Guild Wars 2

For charr, when there is gender specific differences in armour, The Female charr ALWAYS get the MALE verion on the armour… How come it is like that?

For medium Carriers it means we have to deal with even more coats….

It’s simple…Charr see no need to protect females or show off their bodies. What works for the men armor wise works just as well for the ladies. They’re a military society, anything that keeps the troops up and running they’ll use, regardless of gender. Personally I wish more armors were like that for every race, including the scantily clad ones for the ladies also being that way for the men.

This is IRL military practice btw. All those armored bikinis are fictional.

Rednik.3809:

This is IRL military practice btw. All those armored bikinis are fictional.

First, the entire game is fictional. Second, you’re missing a key word from the OP. He said “always.” Charr are not always on duty, and this is especially true for the player characters. “This is a real world military practice” explains why the adamant guards, iron legion engineers and seraph guards all wear pretty much the same thing regardless of gender or any other factors. Most of the armor in the game isn’t even military issue though. If some charr in the black citadel or a lion’s guard quartermaster isn’t selling the armor, the decision on what to wear would be based on personal preference to a degree. Making literally all charr armor the same suggests that charr have no concept of the different genders having different styles. That’s clearly not true because males and females have different hair styles, and the similar ones are still different in some small way.

Armor is above all functional. No matter who is selling it. That may hold true for town cloths but as far as armor goes, there should really be no difference in style. The charr are the only ones doing it right.

Male and Female Charr have no physiological differences that would require different armor. I mean, obviously there ARE differences between the two the same way as there are with any animal, reproductive organs and the like, but female Charr don’t have breasts or anything that would require armor to be made radically differently for them.

With that and the fact that Charr place little emphasis on gender (except Flame Legion who believe females are inferior), there’s no reason for the race to produce 2 sets of armor when 1 will do just as well.

Besides that, the qualities that Charr find attractive are probably vastly different than humans. I would guess its probably related to horns, possibly tails, and on the less visual side of it combat ability. So IF a female Charr wanted to wear something “sexy” it would probably be something that would cater to those features and excentuate them, not just showing a whole lot of skin and such like the normal human female armor does. So it would have to be a completely different design style anyway. Just slapping the human female armor on them (even after adapting the chest) wouldn’t make any sense, they’d have to create a completely new armor just for female Charr.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/races/charr/A-net-dissapointed-in-lack-of-Charr/first < This thread wasn’t originally about the non differences in armor but that is what it quickly became and I feel like it is a good example and something you might want to read.

My response to this thread is the same as to that one. I strongly dislike being forced to wear “female armor” when the male version is 200 time more awesome and covers more.

Ashes.9586:

As a female player who plays a female Charr, I am quite happy with the fact that my character isn’t what I like to call “boobed out” with armor that is barely recognizable as the same set a male next to me is wearing. I don’t WANT people to instantly notice my character is female.
The Charr aren’t about gender they are about what you can do on the battle field, and the fact that my armor matches the males around me makes me feel like I am actually a part of the legions and a true companion of the Charr around me. I would HATE it if suddenly my character had some kinda frilly design on her armor and the males didn’t.

Now, I wouldn’t mind there being accessories of sorts like mane or horn decorations etc to say I was female, that would be something I could choose to display instead of automatic “YOU’RE A GIRL SO WEAR THIS CAUSE I SAID SO.” Now, if the previously stated frilly design was a CHOICE for an armor piece I wouldn’t mind it so much.

Basically to sum everything I said above is that it’s a matter of choice, I don’t want to be forced to state that I am a female through my armor, my face and horns are supposed to do that job.

tldr: I do not want the armor to be changed but I wouldn’t mind choices between two versions of armor.

Full plated, Half plated, Gladiator outfit and a Roman Gladiator Skirt. As long it has different designs from the default male versions. I’m cool with it.

Tei.1704:

Rednik.3809:

This is IRL military practice btw. All those armored bikinis are fictional.

First, the entire game is fictional. Second, you’re missing a key word from the OP. He said “always.” Charr are not always on duty, and this is especially true for the player characters.

Technically speaking, “always” is not true. It’s true for all the original armor in the game, and for what you see NPCs wearing (cultural casual clothes both available and unavailable to the player). However, the townclothes released over the past year do indeed switch to the female human version for female Charr in the cases of some shirts and the shorts.

So if you want to have that look in townclothes, the option is kind of there. I personally think the frilly low-cut shirts look ridiculous on Charr, but far be it for me to tell you what you like.

