When did that happen? (Czerka)

I've said before that I'm not a huge fan of dailies. I'm happy enough to do them occasionally if they benefit me in some way, but I don't really do them just to pass the time, nor do I like it if a game makes them feel mandatory.

Nonetheless the Czerka weekly was one mission that I often picked up on alts before doing a random flashpoint, because it was the one weekly quest associated with dailies that also required two flashpoint runs, and there was always a chance that my random flashpoint might end up being one of the required ones, which would then allow me to kill two birds with one stone if I did the dailies as well. I didn't want that opportunity to go to waste. It was therefore with some surprise that I noticed yesterday, when I logged on one of said alts with the Czerka weekly in her log, that it had been changed to not require runs of Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown anymore.

Instead, both were replaced by a single new [Heroic 2+] quest to kill a newly placed champion droid. I went to check it out and found that at level sixty I could solo said droid with ease. I reckon that it should be possible for lower levels as well, though class and gear will probably matter somewhat in that case.

I also tried to find out when this change actually happened and Reddit quickly educated me that it was apparently made with 3.2: "[WEEKLY] Czerka Dissolution and [WEEKLY] Czerka Takeover no longer require completion of the two Czerka flashpoints. Instead, a new daily Heroic 2+ mission has been added to the mission terminal on CZ-198."

I wonder what Bioware's thought process behind this change was. My own guess would be time. When CZ-198 first came out, I actually applauded the step to connect the "group" portion of the weekly to flashpoints instead of heroic quests, as you have reasons to run those other than their connection to dailies, which introduced a new dynamic to getting the weekly done. Plus with the group finder it's always been easier to find a group for a flashpoint than for a heroic quest (as its functionality for finding heroic groups remains woefully inadequate to this day).

However, looking at it now, the end result was obviously that doing the Czerka weekly took quite a bit more time than any of the other planetary weekly quests. Even assuming instant pops and a good group, running through both Czerka Corporate Labs and Core Meltdown would probably take you at least thirty minutes, if not longer. For comparison, most heroic quests associated with weeklies can be done in about five to ten minutes these days. I wouldn't be surprised if this put people off doing the Czerka weekly, even if they did the regular dailies. So I suppose in the interest of keeping things equal this change makes sense.

Did you know about this change?