I am not sure why people are so against the new equipment, the idea seems fine to me. Its a fresh angle to the game and putting equipment in the ltqs gives a bit more incentive reason to do them. It also offers some strategic choice - go for farming equipment, or go for completion of the ltq and the end/wrapper prizes.
What would be helpful is a much more accurate description of exactly how a battle result is calculated, and a display that shows us our army equipment stats.
After a long period of complaint about it being too easy for an attacker to win, I had thought things had improved and the win/loss results seemed to make more sense. That was until a week or so ago when it seems to have reverted and I have people with attack not much more than half my defence, and way less equipment, easily and consistently beating me in raids. If this continues the up-coming PvP is going to be a disaster.