tiny female armors!

[Iscah]

Ok, so should there be two version equip-able by both? Should There be a way to choose which version appears?

Absolutely - that would be the ideal solution for me. Either two separate items* or some way to toggle between the "well-covered" and "minimal" version (and make it available for both genders!).

* Like they do with some glamour items, eg. Explorer's Tabard/Coat and the High House Bustle/Justaucorps, except not gender-locked. And unlock those too.

We've been around this in other discussions before, I know - other people have said they want more-revealing male costumes, I want less-revealing female costumes, it just makes sense to give people a choice.

[RiyahArp]

Shisui is based on samurai undergarments. The male version is exactly it, except instead of a fundoshi (thong) they gave them briefs. If you watch Akira Kurosawa's seven samurai, you can see it worn often, mostly by the hecklers in the inn who berate the farmers as they look for mercenaries. The female version is glammed up a bit, since there was no equivalent at the time for women. It makes sense also since at level cap we get full samurai plate armor for any jobs.

Never underestimate a woman's uterine powers!

(To FFXIV's credit, there's no real shortage of skimpy male outfits as well).

Please don't tell me that was from a legitimate Red Sonja comic >.< Sonja is as skimpily dressed as any male barbarian in a sword and sorcery comic or movie; check out Dar from Beastmaster for example. I really dislike artists like that who write without any historical knowledge of the genre; sword and sorcery's issues have little to do with dress and more whether or not you agree with the very rough barbarian chivalry/ethos people like Conan had.

[MaloraYuki]

In a game with a glamour system it’s everyones choice what they want to wear. If you don’t like the skimpy armor don’t glam it. If you want big tank like armor glam it. It’s not that hard. I don’t understand the issue here let people have fun, it’s not like the glamour reflects the play style.

[ko_]

CONAN!!!! The ADVENTURER!!! CONAN!!! Warrior without fear! CONAN! THE MIGHTEST WARRIOR EVER! HIS QUEST. to undo the spell of living stone cast upon his family by driving the evil serpent men back into another dimension and vanquishing their leader, the cruel wizard Wrath-A-Mon.

[Lilseph]

Yeah, but Conan wasn't a tank. He was a barbarian. If you ever played games like D&D, you will know that barbarians are a bag of HP and attack power. They have high endurance because of their self-induced rage, but they are also a piñata. They eat a lot of damage in combat. In terms of FFXIV, Conan was a DPS. In opposition to actual heavy armored fighters that have proficiency with a huge variety of armor sets. They are hard to hit. I think that's a very nice representation of the difference between them.

In a game with a glamour system it’s everyones choice what they want to wear. If you don’t like the skimpy armor don’t glam it. If you want big tank like armor glam it. It’s not that hard. I don’t understand the issue here let people have fun, it’s not like the glamour reflects the play style.

Yeah, but everyone here is acknowledging the existence of glamour as a valid option, though. We understand it's magic that covers the actual set. You can wear a full set of armor and glamour it to make it look like a bikini, but it's not a bikini! It only looks like it (I really don't know why this is so hard to understand for some people). Is it silly? Well, in my opinion yes, but it's also the player's choice. Now try to wear the bikini alone, no glamour, the actual set. You'd get wrecked. That's the point, the game barely offers an actual bikini set and I'm fine with that.

Also, Jesus, god forbid people having a discussion in a discussion forum. It's not an issue per se, just a subject where people are sharing their point of view. Easy.

[MaloraYuki]

Also, Jesus, god forbid people having a discussion in a discussion forum. It's not an issue per se, just a subject where people are sharing their point of view. Easy.

I wasn’t trying to say anything bad about the discussion but that’s my view on the discussion is just have fun and do you. If you want to say it’s magic then call it magic. If you want to come up with another theory then come up with another. If you don’t care then don’t care. Just my view on it.

[Lilseph]

I wasn’t trying to say anything bad about the discussion but that’s my view on the discussion is just have fun and do you. If you want to say it’s magic then call it magic. If you want to come up with another theory then come up with another. If you don’t care then don’t care. Just my view on it.

I was speaking in general.

[Makeda]

Yeah, but Conan wasn't a tank. He was a barbarian. If you ever played games like D&D, you will know that

I did not realize that Robert Howard, who passed away in the 1930s, played Dungeons and Dragon, a game written in 1974.

But if we're going to go there... it is worth noting that D&D has never been a good representation of fantasy fiction save for that which was written based on it - and it often even fails there (things like Spellfire had to be patched into D&D because D&D magic just didn't work that way but Greenwood needed 'cooler magic' for a novel)...

D&D never even had tanks. It's 4e tried to add them... but it was a limited concept. Tanking itself doesn't work in any setup where you allow NPCs to ignore the little kid telling "yo momma" jokes and instead focus on his 4 teenage buddies behind him with guns and knives...

