Here's one that does not amuse us:  activesofts changed from rating x 3000 to rating x 10000 in cost...  Way to nerf the skillwires right after I make a skillwires character -.-  The price of rating 4 active soft is now so prohibitive that a character would be lucky to start with just one activesoft at rating 4, making skillwires a pretty silly ware choice.  Seriously, 40k is most of the way towards a novahot alpha or betaware upgrade, and they want you to pay that for one skill where you can't even use Edge?  Nudging people towards task spirits, much?  For 0 =Y=, a mage of the appropriate tradition can summon a force 6 task spirit with a 6 in any skill they want, while it takes a samurai months to save up for the same effect, and it's at a lower rating.  I thought skillwires were balanced just fine, at 12k per pop you really can't start with a lot of them without draining your resources fast...  Oh well, this is just something reported on dumpshock, maybe it ain't so.  At any rate, I'm keeping the ones my character already has, no way is this gonna get applied to me retroactively to annihilate the entire concept behind my character build, not when I'm my own GM

I would actually say that depends...

If we institute SR4A as the ruleset for Wild Wild West, then it would apply to you, and your character.  Even retroactively.  Seeing as we're in a state of free build, and 100% rollover karma, there is little argument as to why something would NOT apply rertroactively.  If we start not applying things retroactively then you begin to have too many issues in the short and long term as far as sensible systems go:

For instance, a mage already made could use the same argument about drain.  And subsequently many have, however they have not attempted to claim a lack of retroactivity, instead they assume (rightly so) that if the game goes to SR4A then we all are affected and many of our characters get changed.

This is, if I still can read, effectively the argument that was just taking place on this forum in this particular subject.  The argument was more generalized but I am sure that those arguing against the changes were looking at their own character concepts that they had in mind already and now felt they could not accomplish because the system was becoming too harsh with regards to their particular characters.

If one were to follow your argument as far as the skillwires person is concerned, then it would also be fair of a person who has already chargenned to ignore the new drain rules and other magical changes.  I personally would hate to see that disparity.  Half of the mages do drain one way and the other half does it another?  Does not seem to make sense to me.

I do not pay attention to general gaming boards (i.e. Dumpshock, D&D forums, etc) so I do not hear all of the potential changes that are happening.  If/when a legitimate and official source comes out with something that affects my character so much as to make them unplayable as I want to play them... I will simply use the suicide command and make another character.  That's the Wild Wild West for you, it eats characters alive.  Simple as that.

Either get on the wagon, or get left behind.

Well, seeing as how I get to decide, no matter what you say, my response to your argument can be to moon you, and go on about my buseinss

That said, you're probably right.  I was just very happy with my character, since she was the cheesiest thing since cheddar, packed with only used ware in order to effectively give myself a bonus 80k nuyen while still having great stats.  She is far from maxed out compared to a bleeding edge samurai, but she's still great at ranged combat, melee combat, social skills, computer skills, demolitions, stealth, driving, and probably more stuff that I'm forgetting atm.  And it took like four hours to build her sheet because it's so complex >.<

My problem is, under SR4A, the character concept is basically impossible.  I wanted her to be a rich kid who took sword and gymnastics lessons growing up, and learned social skills through socializing, and then wanted to become a runner by diverting money from her trust fund to pay for illegal ware, and then learning combat skills like pistols and infiltration through chips...  Though I suppose I can remake her with those skills as meat skills, and just say that she took lessons for those, too