STOP Genderlocking Cosmetics!!

[Theodric]

I think it's because people like us aren't loud enough, combined with the fact that there are far more players who play female characters in the game. Though something may change if we keep raising our voices and eventually become loud enough where the developers will hear us and they'll start making some changes that'll benefit male playing characters more.

Now that I think about it, I want the Dwarf head gear beards to be actual facial hair for male characters. Especially the Lalafell. :3

I think a lot of it can be attributed to the unfortunate fact that feedback just doesn't seem to be gathered from the official forum at all these days. Our community representatives are rarely seen and that may very well be due to having their hands tied. As it stands, it's far easier to get a voice heard over on Twitter by virtue of being able to respond directly to posts that are made by the official FFXIV account. I've been doing that lately to balance out the often one sided voices who are loud but arguably not representative of the community as a whole.

People have been asking for years for more tattoo options and facial hair for men. Yet in an interview, Yoshi-P expressed surprise which suggests that he wasn't told.

Which, in turn, begs the question - why was he told that people wanted a bunch of female outfits made available to use on male characters but not told that there's a pretty decent amount of demand for male characters to have more facial hair options?

As for the amount of people playing female characters compared to male characters, it's actually a roughly equal split on a global level when accounting for all major regions mashed together which is the figure that the development team should be looking at.

[Lauront]

I think a lot of it can be attributed to the unfortunate fact that feedback just doesn't seem to be gathered from the official forum at all these days. Our community representatives are rarely seen and that may very well be due to having their hands tied. As it stands, it's far easier to get a voice heard over on Twitter by virtue of being able to respond directly to posts that are made by the official FFXIV account. I've been doing that lately to balance out the often one sided voices who are loud but arguably not representative of the community as a whole.

People have been asking for years for more tattoo options and facial hair for men. Yet in an interview, Yoshi-P expressed surprise which suggests that he wasn't told.

Which, in turn, begs the question - why was he told that people wanted a bunch of female outfits made available to use on male characters but not told that there's a pretty decent amount of demand for male characters to have more facial hair options?

As for the amount of people playing female characters compared to male characters, it's actually a roughly equal split on a global level when accounting for all major regions mashed together which is the figure that the development team should be looking at.

Indeed. Basically, the split isn't great enough to warrant only catering to one gender and not the other - and besides if you as a developer do that it can end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of your own making.

[LisSquid]

Which, in turn, begs the question - why was he told that people wanted a bunch of female outfits made available to use on male characters but not told that there's a pretty decent amount of demand for male characters to have more facial hair options?

I'd assume that it's because the models are already made. It's easier to port a model in the gear system than it is to add a texture to the already limited character creation system. We had one facial tattoo option added to face paints in a Halloween event years ago, but I can't recall seeing another since. It makes me believe that the current code made it impractical to continue.

Pretty safe to assume that very few suggestions made on the forum (especially the English ones) make it to Yoshi P. The Male Viera/Female Hrothgar may have been the exception, but not the rule.

I'm just kind of stumped on gear design, because I am on board with more masculine gear, but I do not want it pushed into the same situation where it's locked.

All gear in this game skews heavily into the feminine with exceptions, sure, but it's a fact. I don't know if it's because they deem certain sets need to be unisex (so they end up with bulky cuts with bows and ribbons slapped onto them for some ungodly reason), but I'd rather they just made hard feminine and hard masculine appearances. Then let us choose which ones we wanted to use. Could free us from the unisex design if they slapped a swapper in the Calamity Salvager, or some such.

[Rokke]

Pretty safe to assume that very few suggestions made on the forum (especially the English ones) make it to Yoshi P. The Male Viera/Female Hrothgar may have been the exception, but not the rule.

the missing genders threads made it to yoshi's desk because the thread was massive with a ton of likes. a reoccurring issue with the EN forum is that we have 727392 little topics about the same thing and all of them get a handful of replies/likes before they slide off the front page instead of making one big thread showing off the interest.

