There should be separate aesthetic capes.

[TeraRamis]

Really.

I love capes - I love wearing them (to, you know, cons and renaissance festivals and Halloween parties and such); I love characters who wear them. One of my great complaints about FFXIV is that there aren't more outfits that feature them. Yes, there are definitely a few notable exceptions, but the vast majority of 'flowing' garments in this game fall into one of three categories:

• Skirts (dresses and kilts etc.).
  
• Waist capes.
  
• Coats.

I know capes are perfectly possible because chest pieces like High Steel Scale Mail of Fending...



... have them, so it's not a technical hangup. Therefore, I'd like to see simple capes (not cloaks; not capes with huge neck wraps) become available to a wider array of glamours than the scant few chestpieces that feature them.

"But Tera, what about clipping? Building something like that in at this stage in the game would require them to re-edit every chest piece dating back to ARR to allow for it."

Actually, the answer to that is simple: prevent the display of capes for any chest that would suffer significant clipping issues. There are currently some pants/skirts that behave this way in the game right now - they simply will not display when paired with certain boots and/or tops. Capes could work the same way.

"But new stats will mess everything up!"

Make the cape slot statless and fully optional.

"Capes will ruin my immersion."

Prior to FFVII, nearly half of playable characters featured a cape. Capes are just a high fantasy staple. The fact that there aren't more of them in FFXIV jarring.

Honestly, I don't see an argument against this (other than "their time should be better spent elsewhere," which is nonsense. FFXIV is basically a glamour simulator). Oh, and before you beat me to death with this trope, congratulations - I've acknowledged it. Move on.

[Theodric]

I'd also like to see more capes!

[Iscah]

I remember at the fan fest interview with the costume designer, they were talking about how they first worked out integrating capes into an outfit. From memory the models only have a set number of "bones" for animating movement, and capes work by essentially pinning the bottom edge to what would be the skirt hem of a dress or robe. Prior to working out that trick, they didn't think capes could be implemented at all.

[Sove92]

Do you remember Thunderhead?

But seriously, capes are cool but there are many other things that could use a new equipment slot. Unfortunately retroactively adding a slot seems to suffer from samilar array curses as WoW has had with the default backpack. It would be easier to repurpose an already existing one, the best candidate being the job crystal slot whenever SE gets around to getting rid of classes and just turning everything into jobs.

[Enkidoh]

The problem is, as well as the animation problem Iscah mentioned, they have to also ensure capes would not clip through certain body gear (and with miqo'te and hrothgar tails, and long hair) which would require a great deal of time and resources to be dedicated to. Gear would have to be designed specifically to ensure they do not, which is actually a very limiting factor to gear design. This is why we lost a visible waist gear/belt appearence in the changeover from FFXIV 1.0 to ARR - visible belts were stated as actually restricting unique body gear design as body gear had to be designed with belts in mind, hence it was the price that had to be paid for our greatly unique and varied gear design. And by extension, it means seperate capes will also never be added sadly for the same reason.

Would I like seperate visible capes added? Of course I would. But sadly due to technical limitations that will never happen I'm afraid.

Basically, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

[PharisHanasaki]

This topic again.
It's been discussed a lot.
It's a limitation on how the character model is made.

[Rosenstrauch]

I remember at the fan fest interview with the costume designer, they were talking about how they first worked out integrating capes into an outfit. From memory the models only have a set number of "bones" for animating movement, and capes work by essentially pinning the bottom edge to what would be the skirt hem of a dress or robe. Prior to working out that trick, they didn't think capes could be implemented at all.

This trick is exactly why I'm not really a fan of capes in this game. Or in any game other than Dark Souls 2 and 3, for that matter. Without proper physics, they always look uncanny in the way they're animated. Either they go down this route and have the capes stick to certain body parts like glue (cape-like sleeves have this issue, too), or they tend to have fixed animations that look even sillier once you've noticed (World of Warcraft does this, with its capes wagging in sync with your character's movement). And that's when they bother to implement any sort of motion to them at all. The original Dark Souls was somewhat notorious for its cardboard capes.

But yeah, capes are seriously overrated all across the medium due to necessary limitations. I'd rather have a separate slot for facial accessories, like glasses.

[Esmoire]

Just want to once again bring up this awesome video of when Odin's armour had a cape.

Looks way better with it, too. The adapted Crystal Tools for FFXIV actually does support cloth physics, including not having it pass through your character, though they took it out of the build for FFXIV.

[Recon1o6]

We should really have more capes, along the lines of the Shire fending one (which doesn't clip the tail) or the ones that are split midway down to avoid clipping
In addition, the makai tank cape/cloak has something in it as its double layered
Bone limitations seems a bit of a strange limitation to me, since we have an excess of billowing long skirts and robes yet stiffer armour that barely moves bone wise can't have the attached capes work?

Clipping being a barrier isn't really an excuse given the sheer volume of it in this game

What's wrong with using a toned down version of the physics from thordan on movement? Probably a fair bit engine wise


tldr: Lets have more capes preferably ones that don't cut tailed races. Supposed limitations aren't as clear cut as they are made out to be given other billowing items already in the game.

[Iscah]

Bone limitations seems a bit of a strange limitation to me, since we have an excess of billowing long skirts and robes yet stiffer armour that barely moves bone wise can't have the attached capes work?

From memory (and without any familiarity beyond what they said), it sounded like there are set bones for gear, regardless of what that gear is. There are bones for a billowing skirt built into the armour even if it doesn't have one, so you can attach a cape to that pre-existing point, but you can't add a new and separate set of bones for a cape to move freely. That was my understanding anyway.