I have seen two main objections so far:
1. I need to know about their armor as this is a PvP game. I may want to attack or steal.
2. Armor should be boring and repetitive so characters have a reason to wear clothes.
I will start right off by saying that I think number 2 is negligible. Armor already comes with downsides that make wearing it a tradeoff. And if the stat penalties and increased weight aren't enough already to make the choice feel like a bit of a tradeoff, adjust those penalties a little. I personally think, however, that they are pretty solid already.
I can sympathize more with number 1 but I think it can be overcome. Accommodated. And that is what I'm going to try and do here. I think it could actually be taken further in a lot of ways but the basic idea is to tag the armor so it IS identifiable.
I did write up a several page long, detailed document on how this could be done on a grad scale but decided to try and pare it all down to something slightly more manageable.
The base idea is to:
- Assign all existing armors a 'material type' property.
This should be fairly consistent across lines. For example, most Du-Wear might be of the "BashGard Combat Leather" material type.
- Append the material type to Armor @worn and @describe messages.
Maybe just an extra sentence like, "This piece of armor seems to be primarily made of %material." Resulting in something like "This piece of armor seems to be primarily made of BashGard Combat Leather."
- Allow PCs with the right stats/skills modify certain messages on armor.
Just the cosmetic bits like the name, @worn, @describe, @wear, @owear, @remove, @oremove and so on. This lets the player make that custom armor. But since the @wear and @describe messages on all armor get a sentence tagged on mentioning the material, it's clear that it IS armor and with a little IC knowledge you have an idea of what that armor is capable of.
One could also make the higher end armors harder to modify, providing a reason to raise these stats/skills as much as one would raise combat skills/stats.
That's the bulk of it.
As the game will already mention that someone's clothing looks 'armored', players have several levels of 'tells'. Just looking at a person will tell you as much about their custom armor as they can currently tell with stock armor.
No additional items need to be added to the game (though they can be if desired) and few mechanics need to be added. Further, if desired, this could be extended to other items.
Of course, I freely admit that this is a very fresh idea for me so there may be down sides I don't see yet. Regardless, I am a big fan of cyberpunk style and would love to see more of it. I'd love it if we could adjust the game's dials to that sporting your own style isn't as much of a mechanical loss.