Okay, so I came back to SK, and Lockdown was always the most fun thing to do after getting bored of Vana runs and all that. I've been trying to queue for Lockdown for the past two days at different times of the day, but no luck.
What exactly do people do in SK these days?
Back in 2015, people would get bored of Vana runs and then start playing Lockdown. Then the race to collect all the VHs and UVs began, which gave everyone a new reason to log into SK again, doing PvE, playing Lockdown (especially guild Lockdown matches), and climbing the community-made leaderboard for Lockdown players.
Is all of that dead now? If Lockdown is really dead, then what do most players actually do in SK these days?
People have always optimized to do Vanaduke. If there's nothing to do, people just - farm. If it's not that, people are usually merchanting. Repetitive, boring cycle. There's no luck in find games as most of the time they are orchestrated within guilds or friends (or friends of friends). You have Crucible and BN, but those are heavily orchestrated and alt farmed (players like Whimsicality/Dawnleaf and other people do this).
Nowadays people either troll, do personal or guild events, merchanting, and stalling in Haven. Even with the "player peak", people are still static with anything other than PvE.
2015 was when players became more inactive. Vana was already a routine before it became normal and that was due to the fact that Lockdown had no substance and player count was shrinking. VHs and UVs are easier to get now due to a heavy amount of whales and the supply and demand for CE/CR.
So yes, all of it is dead, but there's more deeper reasons than just player count, which I did discuss in another thread created by Rmanami.