You can't change companion weapons or armour

Yeah now I have a ton of questions. To what degree do we specialize, level up or control them at all? That's half the reason I play their games - tactical group combat. In ME1 you had near full control over this. On top of it all, we have 6 companions. ME2 had 12. 

Considering how much you can customize your Ryder in the game, maybe that was one of the trade offs they had to make?  Because you can really, really, reallllly customize your Ryder.  Far more then Shepard in the trilogy in terms of who they are (your dialog choices) and the gameplay choices you can make (mix and matching your weapons, mix and matching your powers).  And that is really what an RPG is about.  Making choices for your character.  

Well if we have no level cap, we can likely max out their skills completely.

You cant tell them what powers they use anymore, they "do their own thing"(thats a new meme now). Apparently they can still prime their strikes for you to do combos, or try to use combos of their own.  I think you can still position them or tell them what enemy to attack.

Just remember it took nearly a year and ten patches to get the Skyhold outfits in DAI

Each companion in DAI was unique in some way, and you could equip them with different weapons and armor.  The outfits simply changed to match that character's unique style.  Leather armor you put on Varric would look different on Cole, Sera, or even the Inquisitor.

It was awesome.

I've known this for a while. I was very disappointed to hear it but the shock has worn off and I'm cool with it. It's going to make it less exciting to pick up loot and I don't understand why they decided this (I guess crew has to look fashionable) but overall I guess it's fine.

My money is also on that they'll listen to our feedback and introduce a new armorset or two for the squadmates with a patch some day. If they could make the Wardrobe for DA:I and Black Emporium free DLC they can do this too.

Agreed.

And took nearly a year to get.

How many people want to spend a year with Peebee charging into gunfights or wandering around a toxic world in a red jacket while everyone else gets armor?

But the fact that we also can't equip them with weapons... that's really shitty IMO. We always could that in any other BioWare game. What the hell?

This news might've placed her on the bottom of usage on the field between squadmates.

Eh, based on MP is seems breather masks are the 'lore' helmets of asari

Honestly is that really that much of a problem?  Granted I am not that much of a lore expert where I can just quote Asari biology off the top of my head, but in science fiction.  In Mass Effect, is it really beyond the realm of possibility that Asari wouldn't need space suits when going around in low atomposhere or no atomosphere environments.  I am just going around with the idea that these characters use biotics to maintain their equilibrium or have some sort of other biological advantage until someone can point to an exact sentence in lore which says that Asari need such things to survive.