My opinion on why the game has constantly been losing players

[Scumbag]

Thank you, i was always thinking why people don't play Discovery. I don't agree with you about your second point, there are a lot of people who would like to play Freelancer again, and they actually payed millions of dollars to do it, kickstarting Star Citizen.
If i remember correctly i read here somewhere there are a lot of new players every month, who install Discovery, and start the game, but they don't stay around too much. And you summed it up nicely, this isn't Freelancer anymore, it's something else, something different that doesn't feel like a continuation of the game they just finished in single player.
That feeling of arriving in Omicron Alpha, seeing the wreck of the Hispania and then docking on Malta, that doesn't feel important anymore in Discovery, who are Outcasts anyway, they are not the dangerous foes they used to be, they are nobody. The Omicrons overall, do they still feel like that far away place?
It's very hard to capture a feeling in a game, and no matter how good the devs are they can't compete with the level of quality that Freelancer had, after all, it was a high level production, financed by Microsoft.

Oh and the RP standard, it alienates people a lot. Think about it, you want me to play a space shooter without shooting stuff, and i also have to write stories? Ok, bye.