Is AVA fun ?

It's fun, but you need some people to play with to make it worthwhile. Without any friends, it gets boring fast.

Also, to get perm guns at this point (if you plan on playing more than like a month or two), you gotta spend money, so that kinda makes the game hard to get started in :/

It is not what it used to be, but if you are good at it, its fun to own at all room xD And yes, playing with friends make it worthwhile You dont necessarily need AP guns to be good, just some good technique. I played all my life with euro basic guns (Fn2k, sv98, m24, etc) and got always top frag. GJ on it!

It used to be fun but aeria has ruined it ps i thought i would pop in

Well it depends of the perspective , but in my opinion, if you don't have some money to buy ap on the game to buy nice ap guns, even if you know how to use the standard guns and you don't have any other guns besides the standards you'll get bored because you'll have to use always the same guns on every single game, if you don't have any friends to play with you you'll get bored. So basically no, the game got screwed up when aeria toke the perm guns... "IJJI times were golden times", just my opinion.