1. Pilots say no and vehicles are going backwards

To some extent. Vehicle parity needs to be a thing and old roles (Marauder/SLAV/LLAV/Black Ops HAV/LDS) need to be reintroduced. Black Ops HAV not as much of a priority however.

AV/Vehicle balance is not doing as good because of no legit Anti-Shield AV, so armor constantly gets shafted.

1. Pilots say no and vehicles are going backwards

I think you could have the vehicles of old if the player base was the same now as it was then. Back then the pubs weren't filled with majority solo players.

The reasoning behind my statement is that the teamwork needed to kill strong vehicles was there then as opposed to what we have now.

No, it's not.

1. Back in the old days i do remember that Surya/Sagaris generally blew each other up without infantry getting in the way

2. Even at the start of PC Madrugars could take on 2 tanks at the same time while a FG hit them (swarms & lai dai were the broken exception)

3. But as time has gone on yes the playerbase has changed, it gone from 'lets get the bastard in the tank you go FG i lay mines and you go swarms' to 'hang on let me get a FG and the tank is gone'

4. Different players and nations - I always find that the ones who do not complain will always kill you because they always work together, take the japanese in any game they go hard and in days of the Marauders they would kill you, same with GAC, same with the russians/germans/french or any of the nations which dont speak english as a 1st language - They will work together and make sure you will die if you are a problem

5. Pubs - Balancing for pubs has been the worst thing to happen to this game since matchmaking doesnt exist and it doesnt help if the enemy refuse to pull out a counter to your playstyle

I think the removal of autosquading for the 6 man squads had a HUGE impact that many people don't factor into the change in behavior of randoms.

Care to elaborate?

I think if anything the biggest stopgap for this game has been (a) poor game performance/framerate and (b) no consistent eng-game for veteran players to prevent them from decimating newbies.

These are single-handedly the two biggest complaints I've heard from anyone I've tried introducing the game to, and they've hardly been addressed since. The new weapons, maps, equipment, etc. are all just fluff when you consider that the core mechanics of the game are still very much bad.

You seem to define "core mechanics" differently from what I know. To me the core mechanics have improved. We have a better New Player Experience in terms of giving new players something to aim for which can be a variety of things such as earning those Faction APEX suits (if they're not in the mood to spend any cash), Planetary Conquest, and even something as mundane as Daily Missions. It's not a major improvement, but it's a start and we should expand on that.

Frame rates is another thing to address, but it's not as problematic now as I have seen. Despite the fact that the PS3 hardware is more or less consistent across the majority of players, some of us have experienced no problems and some of us have. In my case, I have not experienced any problems with frame rates so far and I use a cheap 12GB PS3.