Assault Battle Cadence Change

Very well put. What we are experiencing with ABs is very much different from Raids and TBs for example. The new raid system does force you to gear/relic up 20+ toons every 8 or so months for each new featured raid, but at least we were told in advance what to expect. With TBs, Hoth and Geo are still present within the game even after RotE was released. You get to the point where you outgrow Hoth, so you move on to Geo and eventually to RotE, and in each case, the rewards keep improving to match your current growth.

With ABs, you spent months farming the appropriate teams for each event because said events are a reliable source of gear and mats. I would just like to add that, unlike the case I mentioned with TBs, the old ABs are still useful across all stages of the game. I'm at 12.1M GP, and I still rely on them for Zeta mats, Kyros and to a lesser extent Relic mats and Signal Data. As such, I would also like to repeat what I said in another post about the new cadence. The progression in GoH is this: absolute beginner, early game, mid-game, late game. To move from one stage to the next, you rely on the events accessible to your current stage. Take early game to mid-game, the Forest Moon AB gives out Ewok shards, which gets you closer to unlocking C-3PO, who, while useful in many LS teams, is especially strong in a CLS squad, which in turn is not only very useful in the Military Might AB but also still a strong team even with today's massive power creep, which in turn has a good chance of getting you more crystals and gear to develop for other events. These new ABs are by no means accessible for early-gamers. Like you said, event the initial tiers in the PP battle are ridiculously overtuned (fyi I have all three troopers at R7, so...). Aside from that the rewards for those tiers in either AB are of little to no use for early-game players. It'll take months for them to 7 star the required toons and a much longer time to get them to G12 and then relics. Then, factor in the RNG of what kind of rewards we get (one or the other), which means it will take a very long time for ROI. And then, factor in the longevity of these new ABs. Let's face it, we're more than likely to get to a point where there are so many new ABs that even DoftF and PP are put on rotation. What's the point of investing so much for a single event that is more than likely to get replaced by a new one with much stricter and higher requirements?

With all the reasons you and other players have outlined, there is just no reason for me to get any of these toons to R9. In fact the only reason I got the PP toons to R7 is because they're required for Ahsoka. The Droid Brains are available in weekly shipments (for now at least, since there is apparently a good chance CG might remove them as motivation for us to farm for the new ABs) for 5 pieces for 1500 or so crystals, so I have no trouble getting them from there. And the Gyrda Keypads, I can easily get enough pieces for 1, maybe 2 R9 toons a month through the Raid store. So, unless CG guarantees some kind of longevity for the new ABs and makes the rewards more static, i.e., you get both pieces instead of just one or the other, I foresee none of these toons reaching R8, let alone R9, in the near future.