I believe its a fairly good assumption to make that the majority of players want some sort of change in perpetuum, to both improve the PvP and PvE experience. The problem in games such as this is that its hard to mix PvE players with PvP players, when death carries such a weighty penalty. Other MMOs get past that by making death mean little, having instances battlegrounds, and overall watering down PvP mechanics to the point of it being an extra bullet point on the back of the box.

I also believe it is a fairly good assumption to make that most of us would not like this.

So I was thinking back to some of the MMO's I've played, trying to figure out what drew me to each one, and what worked and what didn't in terms of PvP and PvE content. So let's take a look, and see if we can learn something from them:

Ultima Online:

PvE:

This game's PvE was a lot like perpetuum. Random spawns in the world, sitting there waiting for you to kill them. There were some dungeons, some tougher monsters, and things of that nature, but overall if you wanted PvE you went out and killed some mobs for the sole reason of loot drops. This worked ok, as the majority of equipment was player crafted, and only the "nice stuff" was dropped from mobs.

No quests back when I played it, but the game didn't really need them, as PvE was not what it was about.

PvP:

Towns were the only safe place. Safety was ensured by godlike Guards, which could be summoned by literally typing "guards" in chat whenever another player did something illegal to you or someone near you. PvP was free for all, full loot (items you were wearing & in your inventory, as well as any gold you had). Players could make a living from PvP by killing others and taking their stuff.

You could tell who was likely to attack you because murderer's names would be red. Other players would be blue, criminals and shady characters had gray names. Death happened often, and meant losing whatever you had on you (but you could pick it all up if someone else didn't, after respawn)

What worked:

PvP was fun because gearing up again was really cheap, and thus farming wasn't necessary. Mining was the "grinding" you had to do, in order to collect the ore you needed to make weapons and armor. Any player could do this, and mines were often a favorite hangout of PK's (why mine when you can have someone else do it for you, then kill them and take their stuff?). Character progression was tied to ingame skill usage, so you could have a character maxed out in your chosen skillset within days. This was good because it meant newbies could be effective very early on, while experienced players could still take on several newer opponents due to gear/game knowledge advantage. PvE players could sit and craft all day, they could build houses and castles, and go to dungeons looking for the best loot. They could collect herbs and other items needed by the general populace, and they could sell them in their own personal store. They could even hire NPC vendors to sell their wares for them.

Guilds could essentially craft cities, and were reliant on PvE players to keep the PvP going.

UO shards exist to this day. More than 10 years later, with thousands of players still playing.

Shadowbane:

Shadowbane was really cool, but I hated their interface and controls. The only way to move was clicking on terrain. Melee combat was pretty boring, and actually fairly ineffective in PvP. It did however, have some neat mechanics which made it different from other mmos:

PvE:

There were different areas, newbie areas with no PvP, safe zones, and PvP areas with free for all pvp. The majority of the game areas were FFA. PvE consisted of the same roaming mobs in the world, waiting for players to kill them for loot. The majority of a player's personal income came from farming mobs, and farm operations were common in guilds.

Most of player equipment was crafted. Players could build their own cities (literal cities, castle walls, defenses, vendors, trainers, bank and all). A map showed who owned what area of the world and how much territory they controlled. Alliances were commonplace, yet a lot of individual guilds existed and kept their own cities.

PvE players actually created neutral cities, where any guild could come buy their wares if they could not produce their own. These were bustling trade hubs where a mutual truce existed, as the trade cities were essential to all guilds since very few guilds could produce all they needed on their own.

Shadowbane also had the concept of Hot Zones; These were globally announced areas of the world (which were always open PvP areas, never safe) where monsters dropped better loot and rare treasures, as well as gave more experience. Hot zones swapped from place to place every few hours, and were always favored hunting grounds for PK players (and Anti PK guilds)

PvP:

Resources were obtained from player capturable mines. There were a lot of mines, spread out throughout the world. Each mine had different resources, and no area had all the resources needed for everything. Mines automatically collected resources for the guild who owned them, and stored them away. They also had upkeep costs, and needed to be upgraded in order to make them harder to capture (more HP, more defender NPCs).

