Very well and eloquently written, and also timeless in the sense of misunderstandings about this game.
Grinding
No, it is not pay2win. - in fact, grinding with or without license is now slow as hell, and the bought ships are really not op.
There is a multiple exponentially increasing XP system in the game (where you constantly xp on two of them, main race and contracted faction), which usually is done to help balancing by making progression faster at higher levels, usually used with constant income rate, however, they also nerfed the experience amount afterwards, by a ridiculously high amount, making leveling up in the game really hard, while in the early days, it was almost addictive to keep playing just to unlock yet another feature.
Additionally, they added restrictions to how much income you have based on your level, so you are forced to buy the next tier ships. Which means, theoretically tiers could go up and up and up, which is not really what we are hoping for.
Flying lower tiered ships have no advantage except getting you lesser and lesser amount of xp, and less repair costs. It’s a sad design decision but its okay, since there are only 4 tiers at the moment.
Originally the tiers were balanced out at each other, with T3 module-equivalents being available as T2 in military loot however (stasis and stuff), the greatest gap (T2-T3) there seems to have been closed. Still hoped, lower tiers might get some advantage in scoring, especially if you face higher tiered enemies.
Matchmaking
It still seems to me, that a really balanced game is very rare. Either you swim with a winning crowd or with a losing crowd. Its okay that matchmaking takes into account stuff, but, its not very clear, what.
CCP would never do such things, they disclose not just their whole database, they even give you Rest APIs to their servers to receive ingame data for your tools. It is exactly known in eve what works how.
I dont really care for too much sophistication in matchmaking algorithms, since I find, its only a byproduct of the gamification hype, but I think, except rank playing a part in income, most things are ok there.
What outraged me personally is, that a balancing approach was to fiddle around with the matchmaking, while not overhauling the whole Tech system to make it less tiery and keep it in the endgame.
Flying and Fitting
For anyone who played a lot of eve, fitting in star conflict comes natural. So, being clever is nice in this game, which is cool, since mixed groups of people help each other out, which leads to more diversity and fun.
My only personal whish here is to keep “T1-T5” really “Techs” and not simply “Tiers”, and expand it more by having some more ships for each tier on higher levels. In eve, you always know what a t1 vs. a t2 is. a highlight of that game is to return to T1 ship designs later, as your skills allow them to use much more.
Teamwork
Any online game you play with friends is best played with different types of personalities, and any game which takes that into account is a great game, because everyone can find some strength to build upon.
But here I come to the license again. Squad sizes are part of the game mechanics, if we talk about team games where squads acquire certain roles together. There is no license to just “only build squads” without any income bonus. Well, as I said earlier, the income bonus is negligible anyway, since the nerfs. That price is quite unacceptable for something which calls itself f2p.
And then comes an announcement that squads are not limitless, but you still require them to play, while nerfing and nerfing. Without explanation. So no, not working as intended. I would even say, in some context, you contradicted yourself there.
TL;DR
Basicly, most of what you wrote is right, but it does not address the real issues around the game, only the issues for people who have “weak opinions” they mix into their rage.
So, while I completelty agree with your whole posting, the only thing I cannot agree upon is the title.
And this time, there is no Jita to bomb for protests.