To Dustfinger… I don’t see how u can find a TENT around u’r legs functional… That’s what the coats are to us Charr.

Frostfang.5109:

To Dustfinger… I don’t see how u can find a TENT around u’r legs functional… That’s what the coats are to us Charr.

How does this relate to the differences between male armor and female armor? My post was directed at the post topic.

I wouldn’t mind a few girly options though.

For example, the Female Charr townclothes as a Light Armor.

I would be far more happy with less tail clipping, texture stretching and kitten y, neck exposing helms tbh.

id like to see more fur and less robe on the light armor to be honest. Even in the case of a Charr magic and shamanism is better done with lighter clothers. Feathered chestpiece works well in that direction altrought i guess a light armor the like of gladiator in light armor for male and female alike would also do great for those ’’shaman’’/’’wizard’’ like charr

To be honest, many female Charr might not want to be seen in “feminine” attire. Seeing as they relatively recently won back their place on the battlefield, appearing as equal to the males as possible might be appealing.

Khalic.3561:

To be honest, many female Charr might not want to be seen in “feminine” attire. Seeing as they relatively recently won back their place on the battlefield, appearing as equal to the males as possible might be appealing.

The female charr regained their rights over 200 years ago. By comparison, women in the united states gained the right to vote in 1920—just 93 years ago, and still had to fight for equality for decades afterward. (Which in some areas, they still don’t have)
So my guess would be that the charr are much much more advanced in terms of gender equality then anyplace in the real world. For them, there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing—just clothing. If the females were trying to avoid being feminine, that would suggest that charr society still sees “female” as “inferior”.
From the charr viewpoint, the females are not wearing “male armor”—the armor has no gender. From our viewpoint outside the game, female charr have the male model of armor—but that’s only to help portray the advanced gender equality in the charr society.

It’s not so much that female Charr are wearing male armour, it’s that the armour is unigender (I don’t think it will let me type the proper word…) because female Charr don’t have human chests… They just write “male armour” because otherwise people would somehow not understand…

Yeah, female Charr aren’t wearing “male” armor. They’re just wearing armor.

Weindrasi.3805:

For them, there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing—just clothing.

I really want to see someone defend this idea while taking into account the fact that charr clearly have a concept of masculine and feminine hairstyles.

I’ve wondered a little about that, Tei. It was said earlier that they have different town clothes. I’m a bit confused on why that is in the first place since their body styles aren’t very different. The males are bigger but that’s pretty much it, right?
Why DO they have different hairstyles?
It’s not even that the hairstyles are more feminine (except the newer ones). The females have those cool mohawks. Why can’t guys have them? And some of the braided male ones, I’d like to have on my female Charr.

The starter town clothes are exactly the same and as far as I have previewed so are all the gemstore town clothes.

As far as the different hairstyles etc are concerned I’m pretty sure that’s just due to needing to have some differences in character creation, not lore reasons. But from what I have observed the females have no problem with stating they are female through different horns and hair. It’s kinda like saying “yeah I’m a girl, I’ll still kick your tail.”

I’d like to point out that this thread starts with the assumption that it’s the MALE version of the armor. Why did you start with that assumption. I think there’s a bit of a “glasses effect” going on with the way you’re viewing the charr armor. As it’s been stated above, according to the GW2 lore, Charr do not consider the difference between genders important.

I believe I read from an interview somewhere that lore-wise, Charr casual-wear would be closer to the male’s loincloth, but they had to add something over the chest in the interest of keeping the T rating. (Take this with a grain of salt, I looked for a bit but couldn’t find my source. If someone else remembers this and knows where it was said, feel free to back it up for me.)

I think OP’s statement really comes down to a disconnect between out-of-game view of gender and clothing, and charr-culture view of gender and clothing.

Tei.1704:

Weindrasi.3805:

For them, there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing—just clothing.

I really want to see someone defend this idea while taking into account the fact that charr clearly have a concept of masculine and feminine hairstyles.

I said there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing, not that the charr have done away with feminine or masculine entirely.
Clothing is meant to fit the societal role and position a person holds. Male and female charr hold the same role—soldier. And all soldiers need to be protected just the same. In the real-life military, male and female uniforms are cut differently because male and female humans have different shapes—therefore, uniforms need to conform to those shapes to be the most useful. Charr, however, don’t have much variation in body shape. Charr uniforms are most useful conforming to just one shape—the universal charr shape of both sexes. Therefore, charr armor is unisex—neither male nor female, neither feminine nor masculine.
Charr are unisex in all the areas of life where it is more efficient to be unisex. Both genders fill all societal functions, and wear the armor they need for those functions. Hair, however, is different. It doesn’t matter how a charr expresses his or her hair—that doesn’t make a difference on the battlefield or in society, it’s just a personal preference. If having a certain hairstyle made you a better fighter, then I’m sure all the charr would have that hairstyle, and hair would be unisex too.

