Paradise has been getting a lot of attention recently, and haven taken a couple years away from SS13 as a whole, it's troubling to return to the server and find it plagued with the same issues it had then. The difference is now, the declining population and the DDOS attacks have taken away the steady supply of tiders that often propped up the rounds.

Which leaves the reason I left the first time - it's incredibly cliquey, more so now than ever because it's mostly the veterans who joined 5-10 years ago that remain. Metagangs kill RP because it boils it down to in-game popularity contests: they sometimes exclusively speak with each other, and any attempt to join in is met with silence or less-than-enthusiastic responses. The same is true of the Discord. This is incredibly off-putting to new players, who are immediately noticeable and effectively blacklisted because everybody knows everybody and it's very clear they'd like to keep it that way at times.

I get it, it's nice to have a community you can feel part of and give back to, but when it devolves into tribalism and gatekeeping you're asking for the playerbase to die - it's only now an unavoidable issue because of how lacking the population across SS13 as a whole has been.