Hallo Karsa!

This post has become excruciatingly long and rambling. Maybe somebody else can chime in who's better at formulating the issues (and sentences!) than me.
So here's my summary:

TLDR: Competition from commercial and free indie markets ate a huge bulk of the younger demographics that never played 30 year old classics. But People will still reward truly great games. Copyright issues made distribution of games difficult in many German webforums, so many administrators expect clean games if they are showcased in their forums. People still use the RPG Maker 2000/2003 to develop games but their numbers has been overtaken by users of the newer engines. You will very, very likely find less player with an translated German RPG Maker game than with one translated to English.

It is very much possible that you work on a game demo which 30 people will download and maybe 5 people comment on. So if you don't enjoy interacting with the player communities or the developer forums to make your name known by posting updates and participating in communty activities - AND you don't have a huge ton of fun developing the game, then keep in mind that your game could very well be played by less people than there were pupils in your class at school/university.
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First of all I will always enjoy a nicely made charming game and so will people around here when they have the time.

The variation of RPG-Maker-Engine doesn't really make a difference. Sadly enough since there is already a existing number of RPG Maker games and an ever more expanding list of (cheap) indie games, it has become more and more difficult to find people who play and then actually comment on your game. I think this has mostly something to do with time. All the biggest nostalgia classics (Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Chrono Trigger) must be actively sought out by people today. Younger people, which were the important demographic which played Maker games - since they are often stripped for cash, don't have the impulse to search out for games in the vein of Final Fantasy 6. Mostly since they didn't grow up with them or because they are turned of by such stumbling blocks as the need for a RTP installation and the sometimes bad Windows 10 compatibility issues with older Makers. Instead they are leeching onto newer games in the style of Undertale, To The Moon, Another-Quirky-Earthbound-Game or scary games like Ib. And older players have working jobs, families or spend most of their time developing their own games instead of commenting on other people's games.

Even though the last paragraph might have sounded gloomy, I would disagree with your perception of the English community. While it may very well be true that the developers over there care about turning professional, just in 2019 the RPGMaker.net community awarded the RPG Maker 2003 JRPG-styled Theia The Crimson Eclipse a whole bunch of awards. (https://rpgmaker.net/games/8562/). So it seems that quality is still one of the most persuasive argument if one wants to find new players and recognition.

I will now try to give my estimation of the situation in the german speaking parts of the community.
In Germany there has been a concentrated effort to make maker creations which are copyright-friendly. That means there was less and less toleration of creations that utilized assets from commercial games or pop music. In the last five years that has more or less become an official ban on the use of copyrighted assets for your games. This ban is not born out of malice to torment people who would like to present their often yearlong developed games just because of illegal ressources. It has rather been forced on the administrators out of a fear of the current German law and opportunist attorneys which could try to make them responsible for a game containing massive amounts of rips that a developer publishes in the forum.

So that's the reason why many people no longer use rips. Pure REFMAP or RTP and Theodore are of course no problem since their license agreements are known. Soundtracks usually use tracks from jamendo, newgrounds, incompetech or one of the many japanese composers that created game music for free use.

Since then many people have also changed their primary developer tool to the newer makers or other game engines (At the moment they're mostly using the rpgmaker-mv.de forum). One of the reasons must be the readily available commercial market with its tileset and charset ressources which all have a clear license agreement. And of course with the new engines comes the possibility to port their games to Android and other platforms. This last situation has changed a bit with the release of the latest versions of the easyrpg player. This program, which runs on many platforms, can be used to play many RPG Maker 2000 games flawlessly (https://easyrpg.org/). RPG Maker 2003 games still have some issues when it comes to their standard battle system but the team is actively working on these problems right now.

Over the last few years this forum had a bit of a downturn when it came to activity. But in the last few months a team has been assembled to hopefully revitalize the community with new developers and players, so maybe that will change in the coming months. This forum has been (/is) a traditional stronghold of the RPG Maker 200X generation, so we will see what will happen.

I hope that answers at least some of your questions.

PS: Grandy is working on a remake of Unterwegs in Düsterburg with the RPG Maker VX Ace. He publishes updates mostly on this facebook page -->https://www.facebook.com/UiDuesterburg/