Dark Decimation

I am not on here to complain often, if ever. But the new Dark Decimation event is just insulting to the player base. If the whole point of this new system is to encourage people to use the new characters, why are we making it impossible for F2P players to earn extra shards from this new event?

I know it is well documented that this game is a cash cow, but the bloated prices on these new characters and essentially locking out a good chunk of the player base from doing anything with them NOT ONLY during coliseum but now after is just sad. I know nothing will change given the leadership of this game but it is quite degrading to be expected to shill out hundreds of dollars to achieve value in a Star Wars mobile game.