Lack of male/masculine glamours.

[Pomelo]

^ What server was the last pic on...*transfers*

[karateorangutang]

snip for pics

I dunno, i would only consider one of these pics masculine in the midwestern US sense. Honestly, people are taking this the wrong way. It's not a hatred of what is in the game currently. The OP is asking for glamours that are masculine to the tastes of his area, which I would guess is probably midwestern north america or canada. Masculine fashion there is simple, less is more. Simple patterns, no frillies, not many designs. Earthy colors, collars without plunging necklines... there isnt really alot of this in the game. It's why I play a female character. It's because the fashion in the game is very feminine minded in my opinion. We can talk about the theoretical gender conformity til we are blue in the face, but there is almost no masculine midwestern style clothing in this game.

Thats all he's asking for.

[Meirii]

Not sure I mean a lot of the gathering gear is masculine and looks nice. Kinda has the indiana jones look could glamour that

[karateorangutang]

Not sure I mean a lot of the gathering gear is masculine and looks nice. Kinda has the indiana jones look could glamour that

Sure, theres a set of gear. When the obviously overstated gear makes up 99% of the current make up. He's just asking for some more pieces in addition to what we have. It's very skewed in favor of extremely embellished clothing at the moment. Thats the arguement. Not that nothing at all exists. Just that there is hardly any of it.

Tastes differ immensly. I'm a middle aged male that favors understated dark tones and lines that produce a masculine physique. Collars, tighter sleeves, and tapered waists. All of this stuff makes a very appealing classical midwestern presence that works very well in my area of the country for professional purposes. This game has an extremely small amount of this type of clothing. There is no argument onto what other people like. If you wanna wear whats in the game and it's masculine to you then great! I'm glad that SE catered to your tastes, but don't think that those tastes extend to all the game population.

It's a quantity issue, and one that is somewhat unfair. There are almost no male only glamours outside of RSE. Is that fair?

Answer is up to you, but the question has to be asked.

[Waeksyn]

I guess the problem is that the OP referred to the issue as a lack of "masculine" glamours. That brings out all those that think that leopard skin bikini briefs are masculine. While it's great to have gear available that would be right at home in a gay pride parade, I don't think that's what the OP was looking for.

The game does need more clothing without frills, capes, scarves, thigh high boots, plunging necklines, etc. And it's not only for male characters. I'd love to see more gear that, while still stylish, is more utilitarian and looks like it was designed for the purpose.

I think SE is trying too hard to make fashions, rather than providing gear that can be used to make an individual style. Fashion is what you see on the runway (which nobody wears). Style is an individual expression of character through clothing.

[Koroem]

I tried to make the original post then step back because I knew there would be a crapstorm of opinion on what is masculine and what isn't. Everyone is going to have a different opinion, but the general consensus is that female characters do tend to get a majority of the attention when it comes to design. A lot of items in the game are "unisex" and work well for both males and females. Crafting and gathering gear is a pretty good example of what works. A lot of the heavy armors work for both. Most of the robes don't and they are a nightmare for males trying to keep up a strong appearance. Hell some of the robes and other items were blatantly designed for females, then just had fabric or metal slapped over the spots where cleavage would be. Some of the pictures posted by others above are great examples of how unfair some items are to male characters. Those AST robes? Holy geeze....

I'm going to provide some examples of my concept of masculine as I intended when I posted this thread.

You can tear me apart all you want for not liking plunging necklines, massive amounts of bare skin, scarves, frills, hundreds of accessories dangling off every inch of robes. You can write essay's about how its societies fault I'm not tolerant enough to run around in a dress as a male and love every minute of it. It's going to fall on deaf ears here because past Final Fantasy games have done much more justice to their male characters.

I'm going to VERY BRIEFLY point out some past Final Fantasy male styles. I'm not going to go through all of them, just a couple that pop off the top of my head and are fairly more recent so most everyone around may have at least played these games in their lifetime.

Start by looking at Final Fantasy VIII.

Not even close to the being near the top of the great titles in the franchise as far as I am concerned but just look at the designs. Male characters have fashion suited to them. Coats, pants, fairly well covered with no frills. Even the SEED uniforms work well for both genders. Form fitting but not overtly flamboyant (someone is gonna jump on this I'm sure). You could argue these designs are somewhat basic but as it was said before sometimes less is more, and that doesn't always mean speedos. Raijin is bare chested, but the vest and pants complement the look without taking it to extremes. Which on that note brings me to point out Kiros here. I'm not at all impressed with his design here. This again is going to fall into that highly debatable category of personal opinion and society blah blah blah, but its far too showy and if you told me Kiros was female I wouldn't doubt it for a second.

