As one of the leaders in said community for the NA scene I wouldn't lay the blame entirely on Splat3. Things were slowing down before then and a lot of the old guard were hanging up their hats.
Networking left much to be desired, but we also started the grassroots on the Wii U after all.
I love my Pirate Borg. It's certainly not as in your face like Mörk Borg or Cy_Borg, but it's far more approachable. I would highly recommend it as a starter Borg. Easy to read and an easy atmosphere to drop into.
I adore the mork borg system, but similarly have been limited to one shots as well. But one thing that stood out was that just a bit more hp dramatically improved their staying power.
Characters closer to ~10hp could survive a whole session. So my thought was to run a DCC style funnel with MB characters and have the selected survivors get better right after. They should hit that ~10hp staying power while still being squishy.
Yeah the transition between games was hard. 1 to 2 was ok-ish as there was excitement on the switch. 2 to 3 was rough as the average comp player was between high school and college aged which had less disposable income to get the game right away. Not to mention each time was a hard reset on both maps and equipment that slowly rolled out over time made getting cohesive teams extra hard..