[Soge01]

the missing genders threads made it to yoshi's desk because the thread was massive with a ton of likes. a reoccurring issue with the EN forum is that we have 727392 little topics about the same thing and all of them get a handful of replies/likes before they slide off the front page instead of making one big thread showing off the interest.

So we just gotta keep those two threads that are focused on male aesthetics up and going? I hope that will work because I'd rather avoid making a Twitter account just to help get Yoshi-P and his crew's attention over this. Twitter...doesn't seem like a safe place to be on at all.

[Amnmaat]

So we just gotta keep those two threads that are focused on male aesthetics up and going? I hope that will work because I'd rather avoid making a Twitter account just to help get Yoshi-P and his crew's attention over this. Twitter...doesn't seem like a safe place to be on at all.

It's a very predatory place. Any information you put up there is rife for the picking; even simple stuff like your FF character, etc
Hopefully it goes the way of the dodo soon.

Why have an official forum when all your energy is spent reading random twitter posts which might not even belong to real FF players. Much less FF players of said region.

[Theodric]

So we just gotta keep those two threads that are focused on male aesthetics up and going? I hope that will work because I'd rather avoid making a Twitter account just to help get Yoshi-P and his crew's attention over this. Twitter...doesn't seem like a safe place to be on at all.

Other alternatives are to get lucky with a question on the subject during an open Q&A session. I managed to get a couple in over the years, though it's not reliable.

I suppose trying to get a prominent streamer to speak up on the matter could work, though I don't stream myself as I could be easily identified if I did show my face and streamers don't seem to really bother interacting with people who do not stream themselves...

[Soge01]

Other alternatives are to get lucky with a question on the subject during an open Q&A session. I managed to get a couple in over the years, though it's not reliable.

I suppose trying to get a prominent streamer to speak up on the matter could work, though I don't stream myself as I could be easily identified if I did show my face and streamers don't seem to really bother interacting with people who do not stream themselves...

Work to Game with Brian and Chris might be a good way of seeing if they could ask the question whenever they get a chance to ask something like this to Yoshi-P. I'm not sure if they mainly do streaming, but I watch alot of their YouTube videos and they seem to have talked to Yoshi-P in the past when going to FF conventions. So, whenever they livrstream on their YouTube channel I'll try to get their attention and see if they can ask Yoshi-P and his group on this subject.

I don't think I could get a Q&A question snagged by the developers and I definitely don't want to start streaming just to get their attention. xD

[Rokke]

So we just gotta keep those two threads that are focused on male aesthetics up and going? I hope that will work because I'd rather avoid making a Twitter account just to help get Yoshi-P and his crew's attention over this. Twitter...doesn't seem like a safe place to be on at all.

I cannot remember if it was "most upvoted" or "most replies" per week but I half remember it being said that Yoshi/the team get a summary of the most active forum posts. So yeah. Keep those threads active. Post pictures of what you want in them. Make edits, artwork, keep it at the forefront so it can gain traction and keep appearing in those summaries that get passed along.

Twitter replies are honestly just as useless as most little threads here in that there can be 3000 replies to a SE post but most of them get a trivial amount of engagement, if any at all. Viral posts and people with larger followings get attention easier but that is true on any website/social app really these days.

[Soge01]

I cannot remember if it was "most upvoted" or "most replies" per week but I half remember it being said that Yoshi/the team get a summary of the most active forum posts. So yeah. Keep those threads active. Post pictures of what you want in them. Make edits, artwork, keep it at the forefront so it can gain traction and keep appearing in those summaries that get passed along.

Twitter replies are honestly just as useless as most little threads here in that there can be 3000 replies to a SE post but most of them get a trivial amount of engagement, if any at all. Viral posts and people with larger followings get attention easier but that is true on any website/social app really these days.

Will do! That's great to know and explains why we're getting Male Viera and Hrothgar, plus more hairstyles to both races sometime much later in down the line. Those threads regarding those two subjects are massive! xD