New gearsets preview is a disappointment

[harething]

i still remember the sheer joy & excitement dawntrail's initial announcement brought me. the locales, cultures & influences felt very much a love letter to the wonders of latin american & indigenous heritages, something i never thought would come to one of my most beloved games.

waking up this morning & getting hit with the metaphorical cinderblock that was the meso terminal's armor reveal reminded me that those latam & indigenous roots suffered at the bloody hands of colonizers due to the clear conquistadore influences displayed in 4/6 of those. this is not the history we celebrate when talking about these cultures. the team had to have been completely blind to what this means to us, the many black, brown & indigenous players, which is what lead to me after all these years, take to these forums for a chance at being heard.

i understand theres no chance at these armors being removed, the continued existence of the new world & saami clothings is a testament to that, but the ffxiv team has let down one of their many players in such a way that has negatively affected my overall experience of the game. i hope there is acknowledgement & the huge room for improvement is acted upon because i wouldnt want anyone to feel like i feel writing this today.

[LegendWait]

I really don't get the "conquistador" angle those helmets doesnt look like morions, those armors don't look like a full plated armor.


I see mounted 1800s helmets with normal armor that weve seen many times, two piratey oufitts, two merchants with a hat that look like Wuk Lamat's and a Musketeer.

[resonance_of_terror]

I'm not very happy with the gear sets. They're tasteless & insensitive. They really don't fit the theme of Alexandria or Tural. In the zones I haven't seen any NPCs wear anything similar to that. I myself am from the culture that's based on Tural & I really don't like this. The majority of the gear also really isn't that good looking either. Maybe y'all should have save those gear designs for another expac & not our current one. Even bringing back old gear with the two dye channels would have been better then this.

[quagsires]

Conquistador-inspired outfits in the Latin American-themed expansion pack is just... a pretty terrible decision all around. This does absolutely need to be changed, and I have the feeling SE either needs to hire back their sensitivity consultants; or, if indeed they still have those consultants, expand their purview to also include gearsets.

[Dagny]

Yes lmao. 80 years ago some people still remember and had a major impact on modern history.

400 years ago is before my grandmas grandmas grandmas grandmas grandma.

400 years ago feels like ancient history, yes. But for a lot of people in Latin America, the legacy of colonization isn’t just 'old history', it still shapes their culture and identity. (Belize was a British colony but it didn’t gain independence until 1981, if you want a more tangible ‘recent’ example. Not 'Latin' but still in the same region geographically).

Symbolic conquistador gear can carry a lot of weight, especially when included in a game expansion inspired by Native and Latin American cultures. It’s not about saying fantasy can’t use history, but it’s also valid for people to feel a certain way when those symbols appear. Especially after SE claimed they hired sensitivity consultants, it can feel like it was done without care.

Something that provokes no emotions in one person can still feel personal to someone else. Games (I hope we agree on this) should aim to be for everyone, so it makes sense to bring issues like this up.

[decomposer]

Agreeing with the original post as well as adding my own two-cents.

Dawntrail has been extraordinarily ignorant from its inception to its current-state. It limped right out of the gate by settling on a location already steeped in contentious writing choices and gear, and rather than seek to rectify it, not only ignored the already egregious writing but created more. This gearset is just another drop in a bucket that's been filled to overflowing.

People focus, rightfully, on the New World gear as a negative example of cultural appropriation, while extolling Dawntrail's current gearsets and cultures (most current notwithstanding) as positive examples of cultural appropriation. But this has been an ongoing problem. Even in Endwalker, I had voiced the complaint that the Black Mage Artifact gear was dressed in feathers and dreamcatchers (for whatever reason, BLM often gets saddled with "native" aesthetics despite being quartered, by and large, in Ul'dah. This sort of flatlining of the "orient" and the "occident" into an exotic mystic can be seen, again, in how the Hhetsaro are dressed in Ala Mhigan gear, and how numerous gearsets across the map's SWANA-coded regions appear again in places like Tural.)

In terms of culture, Dawntrail was a mess. Xak Tural is an extremely derivative land of western aesthetics, that prey upon anti-native stereotypes. If I listed every one, I would be here all day. It's derivative and uninspired. Everything they have done is so clearly a product of googling "Latin American Clothing, Mexican Food, Southwest Buildings" and building upon that. The deep pulls of Thomas Moore's Utopia and the Fermi Paradox were left behind years ago.


And INB4 someone says it, I'm not offended on "other people's behalf." Believe it or not, indigenous people exist and are alive today, with fully functioning frontal lobes and opinions.

I did, however, put down my wooden flute and flint rock to write this post.

[Evermomo]

That particular armorset the fending/maiming set is based on is Heavily similair to the armor worn by the conquistadors; it's not appropriate in the context of Dawntrail. FFXIV has responded to previous concerns regarding the names of the korean outfits, so I hope they can understand this is a similair problem, and that something will be done.

[RareBirdAlert]

This gearset was a very bad decision. Giving us gear based on the armor of conquistadores in an expansion based in part in Mesoamerican cultural inspiration is an insult to those cultures. At best I can only see this as a lack of attention to the cultural sensitivity that we had been promised. This was an offensive decision and I feel the only correct response is to replace it and issue an apology. If this cannot be done in time for the 7.3 release, then patch in a replacement later. At the very least, an apology is due.

[vHarlequin]

I really don't get the "conquistador" angle those helmets doesnt look like morions, those armors don't look like a full plated armor.


I see mounted 1800s helmets with normal armor that weve seen many times, two piratey oufitts, two merchants with a hat that look like Wuk Lamat's and a Musketeer.

Literally this, seeing people claim they're the same is wild af and at this point simply have to be trolling. to claim the musketeer style as a whole is culterally insensitive is wild considering how many countries had musketeers, and pictures of the conquistadors of the time show even those with muskets WORE PLATE BREASTPLATES.

[gummicorn]

fictional or not, this is an extremely tonedeaf decision on the devs part given the context of the expansion. i know its near impossible for a dev team to do a complete 180 turn and redesign things weeks before a scheduled release of a new patch, but i can only hope that they take the criticism to heart for later releases.