Although the only reason for that is really to do with scale... While ESFs are meant to be the fixed wing fighters of Planetside, they function as VTOL/heli-type because a fixed wing aircraft engages from miles away (at least for any self-propelled ordnance). (Also applicable to tanks and maybe a powerful rifle under certain conditions.) But computers aren't powerful enough to realistically render that far so you get a huge compression in distances and VTOL fighters end up dogfighting by hover-dancing around each other at a distance of less than a few hundred meters.
Ever hear of ARMA? It's not perfect but it's close, but there are also dedicated flight sims that do the scale right, but... well they are
dedicated sims. I'm just saying computers can handle it but it's not the scope of PS2
I feel that the way ESFs handle, and aircraft in general, has more to do with the nature of the game. They didn't feel that you needed to go through 'flight school' to be able to fly (although something like that wouldn't be a bad idea) so even one of the most difficult maneuvers in real flight (landing) is trivialized because you don't need a long strip of land. This means instead of designing the maps/continents around having dedicated airstrips they can just have a little landing pad.
If they were something that were called from off-continent from aircraft carrier type things... that would actually be kinda neat especially considering the continent locking stuff coming up, but the game's too developed for that sort of thing. Changing the way ESF's function at this point... would probably be bad...
In regards to Pay 2 Win (regardless of if it was intentional or not) every default gun I've tried is good, everything else is more specialized for more specific types of encounters, and there are many things that you simply cannot buy with real money including upgrades for those guns, vehicles, upgrades for your vehicles, etc.