LW staff has promised to not retire any items other than pre-launch items. The prices in the event shop are way too high for casual players and plenty of people who ARE here now aren't going to get everything, much less people who join later and have to buy them at even more obscene prices from players who had the time to grind out multiples.

Those who want items to retire so they can sell them for higher later is just.. :|

Yeah, I would really rather the items on LW not even "soft retire" at all, I want the devs to prioritize new & future players' enjoyment of the game over current player's desire for profit. :/

I would have an ironically "softer" stance on the "soft retiring" if the prices were not so ridiculously high to begin with, it will be a struggle for anyone that isn't glued to the game for 12 hours a day to get more than 1 of everything on offer. 1 of everything may still be a stretch at current prices.

If they are "soft retiring" for store slot reasons, I'd rather they either "soft retire" after a couple of seasons of being in the shop and then go into those boxes, or remain on offer but in "combined packs" to take up less space in the shop.

I think soft-retiring is a good way to have some items accrue value over time, without making them impossible to obtain, something very necessary to keep an economy running. That being said; the sheer amount of items and their price, make this specific case a bad execution in my opinion. Prices need to be lowered and/or less items need to be soft retiring in order for this to work properly.

Yes to soft retiring (no to hard retiring, btw!) but we need a significant decrease in the amount of items soft retiring and the prices of them. 3300 tickets to just get one of each is just too much. Lorwolf is supposed to be a game we play for fun, not a second job.

(Also just to be clear, because I think some people may have different definitions of soft retiring; in my understand soft retiring means the items will be 'readily' available now, and a lot harder to obtain in the future, for example through a lootbox-type thing, a give away or even just 10x the original price, maybe even increasing price each year, with a hard limit of how many can be bought. Hard retiring is that it isn't available again in the future in any way, shape or form; the amount of copies released during the initial release is the amount of copies that we'll just have to make do with. If it simply returns each event in the same way. but isn't available outside the event, I would call that cycling, not soft retiring)

I am ok with soft retiring like they plan. However I agree the prices are way too high for soft retiring to work right now. Players of all play styles should be able to get a couple sets (at the least a set to keep and a set to sell). The way prices are now even overachieving players will have trouble getting a couple sets let alone any other play style.

in short: Yes to soft retire but only if prices are lowered or like the trail where you can get bulk tickets at a decent rate is replayable.

i really dislike this change in light of the fact that they're putting soft-retired items in loot boxes in the future -- not because players in the future will have a chance at these items, that's great, but because they'll have to PAY for that chance with real money. this change, getting rid of the discord (where ppl gave a lot of feedback when they didn't like changes, something that happened immediately before the decision to remove it), and the lack of communication is really frustrating to me and makes me concerned that the site is going to heavily monetize in the future. i strongly dislike loot boxes and gacha mechanics.

@Quiche whether you spend premium currency directly or not, it's not something i would like to see on the site and not a good sign imo especially when new players are having a hard time already. based on my experience with gacha mobile games and KMMOs:

• lootboxes are lootboxes and it's going to cost players $$$ one way or another. for example they could buy pebbles with MS, which encourages sales through real money, just in a roundabout way that obscures how much the player has spent...
• in addition, lootboxes give random loot, and unless dupes are coded out, users will receive duplicate items on bad rolls. meaning players will have to spend more to get what they want, let alone get everything, and sometimes they might not get anything they want at all. an exchange system for duplicates alleviates this, but i've never seen one that wasn't a pittance for players or just a gimmick to get them to "donate" their dupes for more lootbox chances.
• people will struggle to get what they want even if we assume all drop rates are equal. but usually lootbox items have different drop rates assigned, so there will be "rare" items. these items almost always the better items that players really want. so they roll more, and there may or may not be a pity system to cushion their losses. this is how gacha tricks people into spending thousands of dollars -- they've already spent so much, surely they'll be close to getting what they really want this time.
• it's gambling.

in sum, there is a lot of pressure to spend real money, even if the currency for the lootbox is not premium itself.

I agree with Alanna, and I would also like to add that lootboxes don't necessarily have to cost anyone money directly or indirectly. One of the many examples I can think of: what if the lootbox is available in future events for event tickets Those are soulbound, no way to buy them, so no way to spend (or feel the need to spend) real money to get the box.(Ofcourse you could buy more lootboxes of others (assuming they are not soulbound) and you could do so for moonstones, but that wouldn't be any different from choosing to buy something of someone else using moonstones.)

That being said, I do know and agree that lootboxes in other game genres have a horrible reputation and are very unhealthy, so the devs definitely need to tread carefully, if they go ahead with the lootbox idea, that it's not done in a predatory way. But luckily I see a couple of avenues available to soft-retire items in a way that is healthy both for the players and for the game. Throwing some additional ideas here:

1. everyone getting a free lootbox with every event

2. people being able to buy 1 or maybe multiple (but still limited amounts) of lootboxes each event for event currency

3. Lootboxes being part of the level up thing in the event

4. lootboxes being rare but random drops when doing activities during an event

5. sitewide giveaways similar to the holiday snowcat

6. offering the lootbox as a reward in events (plentiful profiles for example)

That being said, as I said in my earlier post, the main issue rn is the price and amount of soft-retiring items (along with the fact it is not 100% clear to me - and I've seen a few others as well - which items are going to soft-reitre and which ones aren't)