Glamour restrictions: a hinderance to creativity

[Iscah]

I feel that ever since HW, the item designers started to worry more about the sets revolving more around a specific theme (their place of origin) rather than following the premises of plate=tank, dress=caster, etc. All it takes is a quick eye-glance around a website like Eorzea Collection to objectively see this fact. There are instances of the armor weights following closely what they're supposed to (i.e. Moonward) but it honestly feels like that's not the norm when we look at the bigger picture.

The designs are definitely "place of origin" first, but they're still usually varied towards tanks getting heavier gear and mages more flowing gear. It can get hazy in the middle, though, depending how they want to spread out the DPS outfits.

Skimming EC in the gearset section rather than glamours...

Aglaia: tank in full armour, DPS light armour with drapes, mages in robes
Darbar: similar outlines at a glance, but the heavy classes have a lot of visible armour and mages have more skirt
Asphodelos: tank is an outlier but the others are similar to Aglaia
Radiant: weird set all round, but the mages still got robes
Classical: heaviest gear on the tank, lightest gear on the mages
Moonward: role-appropriate cosplay
Neo-Ishgardian: weird
Shadowless: weird
PVP designs: mostly role-targeted but the aiming one is an outlier to the heavy design of the rest
Palaka: heavy classes have a full top with pauldrons, heavy gloves and boots; DPS have lightweight pieces; mages have long half-skirts on the tops
Skallic: heavy classes are bulkiest and have the weird goggles and chin armour thing
Imperial: very place-themed, but mages get capes
Shire: standard armoured/lightweight/long coat outlines
Bonewicca: weird
Alliance: tanks have heaviest coat, mages get cute tunics

I guess the thing is that looking within a single class, there is a wide range of designs, but generally looking at one complete series of designs for a dungeon, the tanks still usually get the "heavy within the theme" set and mages get the "robes within the theme" set.

To pull a more specific example instead of moving woodenly through the list, the Ravel Keeper sets: the tank gear there is very lightweight compared to other tank sets, but within the Ravel sets it looks like armour compared to the mages' light cloth tops and long skirts.

[Raikai]

The designs are definitely "place of origin" first, but they're still usually varied towards tanks getting heavier gear and mages more flowing gear. It can get hazy in the middle, though, depending how they want to spread out the DPS outfits.

Skimming EC in the gearset section rather than glamours...

Aglaia: tank in full armour, DPS light armour with drapes, mages in robes
Darbar: similar outlines at a glance, but the heavy classes have a lot of visible armour and mages have more skirt
Asphodelos: tank is an outlier but the others are similar to Aglaia
Radiant: weird set all round, but the mages still got robes
Classical: heaviest gear on the tank, lightest gear on the mages
Moonward: role-appropriate cosplay
Neo-Ishgardian: weird
Shadowless: weird
PVP designs: mostly role-targeted but the aiming one is an outlier to the heavy design of the rest
Palaka: heavy classes have a full top with pauldrons, heavy gloves and boots; DPS have lightweight pieces; mages have long half-skirts on the tops
Skallic: heavy classes are bulkiest and have the weird goggles and chin armour thing
Imperial: very place-themed, but mages get capes
Shire: standard armoured/lightweight/long coat outlines
Bonewicca: weird
Alliance: tanks have heaviest coat, mages get cute tunics

I guess the thing is that looking within a single class, there is a wide range of designs, but generally looking at one complete series of designs for a dungeon, the tanks still usually get the "heavy within the theme" set and mages get the "robes within the theme" set.

To pull a more specific example instead of moving woodenly through the list, the Ravel Keeper sets: the tank gear there is very lightweight compared to other tank sets, but within the Ravel sets it looks like armour compared to the mages' light cloth tops and long skirts.

As far as I can see, nearly half of that list is full of exceptions and outliers - you wrote "weird" in some cases, and they are defnitely outliers. I still stand by the point that getting classic armor weight equivalences is defnitely not the norm.

But then, subjectiveness also kicks in because I really don't see Palaka's heavy sets being able to fully represent the idea of armored tanks when all they have are just small pieces of pauldrons.