No more stats/level on gears?Follow

Play Guild Wars for a year and you'll see the whole aesthetic-gear design is really boring long term.

Gear is character progression when you can't level-up any more. It's been standard fair for RPGs for a long time now. Most of the Final Fantasy games that I can remember had rare, powerful weapons/spells/summons that you could spend hours and hours trying to acquire on top of getting enough exp to get to level 99/maxing out your grid.

My argument is to wear what I want, not because it's purple. We all look alike right now.

Ah, okay, I'm not going to bash you for your language if you're French. Not that I mind the French. Their cooking is fantastic, the wine just as good and they make some killer desserts (crème brûlée, mmmh).

NSFW (unless your work doesn't mind swearing and generalizations)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc78yPv_ztM

I wear blues all the time.

Not everyone is motivated by non-gear rewards, and for things like pets, mounts and titles you can only display one at a time and for mounts not all the time. Some people think the current gear looks cool and why is there more chance that removing stats from gear will make it look better? Okay you will have more choice in what to wear but that is still constrained by what the designers produce. Personally I don't pay much attention to what I'm wearing whilst in groups and one of my characters has a town set that she wears while not questing or leveling (I'd happily do this for other characters but it's not a priority for me). I don't see a problem with having different equipment for fighting (with the looks influenced by the lore of the armour and the graphic being believable as something you would fight in) and clothes that your character wears on a day-to-day basis for just hanging around.

Next problem would be how much of the cool stuff would drop? If everyone gets items for killing a boss then there will be little need to run the content again. Similarly I'm not sure the chance at aesthetic upgrades would provide enough incentive for the majority of the player base to rerun encounters. So the replay value of dungeons and raids becomes diminished, people clear the content as far as the skill total of their group allows and then have nothing to do until the next patch. In the current game setting at least they can work on gear from other means to supplement lack of skill. In a situation where progress is based purely on skill it would be even harder for those who cannot do content to progress. I've known several people who read up on their class, try different specs, etc but just fail when it comes to playing (and I have no idea why), should those people be excluded from any sort of raid content? Surely it's better to have a system like the current one where they (and their group members) can make up for that lack of ability by out gearing the encounter.

Gear progression also means you will have had to do some content at lower levels before you are ready to go to higher level raids. If there is no gear level then I have no way of indicating to a new group that I am ready for encounters which take more skill to defeat. Similarly for dungeon groups, currently the LFG tool decides which instances you can queue for based on gear level, it's not the best method but what would be the alternative? Self-selection wouldn't work very well as people who are inexperienced (or think they are better than they are) could end up in places they are not experienced enough to deal with. Having to have done certain previous content before moving to the next level would be an unnecessary block for those who do have more skill.

Finally, whilst the idea of class quests to unlock special abilities sounds nice it favours people who have more time to put into the game, even if it is skill based people who have more time available to learn/practice the mechanics will be able to unlock that faster. Also depending on the ability in question it could again provide a block to completing future content (in the event that the ability was important enough to be needed for harder raids).

I like the game as it currently is, I don't feel that gear is the be all and end all of the game but it does provide an incentive for running raids/dungeons multiple times and means that people will have at least some experience of group play before moving on to the next level (though the numerous pug threads attest to how little some people learn from that). And regarding the look of gear, I like the feeling that I am facing bosses with a band of warriors (in the general sense of the term, not the class) I think that would be ruined slightly if my fellow raid members looked more like they were heading to a barbecue.

Turn an MMORPG into a Social Network?

No stats on gear for everybody, the bad and mean raiders won't hurt you... Now you’re running around 1 shotting players with no resilience (you even made a thread about how proud you are) and you think it's funny. If I removed the stats, now how bad boy are you now? Pfttt, that’s what I thought!

I think that, in the end, Raw, this image is about you.
http://arch.413chan.net/NOT-SURE-IF-TROLL-OR-JUST-VERY-STUPID-(n1299498207760).jpg

My issue with resilience is that it removes skill from the equation unless both are wearing equal amounts. I consider myself fairly good at Feral PvP, but any scrub in blue resilience gear could walk up and two-shot me, and I'd be unable to do anything about it. PvP spec? Skill? Doesn't matter if you're not wearing resilience gear.

I'm sure it's awesome and all when you're decked in it and are two-shotting people without resilience gear, but hey... two-shotting Mages back in Vanilla was awesome as well. And at least then there was a chance they'd return the favor.

Also, in before 'well, you're retarded'.