IMPORTANT UPDATE! ZOS PLEASE reconsider your decision to no longer make FEMALE Light armor!

Ch4mpTW

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Thing of it is the crafting system is kinda a mess in eso I think.
What they need to do, is make armor just use one type of material, or Several, maybe bosmer armor requires Hides, bones, thread and make this the only crafting material, for all levels,
Daedric armor would require daedric hearts basically ebony ingots like it did in skyrim.
They just need to reduce a lot of the crafting stuff they don't need for the armors they have in game.
This might help with performance as well.
Also we want two gender versions of each outfit, I want female stuff for female charaters and male stuff for male charaters.
I can see sometimes a cross over between the two.

Kinda a mess...? Lol. I've been playing this game since beta days on Mac, and now play primarily on PS4. And: Divines, infused, nirnhoned, precise, and sharpened, are STILL the only useful traits for gear... But, in order to craft some of the best sets, you need to have all 9 traits learned... So what does that tell you?

Brightxdawn

Horrible seriously

LadyNalcarya

Abeille wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

EstelioVeleth wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

[Deleted for Inappropriate Content.]

Yes xDDDDDDDDDD I never understood truly why dont we have more feminine armors ;___; what is Zos afriad of? To not "objectify" women?
Zos you dont objectify us by giving us well... women clothes xD

Well, in my opinion, neglecting women is just as bad as objectifying, if not worse. Its the same good old sexism... You know, that women must be covered and ashamed of their bodies. I realize that the real reason behind these weird meshes is not sexism, just laziness, but still.

Its still sexism if they think they can treat women like 2nd class customers.

Well, a good point actually even though it might be not intentional.

It does kinda make me feel like they think I am not worth their time and resources, at least a little bit ;x

I am all for different styles and I've been defending the introduction of styles that look more loose, like the one used on the Vicious Death set. I defended these styles in the name of variety, since we have older sets that fit more closely to the body too. And, of course, because since my characters generally have small breasts, I didn't notice the deformation nearly as much.

But now that I learned that it is not for variety, that they are just cutting corners and deliberately made the decision to not make female meshes anymore, I'm unhappy.

Yes, it is disheartening.
I also didnt know that they decided to use male meshes before I read this thread, and even though I also used to defend Zos, I find it ridiculous.
Now I just keep bumping this thread, maybe when there's enough unhappy players, Zos might change their decision or at least consider not using male meshes for crown store costumes (a girl can dream, right? ). Also I guess they're planning to sell those motifs in crown store as well, and the images posted here wont make the motifs more appealing, because many players have female characters.

HoloYoitsu

ZOS......

IrishGirlGamer

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Looks like the feminazis got ahold of zenimax's development team. God forbid we have anything remotely attractive when it comes to female armor.

Please don't blame a design decision by Zenimax on feminists. This decision was all ZOS.

As to why they made this decision, you would have to ask them. They've said it's their new design for all future armors.

I believe they said they made the change for realism. Whatever their stated reason, it would seem very likely that it is now at least as half as much easier to make armors with only one model.

This really has nothing to do with feminism.

lordrichter wrote: »

svartorn wrote: »

No replies from ZOS yet..

They are not going to reply. They are doing what they said they are doing, and they are happy with what they are doing. If they change their mind, that will be the only time they will respond. Until then, silence means that they are not going to change anything and have no interest in discussing it.

This.

Although I would like to know, at least, if the new textures are WAI or a bug. If it's a bug, then perhaps it will be fixed.

ZOS_GregoryV

Greetings everyone,

We are glad to see everyone's thoughts about female light armor. While we can understand this can be a touchy subject, we would like to request that we all keep in mind, we would like to keep all threads respectful, civil, and constructive. We have recently taken a moment tp remove some rather Inappropriate Content and Language.

Inappropriate Content and Language: Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on the official ESO forums. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for an official game forum such as ours. Inappropriate content on the ESO forums includes, but is not limited to the following:
Extreme violence
Illegal substances and activities
Pirated copyright-protected material
Pornography and other sexually explicit topics
Real-world religion and politics
Tasteless, vulgar, or obscene material

One specific term we’d like to call out, as well, is the term “gay.” It is never appropriate to use “gay” as a derogatory term.

