It's time (Option to Hide other players Glamour)

[Bright-Flower]

Bigotry accusations are a bit much. However, I don't think occasionally not liking someone's glamour is enough to get the devs to implement a system like this. I have to see glams I don't care for now and then too, but I wouldn't ask for an option to hide them. Nor would I ask for an option to hide faces I don't like when people do hideous things with hair/higlight, skin and makeup colors on their characters that make me want to puke. It isn't bigotry, but I feel there is a certain thin skinned-ness to asking for the ability to hide glams you don't like and I don't think it's worth the developers time, or making everyone's clients have to check to see if that flag is enabled whenever other characters are being rendered on screen regardless of whether you enable it or not.

[CelestePinke]

Bigotry accusations are a bit much. However, I don't think occasionally not liking someone's glamour is enough to get the devs to implement a system like this. I have to see glams I don't care for now and then too, but I wouldn't ask for an option to hide them. Nor would I ask for an option to hide faces I don't like when people do hideous things with hair/higlight, skin and makeup colors on their characters that make me want to puke. It isn't bigotry, but I feel there is a certain thin skinned-ness to asking for the ability to hide glams you don't like and I don't think it's worth the developers time, or making everyone's clients have to check to see if that flag is enabled whenever other characters are being rendered on screen regardless of whether you enable it or not.

That's your opinion, that's it's a waste of devs time, other ppl's opinion is, it is not. As far as rendering, that would be on the client side again. I already suggested that for filter purposes and avoidance of "frankenarmor" that unglamoured players appear in lvl appropriate, class gear. I'm out of this now.

[Packetdancer]

Yet, if I could just interject (which I'm sure has been brought up, but you know... 136 pages so...), can we all not agree this is a -game-? It is a game. This suggestion is not me asking to delete someone's choice of personal lifestyle.

Mm, yes and no? There's been actual psychology studies about things more or less parallel to this; please don't make me go find the links, because while I read a couple in the print editions of research journal a friend subscribes to, I know they're behind the Scientific Psychology journal archive paywall on the internet. (And if you have paid APA journal archive access, you can probably find them with the search engine for yourself; I do not have the paid access.)

But the short form is that normalizing things like that in fiction or entertainment actually has an impact on people's behavior in the real world. The most common example is actually—and I apologize in advance—rape jokes. When people joke around about "wow, we just raped that other team" in gaming or other things like that, people who actually are rapists feel validated; other people joke around about it casually, therefore those other people feel the same way as they do. Clearly there's nothing wrong with what they do, because everyone else feels the same way and just pretends they don't! There's been similar studies about anti-trans sentiment and "men in dresses" comedy in movies and suchnot—"oh, look, it's so absurd that anyone thinks that actor is believable in that dress, and the movie's playing that up for laughs... clearly, everyone feels the same way about trans folks as I do, even if some pretend otherwise!"

And so on.

That does not mean everyone—or even the majority—of folks asking for a feature like this want it for reasons of prejudice or "wanting to strip away personal choice" or anything similar, as I pointed out in the earlier post; many, if not most, are just going "I would really prefer not to see a shiny gold snowman standing there in the middle of my serious story cutscene of people assembling before the Dying Gasp". But there are people out there who believe those sort of things, and a developer adding an option that lets them act on it is something they'll read as a message, going, "See, my feelings about this are perfectly normal; even the developers support them. Oh, sure, they say it's to remove the snowman heads and stuff, but no one cares about that; it's really because no one wants to see those special gender snowflakes playing a male Roegadyn in a dress."

And that reinforcement settles folks more into those beliefs and habits. It's a variation of the 'echo chamber' effect, where if you hang out with people who share your viewpoints, those viewpoints will be reinforced. The most left-wing folks who hang out in online communities skewed heavily to the political left, and will find little there to challenge their views and plenty to reinforce them; similarly the far right-wing folks who hang out in white supremacist groups online will demonstrably have those views reinforced more and more.

So, yeah, it's just a game. And yeah, having your character's outfit changed by someone else may not hurt you directly—you might never even know—but there quite possibly are people who will be affected by it down the road. Which is where some folks are objecting to this on philosophical grounds. It's not going to end the world if it's implemented, but for some folks out there—and I'm assuming none of them are the ones in this thread—it'll be just that little bit of reinforcement of an existing world-view we'd probably be better off without.

(I mean, there's also just the objection that if the problem folks have is immersion—which, fair enough—then purely just stripping away glamour and only showing whatever real gear they're wearing is going to be little better overall; if you have issues with a tank wearing a dress instead of armor, then you're going to still have that issue if someone's wearing YoRHa gear. Or the Shisui fending set. And that's without getting into the sheer percentage of leg armor with a female appearance of basically underwear and/or garters. But that's a separate objection, coming at things from a different angle.)

But the thing is, at the root of it all, both viewpoints are valid. It's not wrong to not want to see a person dressed like a giant frog, or wearing a bathrobe and moogle slippers with a Namazu head, or whatever else during serious cutscenes. And it's also not wrong to be concerned about the overall impact such a feature will have on day-to-day life when you reinforce those sort of negative views for the people who do hold them, even if those aren't the people actually asking for the feature.

