My opinion on why the game has constantly been losing players

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It's just that the stories barely even leave our own forums and / or are not captivating enough to bring people's attention to the thing. I mean, look at Dwarf Fortress stories, they literally make one want to play it on their own.

Roguelikes play almost directly with your imagination. And DF is just an endless source of lolwut occasions being thrown at the player, thus leading to those cool stories you see across the internets.
FL, however, may seem as "just an old game" to youths, even regarding all the RP environment.
I should make some ads on local biggest imageboard, though. Still a way to attract some new players. Language barriers are also a problem, some peeps are being scared by an English-only RP server, they think it's too much for them.