Interesting thread. I am actually playing personally, I joined three months ago.
I can absolutely see why people would quit playing the server or give up if they are a new joiner like myself. The honest truth based on my observations in the past three months is that quite frankly this server is:
A) Is in huge decline.
B) Will die a slow agonizing death over time.
C) Or alternatively will basically exist as the personal D&D of a select small group of people who seem to be content with that.
The problems I've seen are purely rational, objective, as I've not participated in any previous drama or have a biased view due to 20 years of being here. I am also not nostalgic over some by-gone era. I also fix operational models in real life and some of the stuff here are easy fixes so that leads me to believe that C) above is actually intentional. I also don't need to have been a part of this community for X amount of time to be able to view it objectively. Anyone thinking otherwise are just kidding themselves and can get off their high horse.
Issues in ranking:
1. Gate-keeping.
A lot of it. I've never experienced in my entire gaming industry so much gate-keeping. There's a big percentage of quite toxic old veterans that are hell-bent on gate-keeping. The entire model for changes and some of the rules are gate-keeping and this component has multiple degrees.
Examples of that are numerous.
A) For an RP server, you are extremely limited in what you can do. The moment you deviate from that path in any way, you get reported by people.
B) The moment you band with a group of new players, you are accused of ganking. Even though, some of these people have 15 years of experience in PvP so the reality is that you will never win in a straight ratio. People complaining that a bunch of noobs got together to fight against an experienced vet just blows my mind away. Even when said people actually win and they still complain.
C) Another official faction can essentially bully you into doing whatever they want or you can get FR5-ed. So basically someone with two people can dictate how you play just because they were here 5 years ago and have kept up with the absolute minimum of activity to still ''qualify'' as an OF.
D) You try to recruit from the new joiners, you are essentially told you can't do it even though it's clear that the new joiners aren't sticking around and the population is in huge decline. The stats are ever present and visible for all to see on this site.
E) Certain factions (official ones particularly) are essentially run by the same people. This allows them to seamlessly dictate everything that's happening on the server. They pop online whenever necessary. That's essentially gate-keeping new players from actually using or utilizing these factions. At the same time, they are hardly played, barely scraping the minimum target for activity. This is clearly evidenced again by the activity tracker and one has to has basic understanding of data to see. The dusty old dinosaurs can then essentially dictate every major faction in playing without actually playing it. This essentially eliminates the possibility of any new blood actually making any change or becoming an active part of the community in terms of shaping it. And it also allows ancient 10 year old feuds to keep on going between the same two players for example, in competition for creating and dominating most factions worth having. Speaking in generalities, of course.
F) The administration at best - does not have the time to combat this (most likely this), does not care, or is ignorant of it happening. At worst, it's actually a part of the gate-keeping. Certain factions led by parts of the administration are extremely questionable.
G) Overall, some of the community is just unhelpful, toxic (quite obviously on forum and on discord), does not contribute and seems to actively want to destroy and prevent new comers from joining. Nothing is done against such people. This again could be lack of time, ignorance, or willful participation (personal D&D desire). Overall, the general atmosphere is unwelcoming, un-tolerant, or actively hostile to new players.
I) The attitude of some people that you need to perform herculean efforts, write a doctorate, or have spent 10 years on this server for your points to actually have any merit. Let's face it guys, you are not rocket scientists, you haven't written any Shakespeare here. There's multitude of games worth playing out there. No one is going to spend 4 years proving themselves to you and you need to get over your fragile egos.
2. Not helping new players.
A) The idea that a new player has to be prepared when jumping into this game is just absurd. There's tons of rules (read below on that point), tons of stuff to read over, tons of factions to remember. The average person with a decent English is likely not going to remember half of just the rule pages in their first weeks. Let alone ships, guns, fighting effectively, etc.
B) The average experienced player is a toxic salt producing machine powerful enough to support a third world country alone. Mind you, not all are like that (I've met some actual honest and good people) but there's enough toxicity to essentially kill any new player.
