We haven't put any considerable amount of time into discussing the retirement of older adventures. It's come up before but really: we're not keen on it. Not saying that it will NEVER happen, but I'm saying that it's not currently planned.
Fair enough. Given the comments I made previously in the thread regarding the faction changes impacting old design principles, I suspect that within a year, the only Season 1 mods to be run even semi-regularly will be those that have secret missions, to allow 'unlocking' of the magic item store.
The magic item rewards for factions were pretty intensely discussed internally. What we found, though, is that the introduction of these items leads to players feeling more invested and better-recognized in-game - which leads to better player retention.
I'm curious how you 'found' this out -- are you doing some sort of internal playtest with this new material, and if so, on which population are you testing with? Or was there some mechanic in, say, the D&D Open that mimicked this effect?
I would believe you if you said you 'believe' that introducing magic item rewards for factions would increase player retention, but it seems strange to talk about it as if you've tested it and have data to show that it's a real effect. I'd argue that, if you're going by the response to the D&D Open as a way of measuring player retention, the folks playing in that event are not a representative sample of AL players worldwide; *any* reward mechanic would grade out as showing increased player retention, since the players who are motivated enough to travel to conventions and sign up to play in special events are the ones who already have the most 'buy-in' to the campaign. Plus you're ignoring the other side of the coin -- if you increase player retention, but in a way that also increases the barriers to new players entering the campaign, have you really improved the overall standing of the campaign?
Allowing the players to earn minor numeric upgrades (+1 weapons, +1 armors, etc) goes a long way towards helping players build a sense of "win".
And quickly establishing an expectation that a level 5 or 6 character 'should' have a +1 weapon, and by level 7 should also have +1 armor. Players who lack the opportunity to achieve these milestones, either because they choose not to pursue them or because they are 'casual' enough not to be able to ensure they can play in the adventures that unlock those options, are going to feel left out and believe that the campaign doesn't care about their style of play. And that will not improve retention, given that part of the draw of Adventurers League to this point is that it hasn't emphasized numerical advantages and optimization over other playstyles.
Again, time will tell, but I'm not convinced that this is going to end up being the unmitigated 'win' that you believe it will be.
As for the 500 downtime days (between tier 3 and tier 4) "going away" or "being lowered"... I'm not sure where you heard that. This number was selected to better keep DMs in-line with their players should they choose to be, and we haven't really discussed modifying it.
You might want to talk to Greg, then.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?504268-Backend-SKT-Module-Info-Released&p=6956741&viewfull=1#post6956741
Edit: The reason the 500 downtime days seems problematic is based on simple math -- it would take 100 2-hour adventures for a player to reach 500 downtime days, assuming that character doesn't spend any of those days on other things (such as catching up at level 5 or 11); a character will reach level 17 after roughly 52-68 2-hour adventures (presuming it takes roughly 10-12 such adventures to get through tier 1, 18-24 to get through tier 2, and 24-32 to get through tier 3 -- if my math is wrong, I apologize, but based on logsheets I've seen this appears to be a ballpark estimate), or even fewer if AL adventures are combined with hard-cover adventures, since the 'chapter' method of awarding downtime awards an even lower ratio of downtime days compared to XP.
250 downtime days would be a more achievable total, as well as commensurate with existing rules regarding acquiring tool proficiencies or languages via downtime.
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Pauper