Can we please get more cool looking outfits for male characters?

[dezzmont]

I think the lack of masculine armor in Shadowbringers for the most part (not all of it, obviously) has to do with the theme of the expansion, which is going for a sort of 'High Fantasy Victorian' thing.

Part of what makes XIV really unique and good as an MMO is that it highly values diversity of styles and allows a lot of self expression with its glamour system, and that requires unique armors to exist that may not be everyone's style. I personally really liked some of the healer/caster sets in Shadowbrungers, but I can see why not everyone would, and its nice to get stuff like it rather than just more robes. My main issue with Shadowbringers armor is actually that they went a bit too far in trying to make some of this very admittedly ostentatious (it is Victorian inspired after all!) armor masculine, even though some of the stuff wasn't actually that gendered (Ex: They made some of the neo-ishgardian male stuff needlessly bulky compared to the female stuff despite neither being gendered clothing).

It would be neat if we could just toggle between a 'masculine/feminine' style for armor that had serious gender differences, because part of what makes XIV special is that it doesn't just have highly customizable armor, but a lot of diversity in how you express yourself: Its nice that there is not just options for female characters to not be wearing boobplate in the form of 'serious/authentic' and 'casual' armor options, but that male characters can wear non-traditionally masculine armor (and not just the token 'yeah sure have a dress' stuff, but also things like the very foppish Shadowbringerssets!), and its weird that sometimes they do seriously alter sets for both sides.

If you are looking for very 'traditional' armor, Shadowbringershas a few (cryptlurker for example), but even its traditional armor is leaning towards 'realistic/dark fantasy,' sorta like an ARR 2.0 which frankly does have elements that aren't designed to be sleek or cool (like have you ever SEEN a real gamberson?). Again, just the aethestetic for the expansion, and its fine to wear older glams if it fits your style more, it actually shows you care about how you look if its really clear you picked out what you like rather than assembling just the latest gearset.

[Joven]

Do yourself a favor and keep an eye out for the Odin fate in Gridania. You'll be able to tell that he's out and about when the weather changes to Tension, makes the forest look super ominous. Do the fate a couple of times and you'll be able to get his helmet, armor and sword.

You can run Urth's Font and get Odin's armor from that, but the sword is definitely locked to the FATE.

[wereotter]

To be fair, we've also gotten some nice, rather masculine gear (Warg, Eden's promise, Late Allagan, and Paglthan come to mind). My only problem is that said masculine gear also tends to falls into the "traditionally masculine" roles, namely tanks and melees, while casters and specially healers get, you guessed it - more white, frilly, overlydecorated, androgynous/female oriented, dresses, with only some few exceptions

Been playing a caster this expansion after being a monk for every one before this, and I agree. The struggle with casting glamor on men is real. So sick of all the dresses.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I think the lack of masculine armor in Endwalker for the most part (not all of it, obviously) has to do with the theme of the expansion, which is going for a sort of 'High Fantasy Victorian' thing.

Part of what makes XIV really unique and good as an MMO is that it highly values diversity of styles and allows a lot of self expression with its glamour system, and that requires unique armors to exist that may not be everyone's style. I personally really liked some of the healer/caster sets in Endwalker, but I can see why not everyone would, and its nice to get stuff like it rather than just more robes. My main issue with Endwalker's armor is actually that they went a bit too far in trying to make some of this very admittedly ostentatious (it is Victorian inspired after all!) armor masculine, even though some of the stuff wasn't actually that gendered (Ex: They made some of the neo-ishgardian male stuff needlessly bulky compared to the female stuff despite neither being gendered clothing).

It would be neat if we could just toggle between a 'masculine/feminine' style for armor that had serious gender differences, because part of what makes XIV special is that it doesn't just have highly customizable armor, but a lot of diversity in how you express yourself: Its nice that there is not just options for female characters to not be wearing boobplate in the form of 'serious/authentic' and 'casual' armor options, but that male characters can wear non-traditionally masculine armor (and not just the token 'yeah sure have a dress' stuff, but also things like the very foppish Endwalker sets!), and its weird that sometimes they do seriously alter sets for both sides.

If you are looking for very 'traditional' armor, Endwalker has a few (cryptlurker for example), but even its traditional armor is leaning towards 'realistic/dark fantasy,' sorta like an ARR 2.0 which frankly does have elements that aren't designed to be sleek or cool (like have you ever SEEN a real gamberson?). Again, just the aethestetic for the expansion, and its fine to wear older glams if it fits your style more, it actually shows you care about how you look if its really clear you picked out what you like rather than assembling just the latest gearset.

