Armor could be upgraded visually for its quality, take for example the exile light armor, default it has ragged skirt, exceptional it could have a repaired skirt, flawless could have some other simple visual improvement maybe another shoulder guard, maybe a chest guard.
It should work the other way too, exile heavy armor is too perfect, the actual one could become the exceptional and the default could be visually downgraded, say add some dullness to the metal.
This would make wonders to armor variety.
Another approach could be to add visual differencies for armor mods.