You know what's really worrying though? The fact that I'm seeing devs say they're "focusing on player retention" as opposed to growing out the playerbase. That's exactly what happened in the last f2p game I saw die out. Really, think about it; all you're saying when you state you want to focus on retention is that you're just concerned with making the game die more slowly. And for any dev reading this, that's a bad idea, because what's going to happen is that people are going to pick up on it and stop spending money, which means any money you've invested keeping the game on life support and only life support in the long term is going to give zero return.
According to data we collected, people are picking the game up and aren't sticking with it - sometimes as soon as their first match. That's gotten a bit better ever since we changed BotsTDM to be a user's first match, but there's still a fundamental problem of 'why are people leaving our game? is the way we present items, progression, upselling items just broken?' that we have to address. If people aren't having enough fun to stick around, then we need to revisit these points:
Look at Console Data
1) Active users trying out the game are flooding in at a normal rate.
2) Not all players return to the game after their first match.
3) Most users don't get to see beyond 2-3 unlocked Mechs
Analyze the Cause
1) The user must see something during his experience that intrigues him to download and play Hawken
2) The user gets frustrated with his initial experience and does not return.
3) The user has no real reason to come back, as nothing is encouraging him to come back.
Solve the problem
1) Focus on the new user experience and hit areas of the game that may be confusing to a first-time user.
2) Give them more gameplay items to obtain early in the game in some way.
2) Players need a reason to come back and play. When they do come back and play, they will spend money if they are enjoying themselves and they feel like their investment is warranted. Make them feel important.
I would like to stress that we've spent development resources on retention efforts in hopes that when PC does relaunch, it will go smoothly and be friendly to the influx of new players that will be checking out Hawken. Without anyone to spend money, and without wise choices for spending money, it makes it incredibly difficult to make revenue if there's no one spending.
Please also note that the points above were gathered from console data and do not reflect PC players' experiences.