Hey Wilco,
Take my post with a grain of salt because I have only just returned after being away quite some time, so I am not well informed on what it is like on the servers today.
What I can tell you, is the reason why I left in the first place. I really really enjoyed playing on the RPUK server, however about a year ago changes started to come through that made it less and less fun to play as a rebel. (I stopped playing the rebel side way before I stopped Police/NHS). The increasing difficulty of making money legally or safely is probably what got to me first. Do not get me wrong I love roleplaying(and people that remember me as a medic will know that) and especially around robberies because I always tried to talk my way out of it in some stupid way. But it does get to you at some point, when you can't even successfully sell one truck/huron/fish of whatever because you litteraly got robbed every single run of the day. Plus, it's not like you enjoyed yourself during these roleplay scenarios. People where just trying to get your load as soon as possible using what I would say is bare minimum RP and then piss off so they could bank their cash.
I myself am the grinding type so I really enjoyed building up the bankroll, saving for new helicopters/houses etc. and I really enjoyed the Roleplay in my first year of playing at RPUK. I am not saying it should be easy to make money but at this point it felt impossible and it removed a lot of fun from the game for me.
I did not use to be like this and for me it led to me getting quite paranoid when selling or even mining anything to the point where I would jump in a chopper and fly off at the slightest sign of danger(even a chopper just flying by). There's me someone who enjoyes RP trying to avoid it at any cost because it has become so frustrating.
I agree with many people that the main reason this happens is because there isn't much else to do for rebels. It pretty much feels like rob or get robbed.
A few days ago I reinstalled Arma and hopped onto the server to see if my account was still working (and to my pleasant surprise everything was still there) I chatted with some people in Kavala but I am reluctant to really get back into it for fear of the same experiences.
Regards,
Recon Nine