***Updated with gear "lock" option.
Wouldn't it be a good idea for SE to implement a vanity tab or gear section?
For people that don't know, vanity slots are a place where you place gear simply for appearance, while your equipment slots are the ones that are counted for stats etc.
Once setting the gear in the vanity slot, you simply retain that appearance despite changing out other pieces of gear in your 'real' equipment area.
Using gear for a vanity slot doesn't use it up per say, it simply just marks it as the designated appearance you wish to show.
If everquest can do it, FFXI sure can, the fact that EQ just got a new expansion and can do this and FFXI can't should be really embarrassing.
This way blinking in battle would be a thing of the past without third-party plugins, and we could choose our full-time appearance in battle while keeping gear swaps.
Some armor is just god-awful (I'm looking at you camlecac trousers), and it would allow for some neat diversification.
Option 1, the Gear Lock Command:
Instead of taking the time that we know you won't, to develop a system of new inventory and update the UI.
It has been proposed farther along in the thread that a new command akin to /gearlockimage (or whatever) be introduced into the game.
Which does not lock your equipped gear but only "locks" the appearance, stopping blinking and armor to be changed mid combat.
This would take much less time then the other route which I will just throw in for the sake of it, and is in many ways more feasible, as highlighted by many later on.
Option 2, the Vanity Inventory:
Create a new accessible inventory tab where players can select armor from their inventory to put into these appearance slots.
Just shove it into a sub menu under the equipment menu, much like how a Puppetmaster can access the inventory/equipment of their Automaton.
By placing gear in these slots this is the "locked" appearance for your character and regardless of gear swaps you will not blink or change your modeled appearance.
**And for the dev team, there isn't a need to make the vanity tab /checkable, keep it completley invisible to everyone except the user, as I can see how displaying two sets of inventory would probably be impossible.
Only display "real" equipment, so all those people who are hard as e-diamonds can still get their peen on.