The current AEState class design has the following problems:

1) Arbitrary naming scheme for persisted versus non-persisted data.
2) Vague distinction between user configurable settings and data objects stored by a Perk to be shared across Perk instances.
3) Separation of data and metadata proxy without cross reference.
4) Lack of a model/view notification scheme caused by #3 (see bug #376101)

We need to rectify these problems while retaining the following fundamental features:

1) Ability to easily assign settings default values.
2) Ability to easily set/get settings as object attributes.
3) Ability to group settings to suggest relations for view generation.
4) Ability to specify metadata for view generation.