Seriously, If You're Only Going To Create Designs For Women, Just Genderlock

[Iscah]

Says a woman(?) playing a female character. And no, feminine clothing for males IS a bad thing in this game, especially when SE can't come up with any good masculine gear. Some things just work, some things really won't work. Have you not seen the sh*t SE has been giving us since HW? The morbidly ugly caster Stormblood sets should be enough to make people say "WTF?" alone. SE doesn't know how to make modern and masculine looking gear. Some guys may like the dresses, some may even play female characters just for THEIR glamour, but there are males who play male characters (like myself), that don't want to be thrown dresses with high heels for their BLMs.

She just gave you a list of things that are not dresses that you are entirely free to glamour over the gear you hate so much.

And did you read the post I wrote to you pointing out the Stormblood mage gear that is also not dresses?


This is the Lv66 healer gear. Casters get the same in black-and-purple. It is not a dress.


This is the Lv68 caster gear. It is also not a dress.


The black mage job gear is also not a dress, and has flat-soled boots. The red mage gear is historical male clothing. The summoner gear is... weird. (But you don't have to wear it.)

It is not "modern-looking gear" because it is not supposed to be. It doesn't resemble modern clothing for either gender. It is fantasy-themed clothing for a fantasy-themed setting, and you have other options. Whether there are enough options is a separate debate which the rest of us *are* having while you rage at an inaccurate description of what gear is currently available.

What clothing do you expect to be given to mages in a fantasy setting? Serious question.


And as chance would have it, just now I spotted someone wearing the bonewicca "high heels" (the ONLY recent footwear I'm aware of that isn't flat-soled boots or occasionally sandals) and had a good look at them. They are not women's shoes, they are armour specifically designed to resemble animal feet, and the heel is there to hold the foot off the ground in a digitigrade position. (Also it is from the user-submitted design competition - and people complained when SE gave it normal pants instead of the Shisui-style gaping-hole-over-inner-thighs design from the original entry.)



Personally I wouldn't equip it for either gender since they look terribly impractical to fight in. Which is, again, why the vast majority of leveling gear gives us flat-soled shoes.

[Iscah]

I'd rather have gender locked gear than another expansion filled with feminine looking dresses, high heel boots and bedsheet robes for my spellcasters and healers. Seriously, I think the gear designers at SE have no reason idea what stylish masculine gear looks like, since they are so obsessed with feminine gear and cutesy crap for the ladies all the time. If 5.0 ends up delievering the same sh*tty gear designs and reskins, then that will be the last expansion SE will be getting my money.

I said in my last post but you might have missed it - there are lots of practical boots for mages if you just look on the marketboard. Prettymuch everything, in fact. Working down the list, the Marid Leather boots have low heels but still practical, and the first (only?) set of "high heels" are the Lv60 repurposed-Evenstar set for casters. Then low-heeled Serpentskin boots and ARR dress shoes.

For other gear available from Stormblood specifically:

The Lv68 caster gear is a ragged "desert traveller" robe. The healer gear is a mid-length coat (a dress-like coat, but still not a dress) that was also given to tanks.

Lv66: serge gambison and pants for both mages. Really nice looking and not at all feminine. I particularly like the healer colour scheme.

Lv61: the Ghost Barque set for casters uses the Wind Silk Coatee model.

Also the Lv70 Farlander dungeon set gives us short actons that were previously Lv69 melee gear.


The game's 'standard style' for mages is long robes - that's clear by now and I doubt it will change - but they vary from it often enough. Are you seeing these things or are you too focused on the ones that you find offensive? Discuss the imbalance - I know there is one - but stop spitting the same exaggerated descriptions and anger into every topic. It doesn't get your point across better, it just makes my head hurt to read your posts. People will just stop listening to you.

Also these sets are not trying to be "stylish gear" for either gender. They aren't supposed to be judged by modern fashion standards. Historical/fantasy-setting styles have an inherently different range of what is considered to be men's clothing. (I don't want my male character in fashionable clothing, I want him in tunics and elaborate coats. Floor-length robes, not so much, but that's for practicality and we don't get much of that anyway.)

That said - yes they should have designed some of those costumes differently for men. I'm not so insistent on "wizard robes" being a problem for male characters, but the "Ruby Cotton Chasuble" is clearly a women's dress, and a redesign would look much better. (Compare the Lv69 Valerian priest's robes for a good male variation of what is a feminine dress on female characters.) Likewise the Sky Pirate coats, which should have been amazing and instead are identical to the women's version. They made the Plague Bringer coat around the same time, so I don't know what went wrong there.

[Theodric]

Men's fashion is actually a pretty huge industry. A growing one, at that. It's not as if there aren't specific stores devoted solely to men's clothing either. Yet putting all that aside, FFXIV isn't afraid to draw inspiration from various different real world cultures. There's ample pieces of cultural and historical attire to tap into when it comes to stuff that looks cool and masculine on a male model. A male counterpart to Edda's dress, for instance, could have easily have been some sort of pseudo Victorian/Gothic attire. Think the sort of outfits worn by characters in games such as Bloodborne.

Simply unlocking a lot of the outfits used exclusively by NPC's would be a good start. Especially since Yoshi-P has expressed a desire to appeal to role-players. I'm not talking about major NPC's, either - but rather the likes of the Ishgardian and Hingan civilians wearing fancy looking attire that is not currently available to players. People have actually been asking for this for years, though...so I won't hold my breath.

Then there's things like Hien's outfit to consider. Most people requesting it on this forum were specifically after the hairstyle as well. Though that wasn't added - even though it could have been a neat looking unisex hairstyle.

[RiyahArp]

There's ample pieces of cultural and historical attire to tap into when it comes to stuff that looks cool and masculine on a male model.

Mmm, the good fashion isn't really all that different, though. If you look at portrayals of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, he looks incredibly stylish and very modern almost, despite the time being the 1930s. Men's fashion is really restricted in terms of what it can do. Here's a fun little blog telling you what happens when you try for real experimentation and androgyny in the past, Plaid Stallions's Fashion Mockery section.

I think what you should ask for is more masculine male COSTUMES, instead. If anything some of the issue in this game, male and female, is how realistic and modern the glamour is for a fantasy game.

[Duskane]

happens too often hairstyles,event gear and glamor etc etc Generally one sided
and when males do get a nice exclusive always those people who ask for it to be gender neutral (prince,Butler set example)

considering they can make male and female sets look completely different without having a gender lock like WHM and AST af 3 sure they can do it for future gear instead of males waiting months for there equivalent of it or at least i wish they would, not much reason the autumn thavanarian tops are split up.
but i do like the coat they are adding though i didn't really see it as feminine.

[Fourbestintoner]

Females get all the level 1 flavour of the month/slutgear, but a lot of the actual gear look better on men, there aren't a lot fending sets that look decent on female chars and casting/healer is awful on either.