A little Observation.

I'm not sure if everyone is noticing this, but it seems that the hero armors, whether upgraded or not, are usually more elaborate than Character Armors. I believe that if ANET either changed that around, or could create armors like that for our characters, there would be less competition.

Less competition for what? People arent competing with heroes. But i agree, give me a necro that looks like Livia, and i'll be happy.

The reason why hero armor is more elaborate is because
a) there is only one model of the hero, there is no need to scale the model shorter or taller for different sized characters and different hairdos

b) hero armor is all one piece. Unlike human players, hero armor isn't designed to be able to be mix and matched.

if i had armor like that on some of my chars i wouldn't need or want to mix and match

Xandra armor on my rit = yum.

Koss always looks the same for all characters, not all characters look alike, what looks great on one char might look fugly on the next, Koss dousnt have that problem so they can design an armor that truly fits him.

But i disagree with you, basic armor can look great, and if those arnt good enough there are plenty more expensive sets that i think look alot better on us then hero armor. I wouldnt prefer Ogden's armor for my monk char for example.

yes there are several hero armor types i would love to have on my playable characters.

Every character of a certain class has a certain model. The only real difference is skin tone and hair style, which both can be matched with dye and choosing the right armor set. I think a bit more variety in the armor styles like what we see with EOTN heroes, such as Xandra and Livia would be a welcome change. And I'm not talking about the augmentations either.