Colored gear with specific classes.

[DeadRiser]

i felt the Phantasy Star series did it even better.

in their games, your stats are based on a few actual devices that electronically induce those stats.
sort of like an invisible forcefield made up of specific defenses. anything you wear is just for looks.
it makes a little more sense than just magic imbued gear to me but oh well.

Lol I did like that the armor was linked to the outfit, but their color system suckedddd

[Dreadnought]

Lol I did like that the armor was linked to the outfit, but their color system suckedddd

oh yeah, im not defending the actual look of the armour, just the idea behind the stats/clothes.

[DeadRiser]

oh yeah, im not defending the actual look of the armour, just the idea behind the stats/clothes.

Oh I know what your a talking about lol!

[Fensfield]

oh yeah, im not defending the actual look of the armour, just the idea behind the stats/clothes.

Well I liked most of the clothes they came up with >.>; Never had difficulty finding a look for my character that I liked in PSO or PSU.

Still, you're right, the way they disconnected stats almost entirely from aesthetics (the only place it showed was in the colour of the photon channels embroidered in the gear) is one of the things makes the online Phantasy Stars my favourite MMO games. In Phantasy Star Online 2, the units you choose to equip will also appear on your character model, but again, outfit proper has nothing to do with stats.

I cannot wait for that game to come out.. But yes, in my opinion games in this genre really are so much better when they try to get as close to having a system like that as possible. .. And this new bright idea from the dev's to colour code everyone (because of course, we're too daft to tell any other way) is even further from that than removing (rather than fixing) the optimal system. Good lord I hope there's this much vitriol and more being directed at the change in the other language forums.

... And yeah as someone else said, a lot of the character look was controlled by a hue slider. A great many outfits came in two-colour combination sets, but a lot of stuff - particularly for CASTs - was way more customisable.

Oh and Dreadnought, while I've a hope of nabbing your attention here I'll take chance to correct you on something: you misread my post on Mabinogi in the roleplay forum request thread. Try looking again. Much as I know you feel compelled to bash those of us who enjoy games that don't emphasize killing things, "this mobi game" isn't that like that - its combat system's reliance on realtime mechanics is in the middle ground between Final Fantasy XIV and Phantasy Star Online. It's arguably got more action - and even violence - in it than this game has.

Mabinogi also being a game that, by the by, had a very successful philosophy of not having limitations on what colours or indeed types of gear you could wear - it just whacked you with really inconvenient penalties if you, say, focused on magic while wearing full plate (since magic users could get a lot of benefit out of accessories and plate had no accessory slots. And a lot of the cloth gear had a hefty magic bonus on it anyway).

Hell I'd be playing it right now if the combat system's vulnerability to latency didn't mean I get region-locked away from playing with my friends. Well, that and the fact that the whole thing with the Milletians makes roleplaying on the kind of scale we have here a damn-sight harder.

[EmeraldHill]

Lol I did like that the armor was linked to the outfit, but their color system suckedddd

They had a hue slider and you could have pretty much any color.

[Dreadnought]

They had a hue slider and you could have pretty much any color.

they did? i dont remember that!
thats something i always wanted in a game, considering you can get any color you want on metal and fabric in real life.