[Ranylyn]

I think you missed a key point of the whole thing. Not saying I blame you, since it's not exactly the most glaringly obvious part of the post, but hear me out on this.

Call me an idealist if you must, but I'm going somewhere with this train of thought. Please read my whole post before replying. (Not singling any one person out, but I know my opinion will NOT be a popular one, and as such, I feel it's a good idea to cut people off before they retort and say "I get your concerns, I'm getting to it.&quot

For starters, let's look at the key point Dev was making:

The fact that there has been no credibility for this stupidity up until now has made people overly comfortable with outright lying. Intentionally obscuring things that should be obvious to anyone who looks at you is metagaming as well. Not only that, but it's bad roleplaying.

Now. I'll get back to this in a minute. But before I do, I'd like to address another key point: Our community.

I've been playing online games for over 10 years now. Many, MANY RPGs, I'd even say MOST I've played, let you see the gear of other players. And this is never an issue there. Why? Because people build for their build. They don't deliberately just counterbuild against specific players just to be an asshole (though some do counbterbuild against the meta specifically, which leads to a constantly evolving and shifting meta, which is a good thing) And this is even in very toxic communities. So, judging by all the cries of "metagame," we must have the worst community of all, with everyone only out to dick one another over, right?

No. Actually, I don't think that's true in the slightest. I don't even think we have the potential to be even one-tenth as malicious as a lot of those communities. I mean, when was the last time someone gave death threats over using a potion in PVP? It annoys some people, sure, but we don't ever go too far. I just think that we, as a community, developed bad habits. And while everyone sees this as a way to perpetuate that cycle of bad habits, I'm pointing out the opposite angle: If people can open their minds and see past these bad habits for what they are, it will help serve as a defense against it in the long term.

Going back to Dev's point, let's see, here... "Made people overly comfortable." "It's bad roleplaying." Yeah. In an RP Mandatory game, the RP got stale, so people ended up getting all caught up in the PVP, and trying to change it up and keep it interesting. This led to people getting too used to going "Oh, they have A, so I'll use B because I have 300 items on me," even when that made no sense from an RP standpoint. It's just what they do. It wasn't actually hurting anyone, it just kind of became the thing to do... But they're not SUPPOSED to do it.

But now...? It's harder to get away with. You can't just pump Str and be able to use just about any non gun/tome weapon just as well as the next. Gear isn't as universally interchangeable. While some builds do definitely have some options to change it up, such as Guile benefitting ALL the banditry-themed items like Pilfer Spear and Highway Axe, the new stat system will just make it that much more obvious when someone is trying to metagame. This clearly isn't something ANYONE wants to have a reputation of doing. Consider the possible BENEFITS of being able to more actively police metagamey equipment changes. Not only is metagaming against the rules, and breaking rules is punishable, but there's also social pressure to consider. Who wants to be "that guy" that no one wants to play with because they pull that crap?

Sure, there will be examples like Saw's, where some people get butthurt and cry metagame over a coincidence. BUT! And hear me out on this... you know how the new stat fruit shows a message when someone uses it, to help prevent rampant metagamey abuse? You should be able to see someone changing their equipment, as well. One simple notification to nearby players when gear is changed, in exactly the same way the fruit already works will help draw attention to people exploiting it while protecting the innocent. And if someone runs off just to change gear, that'll also be super obvious.

What I'm getting at is... while everyone else may see it as an evil to be purged, I see it as a means to an end. While I disagree with showing all the exact stats and enchantments, the fact remains that there's zero reason to not be able to tell that someone has a sword at their hip, even if you're not close enough to tell a Bloody Fang apart from a Golgorth apart from a Setsuna.

So, considering all this... why is anyone so scared to let anyone see their gear? Is everyone speaking out against this afraid of getting busted, themselves? I don't really think so. But it's a change. A big change. And any radical change will always bring about unwanted distortions, regardless of whether the change is good or bad. If it's an issue, we can always remove it entirely, later. No harm, no foul. I mean, we just spent the better part of a month in beta for massive changes. But do try to see where Dev and I are coming from in defending this system, please.