I'm in it to win it, I just hate using AIM. I will e-mail all day long with someone though. Sloane and I have an email thing going on, but I guess she's on vacation, so it's currently stagnant. Gdocs is fine too - as long as I can write during the day when I have some clarity about me, before night comes and I'm a nonsensical mess.
Re: activity. If I notice a lag, or if things seem to be waning, then I'm not really going to put any effort into pushing myself to be active in an expiring environment. Having put a lot of work into Alois back in EV to never really see him go anywhere with the plots he was involved in, I kinda don't have the desire to do the same with Luut and wind up disappointed. Now, I realize that this takes some motivation on my part too, but when you see a community go without a scene for a few weeks and without comments on the ones that are posted, it's easy to assume that things are on the outs. I will fight for it, but everyone else has to too.
Aside from that, for me the setting is fine and, for the time being, the open plot is fine as well. Luut, in his own way, is trying to figure out Maschinell just as much as I am, so it's an exploratory thing for the both of us. But, I can see how it may be hindering for others. Like, why, if I am a Deus Ex, would I ever want to talk with an Emberswarm, and what would we even have to say? I know that this is half of the fun with rping, trying to figure out how characters mesh together, but if my dude is supposed to be an established member of a community that I am lacking some conceptions about to make his or her knowledge natural/fluid, then what do? (Go and make your own conceptions, right? RIGHT?? ;D )
Like in EV, the random scene assignments might be a good then to institute here. It forces people to interact with one another and find some common ground in a sea of uncertainty and timidness.