Cantina characters are premium characters?

I get what you're saying, but i refresh cantina energy three times a day, so I don't have the same experience. I'm ftp, but play all the time. I finish top three in fleet arena every day, and am working on breaking 100 in arena, so I receive a few hundred crystals a day for free. I have both zetas on r2d2, and Han Solo's zeta (no his name is not raid Han), with Leia's zeta on the way. Once CLS comes back, I'll drop him right in there nicely. I've been playing for about sixth months, and have 1.2mil gp. I say this to point out that you can compete for free if you play wisely and often. Otherwise, you're a casual player, and shouldn't care about much of anything.Top ten arena might be reserved for whales, but you new that before you downloaded the app, as is the case with every ftp game. It sounds like you need a good guild to help you along. I got lucky on that front.