Just a few thoughts on a few things. Some are more a response to what other people have suggested others are the same shit I've been saying for a while now.
Tutorial - as much as the more competent of us dislike such things, it must be added. I have single handedly given at least 500 different players walkthroughs on various subjects of the game throughout my years of playing. I'm not even the most helpful person so think about what the more helpful people in this game have done to ease newbies in? It shouldn't be a players responsibility to try to keep people in game, but that's exactly what it has been for years now.
Player slots - Yea, Pluto was fun back in the day sure, when hundreds of people played this and you didn't NEED to do everything yourself. What happens nowadays if you don't have a resser/cster/imper? You can sometimes end up waiting for hours, and that was true even when server pop was hovering around 10-13% steady. 4 slots is perfectly fine, if anything for the time being the Imp skill should be removed and you should be able to go to a terminal to slap implants in. Game is just too empty right now for that shit.
GM/dev team involvement - You guys need to start fucking talking to us. The majority of us are adults and can take any information you give us without flipping out and throwing a temper tantrum. What will cause a grown man to throw a temper tantrum, however, is someone attempting to belittle him by claiming he wouldn't understand the situation if you tried to reason it out.
GM/dev team involvement 2 - This goes to the "it shouldn't be left to the players to keep people in game" bit. You guys need to do some fucking events. Yes I understand in the past there have been AWFUL GM's in place(or still there, Ivory I'm looking at you) Who have clearly shown favoritism and helped/given items etc. That's a no no by all means, however doing a GM run event where the prize is just some trophies or some such... Nothing game breaking in the least. How could a few roach trophies or a cave spider carcass break the games economy? It can't. You guys need to get off your asses and take part in the community if you want it to continue on. Otherwise you can continue letting it slowly die. I attempted to contact a few diff NST members and threw many idea's and suggestions out even willing to volunteer however much of my own time would be needed to help with it but as always with the NST no proper response was given besides a "Yes we encourage events".
GM/dev team involvement 3 - There are a few players who have played for a while who for some reason enjoy helping the community and enjoy forming events etc. If the main bulk of the NST is unable to get involved with the community, why not 'promote' so to speak, a few people? Give someone maybe a status below GM or some such? Perhaps just a standard player but with 9999999resist armor and a weapon that can insta kill? IDK what kind of systems you can in place but the point is to make someone kind of like an assistant GM just to run events/quests for players. Give them a load of trophies, carcasses or other such non game breaking items that people like, and simply let them run events/quests. I understand part of this game is the whole pvp everywhere etc etc etc and although I'm fond of that, most of the gaming community nowadays can't help but break down sobbing if someone comes in and wrecks their parade. You can argue all sorts of ways about this but at the end of the day why is it fair that 3 bored people are allowed to act ina griefing way that can drive off 10+ newcomers to the game? Clearly those griefing people don't actually care about the state of the game as they are attempting to drive people off rather to cultivate a new crop to play with later.
Neocron is fairly sandboxy, which is nice, but the problem with sandboxes is once the playerbase begins to dry up there's simply less and less to do. If you want any chance at retaining the few, ridiculously loyal, players you have left, you need to step up your game. Talk to us, tell us what you're actually doing, and if you're not working on the game fuckin share that too. Stop trying to treat this like some top secret project, you guys are nowhere near skilled enough to be taking this 'holier than thou' stance on this. Also, for the love of god stay in touch with the actual game. When the population is fuckin nill and not even the GM's or devs ever poke in, it gives it a very shitty ghost town vibe. Why would you stick around in a new game if the population is so low and the staff gives off a "I don't give a shit" aura?
Add cash shop, let people spend $5-10 to wear a tank pa skin on your monk pa. I'll buy it. Other people will buy it. You'll get the much needed funds to improve this game. That not an option? Open a donations page on paypal or some shit. Donate $5 or w/e with the name of your character, have a GM contact said character and give them a gift for being so kind. That's legal, people who host rust, dayz and other games like that servers do that shit and it seems to be completely legal.
There are so many things you guys could do to help improve the game in the immediate. I don't know if you guys just don't ever sit and think about it or you're lazy or low self esteem so you think your idea couldn't work.... IDK, what I do know though is you guys could do a lot more with very little effort.