The "Big 6" items are about as dull as dishwater, and it's a real shame that characters in 3.5 need them to keep up. I absolutely think #7 is where the game needs to go-- make power more of an inherent, rather than item-based aspect of a character. In my mind, magic items ought to be:
-Interesting-- nothing that simply raises stats or makes hitting easier
-Nuanced-- versatile and helpful in a variety of situations
-Few-- no more than two or three per-character. Head/Arms/Body seems like a good breakdown to me, maybe a Feet slot in there too.
Pathfinder ought to give the PCs enough bonuses so that magic items are completely unnecessary to defeat appropriately-CRed monsters. Yes, that means that non-casters will have to get the hell buffed out of them, but that's something I'm honestly OK with.
4e does some things right by making nearly every item have a special power to use, reducing the items a character needs to pull their own weight (and can use at all), and making spellcasters equally as dependent on items as non-spellcasters. But +1 swords and +2 plate armor are still in the game, and still rather unexciting.
