= basically this =
YEP. I used to be a pilot on mattherson (an old outfit called AACE at the time). We had a lot of fun and good times and didn't really act too elitist about it (IIRC). But everyone slowly left, and TBH flying has gotten less and less fun ever since, to where I barely ever bother anymore.
Those "air elites" actually were cancer to their own playstyle, more and more people moved away from flying (for one it didn't really affect base captures) since repeatedly getting dunked by misquito/reaver/scythe "gank squads" was completely unfun, so without anyone to kill you'll see a lot of the air elites of past ground pounding as heavy assaults and what have you. So now the question of flying is whether anyone actually even bothers to pull a plane anymore these days.
Every time SOE caved to the demands of the air knights, it made air knights "nosegun-only" policy stronger and stronger (who woulda guessed???), until everyone else left, then so too did the knights of air. And this is why considering the opinions of your whining players is dumb, my greatest criticism of old SOE was that they listened to the reddit too much. If you're going to balance patch, use STATISTICS FIRST, players opinions second.
Oh and,
these changes to air are on PTS right now.
Yeah that's right. Tomcat missiles might get nerfed AGAIN, and this time, it's the nail in the coffin if those changes go live.
...
My apologies, I went on for much longer than I originally intended. But the "air meta" is still something of a sore spot for me, don't even get me started on the mishandling of the liberator by SOE.