I believe that one of the major causes in decreasing the story-generation potential on CM is something that has been touched on in previous posts here. It’s quite simply too much supposed “QoL” features and a much faster pace the game has these days.
Yes, it is true that nobody is strictly removing RP or actively try to hinder it. What gets constantly removed are “RP hooks”. Sure some of the mechanics of older versions of CM may seem (and were at times) annoying when all you want to do is fight xenos. But they provided much needed reason and context to RP off of. There was an objective need to return to the ship or talk to people. An objective need to rely on good communication and RP relationships with other players.
When you got fucked up in combat there was no self medicating or ignoring symptoms until the round is over. Because only the medics or shipside medbay were able to rid you of some of the injuries and they were painful to deal with. And you couldn’t ignore it because the rounds were longer and combat more punishing. When you wanted to have something special in your loadout you had to be on good terms with the RO because there were no vendors full of attachments, grenades, special ammo and shit like that. It was important to have a reliable escort for the IOs and to get that escort you had to form a team by talking to people. The list goes on…
The important thing is that while on the surface these things have no purpose and are “annoying” to some, they actually serve a critical role in providing the opportunity for natural RP. These days we don’t really have that anymore. Sure nobody is stopping you from going back to medbay as a marine for example but you will almost instantly be met with “Why are you here?” and in todays CM you won’t have a good answer to that.
Almost all of the roles became so indepentent of one another and the basic gameplay loop so streamlined that there is little reason for naturally occuring RP. As the game got faster now if you go out of your way to RP you are not only “wasting time” but people will argue with you ICly that you are actively hindering marine progress or “annoying them”.
I said this before on many occasions already, but if you want to create more RP in CM it has to be integrated to the main gameplay loop and not treated as a “side activity”. Provide gameplay reasons for marines to communicate and rely on each other. Make departments have to work together to achieve 100% effectiveness. And yes (i know a lot of people will disagree with this) but make running everything solo hard and punishing for the player. When you reintroduce the need to talk to people to succeed that’s when you’ll have a good ground for naturally occuring RP that doesn’t feel out of place or forced.