People sacrifice good gear for "fashion"

[Wynn]

I'm too sexy for your hauby

[Ventus]

I'm too sexy for your hauby

this guy is definitely winning XD

[ApplePie]

I only wear pink gear. If you know me in game, you know this to be true. lol (kinda)

[longtallsally]

Good gear?!?! WHERE?!?!

[Rinsui]

In most situations, aside from defensive stats and HP/MP, gear IS useless

This.
OP, stop being a elite smartass and let people enjoy the game as they like. There's little enough to enjoy at the moment.

[Shai]

"Why so serious?"

You answered your own question. The gear in this game is not "game breaking" and there's no purpose to min-maxing.

It's as if gear and food were designed to augment your shortcomings. You max out VIT (for example) you were probably expected to wear DEX gear and eat STR food. The normal min/max mindset, though, is if STR = damage then STR STR STR STR everything STR.

...but the game really doesn't work with that mind set. As said, you can fight the "lolbosses" of the game naked. Gear is truly not worth much other than slight boosts (which you can do yourself by reinvesting your attribute points) or aesthetics.

Why do you care what others wear or how they want to play?

[Mack]

Something I don't really understand is the growing desire people have to looks "fashionable" rather than have better gear. It's pretty shocking how many people just tell me "I'm wearing this because it looks better" even though they are well aware of gear being better for them that doesn't look so stellar >.<. Stuff like this can really make a party suffer and it's quite selfish so I ask why? Why is this allowed? Anyone else relate?

When SE decides to make gear more meaningful, I'll start caring. I personally wear rank appropriate gear but I don't care if others aren't because its useless either way, I may as well be fighting naked from 1 to 50 and it wont make a big difference.

[Duelle]

It's as if gear and food were designed to augment your shortcomings. You max out VIT (for example) you were probably expected to wear DEX gear and eat STR food. The normal min/max mindset, though, is if STR = damage then STR STR STR STR everything STR.

...but the game really doesn't work with that mind set. As said, you can fight the "lolbosses" of the game naked. Gear is truly not worth much other than slight boosts (which you can do yourself by reinvesting your attribute points) or aesthetics.

Why do you care what others wear or how they want to play?

I'm kind of picking up that vibe as well. Which is not a bad thing. I've had it with fugly gear with good stats and good-looking gear with terrible stats. I hated the O-hat, I hated all subligaria, and it annoyed me that they were all vastly superior to some of the pieces of gear I could stand to look at. Could we get to perform well in combat without looking like mismatched clowns for once?

[Nikita]

I hate to admit this but I do it all the time! I think SE stated that was the reason why they made the stats nearly equal across the races as opposed to FFXI, so players could make the character they wanted, the way they want them to look.

I really became addicted to character gear customization after Aion came out, I thought item remodeling was the best idea ever... Here are two examples of that using my Aion character xD :

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/6180/aion0053o.jpg
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5960/aion0004wu.jpg

[Shai]

I'm kind of picking up that vibe as well. Which is not a bad thing. I've had it with fugly gear with good stats and good-looking gear with terrible stats. I hated the O-hat, I hated all subligaria, and it annoyed me that they were all vastly superior to some of the pieces of gear I could stand to look at. Could we get to perform well in combat without looking like mismatched clowns for once?

Well, I wouldn't get used to it.

The no-restrictions on gear is actually a cool idea, but people need the proverbial carrots in their face to do anything. So I'm sure the days of wearing what you think looks cool or makes you laugh will be gone soon enough. They will lower our attributes and make each attribute worth more, they will make restricted gear.

Don't worry, before long we'll all look exactly the same, again.
We wouldn't want people to stray too far outside their comfort zone for too long.