I’m assuming instead of Endwalker you mean ShB. Irregardless of that though, i don’t think it really has to do with the theme. Look at the 2b coffer for crying out loud lmao. But even SB had a lack of male themed glams. Instead we got things like the Shisui glams. And the bunny outfit which wasn’t even changed to better suit men, it was just the exact same version as the female one. It just seems like there’s a lot of laziness involved with the male glams where they hardly alter outfits, for example healer and caster gear, where they obviously design them with females in mind. And then barely change it at all for male characters. It’s just a reoccurring thing.

[dezzmont]

I’m assuming instead of Endwalker you mean ShB. Irregardless of that though, i don’t think it really has to do with the theme. Look at the 2b coffer for crying out loud lmao. But even SB had a lack of male themed glams. Instead we got things like the Shisui glams. And the bunny outfit which wasn’t even changed to better suit men, it was just the exact same version as the female one. It just seems like there’s a lot of laziness involved with the male glams where they hardly alter outfits, for example healer and caster gear, where they obviously design them with females in mind. And then barely change it at all for male characters. It’s just a reoccurring thing.

You are right, I meant SHB, whoops!

Shisui is ONE dungeon glam set that was themed well for them and which added variety to the dungeon sets of Stormblood, which you can find here.

Of these, I would say the bonewicca set is fairly 'transgressing' in intent, the Royal Volunteers set is what one might consider... 'more traditionally masculine than normal unisex clothing' with its super chunky combat armor even on casters, and the Shisui set which are... not feminine per-say. I get why you might not want to go out and wear them personally, but I would more say they are for someone seeking a 'certain type of glam.'

So the 'look at stormblood' thing falls flat. ONE dungeon has a glamset that is for people looking to be... flashy lets say, regardless of gender. I very much understand if it is not uhh... 'for you' unless its on a female character, do understand that isn't the case for everyone and XIV strives to be a game where EVERYONE can look like they walked out a Victoria's Secret catalogue if they wish. Gender Equal eye candy being relegated to one optional dungeon which makes sense for the culture of the world seems good with me.

The 2B situation and the bunny set situation are different. The FFXIV team have been getting non-stop requests for the male bunny outfit as is, so they didn't change it and it actually was hard for them to get the office to do it WITHOUT changing it, to the point they had to get female employees to do it. Which I think doesn't reflect great on the guys in the team considering how willing they were to do the girls in it, but that is sorta what the community overall wants: The ability to have glamours for everybody, rather than to gender segregate glamours. This is also why the 2B outfit and the raid sets were the way they were: the community made it fairly clear they don't like the fact that there are these ultra revealing skimpy outfits that hyper-sexualize the female characters and not vice versa, and that so many outfits were gender locked. I do get there is a frustration with how many very explicitly girly girly 'premium' outfits there are, but this was a very special situation in both cases.

As for the healer and caster gear being minimally altered... that is because most are... robes? Which are gender neutral? Unless you mean the YoRHa set being minimally altered, in which case, your I would disagree and point out its one of the most altered outfits in the game. "Kinda femme" doesn't not mean "Clearly meant for a woman."

Don't get me wrong, I 100% get not clicking with a lot of sets this expansion, it happens and in fact I bounced of quite a few of them. But saying 'they are for women' is very silly when so many of them are clearly unisex and merely don't mesh with your personal style. If you can't rock the Neo-Ishgardian caster top into making you look like an awesome steampunk gentleman adventurer, well that is more on you than SE. A lot of these 'frilly' parts are amazing because they are so different and open up glam options in combination with other stuff. That is, again, why we want glam diversity, rather than getting constant repeats of 'Full plate and full body robes' and you might be very shocked at how rugged you could look in an outfit by mixing in some heavily armored boots and gloves to get a 'battle caster' vibe.

Not every set is meant for every person and maximizing variation in sets naturally means there are a large quantity of sets you will never wear. For example, I will almost never wear 'full, masculine armor' on Hrothgar because it kinda makes em look... not even fat, but boxlike, which I don't like and it means every 'full plate' outfit is DOA for me. Certainly SOME should come out, but I am glad its usually 1-3 a set (save fending sets, which still make sure to get non-armor sets out there each expansion) rather than 'all we get as male characters' and even if I never intend to wear the chest-piece often an element from them can come in handy.

