Visual Gear Damage

[KiriA500]

I don't understand why people think it would be OMG SO MUCH EXTRA WORK!!! If you watched the developer videos that were exclusive to the Collector's Edition (or YouTube for you cheaters!), you'd see that they made certain models, with parts that are interchangeable. That means, they really only have to make one piece of armor, and can remove parts for different sets (like the Steel set is just the Cobalt set minus a few shiny parts).

They'd still need to set up a texture map for a "almost broken" and a "completely broken" gear set, but it would be applied to every piece of gear. It's not nearly as much work as people think it is.

EDIT:
I should point out that if they're following a filing system similar to Final Fantasy XI (which I believe they are), they have an individual .dat file for each piece of gear, which is why it takes so long for stuff to load sometimes.

They mention the Color ID (I think that's the name...correct me if I'm wrong) system they're working on for Version 2, which would allow any piece of gear to be colored how you want. This would be the perfect time to implement something like a damaged gear feature. The new system framework sounds like it will be able to read a model file, and stick a texture on it, without having to make it an entirely new model, which is what it feels like we have now.