I actually think the non-helmeted guys do pretty well at retail though...
I mean, at least in my area anyway, almost all the Endor Rebels are gone, and that figure was so-so at best... And I can't find an honor guard to save my life at retail. I bought one at retail, the other two I have I got from a friend, but as far as seeing them, they're nowhere to be found. I think people see the potential that figure has to be a good generic "base" too for the various guys standing around without helmets. Maybe not, Id on't know, but I can't find the figure at all while I see DST's fairly often... Not abundant, but often. Two or three to a store usually.
Personally I deal with the "clone effect" though on many army builders you can see their faces, but I guess I have the underlying intent to change those heads at some point too with casts somewhere down the line of the myriad of generic heads of all ethnicities that I've built up over the years (and that list keeps growing every year. Thank god for the military toy lines). That maybe sways my opinion slightly.
Still though I'm all for Hasbro whipping up new heads for great figures like the Honor guard, the DST, or whatever else... It even made me appreciate having a couple of the RFT from the Tantive IV pack, even though it's just to break the figures apart for their headsculpts.
I prefer army building the OT personally... But at this point I try to set minimum goals for OT and PT and go for it. The variety from the PT has me limiting at least some of the goals on some of the figure types, but for things like Battledroids, if they hypothetically made the ultimate high quality regular grunt droid in red and tan tomorrow, I'd probably have an insanely high limit on that one... Same as Stormtroopers. While the Airborne Trooper I want about half as many as the Utapau Grunt, or Mace Clones I want only a small squad or two of... Someday.
But, yeah, even if you can see their face, I tend to want a LOT of them. Give me a super articulated Fleet Trooper of figure perfection, and I'll buy it like Stormtroopers... No real limits to how many I'd want. Sure they'll all look alike (at least for a little while) but I'm ok with that. I was the kid with like 5 "Grunt" figures too though, in my GI Joe collection, and they were my green shirts at the time. And that guy had a freaky look too.