[Allegor]

Tbh, with the exception of maybe the Republican and Omega sets, which have traditionally feminine features? (exposed back/shoulders), I wouldn't call any gear from Stormblood 'feminine'. To me, female characters just happen to looks better wearing them than males, but that doesn't mean the set itself is feminine (I'm mostly annoyed it's predominantly white but that's another can of worms).

ShadowBringers gear though? yeah, there are more than a few sets that you just can't debate they were made with females in mind and males as an afterthought, if even, because we all know the healer role is traditionally female - and no, you can't keep using the "it's a robe!" pretext forever [I'm glaring at you, Edengate maternity dress]

[dezzmont]

Snip

I agree that robes can be more feminine or masculine, but I would argue a lot of the robes trend masculine, again with chunky features to try to make them seem less like dresses.

Edengate is one of the few healer robes in my opinion that is actively, aggressively feminine, though I don't think it looks very good (it definitely doesn't have a good fit).

Generally there is actually 1-3 'slots' for ultra-feminine/frilly healer robe per-expansion. ARR had Scylla and arguably Demon's, HW had Valerian and Dravanian, and Stormblood didn't really have any.

SHB has Eden's Verse (if you don't wear it as a full set though I would argue you can dye it and make it look masculine, much like the caster it helps that its default white definitely screams 'pseudodress'), Eden's Gate, and Kiiiiinda Voeburtite (Though much like YoRHa those sets are... intentionally non-traditional lets say). It was about 'on par' with most expansions, and as someone who really likes more 'masculine' healing gear myself we got some of the best stuff this expansion too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like all of the gear this expansion (I would actually say a LOT of it misses overall, and I suspect the chosen visual style of the expansion of being this Victorian style of frills and fancy coats is more going to be used piecemeal to add flare rather than as the core of any outfit), I just don't think this expansion specifically failed on the 'male vs female/feminine vs masculine' front, and I really appreciate them doing more to try to vary up how glamour look and how they present by SET rather than (mostly) by altering the outfit for different sexes. Though they still did that, and I actually think one of the most egregious 'make the male version' over-corrections happened in ShB with the Neo-Ishgard Fending Top which went from a sleek victorian/steampunk blouse with a vest and some cloth hanging off the side for some flair to this ugly, chunky, 'tank robe' that isn't really good for any glamour because it doesn't dye well and it covers way too much of the arms and legs for anything else to show through. Its really emblematic of the costs of trying to 'gender correct' outfits rather than just accept some sets will be feminine and some will be masculine.

That said, again, a super happy medium that would make everyone happy is to just make any set that has extreme bias towards one gender presentation that makes them consider having an entirely different piece for the other gender have a toggle to let you use both versions. That way female healers wouldn't be stuck with the travesty of the Eden's Verse healer and I would have something actually useable with Neo-Ishgardian to update some of my more 'steampunky' tank glams.

[Mimilu]

You can run Urth's Font and get Odin's armor from that, but the sword is definitely locked to the FATE.

You purchase all the Odin gear and barding from Aelina in Mor Dhona using Odin's Mantles you get from completing the FATE (5 mantles for gold, 1 for silver).
All the items cost 5 mantles each.

[Joven]

You purchase all the Odin gear and barding from Aelina in Mor Dhona using Odin's Mantles you get from completing the FATE (5 mantles for gold, 1 for silver).
All the items cost 5 mantles each.

But the FATE is rare. In the whole time I've played this game since ARR I've only seen it pop like 3 times. You can unsync Urth's Font as many times as you want.

[Mimilu]

But the FATE is rare. In the whole time I've played this game since ARR I've only seen it pop like 3 times. You can unsync Urth's Font as many times as you want.

Another thing about the Urth's Fount version of the armor is that it is in pieces (helmet, chest, gloves, legs, and boots) versus the FATE version, which is the helmet and a whole set of armor in one slot. (Neither sets are dyeable though)

The FATE's spawn rate is annoying.
If I'm remembering correctly, it spawns in 1-of-12 places in the Shroud, with it having a 72 hour window for the initial spawn after any maintenance, then it goes back on cooldown for 36 hours and has a 36 hour window to spawn, then repeats the 36 hour cooldown, 36 hour spawn window.