Material Scarcity - Unicorn Rarity

Thing is, to be at 12.8M, you either were around from near day 1, or you have spent a lot. Period. There is no other way. You cannot have started even 4-5 years, been remotely close to FTP and be at 12.8M. I believe that's the OP's point.

They have no problem forcing the issue on players either. 4-5 years ago, they issued an apology about too many marquees and it was hard for people to keep up etc.. Now,  with the current 'season' setup, there are substantially more marquees in a year than when they issued that apology. For crying out loud, i'm coming up on 12M and i can't take the time to finish up a number of toons because of how they handicap you on mats. And i spend a bit too.  I have 3 gaping holes in my Leia farming because I worked up Ahsohka and now Hondo (worst choice for GL ever) and i can't spare the signal data and kyro's to finish those three up.

That is a complaint, that's just the facts. The game is a game of resource, except that they're perfectly happy to let those with bottomless pockets buy their way out. This game seems to have a large number of those people as well.  The argument of a 'it's a business' doesn't hold a lot of water for me when at this point in the game, the prices vs what you get are very poor, yet the game could go totally FTP and keep up as they are right now for multiple years and still stay in the black with how much they've already made.   It's as if CG staff meetings are simply people sitting around a table saying 'so, how can we get people to spend even more money?' The game itself and making it better and fixing it's issues don't seem to register on the meter anywhere. But, leveraging the player base for every last cent? That's job 1.