Mines had windows of opportunity, for an hour every day, a mine had to be open for capture. Guild leaders could set the time the mine was open, so as to provide the defenders with reasonable chances of defence. The developers put certain limitations on that though, so as to avoid guilds setting windows in the middle of the night when other players could not attack it.

Special equipment was needed to destroy the guard towers and capture the mine. Once a mine was captured, it was yours until it was taken from you. This meant that throughout the day, every day, mines in different parts of the world, from different guilds, offering different resources, were open for capture. You could always travel somewhere to look for a mine to capture, and thus, ensuring PvP 24/7. A lot of times mines would be contested by multiple guilds, with the defenders having to fight off several groups to keep the mine, sometimes losing the mine to a "ninja cap" that could occur if a guild snuck in during the fighting and took the mine right before the end of the timer.

Cities could also be sieged. This was done using banestones which were placed 24 hours prior and gave the defenders time to prepare to fight. Siege equipment would be used to take down the walls. There were city buildings that buffed/debuffed (like preventing attackers from flying, which could be used to pass over city walls)

Cities could be ransacked and destroyed. You could of course loot what was left, as well as build a new city on top of it (building could only be done in certain areas).

EvE Online:

I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar, so I won't go into details. Their PvE content is fairly boring and stale, and their PvP leaves much to be desired. The most appealing factor of EvE is the politics, the player driven economy, and the open pvp, at least for me. However, their PvP implementation left me wanting, and was very unsatisfying.

What we can learn from this:

What I propose is that we learn from these games. Shadowbane was great in its PvP implementation, PvP had purpose to it and it was a key part of the game. PvE players were protected by PvP players, and were valued for their contributions. Is a guild attacking you every time you go farm? Simple then, go put a banestone on their city and make them regret it. A bane was a big deal, as it meant quite a bit to lose your city... it was no small feat to build them, cost a lot of money, and it was a slap in the face of the losers... to see your city smoldering in ruins.

Mine pvp was great fun, it provided the capturing guild great boons, and provided players with areas where PvP was almost assured almost every hour of the day. Small guilds could still compete by ninja capping a mine, or simply attacking a mine held by a smaller guild.

Hot zones were great because they provided PvE players incentives to go to PvP areas. PvP players had their prey, but PvE players could also defend themselves by either fighting back, or having their guildmates protect them while they farmed.

TLDR:

Perpetuum could learn from other games in the past.

My suggestions include:

- Hot Zones that change every few hours, are only found in beta islands, and spawn NPCs that drop better loot. This will encourage players to gather in specific strategic areas for more than just "the fun of roaming"

- Capturable resource locations: Create neutral "mining towers" that passively provide valuable resources to players who hold them. Make them capturable every day, ala shadowbane. Have different beta islands and locations within the beta islands have different mines with different resources. Have these towers grant mining bonuses to miners who mine around them, so as to encourage players to actively mine in these areas as well.

- Buildable outposts: Allow players to build outposts, not just capture existing ones. The most profit should be made from outposts built by players, while NPC outposts should remain as neutral ground for small corporations to use to gain a foothold on beta.

- Bigger islands: Scouting is too easy to do using trial accounts. Teleports are easy to camp and to use as scouting tools. There is no way to "sneak into an island" because there are only a few entry points into  them. Open them up so players can travel by foot into another island, or provide players with the means to teleport players INTO an island if they sneak in.

- Full loot drops in Hot Zones: Full loot should drop in hot zones, maybe even allow for a small chance for bots to "drop" after you kill them. This will encourage more solo and small gang players to go out and PvP for personal gain, rather than corporation gain. Make pirating profitable.

- With the inclusion of pirating incentives, incentivize players to go after them, or include drawbacks into the system. Maybe they can be attacked freely in alpha islands if they dare venture into them, grant NIC rewards to players who kill them, based on what bots they're driving (to discourage players having their friends kill them and split the cash). Make the reward be less than the bot & module total cost.