Gender Equality in Costumes - A lack thereof

The devs did state at the Pummit that if enough people mention/ask for/complain about a subject, they will take notice.

Sometimes naive hope is all we have.

That's the major problem - in real life, women wear anything, but men limit themselves to a much smaller choice of clothing types, which means that there aren't reall any clothes that are almost exclusively male, but there are plenty that are almost exclusively female, and that influences how people make their costumes in the game, and how the devs make the costume pieces.
For example, if there are some cool pants for the guys, then plenty of people will ask for them to be available for the girls too - but if there's a new skirt for females, hardly anyone will ask for it to be made available for males too - or if there's a shirt for guys, the girls will want it too, but if there's a corset, hardly any guys will want it - which means that costume part "equality" actually requires women to get twice as many parts as men, so something like the Gunslinger pack would need one male gunslinger outfit, one female gunslinger outfit, and the saloon girl outfit - or if there's a medieval pack, they'd need to make one knight outfit for men, one knight outfit for women, oplus a damsel/princess outfit for the women.
The lack of female versions of some of the male costume parts are probably a misguided attempt at being fair, and giving both genders an even amount of parts with each pack.

(sarcasm) Yes, because the MM will be sending their minions to dance on street corners and walk away with a john, while the others go with other johns.

The same could be said right now with the male pets. If it's a female commanding them, does that make her a Madam? The argument works both ways, yet we still have male pets instead of all gender neutral pets.

Which is why I've said, worry less about "Males get less pieces than Females" which I think the devs should do.

Yes, I realize there are some who want the dresses for males, but it's just not likely worth the dev's time and resources to do such pieces.

Agreed. Completely.

I was just pointing out that the problem isn't the 'look' per se.

It could find itself more prevalent with female MM pets. Something to consider, as it's what the devs have to consider.

Or they could just make the Knight and Gunslinger parts for girls and skip the Saloon Girl and Princess. And I get the feeling that the vast, vast majority of the players would be HAPPY with that. Heck, I'd love it. I can get far more mileage out of chaps or medieval armor than I can out of another set of underwear.

At best the idea that they are going to "avoid prostitution" by this decision is a convenient secondary Dev excuse. Trust me when I say the REAL excuse is that they just don't want to spend the time and effort on it. I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years so I can tell when a Dev is using something like "we don't want people to abuse female pets" as a smoke screen for -real- excuses.

Besides even if I'm wrong and we must take Positron at his word on this that the MAIN reason is the "avoiding prostitution" theory then I could only consider that to be absolutely hypocritical on his part in light of the player character costume items available to us.

So there are our choices: either Posi's being disingenuous or hypocritical - take your pick.

This is true

HOWEVER;

There was a lot of annoyance at the lack of a jacket option for females when the Magic pack came out, along with the only hat options being the witchy ones.

The options for females were;
-Witch hats
-Tights or revealing or uber-revealing tights
-Thigh highs with stupidly pointy heels
-Shoulder length gloves with an option for a daft add on

They did get the Bolero AND High collar cape, which was at least a good choice. But the over-all female magic parts were something more akin to what you'd find in a modern day Halloween costume. Sure we had robes written off at that point, but why pointy heels? Why tights? Why 'sexy' stuff, instead of more practical or arcane parts?
For ALL the options in the OP, bar the male Gunslinger where I removed a few parts, I simply picked the default from the drop down menu. That's the DEFAULT in the Devs eyes, not mine.

The trend continued with the likes of the Barbarian pack, with more fluffy edged corsets then actual 'barbarian' like pieces, for example armour made out of furs or hide, with scrappy metal bolt on options, no barbaric/celtic tattoos or the like. Heck, they even totally missed out the female gloves (or they've since vanished, I couldn't find any in the CC this morning) And yes, the Barbarian female I had to pick, because there was no drop down option. And that was being generous, without simply putting it in the bikini and thong options...


If that's true, then that will simply prove my point.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

But then they'd have to deal with the complaints of "Why doesn't my female have many skirt options?"

I'd be willing to accept the line of "It'd take a LOT of work to do and there's some troublesome UI issue's we'd have to work through" or whatever. It's an upfront, honest answer. Disappointing, sure, but at least it's an honest answer.

Agreed and agreed.

I have NO problem with Females getting more parts than Male/Hu-

Wait. TECHNICALLY, men already DO get twice as many parts as women.
Because Huge is male too. There are 2 male models for every female model.

So Females SHOULD get twice as many parts to make up that discrepancy! Ha.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Well duh, we already know you can't have full length dresses due to the engine.

But that would be ignoring traditional feminine clothing options, and limiting girls to refitted versions of male outfits, which would be totally sexist - that's why the devs are in a difficult position with these costume packs - whatever choice they make will still get them called out on a lack of equality, even though there's a lack of equality in clothing choices for women and men in the real world, and no one really complains about it.

View unacceptable behaviour, make forthright use of the Inform Authority of Issue Button

/Meme

The Report button is already in game. It's already working just fine. That issue is already covered on all bases.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Which goes back to the argument that 1) there is a way to report it, 2) most people have functioning brains who play this game and know better, and that 3) just because there is a possibility for it to happen, doesn't mean that the entire option should be removed.

Heck, they obviously didn't "err on the side of caution" with this set (or most of the female pieces), so why should they suddenly do it with other things? If the "potential" for the abuse of the emotes (the main ones being collapse, swoon, and pushups that were mentioned to me at the Pummit by other players) is so prevalent, then why not just remove the option instead of hiding behind excuses?

They also said people could be offended by the actions done to the pets, so that they were going to err on the side of caution and not do it. (Think of the children!) Yet they DIDN'T listen to the players when we brought up our grievences on this costume set, and brought it out anyway...which leads to a BIG double standard.

Women tend to dress more diversely in real life.

Ergo, they should get more diverse options in game. Men get the Huge model while Women don't, so that seems fair to me.


...
Also...you're making sense...this is scary. Who are you and what have you done with Golden Girl? >_>

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

They likely listened. In fact, I do believe they read the posts.

Now, really, let me ask, do you think they're going to let all that time and resources go to waste and not release it?

No, but they could release more options that covered the complaints.
How are more options a bad thing?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Whether or not it makes any sense, or whether or not you like the reasoning, does not change the fact that this was Positron's answer.
I'm staying out of it. Prostitution was the reason he gave, and I am staying out of people's opinions of his answer.

Exactly. I'd rather hear Posi say something straightforward and definitive like "we've decided to focus our time and attention on other features that will have a greater benefit to our playerbase" than to toss around this hypocritical BS that "we don't want people to be naughty but we'll give giving you as many potentially slutty female costume items as possible".

I'd rather be disappointed by a Dev decree than to be handed steaming piles of doom-esque hypocrisy.

And my argument is that if they have to make a choice between giving the girls a Knight or a Princess costume, or a Gunslinger or a Saloon Girl costume, go with the Knight and Gunslinger. It's also a gameplay issue: I can't make action-y superheroines with this kind of stuff. If given the choice, err on the side of Badass.

I have a way we can solve the unbalanced amount of clothes men get versus women. Make a huge version for females. I'd actually be interested in seeing a huge form for them, because no matter how big you try to make them on the current sliders, they still look either skinny/lithe, or no curves (just really really tall)