Aye Pod, that sums up my feelings. I play open ended sandbox games because I like setting my own challenges, targets, achievements (whatever you like to call them) but a couple of months ago when I had about 800k EP (to be fair on two characters so actually about 1.6m EP) I really couldn't think of anything new to do. I have visited every island in the entire game countless times, know all alpha and beta like the back of my hand and its been many months since spending a big chunk of EP has added anything to my game at all.

To suggest one thing is a tough ask so I'm going to be a bit cheeky and roll a couple together since one really depends on the other.

A wholesale revamp of PvE and relations: More, interesting and varied assignments (including instances) with a properly balanced reward system. No static spawn sites. NPC squads can teleport onto terrain virtually anywhere at anytime and NO BEACONS. Make players work for their rewards. Make standings really mean something and make players make a choice - if you build up relations with one faction it should deteriorate with at least one other. Preferably this should all take place in an enormously expanded and varied world. Seamless loading continents is the Nirvana but given the amount of work that would entail many dozens more islands of different shapes and sizes would be great.

[EDIT]Just as a footnote, I was looking through mmorpg.org the other day at what games were out there and I kept coming back to Perp as, on paper, one of the best two or three out there. Given the level of marketing the game gets, the steady stream of new players at Alpha I terminals seems to bear that out. Trouble is, retention (as we all know) is poor and I'm certain that the lack of a decent carrot dangling tantalisingly out of reach is a major reason. A relations system that effectively unlocks new parts of the game - be that higher level assignments, islands, outposts, faction mods and bots or whatever would add some good juice to that carrot just as long as its not too easy to achieve - no point if you can grind up to max in a couple of weeks or a month.

With General Channel dead, there's nothing left to do.

Landers...

Whats going to keep me sub long term is the silence of trolls.

A:  Speed and a LOT more of it.  Going from point A to B has got to be one of the biggest mind numbing drawbacks of the game.
- Highways should quadruple your speed and go by the most direct route from TP to TP.  Or all TPs on an island should interconnect with all others on that island except the laughable choke points on gamma.  The only reason to leave the highways should be to find stuff, grind, or gather.

B:  There is no sense of reward.  The market is pretty bleah all the way around.  Prototyping even the simplest thing guarantees that no matter how many you sell you'll never recoup the cost so why bother leveling up.

C:  Mk2 versions of bots are anything but an upgrade.  A couple of extra slots, but no extra CPU/PG to use them.  No extra speed or other bonuses.  And they're pretty insanely expensive to make so it's pretty much pointless.

D:  As stated; at fluctuating from 200-500m for a single ICE, how can anyone legitimately make enough to purchase 60???

Because i bought them when it cost 60m maybe ?

I like the suggestion of speeding up highways; there's no real way to autopilot them and they're rare enough on beta to not affect balance (rather, don't change anything about beta highways speed and/or placement). Although, Daoden could use one or two extra highways too...

Your other points are not that relevant after playing for a while. Mk2 for example, are not only a reward in itself (EP and basically just getting one), but the extra fitting possibilities are amazing.

The largest issue with the market is volume, so that just means you need to expand sideways. They added quite the bonus to the market extensions for exactly that reason, I believe.

D). Three things:  no ones playing, imbalance of nic injected into the market, oh and did I mention no ones playing?