There is no reason to retire anything for one simple reason that everyone dreads for no apparent reason:

Power Creep.

The game has a counterbalance that is supposedly built into it: Point Costs.

Yeah, all those DF units have lots of pretty colors and are expensive as hell to put out. The big cool units cost points; the cooler the unit the more points. Thus the counterbalance.

Wizkids can make more powerful units and add new abilities all the while balancing it with the point costs.

As for broken units, they *WILL* be made in every set and I think realistically we all know it. So rotating out sets isn't really going to help that as you will always be dealing with the newest broken pieces for the latest released set.

Despite what anyone here says tournaments (booster or otherwise) do encourage sales. Why? Because you are there at your local hobbystore with these boosters and, if you are like me, the temptation is like a drug. As long as you *KNOW* the pieces aren't going to become retired down the road why not? If you don't get something you want maybe you could trade with your bud. Even when you know that you don't necessarily *NEED* anything, you might buy a few.

So why should you now? I mean, I open a booster now and retirement has sucked the thrill out of it *EVEN* if it is years down the road.

Argue what you want ltrain187 and then tell me that you don't have that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you think of it too. Every player that I know has it, even the newest ones. Do you? If you do, then maybe you arguing on the wrong side and if not who knows you may just be right.

Adorabilly
1) your answer to the new sculpts idea is just a bit off. Wouldn't you like to see some of your favorite mechs come on out. Also We haven't seen any more Ryoken IIs or Vultures or Mad Cat IIIs ...Nice mechs i would like to see more of and if WK included these previous sculpts I think it would really get players drooling.
Yes there will be new things and old things in future sets, however the useless Jes IIs aren't what im talking about and frankly I'll never see enough DF or SH ullers they are the cream of the crop.

2) At least we agree on the SEs....new things like a Beagle Active probe or Enhanced Imaging.

3) And we agree on the campaign idea! i hope WK listens to it cuz well it would honestly be a great way to sooth the tensions....frankly as long as campaign play didn't change I'd be ok.

4) Agreed but the extra cost I'm assuming is for the extra events.

5)True but, cheese is good and tasty...plus it can counter other types of cheese.

6)It wont even the tactical playing field, a new guy wont know the complexed basing tactics, traps and manuvers until he has been beaten by them many times. Units just dont matter that much unless you have no range and only a 20 defense....Stupid pulling Liao Rifelman in a sealed doh doh doh.

7) Can you really say there are any truely power units in the game.....I'd love to know Bill what Arnis isn't that great personally speaking I'd rather make the Arnis player roll the 13 against my Yuri any day. Note all the " power units like the Targe, Arnis, Bounty Hunter ...all new set units!!!
Bill I'd love to know what older units you consider overpowered and why compaired to newer ones.
Also when I was speaking earlier about the GOLDEN RULE OF THE BALANCED ARMY-echo echo echo. I was quite serious a ballanced force will out manuver any other such force in good tactical hands.

8) StormFox's poll conducted by the moderators has over 400 people on this forum with all their differing views on it. It is a standard poll (no one should have 2 accounts) and well over 70 percent said the retirement sceme would definetly end or lessen their buying of the product. No it is not all of what could happen but it gives us a good peak at what could.

At my venues btw the number of upset players is about 100 percent!!!! Even the newer guys ....i feel sorry for them especially. New players wanting to expand there collections bought or won some nice stuff and well now in a year it will all be illegal in the play they sought the very units for.

1. Kenny M. Rusty Cooper, Arnis. I would consider all of them to be older power units. I personally like the fact, I wont'have to see swarms of hoverbikes, or lovely turtling HL armies w/ Kenny m. lets see... tank drop w/ df di schmitt or df marksman goes the way of the dinosaur.

This is a LONG term idea. It is a built in check and balance system so the designers can evaluate everything every 2.5 years, and make the design and game mechanic changes as necessary w/out having to completely neuter those super old units. Look at MK2.0 It changed game mechanics of the game deeply. Older sets could still be used, but they were at a sever disadvantage.


(will they be replaced by newer units? Yes they will and arleady have been. But wait, set retirement is bad, but it is already happening isn't it? Who uses hoverbikes when you can use the ATV's and minigun cycles. Who uses kenny m when they can use SS arrow 4..... It is already happening.)

I think wizkids learned their lesson over MK2.0, and are trying to make better informed choices which will effect game play less.

