Military Police is a tricky role to stick out in the long run. There are many reasons which I believe people burn out, quit, or simply don’t enjoy it.
1: MP hate bleeds to OOC: Military Police doing their job are disliked, just like they are disliked in their IRL counterparts. Many of the players who often get arrested characters as “avatars” of themselves, rather than a constructed character. As such, any perceived slight on their character is an attack on them. This manifests in many ways, but most obviously the LOOC flaming on MPs or the barely IC ranting which may as well be LOOC. You often have to deal with a vocal minority which will represent situations they were not involved with falsely, this compounds the next issue as more people often believe the hearsay of a random marine not involved than wait for things to play out.
2: Staff/Command interactions: When searching/arresting someone as an MP, you are required to follow a set of procedures, this often is then challenged by marines, commands and staff who are very often not as well versed in marine law (resulting in you having to argue things which are often (but not always) common knowledge. While following these set and required procedures (which you can be punished for making a mistake on), you will be expected to process the prisoner, speak to command about what happened, and also interact with staff. Much of this can be, quite literally repeating yourself, over and over to different elements, usually somewhat close to each other. I do believe this specific issue could be mitigated somewhat by making the “arresting” statement made by the officer easier to view by staff and command who are in the brig (such as being able to view the witnesses, statement, arresting officer) directly when examining the cells timer. Staff are usually more understanding these days than in the past, but it still can be frustrating when you’re thrown another thing you have to explain.
3: Limited duties - MPs have a primary purpose of enforcing marine law, however not all rounds have crime. This results in a lot of standing around twiddling your thumbs. Yes, you can help other departments, but you lack access to research, and intel is often handled by the ASO. Roleplay can be found but it’s often a coin flip. There also is not always a catalyst to make roleplay engaging (conflict can breed roleplay). Military Police require authorisation to go to the FOB, creating more friction for at least some engaging duties, as well as an extremely vague definition of what a “secure area” is, which has most MPs avoiding even leaving anything which isn’t the FOB due to the lack of definition leaving it up to whatever staff member is online, which is in essence, note Russian roulette. This is one of the key critical things which has always been an issue during more “standard rounds”. I’ve even suggested letting MPs escort VIPs (such as CL, liasons, officers on specific tasks/RP tasks) but its often shot down by staff online.
4: Restrictive design regarding mutinies/roundstart shenanigans: This one is simple, choices both mechanically and OOCly have made both much less likely, and this does impact the role having things to do.
5: MP tools are still in a poor spot. I’ve made this claim so many times, but the tools are rather lackluster. Riot equipment is nice but all but useless (due to not being able to carry it (and not use it, excluding riot charges and riot gas)unless its blue, and then it’s usually better to have lethals) Melee equipment has slowly been nerfed to being inferior than tazers even in CQB. This was basically agreed by the development team years back but it go put on to the todo list and never got worked on.
5b) Investigative tools: Nice idea to implement but currently awful due to nerfs. Fingerprints are nearly never left (I havent seen one in 12 months at least), even when using forensic sprays. Resulting in most investigations requiring a lot of assumption and luck, which doesn’t feel very investigative.
I think I survived the role so long simply because I roleplay a character (each role impacting being a “multiverse/whatif” origin version of Crimson) so it’s easier (but not always) to compartmentalise and not take things personally. That and the role can allow you to have some excellent roleplay, which has always been the biggest draw to CM for me.