Final Fantasy XIV: Reasonably Realistic Outfits

I made a passing comment on my tanking post about how surprising it was for my female character specializing in taking to damage to actually look like she was wearing armour designed to prevent damage. I played three tanks in World of Warcraft and that was not the case there. Ok, the first was a male gnome (with a WICKED moustache) who did wear real armour. The second was a female druid and tanked completely naked as a bear. Bears don't wear armour, see. Also there wasn't really anything erotic about a 'naked' bear. The last was a female death knight and her armour was really not well designed for being tough. Revealed midriffs and cleavage galore! I'm pretty sure there are some vital organs back there that could really use some protection.

On the weekend I decided to go farm some monsters on the same class, and switched my tanking gear out for some more damage focused gear made of aldgoat leather. Other than the hat being an eye-patch (AWESOME!) instead of something protective this outfit also seems to make sense. The leather looks flexible to make it easier to do more damage (it has dex on it), but it's still completely covering and looks like it would be useful in a fight. Still very form fighting, mind, and I really don't know what sort of clothes you should actually wear to go kill wild goats, but this seems reasonable to me. I really like this outfit.

But wait, you may be saying... I want to see pretty clothes and animated cleavage! Well, it turns out Square has your back. The tank gear and the melee DPS gear may completely cover up, but there's some velveteen cloth crafting gear that does not. It's a nice outfit, clearly not of much protection against a wolf or an orc with a sword or something, but it's not used in those situations. This stuff is worn in town while making or selling stuff. In this case, food, as you can tell from the frying pan weapon. I really don't know what sort of clothes you should wear for making maple syrup, either, but this seems less inappropriate for crafting than it would be for fighting monsters.

Of course the thing that really matters is what the stats are on the gear. I will wear whatever crafting gear has the best crafting stats on it for my level!
I'd prefer if I liked the gear (those glasses are pretty sweet) but I'm not going to wear something worse just to look better. World of Warcraft eventually added in a feature so you could swap the look of your gear so you could have the best of both worlds which was nice. It's not in Final Fantasy XIV, so for now I just need to hope the best gear keeps making sense visually as well.