Thread: The 7.3 Armour preview is offensive

Agree that this set is incredibly inappropriate; adding gear inspired by the colonizers of many of the cultures drawn from for Dawntrail is cruel and disrespectful. The gearsets really should be replaced with a palette-swap or dye-able version of existing gear.

It's extremely tone deaf and insulting to players.
The fact you can tell at a glance what the inspiration was really must mean that no sensitivity experts were consulted! I really hope they listen to us and redo that armor, theres nothing good to come from alienating and hurting your player base.

The gearset is offensive and the developers of FFXIV need to change the designs before release. They should absolutely know better and it is alarming to see them releasing a set based around conquistadors in a region based off of the indigenous peoples of South America. Just extremely disgusting behavior.

Bumping this the same way others are, and including my post from the General thread for proper visibility in the correct category.
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I'm frankly just letting my sub run out and not coming back at this point. I'm latino, many of my friends are either indigenous or latino (if not both!) and we were all cautiously hopeful for Dawntrail after promises from the development team to take cultural sensitivity further into account after past mistakes. We hardly get to see our cultures represented in any good faith without egregious stereotyping and fetishization, so we hoped this expac would be a chance to see what that could look like after proper research and due dilligence.

Everything after the first half of Dawntrail has been a letdown on that front, but the irresponsibility of the gear sets are the final nail in the coffin. Seeing conquistador uniforms side-by-side with indigenous patterning and fabrics as if somehow these are the same culture on the same side of history has been the last bit that finally sets in "wow, they bothered to /lie/ about caring."

I'm not new to video games or media. I wasn't born yesterday. I know no one cares to represent peoples whose cultures have been obliterated by imperialism and slavery, not when the ones putting us in their games are to this day directly benefitting from the result of those attrocities. If we don't make anything ourselves, no one is going to care to see our lives the way we do. Whatever. That's not good and I want change, but I can stomach what I have to for some entertainment after a long day of working a job where my life already doesn't matter.

What makes the difference is transparency and honesty. I don't want companies to feed me lies about caring just to not follow it up. I don't want the false hope that something will be different, I want /real/ hope. I want a backbone and commitment from a team that claims to care. If you don't, then don't say you do! But if CBU3 or anyone else is actually sincere about wanting to enrich the world of FFXIV with the cultural reality of the diverse players that have supported the game to become what it is today, I would like to see actual sensitivity going forward about what they're really putting in their game.

I don't know how realistic it is to get this newest armor set changed with the patch release in a few weeks and the limited resources and budget this game already gets. But the heart of the matter is, unless something changes for the attitude they take with development to match the attitude they tell us they have, I'm not coming back.

This is a very longwinded essay but this has happened so much more since DT release, /after/ they said they'd do better, that I felt it important to express here.

Bumping this as well! I'm not part of people affected by this, but the few sets that represent conquistadors made me recoil and feel extremely weirded out. Also, including Christian imagery on the one blue set has me feeling weird too. Please redesign, remove those parts, or replace the sets with dyeable gear from Yuweyawata Field Station until you fix these gear sets.

Hi. Indigenous woman here. Echoing all sentiments here, everyone has already said anything I wish to say and with greater articulation. Do better Square Enix.

Bumping this to show my support.

Echoing others in this thread that this is extremely tone-deaf and racist. Please exclude this or redesign this gear.

Bumping this because this is important and needs to be addressed! SE can't promise to do better and then release something like this, it's hurtful and discrespectful.