At level people will always pick the best gear for the class they are playing. This leads to a bunch of people wearing the same gear. The only way to create diversity would be to add a bunch of gear with repeating stats (hard to do) or allow model swapping (easy to do). If model swapping were allowed for gear then we could look like we are wearing any piece of gear we wanted to but still get the stats of that best piece of gear for our class.
Some limitations would be expect such as not being able to use a model of a piece of gear you didn't own. They could even limit melee from using mage models and mages from using melee models that way we don't have a healer who looks like they could tank or a tank that looks like he could only take a few hits.
In FFXI I used a program to change the model of the gear my char wore all the time. Well I was still wearing the same stuff to me it looked like I was wearing something very different. I'm suggesting it be made so we can all see these changes in FFXIV.
This is a small pic of my char in FFXI.
http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k1...227143330c.jpg
All they saw was a mithra in rather normal gear but on my screen I'm wearing thf AF and look like a fox. I'm not suggesting adding it so I can make my char look like a fox again although that would be cool. I'm suggesting that we be allowed to change the appearance of our gear to whatever gear we want and for all to be able to see that change.