(This will be a long post, there is no way around it, as there are a lot of issues as I see it 
)
Armor and clothing in CP seem to be having some issues, not only when it comes to stats, realism (player expectations), lore, style and general game mechanic. Basically the whole system seems a bit messy. I will try to quickly explain why this is the case and then look at how CDPR could potential fix it. Now this will require a lot more than simply changing a few things here and there.
The current issues
As many people playing CP will experience is that if you are aiming towards maximizing stats, it won't take long before your character look like a circus clown just having left the mental institute compared to a badass merc. This is really immersion breaking for a lot of people, as they will have a hard time even taking themselves serious, so why would anyone else?
Obviously the idea CDPR is aiming for here is that players have options and you can potentially make your character look like you want, especially if you start adding mods, which can improve certain aspects of an armor. But even this doesn't really work to well, which I will get to in a second.
The problem is that this quickly end in a conflict between style and stats, especially in the beginning to mid game, where armor value on the items themselves seems to have a greater effect than in end game. At which point epic and legendary mods are what is going to have the most effect. This lead to the issue of whether or not the player can find epic and legendary gear to add mods in, given that the amount of mod slots in an item is based on the rarity of it rather than its level.
So if you are only able to find those nice bright yellow legendary shorts you are pretty screwed, if that is not the look you are after. Meaning that your character will be stuck in upgrading their gear simply due to how an item might look if you don't like it.
And as we know there is no customization in CP, so you won't be able to change the color or style on an item.
Since mod slots is the only thing that really matters in the end game in regards to armor, the level and type of item becomes completely redundant. So in this case, we can see that a pair of green office shoes are pretty much as good as some combat boots. (Given that approx. 10 armor reduce damage by 1, according to the help page)
So I just created another pair of legendary boots, which comes with some mods already in it, but as we can see, the mods are of very low quality. So I created a lot of grey armor mods as well, which gave me a lot of blue ones as well? But even the grey ones have +102 armor. Compared to the green one in the boots already. Which could suggest that the mods when creating items doesn't follow the character level, which is not a huge issue, unless it comes with legendary mods if that is possible. However what will make a difference for an item is being able to add 143x3 armor mods in it as that will greatly improve them. I don't have any legendary armor mods so not sure how much they give.
And if im not mistaken legendary items can have the most mod slots, which is primarily why you would want them.
This means that if you want to optimize your character and still look a certain way, you need to have the legendary item of that type. Now these are the only legendary boots I can make, so don't really have any customization options, if i care about my stats, which as mentioned about, doesn't really give me a lot of choices in regards to style, compared to early game.
Another issue, is in regards to the lore, as it is known, style matters more than anything else. But looking at the items above, it's clear that this is not reflected in the game in any way. Nothing about an item relate to style, it's all about number of mod slots and the style thing is purely a gimmick.
The biggest issue with the current system, besides being a mess in regards to "realism", lore and game mechanic which doesn't play together at all, is that it is way too simple or generic to support an RPG system, if these three things should matter. Because as it is now, it doesn't support any of these, but only a very simple mod system. Meaning that legendary items can have the most the slots, so therefore you make those and hope you get as many slots as possible.
The boots I made above with 3 mod slots for these screenshots, I had to reload several times, because some of them only had 1 mod slot. Which means that a pair of legendary boots if they only have 1 mod slot is no better than a pair of blue ones which also have 1 slot.
A quick solution would be to allow the player to customize the look of an item, so that I could make my boots look like a pair of office shoes. Which clearly would solve the look issue. But it wouldn't solve the realism issue, that a pair of office shoes have more armor than a pair of combat boots.
Another issue is that, if you are allowed to change the look of items, these will quickly end up being yet another redundant feature, sort of like how the food and drink works, where you have 30+ different types which does exactly the same. And therefore becomes more of an annoying feature than something useful.
So the whole armor/clothing, style, realism and lore thing regarding armors have some huge issues as I see it, so how to solve it?
Solutions
Honestly im not entirely sure, so hope others will be able to add some ideas as well. But the absolute key issue as I see it, is the simplicity of the system or game. It simply can't support all of these things and also why I started by saying that I don't think this is something that is solved simply by changing a few values. So don't expect these suggestions to really fit into the current game, as a lot of changes is needed here.