Tanking is an artificial construct made to enable gaming in a platform with a 'limited AI' that would have more complex logic based strategies easily outguessed by the player base (see Guild Wars 2 and it's resultant failure to have a dynamic combat system after the second month of the game's life when player figured out all the AI's tricks) who could then just 'take a step to the left' and ignore all fight mechanics...

We really should be trying to map 'tank' to anything in literature because when you do... all you can really find is the little kid on the playground yelling out 'yo momma so big, she got her own zip code'... and that stopped working past maybe the age of 5 or 6... After that we just sat around making those jokes back and forth for the lols...

[Lilseph]

Snip

He clearly didn't and I never stated such thing. Though Conan was a fighter, and I was using D&D as an example how they differenciate both types of fighter (the heavy armored one vs the one that wears none at all). One was a bag of HP, a reckless fighter and the other one a impenetrable one. As a side note, you can create a tank in games like Pathfinder, they are just not played the same way you would play a tank in an MMO. There are limitations. Have you read the feat "Antagonize" or read the class "Luring Cavalier"? (I personally consider Pathfinder a far superior game than 3.0~4th edition). They pretty much aim to catch the most of the monsters' attention.

People are constantly swinging between opposite extremes: pure reality rules (involving physics and whatnot) and going full fantasy where everything is possible. A credible fantasy setting mixes both. Yeah, in XIV you have a dragon that, if we follow the rules of our world, they would crush you by stepping on you. True. Yes, in the real world an arrow can penetrate certain parts of your armor and kill you. Yes, in a pure 100% fantasy world, you could defeat the God of Darkness with a piece of stale bread because "it's magical". But there are rules that must be followed to make it consistent and not just a box of chaos.

Let's say we're playing in a high fantasy world, and you're wearing an armor. For all intended purposes it SHOULD protect you, because you're wearing actual protection. It looks credible, because you're fully covered. No matter how big the enemy is, no matter how powerful they are. But we're in a fantasy world, it means that the armor itself should grant a higher defensive rate, way higher than the real world's counterpart, that's why it works. I think XIV follows that rule, that's why almost 99% of the sets you'll see here, would cover your body. They look heavy, they look sturdy. Now when you see a bikini set (excluding glamouring, that already has been explained several times), it makes you raise your eyebrow. That's why there are several sites that mock these types of designs. It doesn't look credible, even if we're in a fantasy setting (otherwise debates like this wouldn't exist).

I have already stated what my feelings about that particular sets are.

[Makeda]

Let's say we're playing in a high fantasy world, and you're wearing an armor. For all intended purposes it SHOULD protect you, because you're wearing actual protection. It looks credible, because you're fully covered.

That's just it though... I'm not wearing actual protection. That's a suit designed for a cavalry charge and nothing more. Field armor was typically more compositions of mail, leather, and cloth. Maybe a plate or two somewhere meant to deflect slashing blows or later a fencing thrust.

D&D is basically a bad example of ANYTHING. It is nothing more than a simulation game extracted out of table top miniature wargamming that has fantasy elements patched onto it because the first round playtesters were reading Lord of the Rings at the time. But it had very little reliance upon or understanding of armor and weaponry. You're basically only lucky that I also know D&D - because it's not the universal point of reference you might think it is. At this point in time I'd wager more people know the rules of 'World of Warcraft' than have ever played D&D. That might even be true for FFXIV as well. Sure D&D inspired both games... but it's like you're bringing up the spoken language of the Phoenicians here to talk about Greek versus Finish grammar... Ya'll gotta be an expert to get why that's relevant or understand the analogies.

And just because something 'looks good' versus doesn't look good isn't a justification either for any argument because that's really subjective. We've actually seem some pretty horrible and massive injuries since the Iraq War due to a lack of using actual proper thinking about armoring against attacks as opposed to just using what looked like good armor... (and if I am to believe my trainers when I was in Basic Training, the SAME problem was a big issue in Vietnam - using tactics and equipment that 'sounded good' or 'looked good' vs. were actually tested cost the US a lot of causalities).

As you note... in fantasy you can defeat an epic monster with a piece of stale bread.

And... in actual physics... a suit of plate mail armor is just as useful against an archer as a bikini... As in: both are completely and utterly useless. There is a reason the English were such a force for centuries even BEFORE their sailors defeated the Spanish. They were not able to conquer anyone before their naval rise, but they amounted to a pretty solid defense after the reforms of the Normans, and the gesture of holding up 2 fingers is still an extremely rude insult in both England and France because of their archers ability to just go through anything. English friends of my generation tell me that at least into the 1980s, boys where they grew up still had mandatory Archery classes as a part of centuries of tradition that had once been the Island's military advantage.

So... as long as it is fantasy... we should just throw the pretense out the window and go with what seems most magical. We might as well all just put on sailor suits, be named after constellations, carry wants, and have to do cute dances as a part of our attack routines - given the proper inspiration for games like FFIV.

The moment any one of our characters faces off against anything other than a like sized humanoid figure with both parties using slashing or bludgeoning weapons... everything is utter magic.