You deal with them the way game and content permits..

On pvp-islands you can killfragdestroy.

Attaining your competitive pvp related goals should of course not be made null by safety of alpha islands. This is a balance issue no? Someone enjoying and focusing on pve part of the game should not bother anyones goals. But if a corp can fund and for large part attain their pvp island related-goals just by pve in complete safety then there is an issue.

Majority of things needed to attain pvp-related goals should require activities in pvp areas. Since I don't think you can just take away the ability to gather resources for building stuff in alpha the bot-building and nic-earning part will remain something everyone can do in peace. Which could of course be changed somewhat by some form of balanced war dec-system.

Anyways, balanced and plentiful content should give enough goals for everyone. And also enough tools and opportunities for competitive play when the goals conflict.

Half of the game area  is non-pvp where vast majority of players currently roam around in Sequers. So I would not call it just pvp loot game with player based economy.

You are not alone in not knowing a thing about storyline. I would guess majority of players don't know and don't care about lore. However there are also players who do care and pay attention to it.

Imho the issue here is that a decent lore basically just requires writing a text that should be mostly if not fully coherent with the content of the game. Having a decent or better still, well written lore, will not in any way lessen the booming of your heart when you blow up someone and I doubt the lines of Sequers will be affected either. Only if you happen to be allergic to roleplayers you can make a decent case against well written lore.

Well written lore -> Roleplayers get the lore they desire/require. DEVs won't mind the few extra subs that the good lore attracts (make it excellent with evolving storyline and it won't be just few extra subs that would be attracted). PvPers will get easy kills. (rpers are easy and even desirable kills right?). And I believe you don't even have to be a roleplayer to be able to enjoy a well written lore.

And all this by relatively little effort. Of course the better you want the lore to be the more effort it requires and at some point it begins to require professional level talent/skill, but a decent base would be a good start.  Nothing to lose but plenty to gain.

Ok, there are quite many definitions for what a "sandbox"-game is but very few of them dictate that there should be no background or storyline in the game.

Even if you add storyline and even in-game content relating to that story, it doesn't necessarily follow that your playing would be restricted in any way.

Some people like it.
Some hate it.
Some tolerate it. 
Some ignore it.

I think most of us at least agree that it could/should be better.

Maybe the most productive approach would be to start thinking about features and ideas that would make it so. Devs are the ones making the game and we can hope that they listen to us who are playing their game. Maybe we can come up with something that they like enough to implement.

Also it's good that we keep voicing our concerns over the game content. Some may say QQ and to each his own, but nothing will be fixed if it's not known to be broken.

Who knows what they have cooking right now. I do feel that they should actually reveal at least some outlines of their plans and open them for discussion before they go ahead and just implement them.

Even the pvp-side would improve hand in hand with actually interesting pve.

Good pve brings in and keeps players.
More players = More money to develop the game and more pvp action as certain percentage of players is always and surely going to venture into pvp islands and corps. (as slaves to statistics we are)

My issue is not nic/h.

This thread is (was) not about risk vs. reward.

The extra danger that comes with farming in beta has some value I guess, but it doesn't remove the fact that all pve is boring repetitive farming.

I just feel that this system could be utilized into actually interesting and engaging pve.

Easy way would be to bring in instances, but some people for some reason fanatically support open world pve and won't even consider anything that is instanced. So sorry in advance to those of you whose pulse just rose and veins on their forehead began to pulsate. But still.. instancing could give us assignments like:

"Hello Agent. We have discovered activity in a Pelistal Empires base that we thought abandoned. We need you to go there and hack into their satellite link system directly using the hacking interface module that will be provided to you. Department of Federated Industry loves you."

You are transported (I guess airlifting would not brake the lore?) to an instance similar to bases. You would need to sneak past patrolling and working Pelistalites towards your objective. Lots of options how you could tweak the mission.. maybe every time you are discovered and had to rely on blowing stuff up counter would tick and after certain limit your mission would be a failure.

Hacking open entrances to make the job easier. Hacking some defense systems to cause turrets to start shooting their own. Gaaah.. got stuck with hacking stuff, but you get the idea?

Other types of (instanced) assignments could be something like:

Convoy Escort: Sequer will be following you and you have to lead it through several ambushes. You have an option to command the sequer to stop so you can scout ahead and take care of the ambushing bots, disarm traps/mines. Find shortcuts.

Blow stuff up: Attack bases/Convoys/Patrols/Camps/Buildings .. Several maps with varied enemy placements. You would often need to choose between direct assault and fast escape or sneaky approach and surgical strike or just overwhelming firepower (for you farmers).

Defend the (supersecret) outpost: You, with help of some static defense turrets need to fend of waves of enemy attacks. Shootshootshoot, I hope you packed enough ammunition.

Etc.etc. And of course all could be done in teams. Some of this sorta stuff could be even done in open world pve, if we had some sorta Adventure Island (tm). Large enough so you could discover and do stuff/these sort of assignments there in relative peace. Might even make it pvp (low-sec style?) island, but finding pve.rs to blow up should require enough effort to not make it a happy gankland.

Several maps, several/or even random enemy placements, several difficulties for solo & team -> not so repetitive pve anymore..

They would need to be veryvery ineffective and/or veryvery expensive and most importantly their use should be veryvery restricted.

And if not, we would soon be playing minefield online..