Yeah at times things tend to be pretty quiet. Usually around the middle of the day CST/EST time things tend to pick up though. Lately it's been trailing off into the evening and sometimes even night when it does happen to pick up.
For the low amount of players, some of the player base are in custom maps as well, spending time there instead of residing in official maps. There are also various discord servers, some being community based and some being group exclusive that I'm sure they use to talk to each other in rather than getting online. On top of those two things some players are just busy with school or other life things and can't always spend their time online.
Something I've noticed lately is whenever someone new joins, half the time they will almost immediately ask around for a discord server. This is an issue with discord that I wish didn't effect the game. Most the time people will tend to want to pick an easier way to talk with everyone and stay connected, and discord allows for that perfect opportunity because it's right in their hand. Just pick up your phone, open the app and boom you're connected with everyone within an instant. Much easier than going through the process of bringing FH up on your computer/laptop, or having the ability to just scroll through a chat and catch up rather than going to the forum and logging in to see the new posts. Some people will still want to get on the game and forum despite this, while others will be more hands off the game/forum and reside more on discord. Not only does discord bring up this issue, but it also takes away from the forum. One can argue that "forums are old" and "times are changing", however, the ads on the forum are what help pay for the game to stay up and running. There is no way we can gain ad revenue through discord, and the more people will use discord to ask for help or share things, the less traffic the forum will see.
Anywho got off track there lmao There have been a handful of events put on by lovely community members here lately in attempt to promote more activity. For the most part I feel as if they have succeeded, however that only does so much within the community itself with people already here. If we want to see more players then we will have to spread the word about this game around the internet, be it telling your friends, sharing screenshots, making videos, you name it.
even dark storm clouds have a silver lining.
a smaller player/userbase keeps stupid spammy trolls away- they don't see a big group of people to go harass and get a big crowd's worth of people riled up over and set their bait out on the water- they see two or three people and realize it's likely not worth getting banned over potentially rubbing those few people the wrong way.
on the other hand i understand a lot of people left are incredibly passionate about the game- i hardly think it will just fade away as long as they keep looking after it.
discord certainly took its time changing things around here.. but it did. that's that.