That has always been the "right" way to do it from the beginning, if you wanted extra CXP

Is there suddenly a companion shortage?

Go to Galactic Command, and click daily heroics from there.

Do you seriously expect to be notified, or have path notes, that include everything that does not change? I can see being upset when changes are not announced, but complaining that something that did not change was not announced, well, I am at a loss of words for that., other than if you assume something...

I used to know a guy that worked on a horse farm. That farm bought an adjacent horse farm. In order for the new acquisition to look like the base farm, the owner tore up all the fence on the new place, and replaced it with fence that looked like the original farm's. This guy asked if he could buy, not be given, some of the old fence. The farm owner told him no, then ordered him to burn the posts and bury the wire. Instead of gaining a little profit, by selling a small amount of fence, the owner thought it better to pay this guy to destroy all the fence. What does this story have to do with this discussion? The perceived gain of something that someone else "might" get for less than the original cost. That is a very petty thing to argue. What is wrong with others having your "scraps"?

I am surprised none of you marketing wizards have ever heard of a loss leader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader. That is more, or less, exactly what F2P and preferred players are. They increase traffic, which is what "everyone" is complaining about being missing in this game, besides content. Comments like just merge all servers into one and only let us subs play, would surely not lead to higher sub rates. I assume the original introduction of F2P was in response to avoiding just such a situation. In other words, it is likely that if it was not for F2P, or preferred, players, your sub price would be much higher. And, probably high enough to have discouraged enough people to stop subbing that the servers would have been shut down long ago.

This is incorrect. Once you finish a mission, you can "relearn" the same one as many times as you want.

You do realize that too much virtual money has been a problem for quite a while. They also just dropped another money sink by not needing to purchase advanced crafting, if I read correctly. Lowering the amount in game credits available counters inflation. The only difference between in game economics and the real world is that you have no risk of going homeless in the game.