C) The Wiki is abandoned. A wonderful tool that sadly has been left in utter decay. Why? I've no idea. The idea that one needs to read over 50 pages on a forum to understand something, be it game mechanic, or previous lore is absolute utter nonsense.
D) The idea that a new player has to know every lore change or what happened 10 years ago on the forum. Self-explanatory. Vets keep saying - read the lore first. Where exactly? Again, utter insanity.
E) Gate-keeping new players and preventing them from contributing in a meaningful way. (See the entire gate-keeping section).
3. The rules.
A) A lot of the rules are outdated and in need of updating.
B) A lot of the rules are arbitrary or downright vague. This leads to multiple problems including players not understanding them and also to admins having different interpretations of said rules and applying them differently. There's no standard. More so, it creates a bottleneck for the admins because a lot of decisions don't have a check list and require an interview process which leads to a lot of time spent on deciding stuff behind the scenes, I suspect. Of course, this problem is partly alleviated because I imagine with such a declining population, you also have less requests. I also suspect there's no quality control function in place or the QC mechanism don't work well.
C) No general code of conduct - be it positive or negative. This essentially leads to no one having an idea of what's a good practice or what's a bad practice. People claim ''ganking'' is bad but nowhere can you find that out unless salty old vets cry that you managed to beat them through numbers (which again, let's not forget, is the only real chance you have as a new player to begin with).
D) No examples of good RP and bad RP, no definitions. People keep crying about RP but no one can give you any definitions or examples. In fact, jump drives, a game mechanic in the game that everyone uses are not even supposed to be used RP-wise. How would one know that though unless they actually check with a veteran?
E) Re-evaluation of which rules are actually needed and which prevent gameplay needlessly. Which rules require a time-frame that's not reflective of reality or real life commitment.
F) Allow fresh blood in the administration. People with new and unbiased perspective passionate to make changes. I've already met quite a few people that want to help but are not given tools, the opportunity, or considered at all.
4) Information dissemination.
A) The forum is a good tool for RP-ing threads. It's not a good tool to read on rules, lore, historical choices. You can't get context, you can't see the bigger picture. You can't sift upon pages and pages and pages of old threads.
B) There needs to be an outline and each tool needs to be used for specific purposes - Forum for RP and discussions, Wiki for lore, mechanics, and rules. These two need to work together. Have the community help with building up the wiki again. Have administration rule only in points of conflict if time is of essence.
5) There's literally no dynamic movement or any lore impact whatsoever.
A) Let the community drive your narrative. If suddenly 100 people start logging in Gallia, have your lore reflect that. Have people be able to actively and dynamically change relations and factions. The idea that certain factions are stuck in a perpetual endless war with no outcome is just boring. Alliances and wars should shift and change the narrative. Administration should get a person to be a some sort of Game Master (one that does not play any faction and is unbiased, with QC in check just in case). Have a faction actually win a war and claim some territory - give people a reason to log. To defend their homeland or to claim some territory. Have the diplomacy which is the core of this game be able to be shifted. Otherwise, your RP is extremely limited and very scripted. You will always be stifled by constraints.
6) No advertisement.
A) This game can actually acquire so many people at absolutely no financial cost. There's plenty of people that understand marketing. Simple targeted posts even on facebook can do the trick for free. Make a helpful landing page for all the new recruits / people. I'm not even going to talk about the potentiality for actual profit from this mod, because that's an entirely different story.
Addendum: The game is absolutely perfect to play and it's not the reason why people don't pick it, stop, or quit. The gameplay is fun, the game is practically in a niche with no serious competitors. The graphics are clearly not an issue. A lot of people play Deep Rock Galactic, or the old Diablo 2 before the remaster, thousands of examples.
There's quite a lot of quick wins that can be done to drastically improve this server and the overall health of the community, and its population. The fact that it's not done leads me to believe that it's intentional and some people just want to have their own personal D&D session. Which is also fine by the way. But I think that if people woke up from their myopic view, they'll actually find out they might enjoy it more than the same old 10 people circle-jerk. Those get old and predictable fast.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
