I have mixed feelings here. I like that items soft retire, I enjoy that aspect of petsite economy, but the amount of items that are soft retiring paired with the price makes it concerning to me. In my opinion retiring items should be priced in a way that allows casual players to get however much of what they want before they're gone.
I've been hitting the grind today and over several hours have managed to earn 365 tickets. That sounds like a lot, but when each item is between 75-300, and there are 20+ of them, that's not much at all! Granted this is VERY early on in the event, so there's plenty more to be earned for the next month, but the trials only payout once and it's a slow trickle past that.
In my opinion only the Frostbite Winter Hunter set should soft retire, and the lower rarity ones should continue being available at least for a few cycles of this event. Since the developers have stated they won't make a ton of apparel in favor of making new wolves while the community makes CAs, it's probably a good idea to keep a lot of what they do make in circulation. This way there's less of a panic grind for completionists, something rare and soft retired to hunt for for collectors, and more non user made items in circulation for the economy.
Of course, in the end I think it'll probably be fine if all these items soft retire, it's just growing pains and the panic of a first event with limited goods. Just my thoughts on how it could be more user friendly for people that don't have absurd amounts of free time like I do, LOL.
