Am I crazy?

[Darrett]

I'm sure I had read somewhere that you'd be able to have a crafter improve your equipment to be on par with current tier equipment in order to keep the "look" of gear that you like. In other words, if I were to find a helmet at rank 2 that I really liked the look of, I would be able to apply the graphic of that helmet and the stats of another helmet to create an item with the superior stats of the new (say, rank 40) equipment, but the graphical look I preferred.

Is this something I just imagined, or was it actually mentioned somewhere?

If not, then why don't they implement this? It'd solve all the issues of crafters not being important, as well as complaints about what equipment looks like. (See Paladins in WoW and their Burger King armor)

[Ripple]

The main reason I could why they would not do this is for the bad*** factor. I think they want everyone who sees you to get a vibe for your relative strength. So far all the tier four gear looks vastly more threatening than tiers one and two gear. While it would be very fun to surprise enemies thinking your an easy target, I don't think the devs want this.
I wouldn't worry too much about not like how the next tier's gear will look. No Burger King armor, I think.
I have never heard anything about what your talking about, not to that degree anyway. People are speculating that one of the craft skills will enhance gear, permanent or temporary, no one knows.

[Gemini]

I havn't heard of any such thing. As for why to not do it, there are a couple reasons. In WAR we don't craft weapons and armor from scratch, and doing that would pretty much just be a loophole for that. Sure, it's not from scratch, but if you could do that you'd never have to get new armor and weapons, you could just keep your old stuff. Same effect, different stratedgy.

Second, the WYSIWYG rule that Mythic has been talking about forever. If you see someone in really badass armor, you know that guy is a really high level/renown/whatever and you might want to stay away from him without backup. Similarly, if you see someone in really basic armor, you are supposed to be able to tell "Oh, that guys puny, I don't have to worry about him". Your idea would demolish that rule.

[Stiltzkin]

what does WYSIWYG mean?

[Dread_Knight]

what does WYSIWYG mean?

What you see is what you get

[seirios]

i usualy tend to like low/mid tier armors...

then wow came out.. with laz0rz and neon lights and super-xl-shoulders and weapons :P

[Jtmk]

Lotro has kinda system like that, called outfitting, tho there is no crafting invloved you just replace the piece you want to see as outfit into outfit tab, and then there is the tab that has all the stuff that affect your stats. Remember Lotro is 90% PvE game and there is reason why this system is taken off at PvP area.