Please be aware that future violations of the Community Rules may result in this thread being closed and removed from the ESOTU forums. Thank you for your understanding.

MercyKilling

Samadhi wrote: »

In Skyrim and Fallout modding, we got the CBBE body mesh mod specifically in response to this kind of corner-cutting.

No mods in ESO. Hope that ZOS fixes this moving forward.

I've been pushing for cosmetic modding since closed beta testing weekends. Don't hold your breath.

helediron

MornaBaine wrote: »

These don't look bad as they are Heavy Metal armor. I would not expect plate mail to conform to the female figure. But I suspect they still distort badly when worn by females with lager busts than the ones shown here. My main objection is to the terrible distortion of the Light CLOTH armors.

Though why the hell is that Altmer in the second pic wearing a spandex body suit under her armor with ZERO midrift protection???

About these:


Please ignore these early pictures now. Those pictures were first i had, made before the thread, and was just to find out what kind of armors they are. They usually have medium or heavy chest. There are now more pictures behind the links, and with pure light sets. The full light Trinimac, AD and EP armors don't have full female mesh neither. I'll make soon DC sets to verify it too.

Sorry about possible confusion. All my pictures from now on will be about light armor. *I* am still confused with the new motfs. We just had so little of pictures of the new sets.

A sort of disclaimer: All pictures are here . It is my personal archive of ESO gear pictures, and is not really a public site. I have started to copy some of them to ESO fashion site, which IS THE site for ESO gear pictures.

The spandex picture IS wearing full light, including chest. Because there was one wrong picture originally, i threw in few of the newer pictures, and that one was new. That picture also proves OP is right. The mesh they have for AD light chest pretty much completely ignores character customization. This time the result was not "hyperinflated", but "deflated".

This:


turns to this:

"can't breathe!"

It might be that ZOS has some kind of "curvyness" scaling bug. My toons are not so curvy, and they look normal, while others look ballooned. This should be same armor as the ballooned ones:

It is at least close to right proportiens, or slightly inflated. My character is tall High Elf.

MornaBaine

ZOS_GregoryV wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We are glad to see everyone's thoughts about female light armor. While we can understand this can be a touchy subject, we would like to request that we all keep in mind, we would like to keep all threads respectful, civil, and constructive. We have recently taken a moment tp remove some rather Inappropriate Content and Language.

Inappropriate Content and Language: Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on the official ESO forums. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for an official game forum such as ours. Inappropriate content on the ESO forums includes, but is not limited to the following:
Extreme violence
Illegal substances and activities
Pirated copyright-protected material
Pornography and other sexually explicit topics
Real-world religion and politics
Tasteless, vulgar, or obscene material

One specific term we’d like to call out, as well, is the term “gay.” It is never appropriate to use “gay” as a derogatory term.

Please be aware that future violations of the Community Rules may result in this thread being closed and removed from the ESOTU forums. Thank you for your understanding.

Don't suppose we could get an actual "official" comment as to why this awful decision was made, could we?

IrishGirlGamer

nudel wrote: »

I don't have a problem with the removal of boobplate. The flattening of the chest is undesirable with cloth, but even that I could probably live with. What I cannot abide are the enormous pectorals and crazy inflated ribcages given by this "solution" of using the male torso model for female clothing.

Okay, I agree with most of what you say, so I gave you an agree.

Maybe I'm mincing hairs here, but this isn't really about the removal of boobplate for me. It's about using the male armor model for female bodies. Yes, get rid of the boobplate. But give women armor models that look like their made for women, sans the boobplate.

nudel wrote: »

If you want an example of how to properly adapt male clothing to female bodies, look no further than the Calyps and Nuska Heroic Form mod for Skyrim, which adapted the male versions of armor (sans boobplate) to female models, quite successfully. My personal favorite, their take on the Master Mage Robes pictured below:



This is what female cloth should look like, though of course with room for our more busty friends. That is a female torso unlike the abominations Koshka posted. Even if you decide to trim development time by not creating completely unique variations of motifs/costumes for each gender, you can at least trouble yourselves to fit them to a female body. I cannot believe that it saves that much time as you're already making several variations of helms to accommodate different races (Khajiit, Argonian, etc.).

Agreed.

