There's enough difference between 5* and 6* in shards needed (and gear expected) that they could have relaxed the timeframe by several days or even a week and made it less maddening.
I agree about too many toons sitting in mediocrity - and I would actually be okay wth that, but the game is set up so you actually need those toons for character mod challenges and events and on and on. I suppose the day I win my first Assault Battle I'll be happy, but I don't even plan for those at all. It's not like I try to win them. I'd like to make it easier to get over the Mk3 Holo hump that kills so many toons at around gear7. It would be nice if I could actually see some of my stuck toons in action.
Part of the effect of consigning so many toons to g7/level 60-70 is that you really have to take it on faith that other people know what they're talking about when they tell you that a toon that helped you a ton at player level 65 won't be important at pl75 and will be obsolete by pl85. With resources so scant compared to the number of toons you're expected to level & gear for all challenges and events, you tend to take the advice of others and the game sees less experimentation, fewer novel strategies.
The flash events are okay in the sense that they are one more source of gear, but they are also maddening with the very short time frames and the inability to sim them, and the long, long time it can take to do tier 3 (the only one with Mk3 Holos). Seriously, it can take 8 minutes to fight through tier 3 one time. Doing that 4 or 5 times a day just isn't possible. I might sometimes make a point of doing all of them in a day, if it wasn't just to get RNG-distributed gear. At g9, people get stuck on stun cuffs, I get it. And I don't mind collecting them. But there are 4 mod challenges I still need to beat, and that means 20 characters stuck on Mk3 Holos because you can win those challenges at g9, but not at g7.
TWENTY characters stuck on one piece of gear - and that's not even counting my better toons that also need them.
So, yeah, the lack of progress in the toons you actually have combined with a frantic scramble to mediocrity (again - six more characters sitting at level 70) for new toons is exhausting. Like you, Galahax, I find myself much less interested in the game since the way the Thrawn event was handled.
But whatevs. If this feeling continues, I'll never see Jedi Luke, I'll just stop playing. If it doesn't, maybe I'll be scrambling for Jedi Luke in a month or two. Who knows.
