Well, these types of games generally have really difficult times getting off the ground. They build slowly over time with keeping loyal players while adding useful tools and features that bring in new players. I think the development situation is more due to real world events, as much talk towards the end of last year by the devs spoke of 1-2 year out time frames. Who knows.
It is not impossible to get the players back. The players will keep coming back, almost indefinitely, because there is meaningful gameplay. I cannot stress how much of a lure that is - it's the only lure in games. Some games give you points, for example. You got 10,000 points! Yay! But why? Who cares? Oh, because you can compare your score to your friend's score! That is PvP! Regular Nintendo Super Mario Bro's had this interesting PvP mechanic by the fact people could beat each others' scores.
The meaning has always come from players and engaging with other people. Games are about people, about telling your friend the cool thing you did in the game you both play, and so on. Starbase has meaning oozing out of its entirety. It's almost unreal. Someone I recently spoke to about Starbase was amazed and had never heard of any game like it.
But anyway, back to the point; with meaning, means players will come back as they find their UI management and grind for gear in Lost Ark doesn't really do anything. It gives them that hit of brain chemicals when they finally get that super rare drop that took them days of grind over multiple characters per day to finally get, but that's it, it didn't mean anything, because now there's still some other super rare drop to go after. And so on. It's pointless, but, it sucks people in with gambling mechanics and well, lots of people need an addiction. The meaning in Starbase is your ship wreck will be there in a month from now (if you don't derelict it) and someone else will interact and engage with whatever you build. In addition, that ship wreck you come across was someone else's ship at one point. There's much more to it, too much to write, but yeah, so much meaning it's wild. This is why Rust is so popular - everything has meaning. Every base is someone else's, and every person counts. In addition, being at the start of a wipe is important, and so on - everything matters in Rust. This is why people keep going back. Few games without ranking systems, point systems, ladders or some other metric compare. Meaningful gameplay is the metric by which Rust succeeds. No need for ranking systems if your gameplay has meaning. And if Starbase enables more meaningful interaction instead of deterring it, it too will bring players back.