1. Style matters (Lore)
According to the lore style is very important so that need to be reflected in the system somehow. What I would suggest is that each armor/clothing item have style values. Not just one, but several. Which is because one style might work for some but not others, Corpo might not like you looking like a biker straight out of a bar, but might prefer expensive clothing like suits, the correct brands etc. Whereas the average street type, doesn't like some suit wearing type telling them what to do.
Depending on what type of clothing you use, it would increase your chance of successfully interact with different types of people, whether that is gangs or corpo etc. Clearly this would require that more RPG elements are brought into CP, so dialogs options are not as simple as they are now, where they basically have no impact at all. But rather style, background and character stats are what decide how likely you are to succeed in conversation. This would obviously be a huge change of CP as nothing like this exists in it. Even places where one would assume it did, there is nothing like it.
I think most people have tried to make that guy that sell BDs in jigjig street lower his prices based on a "skill check" and from what I can see it is an automatic fail with no chance of success at all, I don't even think a check is being made at all.
So basically style would be a main driving force for conversations, convincing people, intimidation, in certain cases it might even trigger them to attack you. etc.
2. Realism
This is a strange one, because obviously you can look cool in hardcore armor. But there need to be some sort of trade off. So clearly heavy armor or modified material made for protection and that covers large portions of the body should offer better protection than a pair of office shoes, doesn't matter if it's magic shoes or not. It simply doesn't work.
Armor should be split into 3 categories:
Heavy, medium and light
Heavy armor should be worn by strong characters, certain mods could be added which reduce these requirements to add options, but in general people that have gone deep into body could use them as they would work well with a playstyle of someone that want to get up close and offers the best protection against most things. However they might reduce movement and attack speed, lowering stealth and have little protection against certain types of damage etc. This would obviously need to be balanced.
Medium armor are for those that prefer more of a mixture gameplay and give a decent amount of protection. And give some benefits from the heavy armor and some from the light armor.
Light armor would be for those that prefer stealth or more of a long range combat style, maybe even some nethackers.
All armor could give some penalty to nethacking, simply to give each playstyle a more distinct feel, but again certain mods might allow the player to try different options and adjust these bonus slightly to better suit their playstyle.
Armor could also influence options in dialogs, so for instance heavy armor of certain types might give a bonus to intimidation, but a minus to reasoning with people, for instance showing up to a corpo wearing some street looking heavy armor, might have a big effect on how willing they are to deal with you or they might be intimidated, or if you use a heavy armor of the style they prefer it might give you some bonuses. And this would apply to all kinds of type of armor. But maybe in general showing up with a lot of armor looking like you are ready to start a war, might be bad for your style overall, again to make armor and style influence each other and give players options in regards to how much they value one over the other.
Another idea could be, that armor could only be changed at your car or in your apartment, to avoid people from "cheating" with dialogs and also make it slightly more immersive.
3. General mechanics
The gear and playstyle people choose should be expressed in the game mechanics as well, so everything or most thing will have benefits or disadvantages in one way or another, there shouldn't be a simple, "Legendary win all option" but even within these there would be tradeoffs simply due to the type of item used. It would make handling your inventory and gear a lot more interesting, compared to simply looking out for number of mod slots, but also different damage types could be used better, and different types of heavy, medium and light armor, depending on the material they are made off, what mods the player are using, could change the resistance to different type of damage, some maybe have a chance to automatically interrupt hackers, reflect hacks and so forth.
Conclusion
The current system need to be more complex as I see it and better integrated into the game, so it feels like it matters what you wear and how you choose to style your character if CDPR want to fix this issue in a good way.
And obviously styles would be amazing, if the game really supported the idea of lifepath as well. So a corpo player, might have access to more missions with them and in general simply had benefits of hanging out more in this type of environment than the others lifepath, that could be really cool.
Simply allowing people to change the look, even though it would be an improvement, I don't feel is enough to solve the general issue with how armor and clothing are integrated and work in the game currently, both when it comes to mechanics, but also in regards to the lore.
