Please let me know if this question fits or if it can/should be adjusted to fit within the main site and how. Its kind of long but thats because our play system has aspects I feel I need to explain so people understand the full picture but I understand if that might be a bit much. Thank you for your time and help.
I run an rp forum(thats the best I can describe it as) for roleplaying entire countries. You can make news posts, individual character stories, plan covert ops, pretty much whatever you can imagine. Unfortunately "Do whatever" doesn't seem to be to be much of an incentive anymore. Writing has dropped off and sometimes days can go by without a post.
I have suspicions about parts of the game might be contributing to an issue. We also have tech and time progression. Tech progression is where you say your country is researching a thing(usually near future tech like better prosthetics or better robots) and then give it a time to completion. This feeds into the time progression. Every IRL day is 12 in game days. We calculated it this way because a 30 day month irl is about a year in game. I quite like the research system because it gives the world a sense of progression and also gives me something to write about in the news section from time to time.
Anyway, what can I do to get people writing more? Is there something I can do to enthuse them? To incentivize them? Should I make this thing more gamey or less if that's the problem?"