Gender Equality in Costumes - A lack thereof

QR: Well, color me oppositional as usual. I LIKE the female Gunslinger pieces. I am especially in love with that little neckpiece, LOVELOVELOVE! More of these pieces, please! Love the Victorian ones, and these too!

I think the pieces are beautiful, and I can always - but always - use another corset. There will never be a time when I'm not delighted to see another corset.

I don't have all of them stacked onto one character, as is my habit I piece pack-parts out, mixing and matching.

I see men and women wearing the exact same thing enough in real life as it is. Try working in a hospital! Geez. Male and female, young and old everyone has on the same thing for their class of work, right on down to the shoes.

BORING, so I don't do it in the game. I have no problems with the developers releasing a Boring Everyday Clothes pack for those of you who want to look like people you'd see on the street; just don't take my corsets and other pretty things to do it please.

On a tangent, this discussion had me remembering Community's excellent "A Fistful of Paintballs" episode from last season, particularly this exchange:

Abed Nadir: Jeff wants to see you.
Annie Edison: Yeah? And I want pants. A lot of people want a lot of things.



(Annie's costume looks more like a female version of a gunslinger, and it's from a sitcom parody of westerns.)

Hey Zwillinger! Tell Cheryl that the Gunslinger set turned out pretty great and not to worry because haters gonna hate no matter what.

LOL LOL LOL on the new stuff. Wish I could provide more constructive feedback but everyone else seems to have summed it up better than I can.

Might buy a piece or two but whole set....nope.

No, wrong. Not everyone sees it like that; a "constant deluge of corsets" is delightful, after having waited for them literally years and years.

Corsets make the art team "look bad"?! I don't see it, sorry.

Starting to think there's some truth to the old saw that if the developers started passing out twenty-dollar bills, people would fuss because they were not in sequential order.

I agree with the spirit of the topic, everyone, but if we're not careful, the tone of the discussion is going to lead to this thread being locked. That would be a tragedy, since it is a valid and important topic.

Also, Blame Marketing.

I've been playing around with the new female pieces this morning, just to see what I could do with them that *didn't* look like a Hollywood wild west call-girl, and while I did come up with some interesting looks it was much harder to use some of the bits than it ought to have been.

Why?

In a few cases, the models simply don't fit my character properly. I ran into placement problems with the regular belt, the new top and the corset on the Unquiet Bride, who has a fairly slight build and relatively small breasts. While they were somewhat better on Li'nai, who's both more muscular and... err... "better endowed", lets say ... the fit was still oddly off. Someone really needs to give these pieces another look, to correct the placement and fit if nothing else.

I love the bustle. I'll just come right out and say that... I love it and I was looking forward to using it, the new hair, the lace neck-piece and the bow with veil on the Bride. It very much fits her general "look", after all... But I ended up completely unable to use it. I just flat-out could *NOT* get it to look good with anything I wanted to pair it with.

The pre-tinting and the stripes are beyond obnoxious when you try to color the piece white.

(This is what I ended up with for the Bride, by the way.



It did use the bow, top and neck piece even if the bustle didn't work out. She looks a little like loli-bait, I'm afraid... which is a whole different can of worms. People are going to start accusing Nemissary of being a perv at this rate. o_0)

The hyperbole regarding strippers and prostitutes has gotten out of hand. Are many of the new pieces sexy? Sure. But that doesn't necessarily equate to strippers or prostitutes. Strippers and prostitutes would be lucky to dress so well.

Do I wish there had been chaps and such for women? Most definitely. But that doesn't mean I dislike the parts they gave us. Well, okay, I do dislike the stripes on the bustle, which irk me quite a bit because I'd use it in a heartbeat on one character if it was a solid color. But I'm quite pleased that they've added so many new corsets/chest details lately, as well as a few new skirts, and those great bustles. The Bolero Jacket from the steampunk pack is wicked awesome. These pieces really given women more options, both sexy (if you wear the corsets by themselves) and not-so-sexy (when you combine them with less revealing chest patterns or jackets).

What would have helped this not feel so repetitive would be had they changed up the order of what packs we got, so that all the new corset pieces didn't come out one-after-another. But that doesn't mean I dislike them. I love them, and would never get rid of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville It shouldn't really be called a gunslinger pack because the female costume set can't really be genuinely called a gunslinger costume. That's as far as one should go. Going farther and calling the other costume "sex worker" is, whether you intend it or not, an insult to the people who saw that costume as anything other than that, and thought that while it was not a gunslinger costume, it was a nice non-prostitute costume option besides. Its an unnecessary slam, when its not relevant to whether the devs genuinely delivered on their gunslinger pack to both (character) genders.

