Tl;dr - Year1 equipment gets year 2 variant to be online with where the game is headed. What I'm thinking is if you were to inspect your armor or your weapon any of your gear that you equipped and instead of saying Masterwork or Infuse it can have another option that lets it become year 2, like a reforge. perhaps even using materials and having to go to the gunsmith and spend these materials to make these armors and weapons year 2. Make every year one weapon and armor droppable from a certain sources, or have a vendor you can rank up in to get them so people who still wanted this armor or weapons can still get them and they will still be relevent.