devtrackers.gg
The main point of removing a lot of the gear from the loadouts was to reduce the amount of free supplies the players get (especially in multiplayer where you get those every time you respawn).
Personally I would argue it doesn't reduce the variety of the characters by much: even though the characters start as kind of "blank slates" now, it doesn't take that many minutes to obtain gear from elsewhere and start building your character and equipment in the direction want to.
Reducing the availability of supplies has been the point of many of the other recent changes to the economy as well: we feel resources were often too easy to come by, to the point where at the later stages of the campaign you had such an overabundance of supplies you practically didn't even need to care about obtaining more. Now we're trying to make resources a little more scarce - although, there is still a lot more work remaining to get the economy and balance right.
Personally I would argue it doesn't reduce the variety of the characters by much: even though the characters start as kind of "blank slates" now, it doesn't take that many minutes to obtain gear from elsewhere and start building your character and equipment in the direction want to.
Reducing the availability of supplies has been the point of many of the other recent changes to the economy as well: we feel resources were often too easy to come by, to the point where at the later stages of the campaign you had such an overabundance of supplies you practically didn't even need to care about obtaining more. Now we're trying to make resources a little more scarce - although, there is still a lot more work remaining to get the economy and balance right.
