But you are forgetting that it has to be FUN and replayable. Emergent content in Eve is fun when it means competing against another human being who is trying to destroy your shiny stuff. Playing a random hacking game against the computer is not fun, particularly the 678879th time you do it. Especially when, if you successfully complete the site, you have to share the rewards with a small gang in order to get anything at all. Which means that the site has to be lucrative enough to be worth a small gang's time.

TBH I think even with your idea which is somewhat technically infeasible at the moment we'd still have the same complaint. People are used to getting all the goodies on success and the idea that you can succeed and not get everything or perhaps even miss out on something really good is just not what people expect. Essentially making things more fuzzy gets people worried. We are re-balancing the loot that comes out.

[EDIT: EvilweaselSA, I'm not convinced that that's a bad thing. "The one that got away" is the basis of any number of stories; it would keep players hungry, and make a minigame out of identifying the container types and pulling them in as quickly as possible, instead of "push button, receive bacon." I'm fond of the idea that EVE is more complex than those games that are carefully engineered to give you reward sensations as often as possible.]

I don't want to say you guys don't play the game, although that's my instinct, but I suspect you guys don't play the damn game. People run DED sites collaboratively because there is a chance of a payout that makes it worth it (high end mods, pirate faction BPCs). No one is going to run hisec archaeology sites with a team, when they currently pay out less than 500k 50% of the time. Or Nullsec data sites that pay out less than 30 mill. Not when there are anoms and ratting to be done.

The new mini game will take longer and thus will keep the explorer ship exposed for longer.

Better have only 25% of all potential hackers, than actually give a chance to players who don't exactly fit into EVE. CCP wants few but chosen players, and with multiple accounts each, of course.

2. Separately or in addition to 1, the exploration system could be more...exploration-y...if the spawn rates/conditions for relic/data sites were not as dull as they currently are. Currently, the system encourages farming N random systems until satisfied. Why not make the spawn mechanics more dynamic? E.g., tie the spawn rate to number of players in system over X hours (past hour, past day, e.g.). That way, you are unlikely to find much in Jita, but highly likely to find stuff in empty tracks of space. This will also spread players out over space, especially if done in addition to 1 above. Obviously there are many other ways that the spawn rates could be made more dynamic, and almost anything would be better than the current system which is pretty much no different than random monster spawns in any other MMO out there.