18 tiers of gear - should be many more armor

Diablo 2 did not have 15. It had 5. And those were mostly recolored versions of each other with extra pieces stuck on to make them look different.

Not to knock Diablo 2. The number of looks it had are amazing considering what it took to render them out.

Q u o t e:


He means, when you equip them, 3 look very much alike with minor changes. Not that, in your inventory, they're unique looking.

Oh, yeah, icons don't count. :P Those will be unique per item though, too, FYI.

Q u o t e:
these look all different

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/7572/armorappearencepf6.jpg

Look closer?

Hopefully this will help. These aren't new, they're from the BlizzCon 2010 panel. There are most certainly already pictures out there of these slides (if not video). These are 4 of the set appearances for the witch doctor. They're unique from each other in every way, including unique geometry, textures, and in some cases animations, and that is true of the other 14 'tiers'.

http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt243/bashiok/Picture2.png
http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt243/bashiok/Picture4.png
http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt243/bashiok/Picture3.png
http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt243/bashiok/Picture1.png

These visual looks do not determine anything about the item stats, name, quality, etc.

Q u o t e:
it will not be cool to play a whole act and only have 1 ( 2 sometimes ) new type of armor available to find

Hrm. Not cool compared to what? I don't think this is being compared accurately to what Diablo II or even other games offer as far as visual upgrades to a character. 18 tiers, times 5 classes, times 8 armor slots is 720 unique pieces of armor in Diablo III. That's not counting weapons, or alterations to make each armor piece fit both genders. Oh, and right, the dozen or so different colors you can dye each of those pieces.

I also hope this isn't being confused with actual diversity in item drops. You're still going to be finding tons of items with varying quality levels and stats, but the best are going to always be pushing your character's aesthetic 'impressiveness' forward.

Q u o t e:
as compared to d2 you joined a new act and had access to 3-4 or so new armor types

Aside from those 3-4 being minimal changes from one another, they repeated per difficulty. We don't think that's nearly as cool.

Numbers-wise, yes, absolutely Diablo II had more "unique looks" per act. From a viewpoint of actually considering what's available in Diablo III, we've got a ton more items for you to find, and they're all unique, and amazing looking.