We going to ignore the spider legs maul unloc requirement

Personally I couldn’t care less. With their latest massive cash grab strategy, insanely boring colosseum and brain dead “gameplay experience”, I actually don’t care what the requirements are.

I’ll take a look at it when all the toons leave the Era Prison. 

Seeing how there is actually zero point in getting stars for my toons, I'll completely stop wasting crystals on shard packs while the toons are still in Era Prison. When shards goes to shipments I can get double the amount, and since I can't use my 5-6 star era toon for basically anything, why wouldn't I just wait?

Maybe these requirements will squeeze a bit more money from the largest whales, but for "dolphins" like me there is no longer ANY reason to spend on unlocking toons early - they won't really unlock early and they won't get me the new legendaries the first time around any way.

And what do I care if I need to go to R7 or R8 to unlock the legendary the second time? I don't! I have piles of the gear and relic materials needed. And since the gear needed for the new toons is spoiled at the begining of an Era, I have plenty time to plan out my gear farming plan, should there be anything I need to farm.

So again: Thank you CG for making the decision extremely easy. I'll stop spending on toon unlocks, hoard materials and crystals and wait for the toons to leave the Era Clown Car.

Honestly, with the latest crap update followed by the colossal F up with the datacrons, I’m doubting whether I’ll make it to the spider legs event anyways 

Honestly I don’t see much difference between this and what was happening before.  If you wanted a legendary on the first occurrence, you paid for the shards and some of the gear depending on what you hoarded. Now you can’t hoard and have to spend a set amount.  Or you wait for the second occurrence and get him free.  Only now you can spend a little and get a 4, 5, or 6 star version where before it was all or nothing.

Also, you can pretty much get Level 70 for free with some crystal spending and if you bought the shards, you got extra materials (and will get more on the other Marquees) from the higher tiers of the Marquee events.  Remains to be seen if any of the materials to get to 85 will be available for free or crystals (Vader’s Marquee will grant some Mk 7’s if you do the higher tiers) but that’s about the only impediment, going from 70 to 85 may require additional spending.

But no one should have any illusions that Maul should have been 7-star unlockable free-to-play on the first go.

Its not free its over $650 and still not fully unlocked