Relic Delta, Hard Reqs, and Player Choice

So I am one of the ppl who made a tiny contribution to this relic delta thing coming into being. I have said repeatedly that at the high end the benefit from another relic tier is not worth the resource investment. 

This did NOT mean that I never wanted to relic any toons, of course not. What it meant was that I'm so squeezed by hard requirements that I'm not interested in maxing out teams that I already have up and functional. There were very limited resources left over to build up teams that I wanted to relic up to functionality just bc I like the characters in the source material or I think the team is fun to play in the game. 

I set goals for making a toon functional in the game, then ignored opportunities to improve them unless they were hard-required at a higher relic tier so that I could add some variety. I don't want my roster to look like everyone else's, and far too many of my choices are dictated by what the Devs have planned for me. 

Of course, those goals for making a toon functional changed as relic materials became more available. At first I just wanted toons to hit r3, then r4, then the new raid reward structure made things much easier to reach middle tiers, and now I r6 things without worrying much about the total resources invested. I certainly worry about timing, about when I have the resources to spare and when I'm hoarding for the next GL or the next raid, but I never look at a character that I brought to r6 and think, "I wish I'd left them at r3." 

One possibly unappreciated problem with RD is that given the intense investment needed to bring teams to r8/r9, my freedom to bring other toons, toons that the devs did NOT prioritize, I not only have far fewer resources available to bring teams I like (but are not on the Devs' roster plan) to r6, but also r6 won't carry the same functionality that it did before RD. 

I have always been a strong opponent of hard funnelling. Some funnelling is inevitable, of course, but I don't want the Devs to plot my roster development for me. When you think about it, having the Devs choose where to prioritize your resource investments is rather contrary to the entire idea of a resource allocation game like SWGOH. 

So I'm annoyed to find that the new event is restricted to GL Ahsoka/Spectre. Between the Ahsoka chase followed by the new raid combined with the Jedi Master Mace chase followed immediately by the Pirate King Hondo chase, there's been little freedom for month after month now. 

This just isn't acceptable to players like me. And I understand I don't represent all players, but I'd be surprised if there isn't a significant percentage who would join me in saying that we wish to make more of our own choices. Building tall rosters is, indeed, how some people like to play, but it's not how everyone likes to play. People have r9 CUP and IG-86 and Jedi Knight Guardian and such for reasons. My r8 JKG would be r9 already if I had the resources. I just love the idea of a mouse-faced Jedi, and there are never enough women characters for me, so she'll always get more attention from me than I could justify by her kit. I was super happy the day our guild needed someone to take her to r8 for Ops missions. 

Not all the joys of this game are crushing your enemies and hearing the lamentations of their protocol droids.

But the constant pressure to do what the Devs want and not what we want is leaving little room for those other joys. 

Now, maybe the Devs have plans to loosen up access to mid relic tiers (up to, say, r6), but maybe they don't. When I say that I'm not willing to take toons higher than r6 without a good reason, that doesn't mean that I'm not hoarding everything for the next GL. It means that I'm stuck using so many resources on what the Devs are pushing that I need a good reason to justify my personal side-quests. In particular, I farm signal data every day but rarely have any not required for the raid/GL-req/etc toon that's already 6-stars and will be late to its goals if I spend. 

Choice needs to be preserved, and thus to keep players like me happy in the new regime, the game will have to better support choice than it is right now. 

With that long preamble done, here are only a couple of thoughts about how to grow better: 

1. Resource events should not be limited to one GL or one faction. Like Assault Battles, there should be at least 2 equally viable paths to victory in these new events. It's most likely too late for the Ahsoka/Spectre event, but I'm tired of this already, and I see the trend increasing, not decreasing. You already have ways to hard-require toons -- GL chases, Legendary chases, TB planets and Ops missions, etc. Don't do this here.
2. Any event that has an r9 (or higher) tier should drop a LightSpeed token the first time you complete it. It should have limited but meaningful choices about whom the player can use it on, but it should take older, less powerful toons right to r9. And yes, I mean old toons, toons that no one would take to r9 otherwise, but that can still be fun to a player. HK-47 and IG-86 are good DS droids that aren't prioritized today. There are many Jedi, from Jedi Consular to Ima Gun Di that could be targets. To make this work, the LightSpeed token should offer 3x LS choices and 3x DS choices. Pairing factions might also be a good idea. There are old, less useful Empire and Rebel toons that could be packed into a single LST, allowing players the important strategic choice of shoring up LS or DS, Rebels or Empire, for game purposes like Territory Battles, but within that faction choices like Biggs or Wedge or Lando allow for the expression of player personality. 
3. For future raids, the first time someone completes a single r9-tier raid battle for max score, or alternatively the first time a player reaches the max individual crate, drop a single LightSpeed Token as discussed in #2. Only here, make it for another raid toon -- with your choices limited to raid toons that most ppl wouldn't relic up. On Naboo that might have been Jedi Consular. I leave it to you to decide who are the oldest and least desirable O66 raid toons that could serve as examples, but the point here is that this starts with the NEXT raid: meaning you can include certain trashy toons as raid-eligible with the intention of making them an LSToken option. 
4. Increase access to signal data. Honestly many players would like this option best, but I like it least. Yes, it does allow us to relic up more toons, which means that we will ultimately have more relic tiers to hand out to the toons we love rather than those scheduled for us by CG, but as signal data is unrestricted, it will also serve to make easier some things that are intended to be difficult. 

These are preliminary attempts at solutions to the problem, but the problem is serious and should receive serious thought. I invite my fellow players to critique my solutions and offer their own, but ultimately this is going to require the Devs to think carefully through how stressing a build-tall style of play affects the joy of players who don't share that priority and to provide options to keep the game fun for those other players.