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

And? When we started we didn't have things such as double shard drops, or any of the other catch up mechanics players have now. Not that I'm day one as just checked- I started in 2018.

Yes of course players can accelerate progress by paying but thats fine as it makes the game f2p for the rest of us, with there being no issue that f2p's option is to be patient.

The new marquees will be obtainable to smaller and f2p accounts eventually, the same way us older accounts once thought characters that new players can get easily now such as C3PO, the Revans and GAS would be unobtainable for us. For us larger accounts new characters are more easily obtainable but we are still 3-6 months behind those who spend, and again that is fine.

The issue here is you and OP want it both ways, you don't way to a) pay, or b) be patient.

Same, since I hit 11m its been new character comes out, immediatly upgrade to G11. Now with the recent changes its immediatly upgrade to G12 and they are in the never ending queue to move to R5.

I do have a zeta and relic material crunch but thats fine as its only because new characters are becoming usable quicker, and I'll tend to slow farm relics so I can refresh the mats needed, as well as giving me time to bring mod levels up.

Seems the only "issue" is that OP, despite playing for years, hasn't realised its a resource management game and you either a) pay or b) are patient. 

Early April 2019
6 Years, 4 Months almost to the day.      

Game came out November 24, 2015....... so I'm no where close to a Day-1 player,  more like Year-3.4 player.

Hyperdrive came out after I already had 90% of it done so I didn't bother with that.

Biggest "boost/purchase" I've ever made was the $10 "Resistance" LSB pack that granted 7 toons to R5.
I already had JTR, Finn, BB-8, & VS-Han relic'd,  but that pack got me a bunch of characters from G12 to R5
The only thing it left me to do was VS-Chewie to R3 which was easy enough.

Not saying that is the only thing I ever spent on but it's HANDS DOWN the biggest effect on my roster.

The $10 Phoenix one wasn't bad but again, I had 2 Phoenix at R5 already so I got the last 4 & Farmboy to R3 from G12.
Not that I use Farmboy for anything, mostly it was just to beef up Phoenix once they announced Rex to the game.

As I said above, your not quite there yet, but give it a year and you'll be surprised when the Kyro crunch gets noticeably less & then goes away.

Now that said, not sure what this new rate of characters every 2 weeks is going to do to it.
I had something like 3000 Kyros banked a while ago & now I'm down to 1200 or so.

G12 is my new crunch w/ these recent changes. 
Sticking a bunch of G12 on Clones/Jedi all on the same day broke most of my gear stores.
I'm back to looking at a blank gear slot & opening it up & having to go farm those specific pieces w/ my sims/refreshes/store currency.
Currently farming Ilthano's Laptop which will complete him.  (Not that I can put it on at 3* but at least the gear will be there)

My guy, if you've played long enough to be over 10mln GP, surely you must remember the dark times before the gear update? The raid system that pitched guild members in competition with each other for the best, randomized loot? (now we have cooperative guild raids and can choose which gear we want to buy--incredible compared to the old, pre-Krayt raid system).

In the current state of the game, we are showered with gear loot like it's going out of style. Between TB, conquest, raids, Assault Battles and regular daily gear events I am approaching kyro equilibrium, where I will passively stockpile kyrotech because I simply will have more gear stashed than characters to apply kyros to. Several of my guild members have reached this point already and these days they're sitting on a pile of thousands of kyrotech. And since we can now relic toons at 4*, those guys will immediately relic every new marquee... because they have excess gear. 

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.

At 10M GP I was still feeling the Kyro Crunch bad.
Good news is at 12.8M it's gone.
I have more Kyro than I can use at this point.
G12 on the other hand is a crunch again after they opened up G12 to 4* characters last month, LOL.

I don't give everyone Zetas, I spend every bit of Fleet Currency buying them & I still have dozens (hundreds) of Zetas that aren't equipped.
How are AB more sparse than they have been before?  

What does the MOD cap have to do w/ advancing characters?  
People that complain about the cap need to spend more time cleaning out there mods.
I have legions of mods available & still keep myself in the 400-450 range.

If you don't like 33% for character drops you must really hate the 20% drop rate for Purple/Gold gear.

“But seriously, Where’s Porkins and his ship already?”

Ploughed into the Death Star trench