Well, I was not exactly criticizing the mission loop. I was disussing limitations. Stripping content from a game leaves simple bones behind, and while bones are useful, they are useful primarily when attached to other things.
my issues, as I have stated, are these:
1) I'm not a fan of the mad Max setting as a large multiplayergame setting. It makes for a particular type of narrative which seems to work somewhat fine for a single protagonist, but not so much for a group of disparate individuals, who each seem to be in competition with each other as well as with the environment and npcs.
2) a game of diminishing returns is a game of attrition and loss. I dislike that.
3) post apocalyptic is fine. scarcity is fine. crafting is fine, pve and pvp are fine but the five as primary game mechanics are in conflict, and seem like they would lead to more tedium than interesting activity.
4) I've said it already: the crafting system as stated rewards the tinker style nitpickers, who are a rather small part of the overall player base. This will be confounded by the wall of text responses, the myriad questions, and the pages long discussions and arguments over a wide variety of topics. The less finiky players will find themselves completely overwhelmed by the elites in no time.
5) I briefly mentioned above: as I understand the game so far, each player is essentially on their own. trust and team building, as the game is described now, will be problematic, and that means the game can easily devolve into that thing you feared - a sort of pvp and pve arena in which the strong survive, and the rest are meat for the grinder.
6) seems like that would mean that power apartheid would rapidly become an even greater problem here than in ER, where the powerful were, at least generally, players who sought to increase the fun for others (though they may have failed at times)
7) as for not introducing decay via things falling apart - Thunderdome's Master Blaster character kinda revolved around the idea - the ones who can maintain the machinery control the civilization. It feels like an arbitrary break from the setting, and seems to me to require a certain suspension of disbelief. Now, I know that every fantasy game requires that, but every setting should have an internal logic, and this seems to defy the internal logic of the setting.
you say combat has potential for variety? I haven't seen enough about the combat in this game to say. Risk/reward? I question the reward aspect, as eerything is supposed to be currently existing, and good stuff is rare. And even upon gaining the reward, each reward carries a secondary risk - the brighter the shiny, the more people want it, and the more likely you are to lose it, and everything else you've put together to get it. Unless you are already at the top of the scrap heap.
thinking on it, I will expand my core of types that I think could succeed or find interest in the game to these: Power, parasite, tinker. I agree that the aspect of exploration could be a positive, but I think it would eed to be handled well - it's not an automatic generator of interesting things.