Regarding the playerbase vs mechanics its simple. Both sides are equaly wrong and right at the same time. Yes RP is about players and you can't ever interact with NRP or LRP players and enojoy the way it turns out. But at the same time there are mechanics now in the game that let you be a silend shooter without any character at all. I can jump in as a PFC and i can go through the whole round without saying a word to anyone. And thats a fault of the mechanics. You can't expect some players will RP if they have no reason for it. The most obvious example of this is req. Some time ago you had to get anything that was not basic gear from req. It forced you to at least talk to the other players. And if you were rude or refused to talk you were told to fuck off no fancy gear for you then. People started complaining about this and instead of promoting RP and talking to the req staff the devs decided to add squad req. Fine you still at least had to talk with your SL but even this is now considered too much work and annoyance. So from a forced player interaction that should bring players to at least RP a little bit you now have req dumping and even people breaking into other squad reqs to get their gear without standing in req line. Not to mention that you already have almost all special gear in your squad prep. Another example of a more recent change is giving the mess SGT his own hydroponic garden so he doesn't have to ask research to grow him something. Because it would be such a bother for RP role to have to RP with another shipside role in order to get some ingredents. And the same will now happen with the XO. Instead of a high ranking officer that can make things happen shipside we will have squat. And why? Because having the XO and CO talk it out and agree who is leading the op and who will handle the ship is too inconvinient.
And then there are the rules and the other side of staff, the mods and admins. You cannot expect people to follow RP standards when there is zero consequence for breaking them. For example i am forbiden to give out tacshotties to marines asking for them or as a reward while playing XO. Should i break that the mods will soon be all over my ass. But should a marine barge into CIC. Take what he needs and leave all i get from mods as a reply is that its IC issue. And yes it is IC issue but how am i supposed to jail the marine for theft when by the time MPs get there he is on the ground where MPs can't follow. Then there are briefings. One of the best oportunities to add some RP has been turned into a generic 'Alright here are your orders. Ok. Bye' and thats not because the people giving the briefing don't want to do it anymore. It's because if i were to make a 10 or 15 minute briefing the marines would collectively riot. And instead of the admins having my back i would most certainly get in trouble for griefing or whatever. In my opinion the MRP ,as in act at least like a reasonable human in your position would, standard should be enforced way harder. Would the number of players decrease? Yes. Would that be a good thing? Also yes. Are there a lot of players who feel entitled and toxic? Get rid of them then. Nobody likes a player who is going on a rant after getting banned when he did the same thing he was warned about 2 times in a row.
So yes, while its true that RP is mostly about players, unless the devs stop removing every forced player interaction instead of adding more. And stop implementing mechanics that go directly against roleplay it will be harder and harder to get people (especialy new players who don't even know what the game is about yet) to at least try and roleplay. And unless the admins and mods start enforcing at least the medium level of roleplay the number of LRP and NRP players will keep rising. And as was said previously, you can't RP with people who will outright laugh at your face in-game for trying to RP.