It's not just Coliseum, have you tried the Stormtrooper Luke - Era Challenge yet? I even blew £9 buying new materials packs, and spent about 800 crystals on top of that, to get Luke to level 21 and I can only beat challenge Tier 1. Tier 2 I barely even tickle them. Further, only being able to beat Tier 1 means I get a whopping two lots of 40x of the new material types, whatever they mean. Ultimately, only being able to complete 1/6th of the challenge means I miss out on a further two lots of 2,520x of the new materials...
40 out of 2560 total... and my Luke isn't even at F2P levels!
What makes this even more fun and rewarding is the fact that chapter 2 of the Episode Quests has a task as follows; "Complete 3 Era Challenge feats". Only being able to beat Tier 1 means I can only complete 2 feats, the only 2 feats, in Tier 1 of the challenge. I'd be interested to know if your level 17 Luke is able to clear Tier 1 of the challenge, or if you're stuck at completing 0 feats for the Episode Quests.
The very first task of chapter 2 will see a large number of P2P players, and basically all F2P players, unable to complete it! CG really didn't think this update through at all, much less did they test this before punishing their players with it. Grab your popcorn because I don't think many people will be happy with this!