I'm actually very pleased with how clothes and gender specifity have been dealt with. Yes, a man can technically wear women's clothing. It's not like most RPGs where you're outright banned from using them. Instead, you'll most likely choose NOT to wear the women's clothing BECAUSE it looks completely wrong on you. Or perhaps your character is a transvestite (for some reason). Or maybe you're a jokester planning on walking into a tavern wearing it to see what happens. I'm fine with this.
Cannot wait for the dresses to be implemented...
I was actually more pointing out that there don't seem to be any male-specific or even unisex leather vests. The one you can choose to wear at the start of an expert arena session says it's for girls, and so do those you can loot in the arena (which are all worn by girls). Further, AFAIK it's only the leather vest that has this, everything else being gender-neutral. This struck me as a bit odd. Why single out the leather vest for this treatment?
But as to your points, sure, I can see the role-playing aspects of cross-dressing, although for that to have any real significance in the game (instead of just in the player's own mind), the NPCs would all have to have their own personal views on the propriety of cross-dressing and also a chance to see through the disguise, over and above their normal workload related to their actual game function. If the NPCs don't have these features, then cross-dressing is, in actual game terms, an empty gesture. But OTOH, it's only worth the dev's time to implement such features if a significant portion of the player base intends to cross-dress fairly often (or is forced into it by an inexplicable absence of male-specific leather vests
).
Which brings us to other aspects of game design. I'm a big fan of unisex, "one size fits all" clothing in games. Everybody can wear anything without needing it tailored. This is not only convenient for the player but also realistic. After all, back in the day, most folks knew how to sew and carried little sewing kits on long trips for emergency repairs to their clothing, so were capable of making minor alterations themselves. And also back in the day, there wasn't anything like gender equality so the odds of finding female-specific armor was slim to none. Essentially all armor was made for men but could be worn by the relatively few historical women into such activities, so was "unisex" by default. This "unisex" system translates well into games made in today's more egalitarian society, where there are way more female warriors running around, without having to increase game development costs and runtime overhead by including 2 gender-specific versions of most items. And yes, having hard-coded gender-specific items has always irked me due to the loot RNGs always seeming to go against my character's gender, no matter which I was playing
.
However, the unisex system is based on the assumption that everybody out actively adventuring will be wearing trousers. Which seems logical enough, given that you don't see women these days wearing dresses in physically active work and sport, although that's a modern phenomenon, a product of the greater gender equality of today. Back in the days of strict gender roles and associated costume, women usually wore dresses/skirts even in such activities:
So I hope @
Faelivrin's dreams come true
. Although a sidesaddle might be needed if riding horses becomes a thing.
