To many requirements for commander Luke

Everyone who has been playing for more than 6 months has Leia and STH. Everyone has R2 or has already been working getting him to 7* since he was released. EA told us about Farmboy Luke a couple of months ago. The only real blindside was Old Ben but anyone that's been playing for longer than a year has him too. Newer players may not get him on the first try. It's a grind game. If you're late to the party, you're gonna miss out on some initial releases. I didn't get 7* Yoda, Thrawn, or Palps, on my first try. I got R2 but it was only because I was working on an Empire team at the time anyways. If you get the best characters on the first try, every time, the game would be boring.

More than half my guild will have the required characters to unlock Luke the first time but we've all been daily players for TWO YEARS! Be patient, grind one character at a time, and you'll eventually get there but don't be mad that EA occasionally gives goodies to the people that have been there since the beginning.

The difference with the other events you mention is you could at least get the reward character to 5* with 5* toons. 7* to unlock and including old ben is pretty much a big middle finger to anyone playing for less than a year. I have been playing for exactly 13 months, and his time was already over when I started, so I don't even have 5 shards. The 4 I have were gw rewards.

I have accepted that whales will always rule arena with the new meta. I'll just start farming rebels and empire from now on in case something like this comes back. I was hoping they wouldn't make 3 versions and would give us Jedi Luke anyway.

I agree with Ravib. Wife and I been playing for more than a year now. My account alone has over 70 7*'s so kinda a whale myself. Have spent money in past because I believe in supporting games you like. I do believe that p2p should have an edge over f2p, otherwise why would anyone pay anything? However when you release these Uber characters that require multiple new characters right before an event (like thrawn's Phoenix Squad) then allow them into galactic war you are severly bridging the Gap between p2p & f2p. I can understand PvP, and making it harder to complete newer nodes in light and dark side battles without them, but in order to just compete gw is vital. This isn't just about me or my team. I see you have been advertising more trying to bring in newer players, but honestly these kind of money grabs will end up costing you player base and revenue in the future as older players wise up. I also know that these are older toons and not necessarily new, but releasing the info on what's needed a month in advance, and launching events where other events are needed just to get one of 5 required is the same thing (btw I do have R2). It's just another form of "Tickle Me Elmo" tactics. My wife who has been f2p is now thinking about quiting this game. If she does I probably won't be far behind her. EA this is not a good thing at all. A suggestion to at least address this would be to double drop required characters, and consider making R2 farmable. This is not fun this is frustration.

@Widowailer

This is not fun this is frustration.

Exactly. Whales will spend money to avoid the grind, because that's what whales do. Dolphins will spend money if they are close to a reward that otherwise they will have to wait a long (and unknown) time to claim, like if they were just shy of getting a 7* R2D2 the first time round and didn't know when the event will be back.

But a lot of players aren't trying to avoid the grind. A lot of players are grinding things out. And it's a shame that there was no better notice that you would need unrelated toons to acquire Commander Luke. Seriously, there are more than enough "old friends" to make a squad without R2.

Think about it: Wedge and Biggs were Farmboy Luke's best friends growing up, he didn't even meet his sister until he'd already shed his farm boy clothes. How is Leia an "old friend" to Farmboy Luke? How is STHan an "old friend" to Farmboy Luke? R2 met Farmboy before he ditched those clothes and was off on another phase of his life, but to get r2, you have to get 5 x 7* Empire, and Empire toons aren't old friends of Luke. He hated the empire long before he ever met Han or (knowingly) met Leia. So why not Wedge and Biggs as options that can substitute for one or two of the other toons if you don't have them? You would still have to have 5 x 7* out of 7 choices (with one being Farmboy, who we were warned about) instead of 5 x 7* out of 5 choices. It's not "lowering" the requirements, but it does make it easier to fulfill them by providing some farmable options (especially Biggs in GW).

I don't have r2 at all, but I have 4 x 7* Empire with Magma at 98/100 (I was hoping for shards to drop in GW before I needed to spend the last 400 gw tokens). Their gear probably isn't enough, but if I'm very, very lucky with the Luke Flash events, I can get r2 at 7*. I have STHan and Leia at 7*. Of course I have Farmboy at 7* because we knew we needed him. I figured we would need either Yoda or Old Ben, but I didn't think we'd need both and I didn't know that if we only needed one we wouldn't have a choice between them. Before now only the Phoenix events (and early Droid events) have had a requirement that you get every toon of a specific faction. Here they are essentially creating a special Episode IV faction and demanding we have all the toons to qualify for Commander Luke.

Frankly, it doesn't fit the pattern of previous events. It's much more restrictive and by requiring Empire indirectly by requiring R2, it wasn't even plausibly predictable. So now you're going to have a lot of people furiously racing to meet a deadline that is way, way too soon to tackle calmly.

I'll probably get Commander Luke if I can manage to get my Empire toons geared up, but that will take some luck in the Flash Event RNG. The only toons I don't have that I need are Old Ben (1/85) and r2, who basically comes free with the Empire toons.

I've done the math, and I can just barely get Old Ben in 12-13 days if RNG is with me. Over so many attempts, I'm unlikely to deviate too far from the mean, but if it gets to 14 days+, even having r2 may not help me.

On top of that, I'll have to gear r2 from scratch. That's not going to be fun in a short time frame.

All in all, I am one of the people in my guild with the best chance of getting Commander Luke, and unless they give us event units all geared up (once we qualify by having our own 7* versions of each toon) and unless I can bump up my Empire squads gear fast enough, I'm going to have a decent chance of failure.

2x drops for Old Ben would help me switch crystal priority away from shards and onto the gear I need for (presumably) my new R2. So yeah, I'd love it. It would really help me by shaving the time required for OB from 12-13 days down to 6 or 7. It would take some of the stress off.

But even if I do get Commander Luke this time around, I hear my guild mates talking and I've looked at their inventories, the inventories of people who have been playing the game for well over a year, some since the game came out in 2015. I'm stressed about a narrow window, but other players are simply frustrated. This isn't winning EA any fans. This is going to cause far more grief than it will provide joy for the players (such as me) that have a real shot at opening CL this first time round.

I think EA should have learned from the Phoenix frenzy: this isn't good for the Fun, and Fun is the only reason to play the game.