Rank limits on gear

[Augury]

in guild wars you couldnt buy gear in a market ward, you had to be able to get to the place where the crafter was, and obtain the items for making it, while you could buy the items, most were drops from appropriately leveled mobs/salavging those drops.
Mostly of course it was getting to the place, some of the makers were in places you could not get to without completing a certain portion of the story. Which basically makes those high level skins, you can only get for achieving great things. And that was fine.

While i am not married to gear and stats being linked, I am married to having high level/rare content reward you visually. It gives you things to work for, and too hunt, even in games with no stats tied to items, the costume unlock items still have a high value. People want to progress, and working towards getting cool looking gear is a big attraction to playing a game.

Its not about alienating newbs, its about making the game overall entertaining, in your system only money would be the ultimate goal, because you can buy everything visual.

I remember in ffxi, because i started early on, quite a few new players were amazed by my appearence, while for me it was a bit ehhhhhh embarassing? From what they told me, seeing a high level monk, when they were a monk, decked out in gear inspired them, and gave them something to aim for. That is immersive. Its just like in a racing game, you look at the cars, people who race well want to have cool cars, and people just starting want to strive to obtain those cars, not just thier stats.

But more important to games is CHOICE. And a high level/experienced player should be able to make the CHOICE to look glowey and ritzy, or it should be viable to dress in a much more moderate manner. The current way MMOs approach gear is to make the high-end things look like the headlights of a mack truck, while the low-end gear looks like a bunch of diapers sewn together. In my opinion, an adventurer shouldn't be ritzy because their gear is good, they should be ritzy because it's characteristic of them, while those who would rather look like a vagabond should. In MMORPGs this choice has been removed- and replaced with the want to have the "1337 gears" which isn't immersion into the fantasy setting but the world itself. If a Monk looks like a tramp, that shouldn't be a result of them being of low skill- it should be a result of my wanting the character to look like a tramp. If my Monk looks like he stepped out of a Deuxenberg and twirled a cane around, it shouldn't be because they're powerful. If my player looks like a strip-joint sign, it should be because of my fetish with neon lights, not because I beat the high level dungeon 30 times. My emphasis is on AESTHETIC choice, more than anything, and in any economic system, the currency IS the most important part (though I think Gil should be the PC to NPC currency of XIV, not the primary PC to PC currency).