Visible equipment is a big bonus for me, and sorely missed when absent. As for the cutscene issue you mentioned, that's up to the player as well as the developer. Its up to the developer to design gear that gels well with both the storytelling and gameplay and the player has themselves to blame if they wanna dress silly but still take the story seriously.

If the gear looks cool, then I like it to show. I do not like it when I custom make a character and he ends up being buried in generic-looking armor. On an unrelated note, one thing that bugged me with FF10 was how these adventurers who know they will be traveling through a frozen mountain range never pack cold weather gear. Running around on mount Gagazet in shorts looked super stupid.

I like dress up for my character. I can either make them look really stupid and out of place or really cool and bad ass, win win

I'm a big fan of visual changes to equipment/ I love tweaking the hell out of what my characters wear in my RPG's. I remember spending 20 mins trying to deck out my Monk in D3, to the point where I actually skipped from town to town, trying to find the dyes I wanted, as well as doing challenges and seasons to collect matching armor sets, not only for the bonuses, but also for looks as well. I find those RPG's that don't roll with visual changes, tend to hold back a bit of that freedom to change how your character looks, and feels more like the game is telling you how to play and what to wear.

I personally really like it and “Visible” equipment in my opinion should alway be a thing. The capabilities of the consoles can easily support it so if it’s not there it’s simply laziness from the developers.

Love it

...even though the above is not exactly "equipment" per say, but you catch my drift.

I don't care much, but I know many people like it, so why not.

I liked how they did it on ffxii, some things change but you can still see the character design. I hate it when heads are covered

I thought Xenoblade Chronicles X had a great system. On top of the usual equipment menu you had a fashion gear menu in which you could equip items that merely affected the looks of you characters. So if you wanted the armour you equipped to also be represented visually you could just leave the fashion gear menu alone (default setting), if you wanted to choose for yourself how the characters should look you could just go wild in the fashion gear menu. And if you wanted the characters to retain the default look you could take their initial gear and equip those items as fashion gear.

I really like it when different armour pieces also have different visual representations. I like it even more when I'm allowed to customise without having to worry about stats. And I understand why some just want the characters to retain that default look. By having one equipment screen for changing stats and another for changing visuals you're able to satisfy everyone, which is why I think such a menu should be mandatory in RPG's.

Edit:

There was one thing I forgot to mention. Xenoblade Chronicles X also had an option to hide head armour. That's another thing that should be mandatory in RPG's!

Definitely like different equipment to change how my character looks. Though I definitely want an option to make helmets invisible (like there is in Dragon Age), so you can still see the characters.