Using the same style on the Hard Mode Raid has been the plan since the beginning, which you can read about in our blog post: Reborn Dev Spotlight: End Game Content and Post-Launch Updates
We decided to try using the gold foil to give a bit of differentiation to the gear, and also because we have received requests in the past from folks wanting access to the gold foil styles of some of the more rare gear (e.g. the reputation sets, etc.). As with anything, we’ll consider community feedback on this approach for next time, but the gear not having a new style shouldn’t really be a surprise at this point. With the transmog system you can choose to make it look differently of course if you’d rather dye it.
Honestly, regarding the Hard Mode Raid in general, this is content that only like 1% of the entire population of the game is going to see. We’re trying to find a balance between having limited resources which we want to use to impact the largest portion of the player base (with new content in the overworld, new features like inventory management that benefit everyone, etc), against creating content like this that, quite frankly, only a very small portion of the player base will even experience. So, bottom line, it’s extremely unlikely unless we are able to greatly expand the team/resources we have in the future that we would have time to create 8 full new styles just for the Hard Mode Raids.
So basically if the general consensus is that the gold foil is unwanted and you’d all rather just have the exact same style from the Normal Mode Raid with better stats, that’s fine…but there’s a reason why we made it very clear early on there would not be a new gear style for that raid.
There is a very cool and unique mount which you can get in the Raid if your primary driving incentive is to get a piece of gear that shows off your progress in the game.
I have no idea what you mean by this. We have a pair of knuckles controllers we have been testing this with, it seems to work fine now. But of course we’re always open to further feedback on any change that we make.