passionata: I never got why folks would want to rush through a game with ubergear, even the DLC jackets in my book are nothing more than blatant cheats (if not playing on hardest setting)!
But not everyone plays a game for the same exact reasons. Some are in for the gameplay, some are in for the story, some are in in the hope to get their asses kicked a lot, some are in just for the fun and some are in for a bit of everything...
If all the gamers wanted the same things it would be a win-win situation for developers. As it is if developers only focused on a special type of gamers they would end up hitting the same small part of the whole gamer population. Why do you think difficulty levels were invented? It's because not all gamers want to have their asses handed to them every few seconds.
Like difficulty levels New game+ when correctly implemented is just a feature that satisfy a part of the gamer population without really hampering the others. You want it you pick it. You don't want it, you start a new normal game... Simple as that. Furthermore we're talking about a single player game here so the way people play it ( hard or easy, , game+ or not, cheats or not) is not even a factor. If some people ruin their game it only affects them (as long as they don't start complaining about it).
The only problem with New game+ as far as RPG are concerned is that most of the good stuff is won doing quests so starting a new game with all the good stuff kinda defeat the purpose of some quests. But that aside it's all a matter of choice and tastes.