Thread: The 7.3 Armour preview is offensive

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.

much has already been said about this so to avoid repetitiveness i will make this short. the insensitivity and lack of care is very evident in this gearset, and frankly it is disappointing to see. i hope with this thread and the other one in general discussions, a proper change will be implemented, perhaps a recolour of previous gearsets as others have mentioned. and it doesn't stop here, square enix needs to do better in the future as well, these mistakes cannot be repeated.

Bumping this up as well. I'm not from the cultures that SE is trying to depict, but having actual Conquistador "inspired" armor is very, very insensitive.

Like all the other people who have hopped on to co-sign this, there is nothing that I could say that has not been said better by others. So I am just throwing my agreement into the plethora of voices that say Do Better - Now.

I think a very big reason why conquistadores specifically are so unacceptable is because they existed SOLELY within the context of 'let's genocide natives'. The point of their existence was to kill and enslave populations so Spain could settle and use their land. There is no other associated history with them. It's virtually impossible to incorporate that into a fictional world without the political context they carry. Which in turn means: if you're not going to actually deal with colonial violence, maybe keep its greatest symbols out of the drawing board, hm?

as someone from latinoamerica i honestly had to laugh when i saw the 7.3 dungeon gear. i don't think there's anything wrong with throwing in more fantasy medieval armor, however the mixed aesthetics are throwing me off so badly it's almost hilarious how strange it is. like, why would you ever mix the aesthetics of mesoamerican indigenous cultures with 15th~19th century european/spanish/french armor and outfits????

it's no surprise many people are reasonably offended. it just doesn't make sense to make gear that looks like that, especially in an expansion that's supposed to be about celebrating poc cultures. i don't think the gear itself is offensive- it doesn't directly pull from actual historical conquistador armour/outfits- but it is still clearly mixing europian/colonizer aesthetics with mesoamerican/indigenous aesthetics, which is just, well. unsavory and distasteful to say the least. there are so many diverse cultures you could take inspiration from- you have an entire continent to peruse, ffs. yet you pick the colonizers...? not the time or place for that, i fear.

Like many others, I am upset by the new gearsets, but more than that, I am embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to have others know I play this game.

Alexandria's rapacious crossing of reflections to steal the life force of Turali people perfectly mimics the plunder and genocide of the Americas by the Spanish and French colonial empires. The Conquistador-inspired outfits were chosen as an aesthetic for this set specifically because this is a theme that devs wished to echo. They wanted the contexts to be the same. They did it without any consideration for how it might feel for someone to be "rewarded" with reminders of the crimes committed against their people. It's shameful.

To the devs, players talking about how much they enjoyed FFXIV was how the game got so big. The story and the characters inspired players to share the game with their friends. It is the bedrock that your company's bottom line is based on.

If you aspire to be a global company, you cannot afford to undermine that bedrock with these kinds of choices. Your company depends on it.

Also doing my part to co-sign this. Having "conquistador" gear is wildly inappropriate. Wasn't the whole thing with the Imperial Army that "colonization is bad"? Why are we making such sensitive history a clothing item?

Ba-da-bump! Here for support. I had to sign up for the forum to do this because this isn't ok!