Very Upset at Obsolete Android's Aiming/Scouting

[Iscah]

Men and women in real life have different aesthetics and that carries over into the game. Some things that look good on one, don't look good on the other. Having everyone wear the same exact gender neutral clothing would be very boring.

Not necessarily, and particularly by this game's take on gear difference where the male versions can sometimes still involve skirts - but they get pants underneath.

Quite often when gear splits by gender, I'd rather have access to the male version for my female character. Things like the level 50 summoner skirt and the level 70 bard pants are designs that I like but can't access. I'd also prefer full-shirted versions of things like the Star Velvet Himation and the new Android mage tops.

Conversely, for the shirts at least, my Au Ra alt usually wears short tops so I'd switch to the female versions of those pieces for him if I could (but keep the pants).

And just because each piece can be equipped by both genders doesn't mean they need to have the same style from one piece to the next - but that's a separate issue.

People keep saying gender locked glam makes more unique pieces, but I seem to just keep wearing the same items (or the true neutral gear) since I have no desire for the high frill cutsey glam. I expect some people with male characters feel the same with the reverse. Better to just make a set of gear that's cute, sexy, or rugged and let people pick the glam right off the shelf for what they want.

I think at least part of the problem is that a lot of this frustrating form-shifting gear comes as functional battle gear, in which case everyone needs to be able to wear it and having two versions would be complicated. All the gear we have that does come in pairs of gender-locked outfits (or possibly pairs of unlocked outfits) is level 1 glamour gear.

People already complain about some of the sets being too feminine on male characters (and while I don't always agree, certainly some of them are) and I don't think it would go down well if, say, the only white mage artifact gear for this expansion was a really feminine design instead of at least being somewhat different by gender.

Plus there's the issue that by conventional takes on male and female clothing, women "can" wear both skirts and pants while men only wear pants, so making an even balance of gear with skirts and gear with pants actually makes it imbalanced. It's tricky.

Then the dev team would have to do twice the work to make four models instead of two, and then make sure the new ones are properly proportioned for each of the races.

Knowing Square, do you honestly believe that they’d be OK with adding more modeling work for this? If faced with “make male and female versions of the same item of clothing available to each gender” or “make every item of clothing gender neutral so that people don’t feel like they’re missing out” they’d pick the second option. Which would mean for future content, no more bikini tops, no more bare chests, and no more thigh-highs.

I think there's a middle ground for designs - maybe not one that they'd actually be willing to put in the double work for, or can easily manage with the current equipment system, but theoretically if they did...

The better way of defining it rather than "masculine" and "feminine" would be "revealing" and "non-revealing". Give everyone the choice of pants or shorts; full shirt or bare midriff; skirt with or without pants underneath. You'd still get bare-chested outfits for male characters, and those would get the bikini top for the female version, like the new Amalj'aa dungeon gear.

The Fireglass vest is an example that does exist in the game - both genders can equip the version that has a crop top and exposed stomach under the vest, or they can equip the version with a shirt underneath.

It would be great if they had been able to add something similar to the visor toggle on headgear that can be used to switch between different forms of body and leg gear.