Sounds like what Vanguard had was just another variant of transmog then. Just less of a hassle than the WoW system.
In practice I used the visual slots a lot on some of my characters; not so much on others.
For example my Death Cleric would use the Death Cleric armor in the visual slots even if I had a higher end armor in the regular slots. The Death Cleric armor was +Intelligence and +Spiritual Damage Focus. Spiritual damage was of course the damage type of Cleric damage spells. This armor was only useful during soloing. In group a Death Cleric still wanted to primarily heal.
But my tanks would completely ignore the visual slots and I would just put my best heavy armor on display, so people could at a glance see I had it.
Either way this was for a MMORPG where individualization was important. I dont think its as important in a solo game.
So its more of a nice to have, not a musthave.
BG3 for example has no such thing, except one can change the color of equipment. That doesnt do too much though.
