The game worked for the longest time because it had more than the same fifty people in four different coalitions jerking each other raw.
A decade ago when the game was at 200/200 for the better part of the whole day and there were factions with more members than the entire community has at this point, it just worked and we all had fun because we were just playing the game and writing our own stories. Now everyone wants their own shinies and, due to the continuing population decline, the chances to get new and improved types of shinies have gone up exponentially. If you gave Igiss or Cannon the idea of being able to throw a billion credits and a couple pages of roleplay posts at the dev team along with a CMP, a SUR, and a [Ship] entry, and you'd get it returned to you if you were friends with the right people, they'd recommend that you go stuff your idea somewhere uncomfortable (like the back of a Volkswagen).
Then the community started declining and to keep people interested, more and more terribly-implemented hackjobs came together. First the cost of SRPs was halved, then the PoB system and cloaks were added. The community halved in size again and they added new ID and IFF stuff and jump drives and docking modules (maybe cloaks were added at this time too, I can't remember). Then things got worse and they added hyperspace beacons and unique ships to keep people interested. Then things got even worse, and they added FCRs. Now they've added... this.
One of the core problems with all of these things is that they didn't make the community any better or stave off its decline. They did the exact opposite, as the only way to reliably get any of them completed was what back in the day we called Skypefriends.
PoBs: two to three 5Kers a day just to keep the lights on, most of which would never end up counting for faction time for most factions. often supplied through OORP means (skypefriends)
Cloaks: reliant on PoBs and the awful supply chain thereof, does nothing but encourages silent powertrading AND results in people being able to stealth out of encounters. often constructed through OORP means (skypefriends)
Docking modules: same as cloaks, with the "avoid encounters" replaced by "server doesn't work right"
Jump drives: same as cloaks, but with teleporting around the universe and avoiding tons of encounters AND a period of time where you could teleport half the server in 5Kers in a single go. often constructed through OORP means (skypefriends)
Hyperspace beacons: in theory encourages people to fly scout ships with beacons. in practice, too expensive for anyone to use on anything other than a capital ship. also helps kill interaction. often constructed through OORP means (skypefriends)
Unique ships: in theory really cool, in practice a lot of submissions are trash and the ones that do end up making it through either involve so much RP that you honestly feel dead after doing it and have wasted a year of your life, or you managed to get it all done and passed through because you know the right people (skypefriends)
FCR: in theory you become a part of the game. in practice the dev team forgets and you're praying they still like you enough to not punish your faction and dump all your hard work in the trash (skypefriends). plus afterwards they own your faction's lore and you get to hope like hell they like you enough that they won't screw it all up (skypefriends)
RCR: pay a billion credits, maybe get your zoner X wild ERP canonized, or maybe get a station taken over, it all depends on whether or not the dev team likes it and likes you (skypefriends)
Expect factions that have enough pull to get things passed prior to the implementation of this to now get them passed through these new "official" channels, using money they generated on completely different, unrelated ships, probably en masse in the dead of the night when no one's around, or when they've let their friends know not to screw with their trade routes, and with just enough RP to make it look good for the purposes of "transparency" and "fairness" and other things you'll see in bold yellow text when someone calls out something blatantly skypefriends-ed.