Rorc.4619:

I’d like to point out that this thread starts with the assumption that it’s the MALE version of the armor. Why did you start with that assumption. I think there’s a bit of a “glasses effect” going on with the way you’re viewing the charr armor. As it’s been stated above, according to the GW2 lore, Charr do not consider the difference between genders important.

I believe I read from an interview somewhere that lore-wise, Charr casual-wear would be closer to the male’s loincloth, but they had to add something over the chest in the interest of keeping the T rating. (Take this with a grain of salt, I looked for a bit but couldn’t find my source. If someone else remembers this and knows where it was said, feel free to back it up for me.)

I think OP’s statement really comes down to a disconnect between out-of-game view of gender and clothing, and charr-culture view of gender and clothing.

I remember them saying this as well. I think they could have gotten away with making the female charr topless though. There’s nothing there—no nipples, no pectoral definition, just some fluffy fur. It’s a cat. They stayed on the side of caution, which is fine, but I can’t see any logical person considering fur on a cat to be vulgar.

Weindrasi.3805:

I said there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing, not that the charr have done away with feminine or masculine entirely.
In the real-life military, male and female uniforms are cut differently because male and female humans have different shapes—therefore, uniforms need to conform to those shapes to be the most useful. Charr, however, don’t have much variation in body shape.
If having a certain hairstyle made you a better fighter, then I’m sure all the charr would have that hairstyle, and hair would be unisex too.

It’s not that you said they got rid of it. It simply makes no sense that a culture would decide that one controllable part of appearance is pretty much entirely gender dependent while another is completely unisex.

The military uniform argument works for the 9 cultural armor sets in the game. You can maybe argue that the order armor and lion guard armor count as well, but that still leaves the vast majority of armor in the game unaccounted for. Besides, “military” would mean something different when that is the entire basis of how the society works. Uniforms would become something everybody wears everyday. It’s going to be far more casual and based on preference than how we would think of it. Many of the charr you first find in the story aren’t wearing cultural armor or standard gear combinations. Random npcs will have some armor pieces that don’t match and almost nobody else wears for no apparent reason. They personalize what they wear even when on duty. Yet I’m expected to buy that this personalization would never be gender specific. Different dress styles for men and women would never develop the way that it happened for hair.

Can we stop with this “male and female charr have the same body” nonsense? They basically do, but that does not prevent the armor/clothing from being different. Every difference between male and female clothing in the real world is not just because of breasts and hips. Those things would influence shape, but I’m talking about style here. If you took the most generic of white t-shirts and sprinkled some glitter on it, it would suddenly be a feminine shirt. Anet could have just changed the textures on some armor and said “These are styles and patterns females like but males don’t and vice versa.” So, can we stop making it sound like any differences in female armor would negatively impact its perceived functionality?

Hair would effect how well they fight. One female do has rings; those would make noise to alert enemies and get caught on things. The dreadlocks have bones or something that would do the same thing. There’s hair that dangles in front of the face to needlessly hinder vision. All the long hairdos give enemies one more thing they can pull on. The most efficient hairdos would be very short or no hair at all. These types of issues just don’t come into play for obvious reasons. It’s the same reason people can say the armor is meant to be functional and efficient with a straight face despite some of it being made of silk or leaving the entire chest area exposed.

Rorc.4619:

I believe I read from an interview somewhere that lore-wise, Charr casual-wear would be closer to the male’s loincloth, but they had to add something over the chest in the interest of keeping the T rating.

Oddly enough, all the armor that has almost no chest coverage for males is completely unaltered on female charr. Censor & rating logic……./shrug

Ashes.9586:

As far as the different hairstyles etc are concerned I’m pretty sure that’s just due to needing to have some differences in character creation, not lore reasons.

The armor being identical is likely not for lore reasons either. The real explanation would probably go more like “It saved time and effort Anet clearly didn’t want to devote to charr armor in the first place, and it would be an extremely easy decision to justify.”

