Cryptic is doing everything rational to bring in lots of new players every quarter. The problem is Retention, not recruitment.

and that's a sticky problem, since the game's been pushing toward a single-player-shooter style rather than emphasizing social interaction as a route to success.

Here's a few things that might've been done to emphasize social interaction and the making of contacts and friends in the game, instead of pushing for the soloist-me-first-now-I'm-Bored problem...

1. Rep Sponsorship: should be something not given to your own toons, but instead something you can provide/sell to OTHER toons. aka set up so you're looking to Give or get it to or from another player, not moving it from your character to your other character. This does two or three things: it improves player interaction since player A has to find a Player B who will sponsor him or her, whether inside their fleet our outside, whether for free, or for payment to shorten the grind. It builds networks.
2. Taking the Rep store out of the dropdown, and putting it back at locations in social zones (Roxy for Omega), when Roxy was there, DS9 was a happenin' place because players looking to run STF's would go there to find other players who wanted to run STF's-and they'd see them, and talk to them, and team with them...and see the rep uniforms and gear and nifty stuff. People don't stay for the game mechanics nearly so much, as for the people they meet and friendships they make.
3. Teaming up should be easier, solo missions should be RARE, especially at top tier. again, soloists generally (there are exceptions) don't tend to stay with a game once they've seen "all the content". Players that make friendships on the game server do stay (there are, again, exceptions). Top tier missions should have simultaneous goals that require communication to carry out (like Terradome did, or Mine Enemy), and if they're storyline all the better.
4. This game has vestigal PvP. I say vestigal, because it's nearly unplayable without gentleman's agreements on private queues. Much of that, has to do with issues like "Uncounterables"-powers that have either no hard counter, or require you buy some specific ship to have any counter to it at all. (Temporal powers are the obvious one here-the few that HAVE a counter, that counter is ALSO a Temporal bridge officer power, meaning you have to have a Temporal ship with Temporal seating or you're basically helpless.) This is not good for building either a community, or retaining newer players. seeing it in PvE will turn off as many players who can't get it (don't have deep pockets) or won't get it (Plays the wrong faction) as it draws in.

Short answer on PvP, is to admit the team can't manage it, and remove the mode from the game entirely. Likewise the short answer for factions that can't have the new hotness because they're not even worth a bugfix on problems that are over six months old (KDF) is to remove those-entirely, eat the cost of losing the miniscule playerbase (KDF is currently and has been losing population for over two years) if you can't justify the cost of supporting the faction.

Gamers see the imbalances and they do what? they walk away, unless they were already a fan of the IP and willing to endure bugs, imbalances, neglect and developer contempt just to play a game with "Star Trek" in the name.

(IOW-there aren't that many people out there who're like me. Most of them are like my Nieces and did not grow up on Star Trek-but did grow up on gaming...my niece spent some time on THIS game, (about a month) and told me it "Sucked" she started listing off balance and delivery issues, the community's attitude in zone chat, the apeshit responses on STF and queues... go figure, I've been an LTS since 2012...)

in short form, the current state of the game doesn't encourage new players to stay, and doesn't encourage old players to stay, it encourages new players to come in, then leave because they've done everything, and it encourages old players to visit quarterly to run the new voiceover missions.