Episode pass devalued?

Meathead is on record that F2P are expected to reach Era lvl 65 by the end of the Era. There's been a datamine that shows that the subsequent marquee events will award a lot of upgrade materials and it appears that CG is just trying to milk Stormtrooper Luke in particular for profit. It might end up being that we get those extra materials at the very end of the Era, so we end up slogging through the Era with low level toons, getting incremental upgrades very slowly, which I suppose is to give a bigger advantage to spenders and entice them with the prospect of getting more R10 materials. 

It does seem like CG designed Coliseum and the Era level system for maximum frustration to drive spending. Right now we don't know enough about the availability of the higher tier upgrade materials to predict whether your 5* Luke will give you an advantage to enable you to upgrade to lvl80. 

You can grab some upgrade mats daily from the Coliseum (milestone rewards for beating every 10% of the healthbar). 

I get all that. It’s baked into my question. Basically all the backloaded rewards are the minimum wage to get lvl65. What I’m noting is that the Episode Pass gives you nothing beyond that minimum wage. 

The way they presented the era level system, it seemed like if you got to X number of stars, you’d be able to reach that associated threshold in the era level. But it doesn’t seem to be the case. So if you do low to moderate spending, like getting an episode pass and maybe one or two material bundles, invest some crystals, you just end up in more or the less same place as if you spent nothing. 

Oh, and there are fewer omicrons too. So I don’t see why I’d bother with the episode pass in the future. Spending seems now to be more all or nothing. 

yeah, the Ep Pass is garbage if it doesn't give you anything that benefits you DURING THE EPISODE. 

Up until Nov 18th, the Episode Pass wasn't giving you any major way to advance a marquee character either. You would get 20 shards of two marquees, taking you to 4-star without having to buy any gamble packs, and that hasn't changed. So if you have the Episode Pass, you're guaranteed to get a 4-star character, but you're not getting much in the way of gear/ability mats for the marquee specifically. I mean, there is gear and zetas and omicrons in the Pass premium track, but you can allocate them wherever you want. 

Ok, I suppose if you want to be exact, previously you were able to use your existing gear stash to take marquees to G11 (and more recently, straight to G13 if you had the gear required). Now the marquee is stuck at low Era level/gear unless you buy the Era packs from the Era store. In the most literal sense, this is a newly imposed restriction that didn't use to exist. Of course keep in mind that in 3 months you will be able to gear and mod Luke how you like, just like're used to. 

The Episode still contains a bunch of good stuff. 8 additional omicrons, a big pile of Episode currency, zetas, R8/9 relic materials and now, a small amount of Era upgrade materials. Practically speaking, the pass isn't worse than it was before. It didn't contain any G1-G12 gear except kyros and that's still the same. 

It seems devalued because the new system locks you into a low gear character, but the Episode pass had nothing to do with whether your marquees were G1, G11, G12 or G13 before and it still doesn't. The value of the pass is in omicrons, zetas, kyrotech, Episode currency and high tier relic mats. 

And, to be perfectly honest, the pass itself is very transparent. You can see exactly what it contains and from the moment the update went live, we had access to the Era level upgrade system ladder and we could see what upgrade materials Stormtrooper Luke requires and we could see whether the pass contained any of those. It does contain a minor amount of Era materials, but nothing close to the total needed for Era level 65. Frankly, if you were expecting the pass to superboost you, it's your own fault for making this assumption. The information was plainly displayed for you. 

Lastly, the amount of omicrons hasn't changed. The basic track always had 4 and the premium track had 8 more on top of that, for a total of 12. There are still 12 omicrons in the Episode pass:

Lvl 13: 1
Lvl 20: 2
Lvl 24: 2
Lvl 36: 2
Lvl 44: 3
Lvl 46: 2

Here are links to the last 3 Era announcement posts. They have detailed information about what the episode passes for each Era would contain. Please point out to me which exact items, aside from 20 shards of 2 marquees, constituted a humongous boost to the new marquees. Episode passes didn't contain enough materials to max out a marquee before and they still don't now. Not enough gear to go straight to G13, not enough zetas/omicrons to max out the abilities. 

You were able to apply the materials in the pass to the marquee and the marquee was available in GAC/TB/TW/Conquest right away. Now, the marquee characters are locked out of those modes--for everybody. In 3 months, you will be able to use anything gained from the pass to upgrade the marquees (provided you don't use it to upgrade other toons first--the point is, you're still getting the stuff and you can use it to upgrade characters) and you will be able to use the marquees in GAC/TW/TB/Conquest. 

The contents and value of the episode pass is basically the same as it was before. 

Era of Revenge of the Sith | EA Forums - 12059188

Era of Piracy | EA Forums - 12281643

Era of Deadly Pursuit | EA Forums - 12581296

Ok, my bad miscalculating on the omicrons. But the question is still valid in my mind.

Value is relative and contextual. There is a new system in place now, that interacts with the episode pass, but within which I do not think the episode pass gives much of a boost. Therefore it has less value despite having an equivalent amount of gross stuff.

And with the new economy for relics and relic delta, there is a new premium on being able to skip gearing. Yes, I can still use gear stashes to promote units same as before. But the opportunity cost for that is now greater. Which means, again, ending up in the same place is not leaving me with equivalent value in the new system. 

And a more minor factor is the delayed gratification. That’s less valuable than immediate or even just less delayed gratification. Numbers may be the same in the end, but the experience is different. And less fun. So again, the value is less. 

Rewards/amounts are not necessarily equivalent to value in every case. 

I can't say I disagree with anything you said.