Although ... and I hesitate to get this personal, but here goes. IRL, I will always be a B cup. Alas, I'll never get bigger than that. The only reason I mention it is, considering myself, my body, and the picture you posted, my chest hasn't been that small since I was, like, thirteen. That really looks like a child to me.

Some people have made some really good posts here, including @Eiagra. But the issue isn't that someone wants "boobplate". The issue is they are using the same model for both men and women. Let me try to explain why that won't work:

Any character you make has a body model. You can change the shape of that model in character creation screen. The model is just a blank shape and textures are placed upon that shape.

So a simple example: you make a model of a cube using a tool like Blender, 3d Studio Max, or some other modeling software. You then put a DDS texture of some wood boards on it, and bingo! You got a crate. Easy, right?

Well, bodies are a little more complicated. Early games, like Morrowind and Oblivion had static bodies for that reason. All bodies were the same. Texturing was easier (I won't say easy). You have a human body shape and you attached a Breton or an Imperial or Redguard texture. And now you have a character.

Armor and clothing works in one of two general ways. It can be a static item itself with it's own model: a pair boots, for example, that have unique shape independent of the body. In a dynamic environment, you would select the pair of boots, the boots are then centered to placement (on your feet). If your character has slender calves and feet, your in-game boots will be smaller.

The second way armor can work is to be a kind of over-texture. This gives the appearance that your character's skin is painted, or they're wearing a skin-tight onesie.

Okay, so here's the takeaway: In a dynamic environment, like ESO, your armor scales to the shape of your body. Some women's armor sets look pretty much like painted on metal - and I agree that is unrealistic. I've said this before on the forum. You should not be able to see every line and shape of all female anatomy if they are wearing heavy armor, chainmail, leather, or even heavy cloth. Right? Look around you!

But ... remember what we said about dynamic scaling? Say you have a model for a male body. A male's chest is muscular, defined, shoulders are broad. Even with thin hips and a slender shape, their body has a male shape. You make an armor model that fits male bodies. Even if it's dynamic, it's still shaped to that male body model. So the breastplate would be shaped to fit the torso of the male body.

Now, take male armor model and overlay it over a female body model. It will look stupid. Why? Because the model is taking the data from the body, and shaping the texture as it would for a man. That's why you're getting the "Alien-in-your-ribcage-look". It's taking the armor shaped to the male torso and trying to fit it around the female body.

And as was pointed out above: yes, if you make a character with large breasts, the model will be more misshapen. Clipping is more likely to occur. But mostly, it will look strange.

Is it a big deal? Do this. Go onto the character creation screen. Create a male character, whatever race. Then change their gender. Does the body shape change?

"Well, of course it does, Irish! We've changed the gender."

Exactly. That's my point.

Soresina

Well I suppose we could give them points for not being one of those games who are selling themselves using the sexuality of their female characters however I like my female characters to look like women. And I am not saying this because I am a guy, I am also a woman in real life. Hey but at least now I know not to buy anymore costumes from the crown store.

nudel

Obviously Zenimax should hire @IrishGirlGamer to create all the female meshes for their armor from now on.

LuminaLilly

MornaBaine wrote: »

Aimora wrote: »

It's a shame that in such a beautiful game things like this are overlooked

It wasn't just overlooked. It was a conscious design choice to no longer make female character model armor. @ZOS_GinaBruno actually mentioned it on an ESO Live. WHY they decided to cut corners here is a mystery to me. Is the game REALLY doing that poorly financially? Regardless of the reasons, it is a terrible decision and one that was made ON PURPOSE.

Sjw crew has infiltrated ZOS

Xerosus

I didn't even notice this. Wow, that looks horrible. No wonder the Daggerfall chestplate looks horrible on my fem Nord.

IrishGirlGamer

nudel wrote: »

Obviously Zenimax should hire @IrishGirlGamer to create all the female meshes for their armor from now on.

I'm not sure if you're being sincere or sarcastic. I'll assume you mean the former and thank you for the generous compliment. If not, that's okay, too.

I admit: I'm frustrated by this decision. It's wrong and wrongheaded. I'm by no means an expert on modding and there are people here on the forum who have contributed great mods to the Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim treasury. But if I, a pretty basic modder, can understand this basic principle, why can't the Zenimax understand it? It drives me crazy.