)Armor and clothing in CP seem to be having some issues, not only when it comes to stats, realism (player expectations), lore, style and general game mechanic. Basically the whole system seems a bit messy. I will try to quickly explain why this is the case and then look at how CDPR could potential fix it. Now this will require a lot more than simply changing a few things here and there.
The current issues
As many people playing CP will experience is that if you are aiming towards maximizing stats, it won't take long before your character look like a circus clown just having left the mental institute compared to a badass merc. This is really immersion breaking for a lot of people, as they will have a hard time even taking themselves serious, so why would anyone else?
Obviously the idea CDPR is aiming for here is that players have options and you can potentially make your character look like you want, especially if you start adding mods, which can improve certain aspects of an armor. But even this doesn't really work to well, which I will get to in a second.
The problem is that this quickly end in a conflict between style and stats, especially in the beginning to mid game, where armor value on the items themselves seems to have a greater effect than in end game. At which point epic and legendary mods are what is going to have the most effect. This lead to the issue of whether or not the player can find epic and legendary gear to add mods in, given that the amount of mod slots in an item is based on the rarity of it rather than its level.
So if you are only able to find those nice bright yellow legendary shorts you are pretty screwed, if that is not the look you are after. Meaning that your character will be stuck in upgrading their gear simply due to how an item might look if you don't like it.
And as we know there is no customization in CP, so you won't be able to change the color or style on an item.
Since mod slots is the only thing that really matters in the end game in regards to armor, the level and type of item becomes completely redundant. So in this case, we can see that a pair of green office shoes are pretty much as good as some combat boots. (Given that approx. 10 armor reduce damage by 1, according to the help page)
So I just created another pair of legendary boots, which comes with some mods already in it, but as we can see, the mods are of very low quality. So I created a lot of grey armor mods as well, which gave me a lot of blue ones as well? But even the grey ones have +102 armor. Compared to the green one in the boots already. Which could suggest that the mods when creating items doesn't follow the character level, which is not a huge issue, unless it comes with legendary mods if that is possible. However what will make a difference for an item is being able to add 143x3 armor mods in it as that will greatly improve them. I don't have any legendary armor mods so not sure how much they give.
And if im not mistaken legendary items can have the most mod slots, which is primarily why you would want them.
This means that if you want to optimize your character and still look a certain way, you need to have the legendary item of that type. Now these are the only legendary boots I can make, so don't really have any customization options, if i care about my stats, which as mentioned about, doesn't really give me a lot of choices in regards to style, compared to early game.
Another issue, is in regards to the lore, as it is known, style matters more than anything else. But looking at the items above, it's clear that this is not reflected in the game in any way. Nothing about an item relate to style, it's all about number of mod slots and the style thing is purely a gimmick.
The biggest issue with the current system, besides being a mess in regards to "realism", lore and game mechanic which doesn't play together at all, is that it is way too simple or generic to support an RPG system, if these three things should matter. Because as it is now, it doesn't support any of these, but only a very simple mod system. Meaning that legendary items can have the most the slots, so therefore you make those and hope you get as many slots as possible.
The boots I made above with 3 mod slots for these screenshots, I had to reload several times, because some of them only had 1 mod slot. Which means that a pair of legendary boots if they only have 1 mod slot is no better than a pair of blue ones which also have 1 slot.
A quick solution would be to allow the player to customize the look of an item, so that I could make my boots look like a pair of office shoes. Which clearly would solve the look issue. But it wouldn't solve the realism issue, that a pair of office shoes have more armor than a pair of combat boots.
Another issue is that, if you are allowed to change the look of items, these will quickly end up being yet another redundant feature, sort of like how the food and drink works, where you have 30+ different types which does exactly the same. And therefore becomes more of an annoying feature than something useful.
So the whole armor/clothing, style, realism and lore thing regarding armors have some huge issues as I see it, so how to solve it?
Solutions
Honestly im not entirely sure, so hope others will be able to add some ideas as well. But the absolute key issue as I see it, is the simplicity of the system or game. It simply can't support all of these things and also why I started by saying that I don't think this is something that is solved simply by changing a few values. So don't expect these suggestions to really fit into the current game, as a lot of changes is needed here.
