Things I think need to be addressed.

"Boba_The_Fetter;c-1425076" wrote:

"AnnerDoon;c-1424933" wrote:

"Boba_The_Fetter;c-1424889" wrote:
Plus the release cadence. Now f2p get every character off the bat. Compared to the past where you'd have to throw away any game progression and use your crystals on chromiums which isn't viable.

Unless your position is that "every" character released from the Marquee events is viable at two stars (a select few may be), wouldn't F2P players have to "throw away any game progression" and use their crystals on the character shard packs offered at initial release to effectively use them off the bat? It's really no different now that it was in the past, except the marketing mechanism has been re-skinned.

Say what's you want but the people at CG are trying to provide us a chance to at least experiment with every character that comes out.

They are at least giving us a chance to experiment, although it's not always evenly spread for each character. Some characters are viable at low stars, but some are just absolutely not useful at 2 or 3*. It all comes down to what each character is doing. Characters that are all about controlling the battle and don't rely on damage are typically viable at low stars as long as you can protect them (easy enough to do with a solid tank or two, or smokescreen etc.), but some characters that need higher health specifically or just don't do enough damage (typically attackers) aren't viable at lower stars.

I do agree with Yarrg that there a lot of people who just used a card to make their way into the top of arena with RJT. Now the main gripe I have with this is that it seemed to be that these larger legendary events and journey events were supposed to reward long time players as they have wider rosters, which makes the events still doable for for long time ftp as long as they're committed. CLS was very doable for long time f2p, however with RJT, no matter what there were still 2 characters that needed to get farmed from 3* to 7* on 16 energy cantina nodes in simply just too short of a time for f2p. I totally get the fact that money needs to be worth something in order for people to spend, but that's what the whole low star marquee event style is all about. You spend money to make the character viable, and then these longer events that still require time and effort are designed for everyone to be able to at least get a viable character out of by either paying for it or by having been committed and being able to farm hard for it. But farming both Vets in such a short amount of time was just not doable by people not willing to spend money on it.

I just feel like they tainted the nature of their events with RJT and forcing the vet farm into such a short period of time. Thrawn was one thing because the cantina nodes were lower energy and f2p who were committed managed to get him at 7* most long time f2p easily unlocked him at 5* or 6*, and yes money ensured a 7*, but hard work still got you the viable character, but not quite as good.

I'm not saying the p2p and f2p gap is growing in standard arena as I'm still able to compete in my Dec 2015 arena shard as a f2p. I think the ships p2p f2p gap is much larger than the squad arena gap now that the release of newer ships is starting to increase and making them very hard to farm for f2p. As well as the crystal payouts in ships being even more lopsided than the crystal payouts in squad arena, despite the fact that ship arenas are actually more populated with active players that most squad arenas are.