On your poll statement. Have you taken any statistics courses? To the uninformed (not trying to flame, but explain) that poll looks great. but it has no internal or external validity as a statistical tool. It is the gut check reply to people on this board. Therefore no randomness, no balanced informative questions, no repeated measures methods, no control questions, no repeat questions to determine the truth. As a statistical tool it is very lacking. Using the numbers pulled from it to say anthying less than very generic statements is being very generous.

Yes there are about 70% who will buy less. But how many of them were already buying less for other reasons like seeing the same army toooooo many times. Like having changing personal reasons? Like the fact they were not wanting anythign from LI or Jade Falcon? (remember the new factions is a dual edged sword. It is great if they are what you are after, but it sucks if not. Look at the player turnout for the LI events. Compare them to previous events to get your example) How about players who were tired of the rules constantly changing? All of these are valid questions, but these people who might have already been unhappy are now lumped together to get your 70%

You are right it won't even the playing field completely, but do you actually mean to tell me that having only 4 expansions to get figures, and techniques from is not preferable to having unlimited expansions?

it will even the playing field by making the same players choose from teh same pool of units. Giving the newbie the chance to have the same starting point as the veterna player. How often have you heard that the battle is won by what you choose? At least the players will have the same limitations on what to choose from. IT's a start.

How about not retiring sets at all, stupid ####ed up crazy dutch bastards, because most of my collection consists of darkage units!

Bring it on :) I am never insulted by any of your posts, however, your desire to impose on people to put forth your view is quite amusing.

I posted several viable(maybe not, but at least worth discussing) alternatives to what can be done, however, you put no constructive criticism of the ideas that myself or others on this thread have put forth(which is what your original post asked for). My opinions and responses are all there in my original post to this thread(at least the first couple or so anyways). My post is on topic.

Here are a few ideas that I would like to hear your opinions about, and if it would help(not 'WK can't do it so it's not valid' sort of arguement please).

-Specific Piece Banning/Errata
-Return of Participation LEs
-Faction Purity(I personally would not like this, but it is an idea that is out there to be discussed)
-More WK events(say once a week)
-Campaigns becoming Unrestricted events
-Rated Unrestricted Play as WK AP events

It's there, now you can critique my ideas, or you can continue to critique me. Your choice. OK, and I take back the post regarding you being a flamer. My apologies. Can we get back on topic, please?

My goal here is to be a voice of reason here. Can I get everyone to agree with me? No, and I do not expect to do so, either. That is a simple fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinions here. Please try to keep that in mind, LTrain.

@Adorability: The poll I agree is likely the result of the 'mob mentality' here, but even if you gave it a wide margin of error, it would appear that the result of set restriction will not increase sales among the current players. Whether it will attaract new players enough to compensate, and make it worth it for WK is still to be determined.

Also, you have a point about the 'escalating' strength of units, or 'power creep' as many will call it. However, WK's choice(they ARE in a lose-lose situation here), does not inspire me to continue to buy boosters. It will likely bring balance among MW's tourney formats, however, I hope that there will be enough players left to make an impact on it. And I think there could have been better ways to do game balance(i.e. specific piece banning).

Respectfully Submitted.

That is one of the the questions I think this thread was asking for.

First, I play pure faction Bannson Raiders and will not play anything from any other faction in a serious battle.

To answer the question:
New Bannson Raider stuff which adds to the faction. the pieces do not have to be more powerful then the previous ones, just something different that will allow me to develop a larger amount of strategies.

For this reason I do not like set retirement because it will probably do one of two things:
1)Reduce the number of strategies I can use, or
2)I will have to buy new pieces which perform the same task as the ones which were retired.

Now, what is another solution to Set Retirement?
This is more difficult to answer. The best way to prevent set retirement is to design the game in such a way that new expansions will only add to the game and not replace old figures with better ones. Also a set must be designed to avoid the uber units. However, this approach has two problems -
1)In a game like MW, no matter how hard designers could try to not create super units, Its going to happen because the designers can't possibly play test every aspect of every unit.
2)This design approach is not very newbie friendly, though it is possible to help newbies select the most useful pieces to create their initial army with minimal spending.
Obviously this way does not solve all problems, but I think it may be the best way to solve problem. Of course, could Wizkids even adopt this aproach for MW?

