What about replacing current quality numbers with colours or something that takes into consideration a wider range of those numbers?
Lets say the classic MMORPG system, common, uncommon, rare, exceptional, epic, legendary ... or colours, or a new Jorb/HnH style scale.
Numbers would be still there as it is right now, only difference you won't see them, you can just guess the gap it's in based on rarity of the item you have, lets say epic = quality 100 till 200 and so on.
It's not a bad thing to meditate about ... idk if there is a way to not send numbers to the client, but I hope so.