Hearing from people who have been in charge of guilds, I have been told the same thing regarding platoons. People were actually enthusiastic about farming characters like Lobot, CUP, Eeth Koth, etc just for the sake of filling platoons. Now that the moment a new character hits the streets, they're required in platoons has made all those efforts fall by the wayside.
People are not only disinterested in trying to shell out the cash required to stay relevant in TB, they're also just throwing their hands up on previous efforts as well. I'm sure it was intended to keep everyone on the razor's edge as things moved along, but it's pushing a lot of people over the edge into "Eh, another TB? Who cares?" territory.
For most F2P or more casual guilds, TB has either become a "We'll get there someday!" or "We'll never get there, who cares?" scenario. The sad part is, the latter group is probably the better way to be, because you will NEVER as a F2P guild or casual guild have a 5/6/7* character if it was just released in a marquee a couple days ago. That is not a goal you will ever meet without spending.
I agree with the proposition to hold off at least until the latest characters are available in chromiums. Even then, most F2P/Casual guilds won't have the latest characters, but it may at least give them a slight window where the previous batch of new characters were made farmable, and they could have a shot at filling all platoons before new characters come in to guarantee failure for a few weeks.
