From my own experience - i've tried multiple times to connect with the community here and genuinely get involved, though it always ends up failing whereas i'd end up not thinking about this game for another few months afterward. as a person who doesnt exactly feel like i've ever gotten out of my "newbie" stage, it felt somewhat like you had to have either veteran status or strong confidence to be able to have fun on the game, which i had neither of. other than that, considering feralheart is exclusively for hanging out or roleplaying, it gets boring *quick* especially if interaction is something that makes you nervous. then there's the ongoing mentions of drama, of course, which makes playing feel like an off experience. i found out about feralheart a long time ago, tried to join in 2016, and finally joined in 2017 and it still feels like you have to "qualify" in some way to fit in with everybody.
my point is though, that yeah, some people do most likely feel a bit driven away by the whole idea of it. I just feel like this game needs a push in the right direction because well, to be truthful, when a game hits rock bottom activity-wise it usually seems to be the end of it. if any popular users took interest in this game and decided to do something like speak about their characters more often, make videos, and overall spread the experience then more people would feel keen to say something along the lines of "oh hey, that game exists, i should play it!" and that might be the little click that saves this game's life. i, too, have noticed that the player count being below 60 is MUCH below average, as i used to come on and the lowest was about 90 players. i think that the solution is to bring the game up more outside of the site. bring it up to your friends, put something on youtube, obsess about it on tumblr, you get the gist. what i've been seeing a lot is more of "bring the (dwindling) community together" instead of "spread the word, expand the community" which seems to be a recipe for gradual failure. i've stopped seeing anything feralheart related out of the impressive title related community, and the only real reason ive had another look at this game is because i happened to be reminded of it on my own accord.
my point is; the community seems to be solely held together by people who dedicate themselves entirely to the game, and this game only. which is not a good thing if you want consistent activity. and i think that if more people who had mixed interests started to be more productive ingame and share it, people from outside of the community (who are involved with said person's other interests) would have the idea of coming IN to the community. it just seems to be a rare thing to me, and if activity should increase, i think that needs to be more common.