Of all the issues I've had with ESO, this will be the worst for me. I really enjoy this game. I'm willing to continue to support the game as long as it's enjoyable. This has made me so frustrated that I'm starting to rage and I don't want to rage, so I'm going to quit now.

If other players like this decision, and Zenimax chooses to stand by it, then I'll have to decide how important this issue is to me. Right now, it's pretty important.

NBrookus

I was kinda excited to see a ZOS reply. Oh well, it wasn't an answer.

I'm all for more realistic armor shapes. We've got sexy armor styles, let's add some functional ones. I loved the way Mercenary made my tank look fully armored AND stylish; it has texture and shape instead of looking painted on. She's a burly orc gal, but you can still tell she's female under the armor, whether she is wearing her heavy set or light set. More, please. (And anyone who wants to tell her orc ladies aren't strong enough for heavy armor is likely to get a reverberating bash upside the head.)

These examples are just sad. Only on very slender, small breasted characters are these close to acceptable. The character creator lets you create females from androgynous to very curvy; the clothing and armor needs to match that range.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that when these motifs hit the crown store, the artist renditions will not include the body deformities. My desire to collect any new motifs has plummeted.

Ackwalan

ZOS_GregoryV wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We are glad to see everyone's thoughts about female light armor. While we can understand this can be a touchy subject, we would like to request that we all keep in mind, we would like to keep all threads respectful, civil, and constructive. We have recently taken a moment tp remove some rather Inappropriate Content and Language.

Inappropriate Content and Language: Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on the official ESO forums. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for an official game forum such as ours. Inappropriate content on the ESO forums includes, but is not limited to the following:
Extreme violence
Illegal substances and activities
Pirated copyright-protected material
Pornography and other sexually explicit topics
Real-world religion and politics
Tasteless, vulgar, or obscene material

One specific term we’d like to call out, as well, is the term “gay.” It is never appropriate to use “gay” as a derogatory term.

Please be aware that future violations of the Community Rules may result in this thread being closed and removed from the ESOTU forums. Thank you for your understanding.

Nothing worse then seeing a ZOS response on a thread, only to see that it is a B S post about being polite.

Gidorick

MercyKilling wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

In Skyrim and Fallout modding, we got the CBBE body mesh mod specifically in response to this kind of corner-cutting.

No mods in ESO. Hope that ZOS fixes this moving forward.

I've been pushing for cosmetic modding since closed beta testing weekends. Don't hold your breath.

Do you think that would even be possible @MercyKilling ?

Gidorick

Ackwalan wrote: »

ZOS_GregoryV wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We are glad to see everyone's thoughts about female light armor. While we can understand this can be a touchy subject, we would like to request that we all keep in mind, we would like to keep all threads respectful, civil, and constructive. We have recently taken a moment tp remove some rather Inappropriate Content and Language.

Inappropriate Content and Language: Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on the official ESO forums. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for an official game forum such as ours. Inappropriate content on the ESO forums includes, but is not limited to the following:
Extreme violence
Illegal substances and activities
Pirated copyright-protected material
Pornography and other sexually explicit topics
Real-world religion and politics
Tasteless, vulgar, or obscene material

One specific term we’d like to call out, as well, is the term “gay.” It is never appropriate to use “gay” as a derogatory term.

Please be aware that future violations of the Community Rules may result in this thread being closed and removed from the ESOTU forums. Thank you for your understanding.

Nothing worse then seeing a ZOS response on a thread, only to see that it is a B S post about being polite.

yea @Ackwalan ... I can relate

LiquidSchwartz

MISOGYNIST PIGS!!!!!

Well i play male toons so im not heartbroken but im gonna miss seein all the tiddies poppin

Tarrin

Hey! I`m a man, and i`m playing a male character. I want to looking more manfully.

Where is my tool?

Leandor

All my 8 chars are female. They range from, let's say "voluptuous" to skinny. The newer styles (starting at mercenary for me) do suddenly look like *** on them, the personal worst offender being mercenary medium that makes a full bodied imperial look like a 10 year old boy.

Then we have costumes that add 30 kilos at the waist to those chars that once were skinny, converting them to barrel shape almost as bad as the new armor design.

Dear developers, I sat hours in front of the character creation screen to give my girls each the look I wanted them to have. Please realize that this step, intended or not, makes it almost literally painfull to play these chars.

