The Marquee release structure owns bones.

"Dosky;c-1598654" wrote:
This system with marquee events is terrible. In this way, when a pg becomes farmable for an F2P, it is already old. A long time ago the characters were released in many different ways (and never just for a fee).

Even before the switch to marquee events the characters were old before they became farmable. People who paid for them had literal exclusive access for months before they found their way into a store or node.

You're right that a long time ago characters were released in many different ways (though you're wrong that they were never released for just a fee--Any character in Chromium or Aurodium packs were definitively for a fee, and Chirpa was a paid character, albeit for charity) but all those ways were worse for free players than Marquees. The only character that wasn't was Bodhi Rook, who was given to us all for free and then put into the Galactic War store the same day.

You know. Bodhi Rook, the world-beater character that broke the game and is a must-have on every roster.

Probably the most player-friendly pre-Marquee release method was by making them the daily login character, but that resulted in 30 shards over the course of the month, whereas Marquee releases give those 30 over the course of about 15 minutes, and another 20 if you do the final tier. It's the same, only faster and better.

"DrMaggot;c-1598774" wrote:
If I recall when Phoenix squad was released it was entirely F2P farm with kanan and zeb in shops, hera and sabine in nodes, don't recall for ezra.
Same thing for R1 save for baze, I remember farming cassian, K2SO and jyn erso freely in shops ?

No. Phoenix were all Marquee releases with packs and bundles. They were put into stores and nodes about a month before Thrawn was released, but I'd have to look up when those happened. I remember it because shortly after Phoenix were released there were people who were IRATE that they'd paid so much for a squad that was "so bad," and then when Thrawn was released there were people who were IRATE that they wouldn't get him because they hadn't bothered farming Phoenix Squad.

Rogue One releases, from memory:
Scariff Rebel Pathfinder and Bistan were login characters in September and November 2016. Bistan definitely had an event where you could get an extra shard per day, and I *think* SRP did, too, but I might be misremembering that. Either way, Bistan became farmable on

K2-S0 was given free to Android users (Google basically bought it for them) in early December of 2016, by late December it had been put into the shard shop. K2-S0 didn't become farmable until

Chirrut, Cassian, Jyn and Shoretrooper were rewards for winning a player tournament from October to December 2016. Shoretrooper hit a node at the end of January 2017.

Baze was put into Chromium packs in early November 2016 and shard shop late November (then taken out at the end of December). Didn't become farmable until

Krennic and Deathtrooper were released, ironically enough, in the first Marquee Events (though they weren't called that yet) in January 2017.

Kylo's Command Shuttle was released via bundle and packs in February 2017.

If this post seems incomplete it's because it is! I need to go to work and haven't finished scrolling through the Update Threads to find out when specific characters actually reached farming locations. BUT I'm all the way through February 2017 and was about to start March, but I need to go to work. The point is, though, that the earliest characters were released in October of 2016 and by February 2017 only Shoretrooper had hit a node.