Not to be obtuse, but pretty much all my modules are "used" in "that way" by the time I'm done with them.  On the other hand, I really think that should increase their resale value rather than decrease it.

new players here are very much of use in pvp.  lightbot + detector = perfect little scouts with out much skill needed. 1-2 weeks can be acceptable in an assault bot.

all i can say to new players it this: terrain terrain terrain! learn to use it & even when you fight mechs you can still win. or at the very least take a few down with you in perpetuum knowing how to best use your cover is key no matter what bot / mech you are useing. a T1 fit lightbot is still more than able to demob / scout.

Ep gaps can mean alot less here as real life skill & know how IMHO are more important than your "ingame skill points"

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ?

This were PO is lacking. There's nothing to do right now after learning some things.

we have:

missions - repetitive and simple
NPC farming - same as missions
artifact scanning - same as missions
PvP/Beta conquest - PvP's great, Beta is lacking in options
production/trade - sufficient depth but not for the general player

maybe onece teraforming hits the game, we cane have some original content. but the DEVs in this game are quite good :-)

I'm sure there are lots of new, delicious improvements coming down the line that will mitigate some aspects of the game that are not quite there yet.

Hugh points out a sad, but true fact.  I'd like to hop onto his rollercoaster for a moment to add that, almost regardless of how "fleshed out" a game becomes, many MMO activities are mindlessly repetitive.  How long has stEVE had missions and how long have they been making new ones, to only throw scripted action-response based stuff at their players so go through new content, making it mindlessly boring almost as soon as it goes out the door?  Why is crafting in WoW such a boring yawn-fest?  Once you see something once, for the first time, the newness of it is gone and it becomes repetitive to do it a second time.

The point of the game, I think, is to enjoy the company of others while the mindless stuff happens.  These sorts of games are a lot more about what the players are providing one another within the framework that the developers create than they are about relying exclusively on the framework itself to provide amusement.

I honestly think the peacenicks of the MMO community are what make this the case. There are always a significant group who claim to hate it that they can't mine safely or that unpredictable spawns will freak out the newbies and scare them off. But it's exactly the totally safe stuff that gets boring. Absolutely everything needs to be dangerous and/or challenging or people get bored. It can be done, but a few tenacious paradigms need to be dropped: stuff like "click here, receive ore" and "farm lvl1 mobs, buy bigger gun, farm lvl2 mobs". I don't think anyone actually likes that stuff, but it's been stuck in the genre since at least Ultima.

This is true. But that framework still has to support interesting in-game experiences. And I don't think PvP should be the only place where the fun, the interaction, and the gameplay are the same thing. That's how it seems to me at the moment, though.

The problem with stamping a game with 'sandbox' is that it too often just means a FFA PvP-centric game. When a lot of the fun and interest in a game pivots off PvP, well, that's basically the setting of the game as a whole. It seems to be the descriptor of this game. When the player numbers are up, things get fun, when the numbers are down, things are boring. If you want a true sandbox you need to make every aspect interesting for everyone and not just the PvP crowd. I think that's partly why this game has had such a stifled launch. Too much time has been spent tweaking and catering to PvP. There's not enough off peak content to play around with that keeps people interested. From grinding mindless npc's to mining until you want to stab yourself in the face, these activities basically lead you to assets used in or for sales directly to those wanting it for PvP. There’s no real interesting aspects of the PvE and building side of this game, the fun factor is severely lop-sided towards PvP. There's nothing wrong with that, but this game is already niche and that just puts it in a niche of a niche. If we actually have more interesting facets outside of PvP and its randomness, the game will thrive more avidly. Beyond that, sticking with PvP centralization, things will just swing with however many players are online… which doesn’t seem to work in favor of smaller game communities.

As mentioned before, the turnover rate is very high at the moment. Introducing new players will just leave a sour taste in their mouth and they won't ever return.

Devs need to work on introducing new dynamic pve content NOW and maybe splurge on some marketing in the not so distant future.

Unfortunately in 99% of MMOs, you lack proper tools to build while there are multiple ways to destruction available :-))

Even finding a 50/50 split between create and destroy options is not possible (except maybe Second Life and Minecraft, but those are not exactly 'games').

I'd love to see a game that starts with one central spot (like a colony outpost or main city) and LOTS of empty space that lets players create what ever (or almost) they want. Imagine that when PO matures with similar mechanics, they let us discover a huge continent totaly empty with only NPCs (no outpost, maybe a few teleports) and we can do what ever we want there !!!