Final Fantasy 7 is much the same way as 8 was.


The large overcoats styles for Sephiroth (not a EMERGERD SEPHIROTH ROX dullard) and Genesis from Crisis Core work well for male styles.

Below is the main cast for 7. Cid has a scarf but wears it well, goes with the aviation theme for him and pulls off the simple coat/pants combo. Barret, same deal as Raijin above. Vest, bare chest, plenty of skin, but done right.


While on the topic of coats. Why can't we have robes in the style of armored overcoats? Not sure how many of you played Tera, or saw anything from it, but they did a really great job of making robes look badass on males. Here are a few of the Amani styles to illustrate my point.




Here is a highelf who is more boyish looking, but still every bit masculine thanks to the style of the robes:


Anyways back to Final Fantasy 7,
The Turks are a great example of masculinity even with the females in suits.

Advent Children Cid is a another great example of less is more. Tshirt and some pants. Bam. That looks like dude and wouldn't be mistaken for raiding his sister's closet:


I love Final Fantasy XII. I'm probably one of the few, but I also find its styles somewhat closer to the overall feel of FFXIV currently.
Vaan is a polarizing character, you either hate him, or tolerate him. He shows a lot of skin, but still manages to come across as unquestionably male with this fashion choice:


His tactics A2 outfit was much better though in my opinion:


Balthier, a sky pirate, still comes off masculine in appearance even when most piratey stuff tend to conjure images of ruffles/frills.


Basch, just another example of looking unquestionably masculine.


I could go on and on and give more examples but I'm not sure it would do any good. Many of you would just counter point it with your own opinions of how I'm wrong and my opinion doesn't matter, or I'm just complaining. I just wanted to clarify my position some what more from the original post. Its not going to do any good unless it reaches the ears of those actually making the content, so I'm just hoping enough of you understand my point and support it enough to keep bringing up this topic until we finally get some more attention in game for male characters.



TLDR: Pretty pictures, Everyone will disagree because this is the internet and everyone needs to be special.

[Iagainsti]

I guess the problem is that the OP referred to the issue as a lack of "masculine" glamours. That brings out all those that think that leopard skin bikini briefs are masculine. While it's great to have gear available that would be right at home in a gay pride parade, I don't think that's what the OP was looking for.

Narrow minded Sexual orientation shaming. #smh I'd wear leopard skin bikini briefs to a straight pride parade. It's 2015 dude/dudette #getwithit

[Waeksyn]

Narrow minded Sexual orientation shaming. #smh I'd wear leopard skin bikini briefs to a straight pride parade. It's 2015 dude/dudette #getwithit

Not sure how this is sexual orientation shaming. Gay pride parades are terrific and a chance for LGBT to openly proclaim that they are not afraid to be proud of who they are, often underscored by how they dress for the event. I'm also not sure where these straight pride parades are happening - frankly, that would probably be proclaimed as confrontational and homophobic.

What's with all the hashtags? Is this what all the cool kids are doing now?

[WhiteArchmage]

Funny how all the guys from previous FF titles mentioned are are FF7 and above, while this game pays a lot of homages to the first 6 (7 with Nael and project Meteor) and FF1-6's characters were designed by Yoshitaka Amano, who's famous for putting scarves, beads and such on all his characters. Also, those games primarily feature a futuristic society, while Eorzea is around Rennaisance/Industrial Revolution (yes, that's a long period of time, but the fashions of Eorzea range from all across that timeline, and event outfits don't count). Besides the point, you can fudge around and make Vaan's first outfit with the Thavnarian vest, some pants and the Engineer's Thighboots.

Before this degenerates into a rant, while I do agree that there could be more options for glamours, there's not quite a "lack" of masculine glamours. Hell, with the new set coming from the Arboretum, those pieces would look perfect on a Victorian-era male; for some men (and women) having a big, beefy man in leopard print speedos or a subligar is very masculine, for some it's the Gambler's coat and a badass gun. I say just wait until there's more glamours (because there will be) and everyone decides what makes it masculine or not, for THEM.

[Azazua_azura]

so tarzan is gay??? (original leopord lion cloth warer) Fact is, I see all this call for more "male" "masculine" clothing and not too many people are actually showing what they want. Keep in mind, that this game does have some lore and clothing needs to fit that lore. What might not be maculine offline, might be masculine in game. Not hatoing on adding options nor saying we can't have more but describe what you want. Give SE some ideas post sketches and pics. just saying "add more male clothing" isn't enough.