I feel the same way. This is much more a marketing failure than an art failure. On the art front, the pieces are pretty good. But whoever decided on the name "Gunslinger" was just looking for a flashy heroic name, ignoring the fact that name misrepresents a good bit of what's in the pack.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari What's interesting to me is that all the people saying that this is a sexist pack designed by perverts didn't know until now that it was, mostly, designed by a woman. I'm split on "gender equality." I know how much work it takes to make costume parts. And the only actual options are: A) Everyone gets the same costume parts, which means no more skirts/frill/lace or girly stuff. B) Everyone gets the same costume parts, and then women get girly stuff, meaning men just get less costume parts period. C) Everyone gets the same costume parts including girly stuff, so men get corsets and high heels that are a huge waste of developer time for incredibly narrow appeal. D) Everyone gets close to the same stuff, but sometimes women just get girly stuff instead. Logically, none of those options will please people. Someone will always be displeased. Someone will always feel cheated. So I don't have a problem with this pack as-is. I like the girly stuff (and I'm a girl myself). Yes I'd like some chaps to go with them, but I'm not going to outright call this pack sexist. We've had some of both packs -- heck even the OP points it out. I can even see why they have a fascination with corsets as people pointed out. It's because up until now we didn't have any. So they're adding a bunch because it's an as of yet untapped area. It's possible you don't like corsets, but there are people out there who have been wanting corsets for years and finally get some options. I can't even suggest how the devs could do "better" in the future. There's nothing "better" to strive for. All they can do is shift their current goal and disappoint a different subset of people. Sure, they could start giving women pants all the time, but enough rounds of that and I'd personally make a "Where Are My Frikkin Skirts At" thread.

Well stated.

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Sorry for the double post, but something just occurred to me. If there is a feeling that women need more skirts, thigh-high high-heel boots and corsets... Well, that's just fine. Make a set that's a lot of that. Call it... I don't know. High fashion? Cosplay? Whatever you call it, just make a whole set that's mostly that and get it all out of the way in one big clump. Throw in a few jackets, pants and pairs of sensible shoes and you're pretty much golden.

This would also be the perfect opportunity to give men a few more regular articles of clothing. Maybe a few pairs of shoes, a few pairs of shorts, some more t-shirts, maybe a jacket or two that isn't uniform or suit, like a baseball jacket or a Elvis jacket or maybe an actual long coat. Maybe a non-veteran trenchcoat? Some blouses might be in order, too, and we have only a single cardigan that I'm aware of, if it's not actually a woven vest. Maybe a turtleneck or two.

My point is that if regular clothes for women are all people are getting out of these sets... Then why not get that in its own set? It would be more appropriate, I'd know what I'm getting into before I buy it and it would make sense. Then when we get that out of the way we won't have to go through this again with new cosplay sets.

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.

Tried messing with the pieces a bit last night, and the pretinted stripes on the female pieces just kinda killed any design I had going. I'd be happy if they just removed the stripes completely.

But, we're already at the 'this is what you get, we're too busy to change anything, get back to us in 6-8 months and maybe we'll take a look at it' point, complaining anymore hardly seems useful. 30 pages here, 27 pages in the feedback topic, and they're just gonna tell us to go take a hike.

REALLY great customer relations they have here lately. They've just got SO MUCH stuff they're working on, that they aren't allowed to stop for a few days to fix something that their customers are unhappy about. Great company policy there. Then in 6-8 months, you'll just say that you're too busy working on Issue 24 and 25 or whatever and STILL can't stop to fix the stuff we're unhappy about.

I don't envy you, Zwil. It seems to me they just tell you to placate the seething masses and tell them they'll fix it later when they have no intention to do so. If you can't change anything by the time we actually see it, maybe you guys should make the effort to give us a peek at what you're working on while it's still in a phase that things can be changed. That way you can avoid all this backlash and release stuff that people actually want to buy.

Lately, it seems like NCSoft/Marketing is in charge of everything lately and that their way of doing business is to just ignore us completely. Kind of a 'we'll release what we want and you'll like it or else!' way of thinking. But, I'm tired of complaining. It's obvious it's not getting us anywhere, you guys don't listen. You just feed us some lines and move on. *sigh*