Quote Originally Posted by MariaArvana View Post
It's likely due to the fact that locking it to female only is a much easier task to do due to the large extra workload they'd have to re-sculpt it for Male Bodies.

Certain races and genders share body skeletons. Female Hyur/Highlander/Viera/Roegadyn/Au Ra/Miqo'te/Elezen all share the same body skeleton, only with different variables for their proportions. Female Lalafell is separate, but Krile's outfit is already fitted for female lalafell so that's not an issue. So all they'd have to do to get it up and running is make it for female Hyur, then use the various race's variables to fit it for all. Easy-Peasy work for large payoff.

Now for males, not only would they have to re-sculpt the thing (removing notion of any chest curves, widening certain sections/thinning certain sections to better fit a male body, but then we come across the issue that is male body types in the game.

Hrothgar/Roegadyn have their own type no other race shares. Highlander/Au Ra sometimes have a separate one depending on the piece, but may also share with the next group depending. Hyur/Elezen/Miqo'te share another. And finally we have male lalafell which is separate from all of them.

See the issue? Creating a piece of gear for males can sometimes triple or quad their work, whereas females are super easy to design for with their system. Couple this with their "we want to keep the identity of the character who wore these outfits" approach Yoshi-P mentioned and you get one recipe for a quick, easy to hand-wave with their lore reason genderlocked outfit. When it comes to undoing genderlocks, I suspect they're only really going to be targeting the outfits that the vast majority are wanting to be undone, like the ceremony outfits.
I'd rather they spend their resources on content vs making someone happier about who they are/want to be. If you require pixel designs to be content in life, there is a bigger problem than an outfit not being usable. It's a waste of development resources that have to be pulled from elsewhere in order to redo all those models.