I'm for the good old CTF event. It only went awry this time because of the space stuff. (Mathematically, you're just not going to catch somebody when you both move at a constant rate on a plane. You need obstacles and terrain to vary the movement.) Also, no resets. That just ruins the sense of accomplishment or desire for people to build things.
In past events, we usually had plenty for everyone to do. People who wanted to go raiding would raid. People who wanted to build would construct defenses, infrastructure, novelty builds, etc.. People who wanted to parkour had the buff areas. It was a big, open world and you had plenty of options.
Maybe throw in some custom spawning behaviour to make the PvE more challenging, too. (Naturally spawning "Illagers" and randomly named Doppelgangers anyone?)
The issue is the space event was just too limiting for everyone, with its preconstructed and mostly empty world.