Anyone that has played CF for a while already knows everything they need to be able to play CF.
If you can't get from market square to hamsah to any of the cabals or get any passable gear or preps at all without a walkthrough site after however many years you've been playing then I'm amazed.
Quite honestly, FSV did not enable anyone to play CF.
It allowed them to do additional things maybe they didn't want to figure out (quests,prep lists and whatever other info they posted) or do themselves (scripting explore things and such).
The lack of either of those things does not make CF unplayable for anyone.
If all you care about is logging in, blasting away and dying, why do you need any of that other stuff anyway?
Cause you want to win?
Cause you want it to be fair?
Cause you want it to be easier?
Some people like the niche that a game takes at least a little investment. CF takes more than most, but not really. At any given moment I know for a fact I can now roll a character and play CF without any issue. I haven't seen CF change significantly in terms of how to play the game in as long as I have played.
So I honestly don't see how anyone who knows the basics of gameplay can't play CF.
Whether they find it enjoyable as it is now is to the player, but nothing on FSV enabled someone to play CF that couldn't already.
CF is easy to level in, even solo.
Preps, yeah, probably a bit too excessive for the players that want to stack thirty things before every fight. I also still think they are not as all consuming as people want to make them out to be.
OOC channels are the worst thing ever. There's always bleed into the game, and hell, looking at how so many people behave on forums makes me cringe as to how people would behave in live chat in the game.
Scion maybe. What other cabal is hard to get into? And scion has no place in CF now. Smaller playerbase means less roaming gangs to annihilate decked scion mages with 1800 hp and ABS. Scion to me is designed to have constant enemies all the time, but that requires a decent playerbase to support. Since their powers haven't scaled down to compensate for the lower player counts, I'd argue they should just do away with the cabal. Does CF really need another air off scion anyway?