Gender Equality in Costumes - A lack thereof

I'm not hot under the collar about this at all, but I agree that this pack is a pretty extreme case of the topic in the thread - that both genders should be getting shared items where it makes sense. (I suspect people talking about corsets for men were being silly on purpose, but I'll go ahead and say I think that's silly and taking the concept needlessly far.)

@Zwillinger:

I'm also going to jump on the sidebar bandwagon about what I see as an outrageous conflict between production pipelines and player/customer feedback. If the scheduling is such that everything is too far down the line to change by the time feedback can be elicited, then feedback is pointless. You need to either solicit feedback far earlier in your pipeline (at a point where feedback can actually impact design), or you need to modify your schedules to account for possibility of feedback-inspired change.

All of my new concept alts with the exception of two, who are using non-revealing classic tights type costumes, or set pieces that can have tights used to cover all the bare skin, are male for just this reason.

I adore the male versions of the concept packs, but the female version... can't do it. I don't do the over-sexualized concepts. Not even just cleavage. I mean, c'mon, seriously. With all the jumping around and bounding superheroes do, there is nothing short of superglue and duct tape that's keeping the female bits and bobs inside some of what passes for costumes in this game and comics in general.

Common sense, there should be some. Many women love wearing the revealing stuff. I'm not one of 'em. (In another MMO, I'm the person that passes on a nice upgrade because I refuse to wear the plate bikini/garter style armor that it comes in for a female. Bah. I kid not. I'll roll all male alts before I ruin my idea of who my character is with stuff they wouldn't be caught dead in.)

If females are gonna get saddled with overtly sexualized versions, where are the corsets and hotpants for males versions? Eh?

Lisa peeks into thread again...sorry I vanished yesterday, I work overnights and it was bedtime.

I apologize about saying everyone wants man clothing for their toons...I guess what people want is the man and female costume sets to be not identical, but similar.

And that is great. I was looking through all my toons looking to see who had a LOTG recharge and noticed that the majority of them are wearing jeans and a couple would look wonderful in the Baron's Jacket.....I just felt that calling what we got for females a slutty outfit was wrong. But, I did use a green and black miniskirt for the bottoms on mine, and colored the outfit in shades of Christmas green and red so maybe I desluttified it a bit and forgot what it originally looked like in the costume creator...I don't know, that was yesterday

Again, I apologize.

Lisa.

I have a couple of things I want to say on this matter that keeps on happening.

First of all, stop giving your costume sets stupid names. It's not a Gunslinger set if I can't be a gunslinger after buying it. Call it an "Old West" set if you want to be "historically accurate." It's closer to that anyway.

Secondly, stop tailoring the female version of a costume set from whatever version of prostitution is applicable to the given historic period or fictional theme. It makes the art team look sexist even if that's not what they meant to do. It simply looks bad to a casual observer who isn't privy to inside information.

Additionally, try to shoot for including costume pieces of a kind that we don't already have many of. We have enough corsets and dresses for females for a while. What they need more is jackets and pants. Try to add something that's not a duplicate of something else which already exists. The Sailor Moon bow is an excellent example of something unique - a "hair detail" piece.

Finally, treat male, female and huge models all with respect. Don't pick the "cool" costumes to give to one model and the "sexy" costumes to another. If need be, violate historical accuracy and theme expectation. More often than not, your customers will appreciate quality over accuracy.

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And before I go, please stop misinterpreting costume sets or trying to shove in themes that don't belong in them. A Gunslinger set is not the right opportunity to put in saloon girl costumes and a Steampunk set is not the right opportunity to put in Victorian school teacher costumes. All this does is breed deep, sarcastic cynicism. It makes me wonder in what way women will be screwed over in the next costume.

Think about what this has become. You're just about channelling a jackass genie. It's like you're trying to invent new ways to surprise those of us who play women by getting something completely different from what we thought we were getting. If we ask for a knights set, women will get bordello girls. If we get for an astronaut set, women will get brige bunny sailor uniforms. If we ask for a soldier set, women will get field hospital nurse outfits. If we ask for a demon set, women will get succubus pieces.

You breed this kind of cynicism. It's like City of Duke Nukem - men get to be cool and kick *** while women get to be strippers and prostitutes for the men to leer at and give money. I've heard the explanations, I know the reasoning and I even gave the Steampunk set the benefit of a doubt at the time. But my patience for getting an actual decent costume piece for women is wearing really thin. Threads like these will not go away. They'll just get more and more angry the longer this goes on. Do something about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

More skirts would not be a problem with me either. More jacket options would be much appreciated. There is a lack of both options for females.

Took some time to play with the pieces in the CC to push it and see what I could come up with. Feedback after first batch of images:

Big Zoot, a cuddly Ben Grimm-like hero known for his tastes in fine menswear, gets a B-Boy street look.


Turbo Lass, a teen heroine with a range of patriotic and prismatic looks, gets a retro patriotic centennial outfit.


Midnight Gambler, an evil loner still living after having sold his soul to the devil over a century ago, gets new pistols and new sleeves. But the rest the male parts are just too corny for his bad ghostly self.


Malignant Avarice, a animist aspect of greed itself who has socialized amongst the elites of every age, gets a modest update to her Antoinette era outfit.

• Pretinting really gets in the way of mixing and matching these items. Almost nothing in the pack can go white (or very bright) other than parts of the pistols and the female shirt and puffy sleeves. The female collars, bodice and train are the most guilty offenders--especially since you'd think these parts SHOULD be able to go fully white.
• The bullet belt is broken. It does not track physique scaling at all. If you have a low physique setting, it hovers around your waistline. If you have a high setting it gets buried in your torso.
• The geometry on the huge version of the jacket is bugged. Look at the back of Big Zoot. The lowest strap floats above the rivets and the shadow in the texture. This is very clearly a bug.
• The corset/bodice from this pack is available in tight tops, tops with skin and shirts. The corsets from the prior packs, Steampunk and Barbarian, are not available at all in shirts. Why? Seems like the cupless corsets from those packs might work well with this shirt. Yet you didn't tag them for availability. Again, why?
• The mandatory striping on the belt & train bib as well as on this bodice with tintable back laces hinders the versatility of this piece greatly. If you go back to make another skin that is not pretinted and "dirty", also make one that is without striping.
• A solid version of the chiffon hair bow should be available, both with and without veil and with and without skull.
• No male boots with spurs without specific pants? Weak.
• No female boots with spurs with pants geometries? Weak.
• Not being able to tint the cuffs of one version of the male sleeves makes that part very limited in use. Requires a white shirt always.

• When revising a non-pretinted, non-"dirty" version of the bodice and belt/train, consider making one half the stripes accept costume color A and the other half accept costume color B
• Make a version of the bustle sans cape train. Make sure this piece is tagged properly to permit characters to use capes, veils or the magic pack bolero. Make sure this piece also includes all three textures: original pretinting, two color stripes, sans stripes. The bows on the back and side of this bustle alone, especially with a non striped bib would probably greatly increase both sales and usage of this pack.