Ander Thedas wrote:1.7 the complaint was tanks. 1.8 it's scouts. There's a very large and fairly obvious shared issued with both these roles which exacerbates the problems to the level that it's in and is a FUNDAMENTAL balancing ideology that needs to be addressed for this game to reach the level I know it can and should be.
That issue is simply this: The best counter to a play style should almost never be itself.
With 1.7 tanks and the way that AV was currently being utilized the only thing that could really handle the tanks on the battlefield were other tanks. It was, to put it diplomatically, problematic. It hindered the general flow of play and having tanks on the field on either side proved to be more of a detriment to a battle than an improvement of variety and circumstance. Many people complained. Several switched to red line rail fits just to try to do something about it. The infantry was furious at the tanks, the vehicle pilots were furious at the red line rails. Not too many people were happy and it showed. The way to defeat tanks WAS tanks and the battle trends followed that logic to just compound the issue.
Now with 1.8 most people complain about scouts. And there's a problem with cloak times, sure, and brick tanking a scout, fine. But those are NOT the main issues. The problem with scouts is that the things that best counter a scout is another scout. The main weakness of a scout is being seen and not having the option to cherry pick their fights and dictate the battle conditions. The only suits that can rob a scout of his or her ability to do so reliably is another scout suit that's kitting ewar modules, and therein lies the problem almost entirely. People hate having to deal with scouts so in an effort to combat them their option is to become the thing on the battlefield that bothers them. It's the same with the way tanks progressed in 1.7. And with everyone converting over to scouts to solve their own personal scout problem it just adds more to the battlefield, increasing other peoples issues with them.
The solution is one that creates a healthy dynamic of game play and allows for fluidity across play styles: the best counter to a scout needs to be a different suit, which is then countered by something else entirely and so the clockwork mechanisms of war spin.
My personal thought on the issue is that the logical heir to the mantelpiece of counter-scout is the logistics suit. The Gallente is already semi-poised in the right direction with having a bonus to active scanners, but largely speaking it's not enough. I run scout suits (not Gallente) undampened and uncloaked and I get under more than 50% of all scans without too much issue. A think a smallish buff in passive scanning on a logistic suit might go a long way into making passive modules more functional for them (small steps here, it would be way too easy for the pendulum to swing the other way and make the scouts undesirable, too), or even a small buff to the angle that active scanners can sweep, which would make them more reliable without necessarily making them any stronger, which incentiveizes using them more.
All in all there are options, for sure, but the bigger issue to be addressed here is the crux of my argument. When the best counter for a play style is the same play style then the battle trend will always settle there. When you keep the gears moving you keep the fight fresh and I think most people will be happier with a robust theater of war.