First of all let's take a look.
This is september:
http://www.riget.info/aop/playerStats.php?r=month&s=1409526061&ts=0&ar=0&step=9 not bad, huh?
October now:
http://www.riget.info/aop/playerStats.php?r=month&s=1412118061&ts=0&ar=0&step=10 much worse.
We can't blame school for that as some people will. It's not the "boom effect" which ends after first two weeks. We can see that online drops day by day. What happened?
1. For me bad politics and nerfhammers. Instead of nerfing everything to the equal, very low level, some things should be improved. I know that some aspects of the game can just be nerfed and only nerfed, but those nerfs looks like they were made because of shouting and whining, totally ignoring other sides of the game before/after nerf. I know that if you shout louder than the others you will be noticed first, but how many moaners we have here and how many players who thought that this game was fun as it was before? Statistics clearly shows this.
2. I heard about ninja nerfs very often. I didn't test everything what I heard about, but most of things here and I have to say it's some truth in this. What happened with aimtime for example? One aimed shot with desert eagle .50 ext. cap. takes longer time than two LSW bursts.
3. Another thing in my opinion is bad focus or order in which changes are implemented. We have one really big nerf which makes many toons crippled or even unplayable and they can do nothing with that. Full reroll should be implemented in the same time. It works on FO2 and it's the easiest way to do this thing as it is there.
4. We have a bleedover mechanics here. Awesome, because we can make specialized characters and use other weapons as an addition to balance our weaknesses without spending SP (for the beginning, because everyone will do this later for items perks etc.). But the meta and some changes almost forced us to play as tanky as we can with big guns for damage if we don't have any leader behind us and especially with big guns if we have one. Balance is that creepy little bastard which no one can catch and settle him down, but it's not true. For me the best balance example is rock, scissor and paper. Something counters something and you can't be good at everything. We have EW which is easily counters when you put on your metal armor, but you still can managed against them using solar schorcher or electro weapon (if it's not tesla). But it's just a theory. We know that we can't reload solar during night and electro weapons have really small range or didn't have electro dmg on bursts. Sneakers were countered by some perception and bursts because of bypasses, now they are just countered, doesn't matter what you have. SG have too many weapons that will not or almost never be used because of dmg, bursting abillity, range, spread etc., but we have some dev's poll's so let's change the subject.
5. Stats not worth to invest to. It's normal. We have 7 stats and 40 points to spend. It's online game and if you wan't to be succesfull it's obvious that you will dump one stat as low as you can, because that's how math works. Now it's agility or charisma (most of people have two toons, one with high agi and second one with high charisma). How to fix it? Just make charisma useful just for followers or even totally kill it and make leadership bonuses dependant on leadership skill level for both, leaders and soldiers. With existing mechanics it will force people to plan their toons more than just make 250 bg/sg/ew/hth, 200 fa/sneak and 150 doc for defib. And if you want to revamp agi, just make AP dependant on it, not regen only. I don't mean 1 agi = 10 ap, but something like 80 is a base ap and agi will expand it to 100. It should go with some ap cost changes with few weapons and additional aim shot cost (for me it should be not more than +10ap for aim shot). You will decide what you need. High endurance and strength (tankynes) in exchange for some perception and agility (sight range, shooting range, total ap and ap regen) or maybe you will be a burster with lesser survivability (more agility, int and luck lesser str and end)? It's your choice, do whatever you want and suits you best. That will make leadership modules to make toons even more specialized than now, because they will be specialized from the start, not freaking tanks with bg.
6. It's mainly pvp server, so let's reward pvp. Not only ZC. Let's gave us some xp for shooting our opponents. 3-5k exp = Max hp, shared for ones who did damage to target isn't nothing bad and can encourage people to leave their bases and stop doing boring assignments. Maybe add assissts count? Caps spawn on the core could be increased too. Even if you scavenge 20 boxes/lockers/anything else and will found caps in 5 of them, 100-120 caps in each, it won't hurt anybody and make core runs alternative for grinding assignments for caps.
There is a lot more, but it's already a wall of text. As always sorry for my poor english. Let's chat!