Look... I deleted the game upon getting a look at the insane buffs pilots could bring a player's hangar.  Some friends talked me into sticking it out for a bit. 

One game just confirmed that the pilots have forever shifted this from a game of skill to a game of who is willing to spend more money on their pilots.   I was teamed up with some buddies - all of us just have the regular blue pilots and maybe a few purple but mine have not been ranked up at all and I don't think any of my buddies have ranked more than once on a pilot or two.   We pulled a team of other players that I am quite familiar with - some of them are on my friends list and I know their skill level is equal to all of us.  These guys though all opened up their wallets and each had the legendary pilot with 4 stars or better and all implants filled... their other pilots were mostly the purple ones and 3-4 stars minimum with all implant slots filled.  The difference that played was palpable as we barely stood a chance of fighting them.   They outdid us on everything.... more range on their weapons, cooldowns on abilities and extended effect times on abilities, drastically higher HP levels... the list goes on a bit longer.  

So pilots most definitely might not replace skills like Plarium says in thier wideo but pilots absolutely BOOST the hell out of an already skilled player to a point that they become unbeatable against organically skilled players that haven't made the choice to dump a few hundred bucks into their pilots.   

Congrats Plarium on completely destroying a game that was still competitive when all players essentially had the same limitations on their weapon ranges and mech abilities and it really came down to when you chose to make your move.   You ruined any bit of balance the game still had.