I think its great that you guys recently revamped the crash site to try to keep new players interested. Have you ever considered opening the game with a cinematic cutscene? I think starting out with a scene on the bridge of the Skylark, showing the cradle, and the ship going down, then ending with the drop pods going through the atmosphere and landing would be great. In keeping with the oldschool feel of the game I would go for text instead of voice acting though. You would want to make it easily skipable for the old players too. When I first started playing SK I had no Idea what was going on & it did not really register as to what the sphere beside me was. I was/am very curious about backstory. Players have been craving more plot, adding more backstory to the game would be a great way to take care of some of that. An opening cutscene might also make the game feel a bit more polished to new players. Oh, you could maybe throw in a few glimpses of Alpha team starting thier decent as well.