All or nothing economy (or why CG doesn't have a lot of small spenders).

I think era system is not designed for "I like just one toon", it's for "you need the legendary toon to be competitive, so you must unlock it as soon as posible and you must get the other 6 to do this".  The usefulness of those 6 toons is secondary, it's an extra cookie.

Honestly, the new system is only slightly better for f2p than the old marquee system was. My marquee toons certainly get more into them now, but in other ways a lot of them will just get benched. Yeah, seems weird to have 4* relic 2 characters never getting farmed or worked on again, but there you are.

They made it easier to get into relics, but that loses some of your lister when you realize everything below g13 is kind of phased out. They even call it "legacy" gear now. They will keep adding new relic levels, they will keep raising the bar on the minimum needed relic levels (such as datacrons requiring r6 now).

So yeah...you have to pick and choose. On the other hand, if you've caught up on old units with tokens, there's not a whole lot else to spend crystals on, unless you are hoping for a new capital ship. New GLs are going go require all the new marquee toons anyway, so.

P.S. A 5* should have only cost you 7k crystals, not 12. Unless you just bought the biggest pack and overshot.

Hi Zanir2​ and crzydroid​,

Thank you both for the elaborate answers. And apologies I don't keep records so it likely was 7k not 12. Either way, you're confirming what I feared: the way it was designed is to make you chase (virtually) all of the characters to the same star levels, allowing to unlock the marquee that's required if you want to reach the colliseum materials needed to level the characters you like further. That's a shame.

I'm unwilling to spend 240 euro a year to just barely keep up. And while I have sufficient crystals, it feels more rewarding both emotionally and from a gameplay (gac / tw) perspective to spend those om refreshes to get higher relics and better mods.

I think GC could entice a lot of people like myself to spend if they offered a way to make an investment in just 1 character worthwhile. Sure, I wouldn't get the Marquee and I won't reach K1 with that, but I'd have been willing to spend to get a functioning Mara Jade Skywalker or Luke Concept. I think they underestimate the dislike people have for 'losing', which is what spending valuable resources on uninteresting characters I won't be using afterwards feels like to me.

Id argue CG does have a lot of small spenders, small being the Episode Pass and Conquest pass. £30 per month isn't bad income and both give good value to small spenders. Despite perceived apathy for Collisium, from shard experience I need to get Pass Plus to compete as this seems very popular.

Really your title is misleading as you have no evidence that "All or nothing economy (or why CG doesn't have a lot of small spenders)" is true, and you make this assumption based on only your own experience. One which is a very flawed one as clearly to get the most from an era you need to invest consistently across the entirety of it.

I'm an end game account and just buy the passes (Pass Plus for Eras) and then spend crystals to 6* each character. My return is consistent, and I also know I could 5 consistently with a little less investment, or 7* by spending a decent amount of money.

Its not rocket science and not sure why you'd think the method you used would benefit you in any way, or expect it to be changed just because you made a mistake in not planning what you were going to do across the era. Particularly as this is the 3rd era so you should know how it works by now.

DUNCAN1919​ I'm sorry that you felt the title was misleading and how my observations and questions hurt your feelings. Thanks for your time responding despite that. I myself wouldn't experience spending 30 dollars a month on a mobile game as 'small' spending, so perhaps our expectations on what the average or median player spends are a bit different.

Hard disagree. With the new system f2p can now push other characters  straight to 6 R5 via the Era Shipments, and in most case just use it to gear them as in many cases they'll have the characters at 7 via many catchup mechanics they have for older character shards.

Yes, their era currency income might not be great but when you see someone like Scrybe having his f2p accounts first GL as PKHO you really see the benefits of the new system.

Also in Rotta we had a Marquee character that could beat GLs at low stars, thats far better than how previous Marquee releases worked. As a long time player I remember when Marquees (or Legendarys) just felt absolutely unachievable in the early and sometimes mid-game but now all players can get some benefit from them. We are also seeing reports that Darth Jar-Jar is a GL Killer too.

Finally regarding Gear, it is beneficial as young f2p accounts will have bottlenecks in gear that many of us experienced years ago and they will get the new characters in a state that saves them a lot of gear.

I think that here you probably get to the heart of the issue, in that different people have very different benchmarks as to what would be considered “small” spending. I would also call $30 monthly as being middle spending, but then the distribution is very skewed by some very, very, big spenders. At the level of less than $20-30 monthly (which ends up being $240-360 yearly 😱) if you aren’t end game and are chasing a few different targets beyond just era your ROI probably won’t feel worthwhile. 

Certainly, catch-up mechanics for older units are now way better for f2p than ever before, but it does sometimes feel as though there’s very limited middle ground. In all likelihood that’s simply because that’s not the market CG cater for. They need whales to fund the development and keep the game going, and they need f2p to fill out the player base to give variety for PvP. It would be amazing to see the stats and distribution on amount spent per account and I would expect it’s more bi-modal than a smooth distribution.