So I've been playing since global release and I really developed a strong love for the game...

Fast paced, good pvp elements where your decision making and how you worked the map were the key elements to a winning strategy.  Even running into players that paid a lot of money to upgrade their stuff or obtain stuff early wasn't too problematic because with better tactics, you could beat them.  

Adding the pilots though has really changed the game though.  Let me list a few key ways from my perspective

1. Resources are very hard to obtain already but you have doubled + the amount of resources a player must now obtain.  At the same time resources have been removed from several areas of the game.

2. There was a balance in the game where high powered weapons had some limitations - i.e. ARC TORRENTS.  Massive damage potential but required solid tactics to emply them since it was a close range weapon.  Pilots and implants have changed all of these limitations as you can now tweak any weapon to function at a range it was not capable of being used at before. 

3. It was a game of strategy/tactics where the player that understood the ability cooldowns, length of effect and distance could use that knowledge to win an engagement... that is also getting tossed out the window with pilots as you never know what a players set up might be.  On one hand I can see how this adds some variability to the game but it comes with negatives and I honestly don't see any long term positive reasons for adding all these balance changes to the weapon/mech systems.

4. There have been issues with Matchmaking... specifically for players under 150k xp and even more for players under 100k xp.  Buying things early really gave an advantage because of the way your MM works with XP as the primary sorting point.   Now you add in pilots which let players wildly buff their abilities to a point where they could become unbeatable when placed into a match of pocket change/f2p.   THis really adds to the reputation the game has obtained of being pay to win.  

I would love for you to address how pilots are a long term positive for the ENTIRE community and not just those on the upper end of the food chain - i.e. the whales.