We are not saying they are unplayable, we are saying they are underwhelming. At least in the first half of the game physical easily outdamage magical damage, because magic damage mainly depends on level and early on the damage per level is low. Later on it might change because of Source skills, but many of them seem to be by definition kind of gamebreaking by themselves. My friend and I never got that far, because fights were already to boring an repetative, so that he lost interest in playing.
How to show what kind of affinity their Armor-bar has? Pretty simple, just change color of the armor bar accordingly. There are already two colors for magical and physical armor, so you would just need a third color for the 'neutral' state.
