Well. That de-escalated quickly.
Some folks like new boards. Give them a product with JAVM (Just Another Village Map) and a few scenarios, and they're happy. And others apparently start seeing the downsides, which seem to include difficulty in aquiring a complete kit and dilution of playability since it becomes less of a given that most players will have the board your scenario is based on.
I'm pretty firmly in the former camp; I don't mind some over-attention to a few board types and I don't publish scenarios, so I don't worry about players not having all the required boards. Maybe it becomes a self-fulfilling practice; the more products have new boards, the more products NEED TO have new boards. Also, the ease of putting out new boards (and the general aversion to overlays) also makes it easier for designers to want new boards for their designs, rather than make do with old boards and overlays. It also maybe doesn't help that certain map elves keep pestering board designers with things like "Hey, do you need a new map? I wanna do a new map!"
Others' mileages apparently vary, but I don't find this disturbing. We all spend plenty of money on this hobby; I don't mind needing to spend more, and I don't mind not having the boards to play certain scenarios; I just play something else. Not being a newbie, I don't feel the pain of trying to start up or keep up. I would think MMP would find it in their best interest to address that concern, though.
Lastly and FWIW, in my experience it's far easier to sell publishers on a new board if it presents something unique to the system. Believe it or not, there are still new things out there, and publishers want to put out new things. Steve Swann has an Arid Boards project for LFT that's coming out soon/"soon", featuring something like 6-8 new DTO boards that give you more than what you can get with boards 25-31 and overlays. I've done some boards for BFP that will be coming out "soon" that do new PTO things that I'm very happy with. Board 84 in this thread is something new that couldn't be done with previous maps and overlays. I did an Iwo Jima geoboard that will be featured in a tournament "soon". Etc.
So, sure - I can see how others may see some downside here. I just don't agree that it's a problem. Ultimately, if JAVM products stop selling (and I'm not calling AP14 such a product), I imagine publishers will shy away from them. Until then, my take is that people are still interested, and as long as I'm not part of a machine that's cranking out crap and/or overcharging for it, that seems like a good thing.