The reason year one gear should be relevant in year 2 is because we are talking about armor and weapons. There's no reason even in a Sci-fi fantasy world that weapons and armor couldn't be augmented or upgraded in some way to keep up with current technologies. Therefor we should be able to upgrade even basic common gear to be relevant with whatever the current level cap is. Not only is this a more robust and realistic approach to supplying a guardian with gear but will make the options even greater for customization and uniqueness down the road when the amount of choices could (given we actually were able to upgrade even common gear) be hundreds of styles. At that point truly no 2 guardians would look alike but the playing field could still be level. I hope that this intrigues some of you cause I for one would love to see it