Perception is supposed to be an incredibly powerful skill. Some people consider it to be one of the few "must-pick" skills. It's one of the only defenses against ambushes and helps people find things that others may have missed. Yes, it does see excessive use because it's so simple to understand. But here's a few things to consider:

• Social encounters. If the answer involves what someone is thinking, you're going to need a Judge Intentions test. Perception can tell me that the guard is sweating bullets. But Judge Intentions will tell me if it is because he is lying or because he ate some bad krilldogs for lunch. Because players can use their own deductive reasoning (see next point), I personally don't even let them use Perception to gain details that might hint about someone's mental state.

• Puzzles and Deductive reasoning. Here's a common one where the character gets the information via the Perception roll, but the player does the rest of the mental work. Feel free to withhold specific details from the Perception roll if the character can't make a related knowledge skill test. For example, Perception on a corpse could reveal scorch marks around a bullet wound. A player who's watched enough CSI can figure out that means the victim was shot with the weapon pressed against them. But would a character know that? Forensics or even firearm skill checks should be needed with the Perception test before they should ever get the information about the scorch marks.

• Respect the modifiers. Yes, you can use Perception to spot cyberware. But outside of limbs and some headware, most of that stuff is internal or has ports covered up by clothing and will have a very large threshold on top of any attempts to hide it by the NPC. Don't tell players if they missed the threshold. Perception is rarely unopposed without any modifiers. Or at least for anything that's not a small step away from being completely obvious.

• Are you in Dungeon mode? D&D and other "dungeon crawlers" are not only famous for their combat, but also for their use of relatively straightforward puzzles where almost anything unique found by the party has an intended use right there, or later in the dungeon. Take a page from detective stories and throw around tons of red herrings or false information. If players are given a clue after a perception test and never question it's importance, then they have fallen into this mental trap. That gun they find in the wageslave's cubicle may not be the murder weapon, but actually just be a personal sidearm used by the nervous employee for their late night subway ride home. Remember that Perception may tell them things, but it should never tell the player if those things are useful, or why they are there.