exactly adhering to (modern Western) masculine dress in the first place.

...

As much as the glamour restrictions are annoying, I think I do enjoy the challenge of working around them. Up until there's that one thing I really really want to equip, anyway....

Yes, of course there are those options, my healer wears a cowboy-like outfit at the moment and thats possible.
But thats the reason i dont understand why the restrictions are still there, if i can equip many "non-healer-like" glamors anyways.
Tbh i just want to wear the pyros tank/dragoon set on all of my jobs in different colours XD.

Edit: spelling

[Iscah]

Yes, of course there are those options, my healer wears a cowboy-like outfit at the moment and thats possible.
But thats the reason i dont understand why the restrictions are still there, if i can equip many "non-healer-like" glamors anyways.

That's why I suspect it's more of a deep technical issue than the official answer of "job identity!" - obviously there's no good design reason why casters might be able to equip boots with gold decorations and healers can equip the exact same boots with silver decorations, but heavens forbid you ever try to wear the gold ones as a healer!

So, as I wrote before, I think it's likely that to keep the relic gear "safe", they may have to keep all glamours locked down to prevent it - and the gear does need to have designated classes that can equip it. The arbitrary restrictions on what else can be equipped are a side effect, not a deliberate rule - and possibly even exaggerated as they try to work around it and include some armoured pieces into the mage designs and non-armour for tanks, so people can access them if they want.


I also think there may be a cultural issue. From something I remember reading a while ago, I think it might be a big deal for them (in Japanese culture) to actually admit they won't be able to do this thing that everyone is requesting, so they give a polite non-answer and make it sound like they're not doing it rather than they can't.

Does anyone know if the Japanese fandom keeps requesting things like this after they've been told it's not happening?

[Rongway]

That's why I suspect it's more of a deep technical issue than the official answer of "job identity!" - obviously there's no good design reason why casters might be able to equip boots with gold decorations and healers can equip the exact same boots with silver decorations, but heavens forbid you ever try to wear the gold ones as a healer!

I struggle to think of how it could be at all a technical issue. If I had coded the current system as it functions today, the glamour validation check would involve, among other things, if item.EquipableBy.contains(currentJob). All that would be needed to allow all non-AF gear to be universally glamourable would be to change that one check to if (item.EquipableBy.size >= 2 or item.EquipableBy.contains(currentJob)).

In layperson's terms, this checks if the item is AF by checking how many jobs/classes can equip it. If it's exactly one, then the gear is AF, and it needs to check if current job matches. If it's equipable by more than one, it's not AF and glamourable by anybody. Of course, this only works so long as we have classes, since the defining feature for DRG AF and NIN AF currently is that they cannot be equipped by LNC and ROG respectively. Were we to eliminate classes, an AF flag would have to be added to all AF gear because you wouldn't be able to tell DRG general gear from DRG AF, or NIN general gear from NIN AF, just by looking at the list of equipable jobs. So in that case the check would be if (not item.IsAF or item.EquipableBy.Contains(currentJob)).

But it should really be as simple as this.

[MariaArvana]

bunch of comparison coding

Given how they've setup other systems in this game, I have a strong feeling that we're not actually "glamouring" an item per say, but ACTUALLY equipping it in a 'ghost' slot the game is using, which would make it impossible for any other job to glamour anything they can't actually equip. and the reason they use "job identity" as the PR response since it would take more time than they want to allocate to change.

[Iscah]

Given how they've setup other systems in this game, I have a strong feeling that we're not actually "glamouring" an item per say, but ACTUALLY equipping it in a 'ghost' slot the game is using, which would make it impossible for any other job to glamour anything they can't actually equip. and the reason they use "job identity" as the PR response since it would take more time than they want to allocate to change.

Glamours are linked to the item rather than you or your current gearset, though. Unless it's reading the "glamour instruction" on the item and placing it in the phantom slot every time you change gear, I don't think that sounds like the way it would work.

[MariaArvana]

Glamours are linked to the item rather than you or your current gearset, though. Unless it's reading the "glamour instruction" on the item and placing it in the phantom slot every time you change gear, I don't think that sounds like the way it would work.

It's simply my own hypothesis from the short time I spent coding, due to the fact they've intrinsically tied the glamour system to the equip conditions of the actual item. I doubt it's as simple as a simple byte value on the actual gear, or it'd be pretty easy to code around it, as all you'd need is to have a function to grab the appearance of the other item and override the graphic/model display function calls with the glamour piece instead, the equip conditions not even needing to be referenced.

Hence why I believe there's extraneous conditions, or the game is using some sort of 'ghost' slot for Glamour leading to the "You can only glamour what you can equip" issue, with "Job identity!" being their PR response. Either that or they're pretty adamant about their aesthetic choice and made it limiting on purpose. Who knows :shrug: