@OP agree
TWI put so much effort into arcade community
- They added FF and CD gamemodes to RO and look at server browser - there are like 2-3 FF/CD servers with 10 people and 30 bots playing it. Even when they forced competitive community (SE tournament) to play CD instead of TE that didn't help. And don't get me wrong I really like CD gamemode as retired CS player, but that clearly shows that CoD and CS players were more important to TWI than old customers. (they also broke TE by adding lockdown and AI MG bot)
- They added relaxed realism into game: about 80% of servers run realism mode only
- They turned RO into cheap CoD clone, community wants RO spirit back (AGAIN NOT A CARBON COPY OF OSTFRONT, BUT IMPROVED RO/DH GAME, THE REAL SUCCESSOR).
I don't mind to have bigger playerbase however making a cheap clone of popular game won't work. Ugly looking burger (HoS) from small pub doesn't look like McDonalds's cheesburger (CoD) even if tastes better. When old customers would like some fancy, high quality food like roast (RO/DH).
Also making game as much arcade/fast/CQF as possible isn't answer. Take a look at ArmA 2 community: many times bigger, more active community,
A2 modders release every day new addons, missions,
hundreds of active clans etc. And Arma 2 is tactical, slow paced and realistic mil sim w/ huge open maps. Same story with mount and blade.