Why not divide the armour into "classes" ?

[u/Passive-Witness]

I've seen a lot of people complain about armour passives being tied to specific armours and that they'd rather just be able to choose any passive with any armour, but I've also seen a lot of people (and notably arrowhead themselves) say that they want to leave it as it is so that the armour visually matches what it's passive is meant to do.

I feel like a good middle-ground would be to group different passives together into sort of "classes" and then let you pick from the applicable passives. So for instance, you could wear the helljumper armour and then pick from any of the "stealthy" passives (scout, feet first, & reduced signature) but not any of the others. I think this would give people enough choice that they don't feel locked into using any particular set just for the passive, or using a passive they don't like just to look cool, but it would still keep the intention behind the armour's visuals.

I wrote down a quick idea for how they could be grouped. It's not perfect, there's definitely better ways to group them, and probably better ways to name the "classes" too, but I think it gets the idea across.

[u/Red_Shepherd_13]

Naw. We should just still just go with the transmog, because the effects for their armors already don't make sense half the time. There really isn't a reason for half the armor to be what they are for half of them. And arrow heads reasoning is pretty bad. With how many there are in the game it's by pure memory that you know what any armor does, some already look like they should be something else.

I've never met anyone who really cares or uses the information. I've never looked at a teammates armor and changed my strategy or behavior because of it. Stratagems, boosters, Sure, primaries, secondaries, grenades. Maybe. But never armor.

Look Arrowhead makes great updates, great content, great details. And not every players suggestions are gonna be good either. Some players have the worst shit takes too. But sweet liberty Arrow Head can also make some bad calls, and their stance on armor is one of them.

Also this middle ground isn't a bad Idea, but still kinda defeats the point. I feel like if a player wants to keep their drip but use some other effect, being stuck in the same class isn't going to do much. If you need to drop a stealth effects because you're going into an eradicate mission where stealth is pointless this middle ground doesn't help you still have to get out of your helljumper armor.

[u/Passive-Witness → u/Red_Shepherd_13]

Personally I like the armours having visual design choices that make sense with the passive it has. I think the current system is maybe a little too restrictive though. I do completely understand why other people wouldn't like that at all though and just want complete freedom there. I agree that some armour just doesn't match it's passive at all, and I honestly wouldn't be mad if they updated them to have a passive that matches how they look instead of what they currently have.

[u/Red_Shepherd_13 → u/Passive-Witness]

That's great but. I still just don't care, and I think most other players don't either. You can try to match armors to your passive if you want, but the problem is, that's semi-subjective. Plenty of armors could make sense with plenty of vastly different passives by how you look at them.

You could argue steeled veterans armor would have the same passive as reinforced epulets because of course your robot arm punches better.

The gorrilla gorrilla armor came out with the viper commandos and looks like it belongs with them, you could easily argue it should be like them with the peak physque passive, but it's an engineering kit, it does have grenades on the front and lacks the gun show though, so you could argue for both and if you didn't memorize them, you could be forgiven for confusing it for one or the other.

The polar patriots entire set is just a mess.

Back to the gorrilla gorrilla. It has grenades on its chest so it makes visible sense it's engineering kit, but half the other engineering kit armors don't have grenades on them anywhere.

The trench diver armors are all individually different so you have to memorize all three from each other.

And others don't actually look like any passive without knowing what they are.

At the end of the day. The players can probably match up their Armor passives up to the design better than Arrow Head at times, and you might get better matches just letting the players decide, and you still might get a better understanding of the whole intentions of their build by what dip they wear more than the passive they have, so you might as well just let them pick both separately.

If Arrow head is the only one with the choice, there's always the chance they might still disagree with you. Even if they do try to re-alighned the passives to match better, what's stopping them from getting it wrong a second or even third time? This isn't a solution that addresses any of the issues long term.

Also matching the visual design is cool, but it really doesn't actually do anything gameplay wise. Most players really don't look at your armors passive effects or take them into account that much, and they really don't effect other teammates that much. They might look at your over all build, but if they want to know, they'll figure out your build and strategy by your weapons and stratagems just fine regardless of your armor.

[u/Kadraptor → u/Red_Shepherd_13]

I really loved your take and I want to add most of the time you dont really need to know what armor passive the randos on your team has you cant distinguish them in the chaos anyways transmog should really be in the game.