Like many when this launched I was skeptical, I wanted this to be like galaxies and when it didn't compare I didn't play. There were a few people that I saw spamming in general about how their guilds were recruiting for heavy involvement and I just went about my way because I was disappointed in it. Then one day as my boredom set in a guildy of mine asked me to play, when I said it wasn't me he bribed me to do it. And so my journey through the world of GSF began. If I was going to do it I was going to commit, I started a new character unlocking the legacy perks for GSF. I then just started to play, over and over. Through crashes and the rage of being killed over and over the experience was fun. I was always playing other teams with 5 ships when I started with 2, then through just playing that turned to 3. I purchased my first gunship, then I bought a bomber, eventually I was one of the players with 5 ships and to me it was fun. I had gotten past the learning curve and I became one of the pilots people either come after in pairs, or they run from me.
Every time I do my weekly and daily I play the same people, now the games go either way and on that aspect it is fun. I try to get people to do it much like my guildy did on me, but the problem I run into is people say it's not real content. It gives you no gear, it gives you no valor, it serves no purpose other than to sit there on a screen you are the only one to see.
The ships we get we can customize the paint jobs, but aside for that we are the only ones who ever see that new paint job and it's only when we select the spec's on the ship. We now get the starfighter coms to be used to purchase the old railway items, but players still are not interested. Until the hutt event came and with the double scorecard introduced several new players in search for credits. With the average game giving you 10k for loss or up to 32 for a win I saw many new players entering. Several more people were exposed and I was happy to share the knowledge I learned on how to play. As soon as we switched to the pvp event I went back and started to pvp more like many others. In order to do my weekly again i had to wait for queues to pop, I completed all my dailies on Oricon before I got my first queue to pop for GSF. I'd suggest keeping the rewards as they were, give people a reason to play and you will see a larger turnout.
But that is me, I enjoy playing it regardless if there was more meat to it other players would come and do it. The reason they don't is we only see the benefit in a tiny window and it only impacts those that play. There are no major titles, no unique gear, and the ships with the exception of the blasters we hardly see any of the changes we make to the ships.