Well now one thing that has always intrigued me is that most units look to have a function in some aspect or another. Others are just real fun to have, and still others look good. And lastly others are made to give us the bottom barrel so we will buy something else just so we are not limited by the junk we have. In a clix game environment there are only so many configurations available that are actually a viable number. What that means is most units will have numbers in certian areas that make them playable. So a mech with an 11 for a damage will not happen just as a mech with a 3 for AV will not happen. Anyone can see how this limits the possiblities in a game. Now what is harder to make out is why there are only a few SE colors and patterns. Much fun as this game is I have more units that have a 4 and 5 attack 6 or 7 movement 9 and 10 AV and 21 22 DV then I can really choose between. Most have similar SE's and most cost about the same. All are useful but I can see why WK feels they are running out of ideas. Here is the problem everything is the same. Answer make them do different things with new SE's. If I have 10 units they all move and attack the same with the same armor I will find that boring. If I have 10 units and each and everyone of them does something specific to that unit then suddenly I want to use that whenever it should be placed in that situation. So lets change some rules and be freaking original. Give me some of those loadout cards maybe they are just a Specific SE type equipment but still cost more to be brought out., There are so many possiblities here it is not funny. But stop with this whole WK had no choice. WK gets our money and should use that to expand and get more creative not try and take away things so the playing field is even, supposedly. WK get up off your Fat rears and do your job get some imagination. Expand this game because once this game starts shrinking I think it will just be too small for me to find.

Ah.... now we get some serious research. Fenris and Cmd steerling now we will see how the research is different from the unscientific poll.

BTW, if I'm wrong about the percentage (my statement was no where near 70%, I'll publically apologize) But I think I'm right, but if I am will others do what I'm willign to do?

(doubt it, I actually expect to see many people say how wizkids is cooking the books, or outright lying. if you doubt me here look at the online chat and what was actuallly typed and what many people actually heard.)

Ok adorabilly the poll done by Stormfox is just like any other poll.
and you are ignoring the question.

The question was will the retirement of sets effect your purchasing???!!! It was quite direct infact!

So directly by this action 70% of the over 400 polled on this forum so yes the majority of the people you have been talking to, will lessing their purchasing from WizKids due DIRECTLY TO THIS RETIREMENT SCEME....This is Im assuming a less than desired effect.

I think the reaction will varry with economic class and region but, I for one know that nearly all of the Hawaii players and there are alot of us are totally pissed and want a change in this future policy.

You may disagree but I'd have to say the numbers are right you should ask people at your venue as well as other battlemasters what there players seem to say. If WK sees such that such a move is unpopular.

Were there any questions directly related to set retirement?? I could not remember any. So much for research.

:) Well, I am certainly hoping that this is the case... I'd like to think our group out here isn't hyper competitive, and it would be nice to be able to play in "official" events with our favorite armies... Heck, that's why I picked up the game to begin with myself, and now that the Warden Wolves (Wolves in Exile) are sort of in the storyline I'm hoping to watch it advance... Frankly, aside from some fairly poor PR (the chat wasn't well received out here, and the mail with the CL comment was just unprofessional), it doesn't look too bad from a player's point of view. Locally here at least I think we're adapting the "Wait and See" attitude. Most of us lived through the Magic thing, we'll see what happens, hopefully it all works out...

'course, just my opinions as always...

Forget the polls and forget the alternatives for a moment (which I have already mentioned several that apparently where ignored because they were perhaps too good for anyone to find holes in the logic) and answer the simple question I asked.

Come on everybody.

Do you have that sinking feeling when you open a booster now? You know kind of a stabbing feeling in your gut followed by mild nausea? Do you feel it would be almost as rewarding flushing your money down the toilet than buying one?

I mean before there was always a chance of pulling #### out of your boosters, but now you have the garantee that the whole box is #### even before you open it. Pardon me when I say, WHEEEE!! JUST WHAT I WANTED!! <note: for the slow witted this is sarcasm>

Everybody that's for this can say what they want and say all their pro's for this but you've got that sinking gut feeling too don't you?

Guh. Flamewars.

Well, I was GONNA post the Pay-for-Play idea I got from the BM boards, but I see it's already been brought up. (Wow, someone's reading what I'm saying. Creepy.) It should be noted that this idea is more of an addition to set retirement, rather than an alternative. And yes, I do feel that retirement will be good for the game, long-term.

People, the game is what you make it. If you automatically discount every unit not listed as a "power unit" on these boards, then they all become useless. But the truly good and creative players examine every piece to try and figure out what is usable, what is good, and what can be used in new, unexpected ways. Try and do this, and your experience will be that much more enriching.

I support the Ideas for both retirement of sets and for a faction pure set of some sort. Although I dont think that the later Idea will ever happen.

Now, THAT I can agree with! ;)