Well, aside from shamelessly promoting my server, I was also curious to know whether all private servers are experiencing a population increase as the game’s overall player base diminishes. This trend might suggest that the decline is largely due to the poor performance and moderation policies of the official servers. Some players are either reluctant or struggle to access private servers, especially those with mods, which could explain why official servers are declining while private ones are rising. It’s also likely that the decline in players is partly due to the debacle during the last update, which led to many being mistakenly banned over Crom coins. Additionally, the popularity of the new Pokemon-with-guns survival game is undoubtedly a contributing factor. In my opinion, these three hypotheses explain the significant loss of players.
Improving player retention could involve adding more endgame horizontal progression, although it’s unlikely at this stage of the game’s lifecycle. Most people tend to get bored of this game and quit after a few months, only to return after a long hiatus. The battle pass system was devised to counter this, but it isn’t enough. Endgame vertical character progression mechanics would be more effective, in my opinion. They’ve put all their eggs in one basket by catering to the RP community, but there’s an untapped market in trying to retain the rest of their player base with more long-term engagement strategies. This is just my humble opinion, in response to the conversation regarding the player exodus and the contrasting rise in popularity of my server, which provides a better experience with dedicated hardware and a selective use of well-made mods. The “report meta” prevalent on official servers and their poor performance seem to be significant issues contributing to the decline in player numbers from my perspective, as well as the other issues I mentioned above.