The best PvE would be AI that act like players:

• They act in rational (but not necessarily predictable) fashion. Escorted convoys travelling between destinations, miners and harvesters are actually gathering from actual sources, combat NPCs don't have set spawn points but react to player activity.

• Combat AI are smarter and craftier. They press you and chase you until you're dead if they can catch you, they give up if they can't*. They run or call in reinforcements if they're losing. They stage ambushes on vulnerable-looking players.

No warnings for big spawns. No "safe" spots, especially in Alpha2. Drop the average difficulty of the NPCs near newbie spots if needed. Content of groups would vary wildly (singles to large swarms), adjusted for fun/balance. Every player should be at least a little bit afraid at all times.

*"Training" is avoided, because the NPCs will only chase a player that they can actually catch and kill. This is not based on the speed the player pretends to move (reduced throttle or whatever), or the firepower they pretend to have, but what their bot is actually capable of.

Reminds me of my old post http://forumsbetaarchive.perpetuum-onli … 60/#p19460. I still believe it's a cool idea, just not for Perpetuum.

The thing is, challenging PvE only works when death is cheap. Otherwise you get a lot of dissatisfied players quickly.

The devs are actually doing a good job of balancing PVE and PVE improvements. Neither of them are happening fast enough for us in general, but they are doing both.

PVE got some luv, and now it's time for PVP with outpost changes.

As I mentioned, PVE industry will actually benefit from more and better PVP action that can be done by smaller corps. So the idea of a PVP enabled arena actually fits the bill of doing BOTH, so great idea there. I'm not sure how much it will get used, since it has to be player driven, you will not see a wow type of arena matching system in the game, simply because it's not balanced around 1v1 or even 5v5. And, that being the case, really the competitors can simply flag to PVP and there's no reason to make it a PVP enabled area; like it is now.

Tl;Dr - The game needs both PVE and PVP improvements, and the devs are doing both, we just need to keep giving them ideas and wait patiently

Dynamic PVE is not only difficult to produce, there are very few games out there that do it, it's also even more frustrating.

The PVE content with EWAR is very challenging, but it was too frustrating, so the challenge was less about living and more about not being able to kill anything; so ewar was reduced.

Devs are already adding in dynamically increasing difficulty on farmed spawns. The likely outcome is going to be complaints from solo players that farmed for a 1/2 hour until the elite spawned and then they had to wait around 20 mins for it to despawn. And complaints from the farming groups, that the elite doens't spawn often enough, and its not challenging.

Unless the Devs are going to put a wooden sign out in front of each spawn "You must be this high to ride this ride" to differentiate between solo'able content and group content, both groups are going to assume that whatever spawn they are fighting is meant for thier style of game play. And more often then not the group is going to be the one taking on the easier spawn complaining it's not hard enough, but not taking on the group spawn because it's too hard.

tl;dr - Devs can't balance the same PVE content for both solo and group play, they just have to present it in the proper areas and let the players complain. Or just water down the content and the reward to the easiest level and again let the players complain.

RP wise, the Syndicate is 'holding back the hordes' by setting up teleport blocks. So this is basically our spearhead and the Syndicate is using sneakeeze to gain a foot hold instead of all out military force.

The PVP part is supposed to be about us. The three factions are cooperating on the surface, but underneath they are all vieying for ultimate power. And if they can get us 'freelancers' to do all the mining and heavy lifting, while they reap the rewards back on earth once the energy is flowing, that's a win for them.

Technically, they don't have any need or desire for NIC or bots or land, its about the energy, and getting that energy to earth so they can by fast cars and loose women, only the pioneers really care about building something on Nia.

But yes, we've been promised a new improved website, which come to think of it will probably coincide with the marketing push later on, and it should raise awareness and answer some questions about the world. The newest level 3 assignment has all the things you talked about Grim, but it didn't stick. So just putting all those items that you want isn't the answer, this is something that's going to have to build up over time, no single patch or PVE/PVP update is going to be an "ah ha" moment.

As the game develops, all of a sudden we'll be looking at it and think, "yeah, this works".

you can't get much better PVE without instancing it. you'd need specific scenarios created for missions and such and those only work when the environment if custom made for each specific mission.

if alpha outpost would be more populated, I could imagine NPC raids on them. but with the current population it would not make much sense. basicaly NPC raids depending on the usage of the outpost (simulating an actual war with the Niani).

Rifts...

I could easily do without complex, dynamic AI if the NPCs at least appeared slightly rational. Where they are and how they're fit makes zero sense in the current setup, though. The bot lore makes these guys sound like they're part of a shockingly advanced society, but the reality is they just gather in small groups and walk in circles. They aren't dumb wild boars, though. If there are mining bots, they should be where mining can actually happen and actually mining. If there are haulers, they should be travelling between places to haul from and to. If there are combat bots, they should be guarding plant/mineral patches, escorting non-combats, or generally roaming. These can be just as static as existing spawns, they're just in far more rational places.

This is the main problem with the themepark approach. At some point, the devs will just have to draw a line in the sand for "traditional" MMOGamers and say, "Whatever you think an MMOG should be, this is what PO is. Now stuff your cliched quest and loot table paradigms and let us build our game."

Nobody has suggested a twist to PVE.  How about a rebellion set twist to A2 islands.
Perhaps at a certain skill set, a pilot or group of pilots can enter an area and run rebellion missions against the Syndicate.

Perhaps the assignment is layered so solo pilots can complete the outer 2 areas but groups could enter the inner areas and complete deeper levels of the combat area. btw, teleports from the agent giving the assignment to the combat area would be nice.

One great twist to this potential "dark side" assignment is that if one faction ported you to the combat zone, and another faction ported a different pilot to the same combat zone but for their side, perhaps entry PVP from PVE could be born.

I could see these assignment being things like sabotaging power generators, knocking out coms, destroying manufacturing equipment, and the drops could be CT's or other rare items depending on the risk/reward scale.

I would see these assignments being ported to "dead space" areas where only those involved in the assignment could participate (ie, inside mountains nearby, under water structures, or at least lead the lore that way).

When the assignment must have a group of lets say 3 pilots, perhaps you sit in a Que, and when the other agent gets his 3 pilots, all 6 are dumped into the combat zone, for PVE and when they meet up representing opposite sides, near the final objective, they PVP or RUN!.

Could be fun. And would probably make a decent XBox Live game. Not so much for persistent MMOGs, I don't think:
- Would feel very artificial since it has well-defined, static stages and predictable progression.
- No real effect on the game world, calling into question any claims made by the game that you're "rebelling" or something.
- Is anti-MMO due to instancing. By disconnecting from the game world, you severely limit the possibilities for dynamic interaction and emergent behaviour. It's a theme park move.

The PvE/PvP mix is fantastic, though.

In an MMOG system, you want something where the rules are simple but vague, and the goal open to interpretation. This lets players approach challenges in surprising and creative ways, and interfere with each other in equally surprising and creative ways. Two mandatory components of that (IMO) are (1) no separation of PvE and PvP, (2) and no arenas.