Everything on Zone needs to be redone.
Some basic stuff:
1) Quest, doesn't need to have a story line but it is preferred. Quest can give loot drops, such as gralats, guns, hats, bodies, heads etc. You know where am going with this.
2) Tileset, either make an entirely new tileset or improve the current on. That means other colors besides BLUE, some shading and tone and contrast to it as well.
3) Basing, keep the current planets such as Spring, Choros, Iricia and Conquest and reduce the time given for holding those bases by 3/4. For other bases on the map make a more elaborate designs, no need to be symmetrical in every level. Add some barriers doors and mounted turrets for use by defender and other captivating ideas you could think of.
4) Squads, increase the cost for creating a squad that way players don't just abuse the 1k hat achievement, I would say increase the cap to 20k per squad. Remove squads that aren't active on the leaderboard, lets say if a squads stops basing for about a week they'll be taken off the board and replaced by the next squad closest to it's hours. To get back on the leaderboard, they need to hold a planet or base for at least five hours. Add more rights to be given in the squad such as being able to mute the player from the squad, banning them (ban list should be available), promotion system that authorize players can give to other players. This means the leader or anyone that is authorize can give points to a player which would be added to a kind of progress bar that lets gets them promoted through a set of ranks system that is set up by the leader.
5) Squad rewards, going to make this simple 1k=Hat for 15 players excluding hatmaker and leader. 2.5k=Hat for 6 players excluding hatmaker and leader. 5k=Hideout. 7.5k=25 statue for squad members & temporary gun skin added to the hideout that needs to be re-grap every three days or so. 10k=Custom gun skin for 18 players excluding skin maker and leader. Also there
6) Staff made squad rewards, this can range from skins, guns, hats to anything available in Zone. How this would work is a squad can earn "squad cash" By holding planets or base, killing players while defending base and squad activities events.
7) Squad activities, this can include TDM, Capture the flag etc. This should be a hosted event and NPC hosted every 30mins or an hour. Winning squad receives a set of "squad cash" that can be spent in the "squad cash store".
8) PvE, so we already have a mission type of event set up, why not improve it? Missions should give loots that can be sold for gralats that means finishing the mission, killing enemies or completing certain objective. Leveling up can give you access to different areas throughout the map. Check out the game Destiny, they have planets such as Earth, Mars, Venus and even the moon that has a fairly large map that can players can roam around for hours doing different missions, events, and looting or grinding for items and experience.
9) Guns, they need to be redone everything from gani to stats. Needs a variety of stats for its set price. Because as of now all the guns are nearly equal when some cost a lot more than others.
Well that's all I could really thought of as of now, I'll try to add more ideas when I can. Kinda was lazy so I kept things simple and to the point. Like to see some of these ideas incorporated into the game or at least even being considered lol.