I've just been playing the GC section and there is absolutely zero joy in any of it. Clearly players are railroaded to use very specific characters, and not feel they have any ability to utilise any of the hard earned and built roster characters and anything outside of track is worthless. Seriously just wow, the team has certainly hit the players in the balls firmly.
Introducing an additional game currency is classically set to confuse players and delay realization that gear assets are being stripped away and placed out of free reach.
The tracker is awful, no good feeling of progression. The LHS scroll in feat animation for dailies is annoying as it obscures the gear/character shard drops icons so that you can't see that you've not got any character shards again! Why can't the animation drop down from the top centrally before disappearing as it does?
The price of passes in general is too much frankly. I'll likely treat these the same as the paid conquest pass which is to ignore it.
Honestly, would it not have been easier to just enable a Paid Episode lobby which opens up access to non free treats of gear that is bottleneck pain to get via a special currency shop. Frecking make it like the racing gambling planet in the films if you want to make it star warsy.
Those accounts who pay can have a Pass tag applied to their account if needs be so they can access extra lobbies landing grounds and they can gain additional currency easier will during normal play with the rest of players over time. Special days could drop small breadcrumbs of newer currency to all players and then drop in time limited access paid by crystals periodically, so people can experience the perks having a pass.
Marques should drop for all to experience level 2, paid pass folks can fast track further to perhaps 3 or 4 star. New currency can access new character shards quicker of course, before the accessibility to new toons is opened to "free" account holders.
But no, everyone's got feel like garbage instead!!