We going to ignore the spider legs maul unloc requirement

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.