I agree. The new raid system is a bit frustrating, having to farm 20+ toons, in most cases either the latest toons or garbage ones, to play a raid only for a new raid to get released 8 months later, forcing you to farm completely different toons. But at least with raids, we were warned in advance what to expect. Meanwhile, with the ABs we were informed about the rotation about two weeks after players kept asking and speculating on what is happening.
The progression in GoH is simple. Every player starts off as an absolute beginner and then soon moves on to early game. From there they slowly become mid-game players and eventually reach the late-game. In order to move from one stage to the next, they build their roster using resources and events accessible to their current level. In the case of the old ABs, they are available and highly useful to early game players, they are a steady source of income for mid-game, and are still beneficial/necessary for late-gamers. The new ABs, however, benefit only late-gamers, but require new and higher investments to be useful, investments that are by now means accessible to mid- and especially early-game players. The tiers that early-stagers can play give out meaningless rewards. The first two tiers of DoF gives out a few shards for POW or MQG, PP gives out a few shards of NT or Enoch or DTP; the third tier requires R1 and gives out mod slicing mats, which, while useful, are nowhere near as useful as gear and relic mats or signal data or zetas (which the new ABs do not give out) when it comes to roster growth. The old ABs have static rewards, so players can plan in advance how to use those resources; new ABs give good rewards, but like I said they are mainly aimed at late-game level, but are RNG based - you get either CCBs or BWs, Fragmented SD or Incomplete SD (and if I may add, PP does not give signal data at all), Droid Brains or Gyrda Keypads, which means that players are unable to plan in advance and it will take a much longer time for RoI to kick in. And what happens when we have enough new ABs that even DoF and PP are put on rotation? What's the point in investing toward events like this if everything we do is invalidated later on, especially without any warning?