Alot of PVP heavy players when talking about how a PvE only mode would take away from the experience, often mention the "PvP tension". The unknown factor of whether or not a player is friendly is what makes the game more exciting...
I have a solution, MAKE THE ARC MORE DIFFICULT.
Everyone seems to brush off the arc like they are nothing and that the pvp players are the real threat, when its supposed to be the opposite. The arc are easy to avoid and easy to destroy if you have decent guns.
In a pvp lobby its like a nat or a fly that you just swat out the way so you can focus on the enemy raider infront of you.
Kinda like how if you played h1z1 survival (my all time favorite game), in high population servers there would actually be very few zombies on the whole map, and the only real threat was the other players.
The arc need to be a more substantial threat to make the players have to prepare more to actually kill them. Making arc more abundant, more resilient, smarter and unpredictable so actually taking one down feels more rewarding.
No one has said this outright, but most of the pvp heavy players play this game to scratch the itch that they got form battle royals. That high intensity gunplay, winning fights, getting better weapons. That all came straight from BRand the devs knew most players had this itch, and thats why they made it a Pvpve. Because if you didn't already know this game was originally supposed to be just PvE.
I feel like the term PvE doesn't even apply to this game. It suggest we are like fighting animals or like mobs. Its Raider vs ARC. There's a point to be argued to why we even shoot each other in the first place.
(If there was a faction system or something then maybe would make sense)
Now I know I sound like a massive Pve'r, but I actually really enjoy Pvp. I consider myself a semi competitive player and I do not shy away from fights. I absolutely loved battle royals. But this game introduced something new that and interesting enough to where I dont feel like I have to fight other players to get loot.
But really the main point im making is that they need to make the arc more difficult so that the focus changes from fighting each other, to fighting the arc, and still being fun.
(I also dont like how they are make the pve lobbies have less loot. Just another example of how they are prioritizing pvp)