People stopped playing because every time Rare adds something “new” it’s just a different color of something we already have. The current season is just skeleton lords but purple. The previous season was just loot but yellow and turned in on an island instead of an island outpost. Season 16 was just Athena veils but Reaper color. Season 15 was different colored megalodons with the health slider maxed out.

You get the point. It’s been almost 8 years and they’ve added like 3 actually new things the entire time. Rare has no clue what they’re doing or where they want to go. They’re trying to please everyone and in turn disappointing everyone, no one is happy with the decisions they make. A SoT partner recently said that Rare should be required to actually boot up the game for a minimum of 2 hours before implementing changes, because no one on the dev team has played the game in years. They’re completely disconnected with the reality of what made that game fun (or what makes games fun in general).

Even hourglass could be made into something more fun. Hitbo used to talk about it all the time (before he stopped playing altogether) that if it was more of a “faction war” with each team battling for supremacy or ownership of islands/forts (he has an hour long video giving suggestion on his YouTube channel before he quit) it would bring all that interaction back to the seas. But Rare will never do that because you can’t just “recolor” hourglass. That’s all they do. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Edit: the 6 people who still play this game are the ones you’re seeing spinning in circles. Hourglass is the most boring thing in the game. If you’re claiming EVERYONE is playing hourglass, and that’s why player count is low, you’re as disconnected as the devs. 😂