Sure, I coud re-craft and upgrade all the offending stuff, but firstly I do not have the resources to do that for all of them and secondly does this affects all of those styles that have a bit more detail than "it's leather and it's red, good enough".

I have been playing since PC early access, subscribed all the way through. I have ranted and raved about many things on the forums, I have endured all the dubious gameplay decisions made and the exaggerated nerfs and buffs that were the result of them. I have endured lag in Cyrodiil that made my toons stutter and stop and usually die for hours on end.

I have never seriously considered quitting before. This change does exactly that. It makes me want to give up the chars that I have meticulously outfitted to match their figure (and playstyle) only to now look like crap piled up 5 foot high.

@ZOS_GinaBruno, please get the developer responsible for character modelling in here, together with corporate, and make them reconsider.

Conquistador

ZOS_GregoryV wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We are glad to see everyone's thoughts about female light armor. While we can understand this can be a touchy subject, we would like to request that we all keep in mind, we would like to keep all threads respectful, civil, and constructive. We have recently taken a moment tp remove some rather Inappropriate Content and Language.

Inappropriate Content and Language: Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on the official ESO forums. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for an official game forum such as ours. Inappropriate content on the ESO forums includes, but is not limited to the following:
Extreme violence
Illegal substances and activities
Pirated copyright-protected material
Pornography and other sexually explicit topics
Real-world religion and politics
Tasteless, vulgar, or obscene material

One specific term we’d like to call out, as well, is the term “gay.” It is never appropriate to use “gay” as a derogatory term.

Please be aware that future violations of the Community Rules may result in this thread being closed and removed from the ESOTU forums. Thank you for your understanding.

i lol'd.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Thing of it is the crafting system is kinda a mess in eso I think.
What they need to do, is make armor just use one type of material, or Several, maybe bosmer armor requires Hides, bones, thread and make this the only crafting material, for all levels,
Daedric armor would require daedric hearts basically ebony ingots like it did in skyrim.
They just need to reduce a lot of the crafting stuff they don't need for the armors they have in game.
This might help with performance as well.
Also we want two gender versions of each outfit, I want female stuff for female charaters and male stuff for male charaters.
I can see sometimes a cross over between the two.

But that would actually require Zenimax to not be lazy and put in a good amount of work instead of just putting in the bare minimum amount of work. Can't have that now, can we? xD

JadeNaria

Gidorick wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

ZOS_GregoryV wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We are glad to see everyone's thoughts about female light armor. While we can understand this can be a touchy subject, we would like to request that we all keep in mind, we would like to keep all threads respectful, civil, and constructive. We have recently taken a moment tp remove some rather Inappropriate Content and Language.

Inappropriate Content and Language: Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on the official ESO forums. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for an official game forum such as ours. Inappropriate content on the ESO forums includes, but is not limited to the following:
Extreme violence
Illegal substances and activities
Pirated copyright-protected material
Pornography and other sexually explicit topics
Real-world religion and politics
Tasteless, vulgar, or obscene material

One specific term we’d like to call out, as well, is the term “gay.” It is never appropriate to use “gay” as a derogatory term.

Please be aware that future violations of the Community Rules may result in this thread being closed and removed from the ESOTU forums. Thank you for your understanding.

Nothing worse then seeing a ZOS response on a thread, only to see that it is a B S post about being polite.

yea @Ackwalan ... I can relate

This is without a doubt my new favorite comic strip. I'm looking forward to the movie

DenniMyuu

Ever worn Medium Ebonheart chest piece? Been like this since IC DLC launched, looks just horrible but well.

khele23eb17_ESO

Perhaps ZOS is trying to appeal to the transgender community...

Why even have female characters in game if they'll end up being men with big butts and weirdly feminine faces.

Vangy

All this aside,

Can someone explain to my Breton Sorc why her boobs are 20% smaller then what they used to be pre-IC? Im not wearing a tin foil hat. Ive removed her armor and spent a good few mins inspecting her. I dont like this whole "boobs are offensive and must be destroyed at all costs" approach zenimax seems to be taking..... #Bringbackourboobs

TortUred_mAlice

It looks like characters have diaphragmatic hernia.

