I had a big long post made about this but scrapped it because most have already said what's on my mind. What it boils down to is this:
Player retention is at an all time low because roleplay, in most cases, is an afterthought by many in the community. Most avid RPers do so within their own cliques, rarely involving outside individuals unless agreed upon outside of roleplay.
What's worse, is you have names like "Donald.Jimmyson" and "Freelancer2004" flying around with nothing being done about it despite it being against the rules to have a character name as such. You might say, "Well report it then." Sure, or the admins could pull these players aside when they see it and inform them it needs to change instead. These names only add to the appearance that this isn't a Roleplay community to those first starting to play, so they assume they can do so as well and the problem just propagates.
The piracy problem won't be solved by changing the player list, adding more rules, or anything like that. It comes down to this being yet another symptom of a lack of focus on roleplay and instead in maximizing credit income. With Discovery, you either have Space Truck Simulator or Ace Combat Space Edition and nothing much inbetween.
I've lost people who meant the world to me...and I'm still doing just fine. I'm coming for everything they said I couldn't have.