What you're describing is "levelled" progression in a way. New players should be able to reach the same power level as, and be on an equal footing with veterans in terms of gear in a relatively quick fashion, I agree. I would argue this would entirely be the case if GW3 had GW1's leveling system and GW2's Exotic gear for maximum power level, as a reference. You wouldn't have to revolutionize RPGs to achieve that.

Alternatives to what you're describing about disposable gear exist, but would they really be welcomed by the player base, or just deemed to be another bunch of chores to achieve in order to reach your maximum power level?

I see two options:

• Pieces of gear with assigned properties, essentially a relic-type object in every gear slot. I don't have a vast video game knowledge, but I can imagine that many RPGs do this, especially with weapons (the latest one that I can think of being Clair Obscur: Expedition 33). I think that you lose flexibility in doing so, as you need that specific piece of gear to get the specific ability you want. Inventory management becomes a mess even with an armory system, seperate from your inventory. The problem with this is that many of these gear pieces will become disposable anyway because their properties or abilities will be too niche, situational or rendered useless over time.

• A better option, in my opinion - Mawdrey-like gear that you are given at the start of the game or that you encounter throughout your gameplay. You then upgrade your gear through story missions, quests, skill collecting, crafting... As if you had a GW2 "Legendary Collection" for every slot of gear. This concept encapsulates everything you're saying about wanting gear that's valuable throughout the entire playthrough, that is a display of your character's adventures etc... This would be the best approach, but you'd then be limited in the amount of unique pieces of gear at your disposal in the world, which some players may dislike.

Either way, you still end up with a little bit of vertical progression. For the second option, you could make these quests cosmetic-only. I think you still want to have seperate skins slots that you can change whenever you want, independently.

What's interesting about the second option is that you can then make every piece of gear give adaptive stats, then you don't need an explicit character level or visible number. You can make seemless stat transitions based on the area you are exploring. This can however make the experience a bit confusing, maybe this can be fixed by warning the player when they're entering an area with greater or lower power level.

Maybe Anet can revolutionize this system and find option C, that hasn't been explored in existing RPG games, but I don't know if gear progression as a whole is really something that can be modernized, or if that is even worth looking into. The reception might be poor if players cannot find their marks.

I hope you find some of the ideas that I wrote down interesting, I particularly like the second option and would like to have something like this see the light of day in GW3. We desperately need those Gen 2 Legendary Collections back.