Also, its important to say that the opimal/favor system is an important part of Armory system. The primary use of this is to offer any player a minimum armor if he change classes. Why this? Because would be really stupid you have a system that allows you to change class everywhere but you being naked after class change becaus the current class cannot equip any of the armor you're carrying.

I still have hopes up that the dev team will double check the class restriction of NM armors and future armors (OK, restrictiong some artifact armor to its native class is fair enough...making certain pieces of armor that are exclusive of one class is fair enough...but if more than one class can use that armor, why not using the optimal/favor system that is already ingame?) so thay can see that class (and possible rank) restrictions are hurting the armory system and, if they continue this way soon enough the armory system will collapse...because when you're not able to carry a set of armor for a class you have you, obviously, woun't use it either, breaking the flexibility of the system.

And, at the other side, we have the casual and RP players that do enjoyed the armory system because they were able to dress the character the way they wanted. Is it stupid? Not really! If a player want to RP so let him RP. The optimal/favor system allows them to.

My hopes is that materia system also come to help the game this way, making the native effects of armors not as important as the materia effects, increasing the flexibility of armor choices even for those that seek optimizing their characters. Actually, they could just make rank/class restrictions materia "side-effects" instead of armors...certain materias that add a very specific effect also turning, as example, a certain armor GLA exclusive...or a high level materia adding rank restriction to the armor it was added. This would be a much better way of dealing with armory system than just tossing random class/rank restrictions.