So neither side's actually likely to budge on this, and the thread will just continue to go around and around in circles as people argue philosophical positions as though the other side is wrong; since neither side is, no one's likely to yield and concede the "no, I was wrong, you're right" point that both sides seem to be looking for. So no one is going to ever "win" this argument.

(Of course, I say this while allowing myself to be part of that same protracted debate, so... clearly, I'm not the best at taking my own advice!)

[Brynne]

Precisely that post. Thank you very much. I feel it was a pretty good summing up of where each side seemed to be coming from and why it's such a contentious subject.

That was such a good post and I'm glad to see someone else giving it attention. In general, I love all of Packetdancer's posts in this thread. I wish I could highlight them or pin them or something.

[Halivel]

(Of course, I say this while allowing myself to be part of that same protracted debate, so... clearly, I'm not the best at taking my own advice!)

Funnily enough, similar post on JP section (the OP of which clearly stated that he asks for it because of men in dresses) died out after 10 pages, with OP apologizing and saying he was in the wrong on 6th. They also already had thread (at least one big) asking for this feature for immersions reasons, and there it was concluded by participants that it shouldn't be a thing as well, more or less.

(Just in case if somebody would ask for the link to post in JP forum: I won't give it. The only time I did it for another thread it ended with a wave of EN speaking players using Google Translate, and being rude and impatient on top of that, so in short: I won't do it ever again).

[Granyala]

I don't propose a limit to glamour, I just want to be able to turn off other players glamours displaying on my client.

Request denied.

The whole point of glamor is for me to be in control how others (and myself) see my character. Esp in the cases in which my characters tastes and philosophy disagree with the gear she needs to wear due to stats etc.

I get that you may be annoyed by some of the more ridiculous choices of some players attire but I gladly take that in exchange for the amount of control I get.

[Theodric]

Funnily enough, similar post on JP section (the OP of which clearly stated that he asks for it because of men in dresses) died out after 10 pages, with OP apologizing and saying he was in the wrong on 6th. They also already had thread (at least one big) asking for this feature for immersions reasons, and there it was concluded by participants that it shouldn't be a thing as well, more or less.

(Just in case if somebody would ask for the link to post in JP forum: I won't give it. The only time I did it for another thread it ended with a wave of EN speaking players using Google Translate, and being rude and impatient on top of that, so in short: I won't do it ever again).

Well, with no link I believe such claims are best taken with a pinch of salt. I'd be very curious to see if the thread had players shaming the original poster for the suggestion - much like has transpired within this very thread.

As we've seen both in the real world and social media bubble, the sort of individuals who get angry over suggestions such as the one in this thread tend to get very nasty about trying to force people into adhering to what they push as the 'correct' opinion to have.

Even though fashion is completely subjective.

I'd also note that Japanese threads tend to be much smaller in general and there's a bit less traffic to be found there compared to how quickly threads move here.

[Packetdancer]

Funnily enough, similar post on JP section (the OP of which clearly stated that he asks for it because of men in dresses) died out after 10 pages, with OP apologizing and saying he was in the wrong on 6th. They also already had thread (at least one big) asking for this feature for immersions reasons, and there it was concluded by participants that it shouldn't be a thing as well, more or less.

This doesn't actually surprise me that much, honestly. I lived in Osaka for a while as a kid, and it's always struck me that Japanese culture has less of a stigma associated with admitting that you're wrong; it just means "I have reconsidered my view and realized it was inaccurate." Whereas in Western culture it often feels like admitting you were wrong is some massive personal failing, and people will hold onto a position in an argument like a starving dog holding onto a bone.

And the situation is further differentiated by the fact that over in that thread the OP was espousing a different reason for wanting the feature. In this thread, even if some folks are arguing against the feature by pointing out that they're uncomfortable that the ripple effects might encourage bigoted behavior in general, no one engaged in the ongoing... ah, 'vigorous topical discussion', let's call it... is actually taking the stance that we need this feature because "men in dresses are gross", but instead arguing (understandably) that their immersion takes a hit when someone is liberating Doma dressed like a moogle or fighting for the fate of the world in a tuxedo and metallic gold Namazu mask.

[Halivel]

Well, with no link I believe such claims are best taken with a pinch of salt.

I know, but as i said, EN community already presented itself in the "best" light for me to never want to give it another chance. You are free to search for this post if you wish, it's not that hard to find really. I can give a hint as to which section to search, but nothing more than this.

I'd be very curious to see if the thread had players shaming the original poster for the suggestion - much like has transpired within this very thread.

I won't call it shaming, but there were 2 or 3 people saying that if OP isn't fine with such things, then MMO games aren't for him. Wordings overal aren't as heated as they are here, for a variety of reasons (starting from the way you speak in Japanese in general, going to much more strict moderation procedure on JP forum).

I'd also note that Japanese threads tend to be much smaller in general and there's a bit less traffic to be found there compared to how quickly threads move here.

True as well, but with this there is also less tendency to go on circles where 100 pages are writtend by same 4 people.

[Lufir]

Sweaters and shorts existed long before the internet dear child.

Wow, I never knew those existed before the internet. Tell me more wise Sage of Eld!