There's a lot of vitriol in the community lately about pricing in the game and I think that, however well-intentioned you and the leaders of other seemingly-large spending guilds are trying to be, these sentiments are always going to be met with discontent.

The only reason why EA feels like they can get away with creating toons that cost $1300 a piece is because a previous price point at ~$250 per toon was embraced by so many players, even if it was a one-time thing full of regret later. The Aurodium packs were likely never meant to appeal to so many players and should have created a real stratification in the game between the mega-spenders who bought all the Aurodiums and had all the top toons, the moderate spenders who might have a few top characters, and then mild spenders or FTP who only had the characters who were freely available.

Because of the Star Wars IP, many players jumped at the opportunity to not only gain some memorable characters, but also gain those strong memorable characters before others could and have a persistent edge in the Arena. Instead of proper layering, the $250 price point gave the game krakens and guppies/FTP with nothing in the middle.

Now, EA has to up the ante; they have to create the necessary layering that many "freemium" games have. The problem is that since the intended high-end wasn't actually high enough, EA has to create a high-end that seems astronomical in order to create that layer. The reason so many players are up in arms about boycotting now is that the time to boycott was back when EA started with this $250 per character nonsense in the first place. Before the credit crunch, before the gear crunch, before they started offering packs at $100+tax for 4-star toons.

We're the Aurodium packs overpriced? Sure to many they were. But to many they were reasonably priced. These new prices are an absolute atrocity. I understand some people think spending $200 for some pixels, is stupid, a hobby is a hobby, and as long as you find personal enjoyment in something, then it's worth whatever you are willing to spend.

The "little guys" in this game see no difference between $1300 and $250. The way I see it (and also the way you clearly see it, too), if someone is very devoted to his or her hobby and doesn't mind spending for it, they will either decide to keep spending as the price rises, or they will lower their participation in the hobby.

Is $1300 for a character overpriced? Definitely, but as evidenced by the fact that there are people already rocking their 7* Krennic and DTs, clearly to others $1300 isn't a problem for their hobby. The reason why the community is so irritated with the perceived high spenders is that the high-spenders seem only to be crying foul once the price point tipped over something that had routinely given them an advantage over the last 14 months.

People pay hundreds of dollars for Lego Star Wars sets, which boggles my mind. I love Star Wars and think Legos are kind of neat, but I'm of the sentiment, "It's a toy! Who spends that much on Lego!" but, for others, that's their hobby and, if they want to spend their money on something I find worthless, then "you do you."

I'll give another example: I like to write and I keep all my notes in Premium Evernote because it's got a lot of features I enjoy. Recently, Evernote jacked up their pricing for their premium service to about $60 a year. Was I annoyed? Surely! But, I still paid the new renewal price because it was worth it to me. If I thought that I couldn't afford the new pricing, I would have determined which of the lower tiers would better suit me, or I'd have packed up and gone to a different service that was in my price range. Evernote wanted to create further separation for their different levels of service, in the same manner than EA is doing here, regardless if it is seen as gouging their customers.

The pricing for characters in this game has ALWAYS been an issue, but the perception is that now that the heavy spenders are feeling the burn, it's time for action. The folks with the complete-geared, 100-toon rosters will need to make some decisions. Will they continue to pay the outrageous pricing for new characters? Some of them already have: https://swgoh.gg/sync/leaderboard/collection/ If not, then they will need to be a little more conservative on which toons they decide to get, which honestly aids the whole game. Instead of seeing a sea of the newest and most OP toons dominating on every shard, maybe a little more variety will be introduced by allowing players to use other characters in more unique ways.