Honestly, I wouldn't care if the placeholders even had something like different colors to distinguish between them. If all the missing scouts used the exact same suit model - down to the color - I'd still want it. It's the missing elements of the skill tree and missing knowledge there that create the larger issue.

The skills that are missing could be primary desires for many people. If you want to define yourself as a "gallente heavy", you're going to need to put points into "Gallente Heavy Frames", and presumably something like "Sentinel" or "Commando" as well. Even with the skill discounts, you're still looking at maxing an 8x skill and possibly a 4x one at the same time.

If CCP's solution to the wait is "save SP" because "no respec", that's a huge chunk SP to be squirreling away (3.7 mill or so). You can get a new weapon to advanced in a week or so. Getting that new suit type to proto can't happen the same way though. The nature of making investing in a given racial variant/style so time-intensive is that it makes a decision weighty. Making the decisions without all the facts is painful, similar to if EVE just completely lacked ship-types for some races. It's awkward.

I wouldn't mind placeholders for lots of things. I'd like an Amarr pilot with an Amarr dropship, for example. I can't skill into Amarr light frames (don't exist), Amarr pilots (role doesn't exist), or Amarr Dropships (don't exist).

If I wanted to skill into something equivalent, I'd basically be stuck aligning with Caldari/Gallente at a huge expense of SP. It would take months to earn that same SP to get the same degree of skill in Amarr if it suddenly released. The alternative is saving my SP till those things are released, but.... we don't know when that will happen. So, you look at gimping yourself and not spending SP while you wait.

If they just threw a Gallente dropship (model-wise) with the Amarr stats up, and added the skills... it wouldn't be the same of course. But my SP wouldn't be wasted. Same deal with the scout suit. Obviously the Gallente suit isn't the same as an Amarr, but it allows me to both know what I'm getting into ("oh wow, the bonuses for Amarr pilots are terrible" and so on) and to put my hard-earned SP towards my eventual goal as opposed to something I don't want.

I don't think the "tech" restrictions of placeholders are as complicated as people make them out to be. The set of variables that would be pointing towards the appropriate model just gets pointed at an existing model instead. Like I said, I don't care if it looks exactly the same - I care if I spend two months of SP on something that isn't the suit/area I actually wanted to spec into. The skills matter. The is entirely because they've setup the game so that it -does- take months (assuming max SP) to get skilled up in something like a dropsuit. Why take X-race to proto if it's not even the one you want?

I think there's already a lot of stuff that's not really articulated in-game. Like the viewer model for all the ARs having scopes, and the general lack of distinction between different ARs. People will plan their skills by the skills, when they notice the suits' not unique, it'll be like a number of other problems in game that have no documentation (memory leak, etc.).

Not documenting the fact it's a placeholder graphic is a minor issue compared to the lack of the skills on the tree.

Single greatest metaphor ever