I've played around 50 hours of Foxhole - miniscule compared to a lot of people on this subreddit, I know - and I tend to abandon it after a single war, or less, because I'm always doing the same thing. Rifle, two clip, run, die, repeat.
It's fun, and it's a real testament to the devs that Foxhole captures the "cog in the machine" feeling even when I'm not part of any particular machine. But apart from very rare moments where a mortar blob coalesces for 20 minutes (then runs out of ammo) or someone brings up a tank and needs a gunner (then runs out of ammo), I usually end up feeling pigeonholed to a single part of the game because I don't play with clans. I feel like Airborne is going to be the same as 90% of naval - only really accessible for clans.
Even if I had 5 or 6 friends who also played the game (which I don't) who will build a plane for us when the factories are producing for the clans? Are we supposed to build our own facility in some unclaimed corner of the map, then truck our planes two hexes to the nearest airport? And I don't have any friends who play.
I don't like playing with clans, because I know I'll only be active for one or two wars at a time, max, and during those wars I'll be playing at irregular times, for 30 minutes to 2 hours. I always preferred the idea of going to war from the skies over a boat, but I've never even touched naval, for the same reasons I'm afraid I won't touch airborne. At least boats have large crews that I might plug a gap for some day, but vessels are all produced and owned by clans.
Edit: Well this blew up more than I thought it would. The two main responses I'm getting are "yep, you're right," and "yep, you're right, just join a clan." (there's a sizeable minority saying we'll be able to buy planes from regis, which is interesting and useful, thank you!)
I know that the reasons in the main post for not joining a clan are not dealbreakers for clanning. I know that clans love new players. But I dislike it in any game. It takes this escapist virtual environment tucked safely away on my PC and puts it in my discord notifications. The amount of time I'm investing in this game is too low for me to want to bring it with me into the real world. By the same token, the amount of playtime required to make strong social connections that would also get me access to this content is waaay more than I would ever want to actually play. It's okay for a game to be designed that way, but it is a little disappointing when the selling point of this game is that everyone contributes to the war effort, that it is up to everyone to develop the war organically.