Most of our guys closed genchat on day one. I open it up for some live action trolling, and otherwise stay out. Not shocked people left it, it's a butt channel that also serves up a hot steaming plate of free intel.

Also I'm assuming an infestation is a pve thing? Have you given pvp a shot yet? I herd it is gud.

Much like playing baseball alone, playing Perp solo is a lot of hitting stuff and chasing after it to bring it back home. Not very satisfying. If you get good enough, you can hit the ball straight up, try to put a glove on, and catch it before it comes back down; but once you have that mastered, and there's no one there to clap for you then that gets old too.

No mmo can make enough solo content to keep players interested for long. I stopped playing rift solo for the same reason, I didn't run out of content, but it was all 'the same'. If a player doesn't have the time or desire to join a corp, they WILL leave; its inevitable. Perp could use more casual PVP corps, there are already plenty of casual PVE corps, where players can log in/out at thier pleasure. Participate or not based on schedule. Sure your not the Boss of your own solo corp, but not every corp treats it's members like Tax mules.

Grim. Sandbox doesn't mean it caters to all play styles. It does mean that players can play any way they like, which is different. Sandbox also means that the PLAYER has to do thier part in making the game enjoyable for themselves. Perp has tossed a few plastic spades and a small bucket into the sandbox, it's up to the player to decide what to do with it. They can hit each other over the head with the shovels or they can build sandcastles. Perp could use some more tools in the sandbox, yes. Joining a corp is just another way to share ideas and to play together, the Player is still fully in charge of how they choose to play as a member of the corp. If you don't like the corp, then find another, it only defines your play if you let it.

I played solo for months. In order to make that happen I had to set my own goals. Just like players that finish a game then go back and do it again to see if they can finish it faster, they call them Achievements today, but old school, it was just players trying out different ways to play the same game. PVE dull, go in and see how many NPC's you can tank at 1 time, see if you can pull artifact's our fromunder spawns. Don't get locked into the games' limits either, who cares if the reward is crap, do it for entertainment. Corps encourage this play by sharing ideas like that for PVE, and then there is also somewhere next to you that cares if you succeded or not, so the world doens't revolve around NIC/hr.

I used the anlogy of someone out in a field alone with a couple tools, a ball, bat and glove. Over x number of years many players have developed a fixed content around the game, rules and suggested ways to play, but its just a sandbox really. Play it with 5 on a team in a the sandlot, its ok, you can do that because your not limited to the rules of 9 per side. When you get down to just 1 person though, you have to get creative if you really want to be out there doing something; but even going to batting practice is more fun with a couple people, and all your doing is hitting the ball and running after it just like you would if you were alone.

Typically where you'll see the most inovation in this type of game is with griefers, because face it, they are used to playing alone and making up their own rules to play a game differently then everyone else. PVE people are sort of used to having content handed to them with a road map, literally in wow now, to the next piece of the content.

Tl;dr - Sandbox games require both sides to participate in the discovery of new ways to enjoy the game.

Arga, you're making this assumption in your analogy that what changes the 'game' is the number of players and how they interact with the given tools. But that's not related to the fact that PO is quite lacking in said tools that relate to most anything aside PvP. The longevity that is dug out from this game typically falls to PvP'ing. If you try mission running, arty scanning or grinding NPC's, you'd be lucky to stay interested in that stuff for more than a billing period or two. What keeps people interested in most mmo's is the developers abilities to design enough tools to keep players cycling their interests and playing around in their world. If you only give people a sparse amount of tools, you can't expect them to just stay interested under their own creativity and say that the player is what makes the sandbox lacking in content.

Your own personal creativity can sure drive how much you play a game and affect it, but when you don't have those tools to express that creativity, you could be the most creative person in existence and still run out of interesting things to relate to. I'll refer back to my empty room analogy, throw someone in one and tell them they're free to do whatever they want, they're likely to get bored quick and I highly doubt you can interject that it’s that persons own fault. While creativity and interest in something is very subjective, to simply stamp a game with sandbox and barely have any innovative systems to play with is very misleading. You can't charge people money to use their own creativity and tell them it's their fault they're not creative enough to play the game. Paying for the game also imposes a certain responsibility upon the developer, I’d say even over that of the players, to actually keep players engaged by providing interesting tools to spur creativity. If that wasn't the case, development of a game would mean little to nothing and it would be the luck of the developers to have ‘creative’ players in their games and making them interesting. Who markets a game like that? Come play our game, we have such innovative players that carry our lacking systems!