Male Spring Bottoms. What the hell?

[Hestzhyen]

Yes, there's always guys complaining that they don't like casters wearing dresses. And, I've seen a lot of topics about how the gear overall in FFXIV is too feminine, and they also go on about how SE hates men so much.

Life is rough if you want to be a manly caster/healer. I say this as a heal main who plays RDM and BLM most often when DPSing- you have to try really, really hard to avoid wearing dresses, robes, super long coats, etc. Some of the sets do look cool (can't wait to get a dyable version of the Bardam's stuff!), but a lot of the time I just want to see myself actually wearing pants or shorts, no frills or sweeping robes attached. SE is stuck in a rigid design mentality across the board and these sad excuse for seasonal "shorts" is just the latest in a long trend of not being in touch with what people want to have their characters wear.

I've been wearing the Garo set for ages as a caster since it's simply the most aesthetically pleasing "battle mage" gear in the game, and that was designed by someone outside the company. I want more stuff like that. And shorts. For the love of god can we get some real shorts so I can have something approaching variety PLEASE.

[Usho]

Yes, there's always guys complaining that they don't like casters wearing dresses. And, I've seen a lot of topics about how the gear overall in FFXIV is too feminine, and they also go on about how SE hates men so much.

Because it's true? Or rather, it's become very obvious. But you wouldn't know would you? Probably not. If you look at nearly all the gear (especially caster and healer gear) starting from HW to now, it's either a dress or some "coat" at that is cleverly disguised as a dress. Lot of them look overly feminine. Have you seen the caster SB leveling (62-68) gear? Especially the lvl 64 Caster gear. It's feminine looking and it's ugly at that.


Whoever designs gear at SE is very narrow minded and needs to be fired asap. Lot of the gear is reskinned from old ass gear from past expansions. Outside of "some" lvl 1 glamour pieces and some arr leveling gear (which a lot of them are gender neutral) lot of the gear onwards is very feminine and it's getting on my nerves.

If you wanna wear a dress then more power to ya, but I want some masculine looking gear or at least some gear that shows off a guy's features more. Most female players don't complain much cause a lot the gear designs panders a lot to female players and or males playing females.

But male characters, as far as SE is concerned, is put on the backburner as far as better gear is considered which leads me to believe that SE is very much double standardized.

To the Devs: My suggestion: Make gender related gear for both genders from lvl 50-onwards. For example, the lvl 50 caster body is the "Rainbow Robe of Casting". Make 2 sets, one for females and one for males. For a game like this that likes to pander, this shouldn't be a hard task to do. If this continues as is...5.0 onwards will have the same reskinned gear and feminine looking gear and that's not something I'm looking forward too. Fire your terribad designer and hire someone who actually cares about diversity.

If you think I'm complaining then i don't really care what you think, but you're welcome to argue your case. My complaint is a valid one and I think there are other people who agree that the gear design needs to change, at least as far as designing gear for males.

[Lauront]

Because it's true? Or rather, it's become very obvious. But you wouldn't know would you? Probably not. If you look at nearly all the gear (especially caster and healer gear) starting from HW to now, it's either a dress or some "coat" at that is cleverly disguised as a dress. Lot of them look overly feminine. Have you seen the caster SB leveling (62-68) gear? Especially the lvl 64 Caster gear. It's feminine looking and it's ugly at that.

Caster gear isn't even that bad in general, it's a mix of outfits. Healer outfits though are atrocious for males. It's not even the robes that are the issue. Most of the robes look pretty good on male characters and the BLM and RDM ones even have a masculine edge to them. It's outfits like the SMN AF1 set, or the Republican caster/healer sets, that just don't fit a male character very well. Not because they show off body, which IMO is fine, but because of the overall design of the fabrics. I agree with your suggestion to make a male/female variant of outfits that lack a unisex design. Maybe not gender-lock it for the minority who like putting girly outfits on guys and vice versa.

The problem is a lack of options that hurts everyone involved, if we had more options no one would've picked on any one set that goes heavily in either direction because there would've been something to offset it like there is for females most of the time. Some people want to run their male characters as wearing more femininie clothes - not necessarily the Generic Robes™ casters get (and what if I want that, but for my tank? I'm screwed), especially when you look at the variety of outfits female characters get. And then you have the people who want more masculine outfits, who either get screwed over because the set is unisex so they have to put in a boob-window a-la lore tank set (I personally like that on guys, but I get why people complain), or because their idea of what guys wear is what we got in this case, Generic Pants™ that don't even look that good. Pants can look good, I adore the AF3 BRD pants, but they're the extreme minority. Sometimes I have a hard time telling apart the Best Man's slacks from the Butler's slacks from the Slacks of Eternal Passion. Sure, I have 3 options for pants. But are they really options if I can't really tell them apart?
And yes, people can and will complain either way. But these pants in particular are just plain and uninspired, I can't imagine either side is overly happy with them.

Yeah, I think they could resolve this by making a variant of each set intended for each gender but not gender locking it. It'd be a bit more design effort but 1) they have a cash shop and 2) the sub isn't exactly cheap, so I am tired of cop outs and excuses for not spending money on the game.

[Lukha]

Yeah, I think they could resolve this by making a variant of each set intended for each gender but not gender locking it. It'd be a bit more design effort but 1) they have a cash shop and 2) the sub isn't exactly cheap, so I am tired of cop outs and excuses for not spending money on the game.

I feel like this would be the best potential solution to this problem. Everyone gets the same number of items, so there's no disparity there, and everyone gets more options to mix and match as they please. Though this is assuming the team can get over their apparently intense discomfort at modeling anything more complicated than a pair of ugly sweatpants on the male form...

[Tsumdere]

*raises hand slowly* Like me. I really hated that for the longest time I was stuck with one casting jacket because it was the only one that was cool and wasn't a straight up dress.

Thankfully now we have the Spring Shirt, unlocked suspenders from Eureka, and the Winter Sweater if I am feeling like looking like a dad, so I'm really happy that now I actually have some choices

[NovaLevossida]

Words of wisdom:

Play female in every game except Monster Hunter World. Fashion Souls thanks you.

[Lukha]

Words of wisdom:

Play female in every game except Monster Hunter World. Fashion Souls thanks you.

But I am a female and want to look at male booty in sexy clothing.

[Unscene]

WTB Kevin Smith huge jorts.

[Oakley]

I definitely agree that males and females should get the same attention to gear. I even imagine it would take less work to make the gear unisex... they actively created two different models for this piece and moulded it to each model rather than just copy/pasting the same short shorts for everyone. Why can't boys have cute clothes too??? I was so disappointed when I saw the girl shorts and knew instantly that the guy version would be worse...