For new readers:
To put this thread back on track (as I have been seeing some good ideas), lets try discussing some creative ways of implementing a system as mentioned. Also, try not to mindlessly argue with each other if you do so (as many have done already).
This discussion is now officially about ideas towards implementing such a system, not about arguing for whether or not it's necessary.
Original post:
I recently created a character, got him out of the tutorial, traded him 4/5* Equipment, and within 3 hours of playtime was able to get to Emberlight on my own. I think this is a bit unreasonable. o_o
So most MMOs are based upon your actual Character leveling-up, not your "stuff". This is a reason I like SK, because it gets away from the usual. However, as I showed above, there are still issues with this. My suggestion is to actually give your character itself a Level, so that you can't just immediately wield the best stuff, you have to gain experience first. For example, your character starts as 0-Star Lv1, and gains experience with heat, where each LvN is slightly harder than the last. They level just as a weapon does, however, once they reach the end of Lv10 they gain a star and become 1-Star. It will now be significantly harder to Level up than the previous tier. So on, and so forth... they reach 5-Star Lv10 end-of-the-bar: perhaps they finally get their "Complete"? I don't know. So a characters Tier would go up as their Equipment does, just at a different rate (slower, would make more sense).
I just honestly think there needs to be some way to control this. People should have to advance through tiers smoothly, not suddenly. Not to mention the ridiculous boost people with CE get (like myself), as it is now.
Well, we have three tiers.
0-1 star, 2-3 star, and 4-5 star.
These correspond with Haven-Moorcroft; Moorcroft-Emberlight; Emberlight-The Core
So perhaps something similar but based on those star level ranges.
But what happens if you can easily complete Haven-Moorcroft, and want a challenge. But you have to wait til you have to level to get that piece of armour/weapon that would let you do that?
You get annoyed =/
So, I vote it stays as is is, personally, for my sanity ^^