What type of things should be different? lace and frills on female charr armor? In RL that is an echo of western aristocrity who didn’t do amual labor. Those types of things wouldn’t make sense to seperate into gender roles in charr society. If not lace and frills then what?

And male charr do have longer hair options.

edit: Just realized, different decoration on armor is a different armor set. What you’re really asking for is different armor sets for male and female charr. What would tie those armor sets together to being the same set since they would have different decorations? And what would the other races get while charr are getting double armor sets?

Well if you guys buy the Xmas clothes for F charrs. They do wear the dress.
Had these outfits since last year and I think they’ll be recurring soon.
So buy them up and feel purrty. Roar.

The female Charr wear different versions of several of the town clothes really. Those cargo shorts turn into ridiculous daisy dukes, and the frilly shirts are the low cut versions.

If female Charr armor should be different, how would a female Charr’s armor be different to show that she’s female?
Or if you think this way, how would you make the male version different if everyone’s wearing the female one now?
What is the Charr idea of feminine/masculine armor/clothing? I don’t know that I’ve seen NPCs differentiating.

One thing that would be different if charr armour would be the female sort sometimes is that we would get rid of a bunch of coats (and by thet the tailclipping as well). It doesn’t ave to be the girly-girly kind or armour… juet less “tents” hanging over our legs. As most of male medium and light armour do….

Frostfang.5109:

One thing that would be different if charr armour would be the female sort sometimes is that we would get rid of a bunch of coats (and by thet the tailclipping as well). It doesn’t ave to be the girly-girly kind or armour… juet less “tents” hanging over our legs. As most of male medium and light armour do….

Considering the female versions of medium armor are pretty much exactly the same as the male versions on the other races I don’t quite see why they would bother making completely new versions for charr.
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/human-medium.htm
The same applies to light armor in that if the males have a skirt the females at least have a different version of the skirt.
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/human-light.htm

Some of the female armours shows more legs (are sort of pants/short skirts) or are shorter than the male version (and, yes there are long versions of female atrmour too). When it comes to charr lots of the armours are covering the legs almost to the toes hiding half of our bodies….. (and usually cause tailclipping – espacially in the sets bought by gems – even though they have been starting to look at it now).

Take a look at the same pages for charr….

Medium:
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/charr-medium.htm

Light:
http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/charr-light.htm

There could be good use of non-coaty Medium and light armour for all races…. as there are plenty of them for humanoid races as well…

Tei.1704:

If you took the most generic of white t-shirts and sprinkled some glitter on it, it would suddenly be a feminine shirt.

Nah, it’d just be a generic white t-shirt with some glitter sprinkled on it, that most people in my culture would perceive as feminine.

Who you are affects how you perceive things.

Female Charrs are not “fancy pretty” Humans. No perfume, no sweet fruity dresses.
They don’t wear gorgeous clothes, it’s more practical. Also, Charrs criteria aren’t Humans. A beautiful Charr is strong, a fierce warrior with tough muscles under skin for both gender.

Charr seduction ? You mean wrestling !

Kulvar… u dont get the Point (not only u)… What is moe practical. Running around with a tent around u’r legs or have something shorter or pants for u’r legs? THAT is the Point I ewant to get to…. And the male armour is in this case the ones that are the most “tent”-ish…

Its got nothing to do with whats more pretty. The discussion have never even been about that on this thread.

Well everyone in this game can do with a lot fewer “tents” around their legs. That has nothing to do with male and female characters.
Personally, I say down with trench coats, armor skirts, and dresses. Bring in the pants. This game needs more pants for everyone.

Panda Shepard.1248:

This game needs more pants for everyone.

Quote of the day right there.

Sorry, I misunderstood. ^^’ (french)

Electro.4173:

but female Charr don’t have breasts or anything that would require armor to be made radically differently for them.

Even with breasts, female HUMANS don’t require armour to be mde radically different for them. It is purely kittenwear, kitten costumes and sexual innuendo that is responsible for most armour differences in this game, and basically any other fantasy game.

I found it amusing that when a female charr is ‘naked’, they still have a cloth wrapped around their chest, even if they don’t have breasts. Don’t know if this is because the Charr still have some amount of modesty about that, or if because the devs didn’t want to have ‘barechested females’.
Yet because of the male-unisex armor, certain heavy armor sets do bare their chest (Level 80 named exotic, level 80 crafted rare, Brahm’s armor, et cetera), leaving them more exposed in the chest wearing armor than they are naked.
For what it’s worth, same thing with female Asura and many (if not all) armor sets.