1. Style matters (Lore)
According to the lore style is very important so that need to be reflected in the system somehow. What I would suggest is that each armor/clothing item have style values. Not just one, but several. Which is because one style might work for some but not others, Corpo might not like you looking like a biker straight out of a bar, but might prefer expensive clothing like suits, the correct brands etc. Whereas the average street type, doesn't like some suit wearing type telling them what to do.
Depending on what type of clothing you use, it would increase your chance of successfully interact with different types of people, whether that is gangs or corpo etc. Clearly this would require that more RPG elements are brought into CP, so dialogs options are not as simple as they are now, where they basically have no impact at all. But rather style, background and character stats are what decide how likely you are to succeed in conversation. This would obviously be a huge change of CP as nothing like this exists in it. Even places where one would assume it did, there is nothing like it.
I think most people have tried to make that guy that sell BDs in jigjig street lower his prices based on a "skill check" and from what I can see it is an automatic fail with no chance of success at all, I don't even think a check is being made at all.
So basically style would be a main driving force for conversations, convincing people, intimidation, in certain cases it might even trigger them to attack you. etc.
2. Realism
This is a strange one, because obviously you can look cool in hardcore armor. But there need to be some sort of trade off. So clearly heavy armor or modified material made for protection and that covers large portions of the body should offer better protection than a pair of office shoes, doesn't matter if it's magic shoes or not. It simply doesn't work.
Armor should be split into 3 categories:
Heavy, medium and light
Heavy armor should be worn by strong characters, certain mods could be added which reduce these requirements to add options, but in general people that have gone deep into body could use them as they would work well with a playstyle of someone that want to get up close and offers the best protection against most things. However they might reduce movement and attack speed, lowering stealth and have little protection against certain types of damage etc. This would obviously need to be balanced.
Medium armor are for those that prefer more of a mixture gameplay and give a decent amount of protection. And give some benefits from the heavy armor and some from the light armor.
Light armor would be for those that prefer stealth or more of a long range combat style, maybe even some nethackers.
All armor could give some penalty to nethacking, simply to give each playstyle a more distinct feel, but again certain mods might allow the player to try different options and adjust these bonus slightly to better suit their playstyle.
Armor could also influence options in dialogs, so for instance heavy armor of certain types might give a bonus to intimidation, but a minus to reasoning with people, for instance showing up to a corpo wearing some street looking heavy armor, might have a big effect on how willing they are to deal with you or they might be intimidated, or if you use a heavy armor of the style they prefer it might give you some bonuses. And this would apply to all kinds of type of armor. But maybe in general showing up with a lot of armor looking like you are ready to start a war, might be bad for your style overall, again to make armor and style influence each other and give players options in regards to how much they value one over the other.
Another idea could be, that armor could only be changed at your car or in your apartment, to avoid people from "cheating" with dialogs and also make it slightly more immersive.
3. General mechanics
The gear and playstyle people choose should be expressed in the game mechanics as well, so everything or most thing will have benefits or disadvantages in one way or another, there shouldn't be a simple, "Legendary win all option" but even within these there would be tradeoffs simply due to the type of item used. It would make handling your inventory and gear a lot more interesting, compared to simply looking out for number of mod slots, but also different damage types could be used better, and different types of heavy, medium and light armor, depending on the material they are made off, what mods the player are using, could change the resistance to different type of damage, some maybe have a chance to automatically interrupt hackers, reflect hacks and so forth.
Conclusion
The current system need to be more complex as I see it and better integrated into the game, so it feels like it matters what you wear and how you choose to style your character if CDPR want to fix this issue in a good way.
And obviously styles would be amazing, if the game really supported the idea of lifepath as well. So a corpo player, might have access to more missions with them and in general simply had benefits of hanging out more in this type of environment than the others lifepath, that could be really cool.
Simply allowing people to change the look, even though it would be an improvement, I don't feel is enough to solve the general issue with how armor and clothing are integrated and work in the game currently, both when it comes to mechanics, but also in regards to the lore.
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