I whole heartedly agree with your (OP) statements above.
Just pause for a moment.
You received valid cause for concern from the "transparent" testing of Relic Delta and the community as a whole via Reddit, YouTube, and EA Forum Comments hated it but you (CG) still decided to go forward with it anyways.
I mean, if that were the ONLY change and you (CG) actually did something worthy of a 10 year milestone of a mobile game, it would be a hard pill to swallow but most probably would have prevailed.
BUT, you pushed a paywall of a system (in true EA style) on Coliseum and now with Galactic Challenge? What did you actually give the players for 10 years? A duplicate of the 7 day calendar and 1 mail with some rewards. OH and can't forget the burning dumpster fire of all the updates and lag you worked on for a year. I'm not dismissing days and hours of work, however, with all the ideas floating out there from your community you decided to go this route, in turn, alienating ALL of your player base. F2P, Minnows/Dolphins who can't hope to compete AND whales that view spending as fruitless.
Look at any other mobile app games in the Google Play or IOS App Store that is celebrating one year (even just one year) and tell me about the fanfare and celebration that went into SWGOH and THE 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY. I was thinking huge banners in the app stores, discount gems for purchase, maybe an exclusive anniversary toon, release every LSB for purchase over the weekend, launch every event at the same time for the weekend, SOMETHING!
There was none, instead players were told to spend more (money, gems and time). With a "DEFEATED" 5 times over and over.
Thanks CG. 14.6M GP and 10 years later, I'm truly on the fence after you crammed pay walls down our throat.