Of course it was not only because of sneaks, they were simply the last drop imo.
And yes, as you said there was not that much to do to stay interested. Mainly because of free lvl 24, tech progression that was rushed and over-abundance of loot.
There was quite a few suggestions made to rectify those issues tho;
1- Go back to old tech progression system where you turn in holdisk/maps/modules to unlock progresivly better weapons. (More scavenging)
2- Raise prices of top tier weapons on faction vendors and dont make them lootable from bums and ghouls. (Those guns will feel much more valuable then)
3- Either return assignemnts but in-core, or have caps into faction money converter NPCs for x rate (more options,more people in the core and stuff to do when low online count.)
4- Make sneaks into recons, dont make them contest zones, and remove the ~ZC option ( more people in core because they arent afraid of being murdered by ninjas, more swords symbols on the map= more people going in for fights.
5- This is made true by #4; Reasons to try to capture zones: You dont contest your own zones, so controlling the map lets you scavenge in peace and get warning when ennemies enter, along with NPC patrols on your side. It's also to establish your faction's frontline. (Currently people take one zone here, one zone there without any real long-term goals, they choose batlegrounds based solely on # of snipers/bg/melle currently in their group.)
If anyone can think of anything else, feel free to share your toughts. We might not be coders but we can still paint a clear picture of what the players think for the dev's when they come back from vacations.