MornaBaine

IrishGirlGamer wrote: »

nudel wrote: »

I don't have a problem with the removal of boobplate. The flattening of the chest is undesirable with cloth, but even that I could probably live with. What I cannot abide are the enormous pectorals and crazy inflated ribcages given by this "solution" of using the male torso model for female clothing.

Okay, I agree with most of what you say, so I gave you an agree.

Maybe I'm mincing hairs here, but this isn't really about the removal of boobplate for me. It's about using the male armor model for female bodies. Yes, get rid of the boobplate. But give women armor models that look like their made for women, sans the boobplate.

nudel wrote: »

If you want an example of how to properly adapt male clothing to female bodies, look no further than the Calyps and Nuska Heroic Form mod for Skyrim, which adapted the male versions of armor (sans boobplate) to female models, quite successfully. My personal favorite, their take on the Master Mage Robes pictured below:



This is what female cloth should look like, though of course with room for our more busty friends. That is a female torso unlike the abominations Koshka posted. Even if you decide to trim development time by not creating completely unique variations of motifs/costumes for each gender, you can at least trouble yourselves to fit them to a female body. I cannot believe that it saves that much time as you're already making several variations of helms to accommodate different races (Khajiit, Argonian, etc.).

Agreed.

Although ... and I hesitate to get this personal, but here goes. IRL, I will always be a B cup. Alas, I'll never get bigger than that. The only reason I mention it is, considering myself, my body, and the picture you posted, my chest hasn't been that small since I was, like, thirteen. That really looks like a child to me.

Some people have made some really good posts here, including @Eiagra. But the issue isn't that someone wants "boobplate". The issue is they are using the same model for both men and women. Let me try to explain why that won't work:

Any character you make has a body model. You can change the shape of that model in character creation screen. The model is just a blank shape and textures are placed upon that shape.

So a simple example: you make a model of a cube using a tool like Blender, 3d Studio Max, or some other modeling software. You then put a DDS texture of some wood boards on it, and bingo! You got a crate. Easy, right?

Well, bodies are a little more complicated. Early games, like Morrowind and Oblivion had static bodies for that reason. All bodies were the same. Texturing was easier (I won't say easy). You have a human body shape and you attached a Breton or an Imperial or Redguard texture. And now you have a character.

Armor and clothing works in one of two general ways. It can be a static item itself with it's own model: a pair boots, for example, that have unique shape independent of the body. In a dynamic environment, you would select the pair of boots, the boots are then centered to placement (on your feet). If your character has slender calves and feet, your in-game boots will be smaller.

The second way armor can work is to be a kind of over-texture. This gives the appearance that your character's skin is painted, or they're wearing a skin-tight onesie.

Okay, so here's the takeaway: In a dynamic environment, like ESO, your armor scales to the shape of your body. Some women's armor sets look pretty much like painted on metal - and I agree that is unrealistic. I've said this before on the forum. You should not be able to see every line and shape of all female anatomy if they are wearing heavy armor, chainmail, leather, or even heavy cloth. Right? Look around you!

But ... remember what we said about dynamic scaling? Say you have a model for a male body. A male's chest is muscular, defined, shoulders are broad. Even with thin hips and a slender shape, their body has a male shape. You make an armor model that fits male bodies. Even if it's dynamic, it's still shaped to that male body model. So the breastplate would be shaped to fit the torso of the male body.

Now, take male armor model and overlay it over a female body model. It will look stupid. Why? Because the model is taking the data from the body, and shaping the texture as it would for a man. That's why you're getting the "Alien-in-your-ribcage-look". It's taking the armor shaped to the male torso and trying to fit it around the female body.

And as was pointed out above: yes, if you make a character with large breasts, the model will be more misshapen. Clipping is more likely to occur. But mostly, it will look strange.

Is it a big deal? Do this. Go onto the character creation screen. Create a male character, whatever race. Then change their gender. Does the body shape change?

"Well, of course it does, Irish! We've changed the gender."

Exactly. That's my point.

Thank you so much for this Irish. You've broken down the problem far better than I could have done. Here's hoping they listen. For a game that has been as socially progressive as this one, not to mention downright LGBT-friendly, to suddenly be told, "Female characters are not important enough to create armor for," is some pretty staggering sexism. And very unwelcome.