Great FAQ, answers a whole lot of Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta my initial doubts. Gosh, this looks so complex. On the one hand, kudos for keeping the original game intact so there won't be a riot over fluctuations people don't like. But on the flip side, since they are remaking base PSO2 visuals anyhow, I wish they would only go 100 percent and synchronize personality models completely. Giving old players some free fashion items and unlocks will be sufficient to bribe everyone to take the new system.
Synchronizing 100% personality models does not seem simple. The dilemma is that the older outfits and coating use are modeled to match the old pso2 body. To be able to synchronize it, they would have to recreate from scratch (haha pun) 8 decades of makeup. That is unlikely to happen. Well, I mean that I would be ready to shed a certain percentage of these makeup to keep things intact around versions. As long as there's a continuous feed of cool new things to replace it, I do not mind. I always rotate out my older appearances anyhow. So long as the character versions translate 1:1 it'll still feel just like mine.
The instance I can think of is the Dragon Hunter Frontier Z cooperation where I can imagine the clothing and weapons could definitely be provided a visual upgrade together with everything else but that I don't exactly know how the licensing or the way the lawful side of this collaboration functions where I'd wish it had been as simple as Sega going through and updating the assets but I don't understand about just how much of Capcom is involved in that process.
When it was only just Phantasy Star-related items (like character outfits, cameos from different games, or other Sega-related properties) I could imagine this likely would have been achieved, or at least would be done. But in the worldwide variant we already don't have the existence of Cougar NX therefore that I don't know if there are other complications seeing Sega's properties that might also contribute not to upgrading everything they could within reason.
I can envision that probably out there we'll still see somebody wearing those old collaboration items even when they are not awakened to the same criteria as new cosmetics in a similar manner and that there definitely would have been outrage when it was made obsolete or unusable. Collabs that have experienced their cosmetics removed still have their resources exist on the game so those will likely still be accessible for cheap PSO2 Meseta jp players.