I disagree heavily with this rather shallow approach of looking at it and i do so for good reasons. I strongly suggest rethinking this approach, especially because “fun / hr” does not fit well into what EVE ONLINE is and provides.
I apologize in advance for being so thorough and writing books. I am used to speaking to people, which makes it much easier for me to skip whole paragraphs of text (you know what i mean :p), because I can observe if the one who’s listening is actually able to follow.
From the “Things you should know before you design a game” department. While I’m by no means an expert, I know enough to share some thoughts. I need to, because such considerations are important for what I’m doing.
You can design a game for people who seek fun, like (usually horribly shallow and addicting) mobile games. You can design a game for people who seek satisfaction. You can mix them of course, but it’s dangerous, because you need to keep the balance between these two groups of players.
Changing a game, which was primarily designed for those who seek satisfaction, into a game for those who seek fun, is very risky. That’s part of what’s going on in EVE right now, where the old player base was, due to the nature of the game, more about gaining satisfaction than simply about having fun. I’m not saying no one had fun, or didn’t want to have fun. I’m saying that fun, taking under consideration how the game worked for it’s most part, definitely wasn’t the driving factor for most of its players.
As we all know, CCP is taking the slow approach, changing the game over years to come with every new generation accepting the status quo as the norm, alienating all those who see the new norm as an attack on their interests and, often enough, on the game itself.
The equation you’re looking for is “Satisfaction / Session”, assuming you care about the longevity of EVE. Yes, the distinction between Fun and Satisfaction is important and No, they do not mean the same thing. We’re talking about two different groups of people here and of course there’s overlapping, but in general can we split them up in “seeking fun” and “seeking satisfaction”.
EVE ONLINE has always been better suited to the latter type, with more and more of the former type joining the game. They’re easily visible.
“Fun” is the positive feeling you feel during an activity. One can build a tolerance to “fun”, which leads to “boredom” and the need of finding a new activity, which then provides “fun” again, until that too wears off. You need greater and greater fixes (as in: higher and higher doseages of a drug. See also: grinding and levelling up). Personally I would classify boredom as withdrawal of fun, which would turn those, who seek nothing but fun, into addicts.
See also: people whining about the game being boring and CCP not providing any new content for them; Mining is boring, make it more engaging; FW is boring; Missions are boring; i can’t find targets; etc. etc. These people are looking for fun and usually they’re unaware of what’s keeping them from having any, or what forces them to continually seek fun as if it was the centerpoint of existence.
Miners (and AFK Cloakers) are interesting cases. Miners, unless they saturate themselves with enough characters to keep the activity a fun one (example: being 100% occupied by quadrupleboxxing 
), pure solo-mining without social activity usually is not fun at all, unless you also enjoy watching paint dry, grass grow and a ticking clock.
Mining is, purposefully, an activity you can do while doing other things, in game or in real life. When silent solo-miners say “mining is fun”, while they’re actually doing something else (netflix, chatting), then what they actually mean is “mining is satisfying”. The outcome is satisfying.
So, just to be clear for those brains who do not actually read and can not see beyond their biasses, always only scanning for trigger-words: Mining can be fun under certain conditions, but in general mining is something that is not fun, but satisfying.
AFK Cloaking is also an interesting case. The fun part of afk cloaking is watching miners in a belt, without them knowing you’re there. It’s smack talking in local, enjoying the tears of your scared victims. It’s raking in the money from extortion. AFK Cloaking is satisfying, because of the long term effects, despite there not being any actual (or at least obvious) efforts. One can argue that “patience” is an effort, but I’m not willing to dive into that.
“Satisfaction”, in difference to “fun”, is the feeling you get as outcome of an activity. Like, for example, having a plan, following it through and succeeding. Success is not a requirement, but increases satisfaction. It is perfectly normal to fail, because satisfaction can still be drawn by those mindsets who understand that failure leads to improvement. Damn, I’ve failed really hard, but I’ve already learned quite a lot!
Failure, btw, for most is no fun. I’ll leave that to you to figure out why this is actually an important consideration and what mindset sits behind such thoughts.
Activities that are fun aren’t necessarily satisfying. Mobile games are deliberately designed to be fun, to get you addicted. The point of this whole post is:
Stop mixing fun with satisfaction. They’re not the same and differentiating between these two groups is important, otherwise you’ll alienate all those who do not simply look for fun. When you design a game it is crucial to know that, otherwise you’ll have a really bad day.
You can have fun hunting targets and you can feel satisfied when you catch and kill it. There is no “levelling up”. You can have fun doing market PvP and feel satisfied after making billions. Again, no “levelling up”. You can have fun doing industry and feel satisfied when your products are ready. Yet again, there is no “levelling up”.
Of course, here too, the feeling of satisfaction will eventually cease, but it will take you much longer, because there is no actual end and fun was not the important part of playing. The important part of playing was the feeling of satisfaction. You might feel saturated and grow bored of your own success eventually, yes, but it usually takes much longer to reach such a state.
Then you have missions. For an example it’s literally the elephant in the room. As CCP said themselves, there’s the type who “levels up their raven” and eventually quits the game out of boredom once they’ve done them all, fly loot pinatas and sit on richness they have no actual use for.
These people look for “fun”, but not for satisfaction. There is no satisfaction, unless the player had a plan behind what he does, like mercs grinding up for locator agents. The primary purpose of missions is to have fun shooting NPCs and levelling up (and making money, but that’s beyond the point). You level up by being able to buy bigger ships, more expensive gear and reaching the next level.
Eventually it’s done. Boom.
CCP, WE DEMAND NEW CONTENT! And they do that why? Because they only care about having fun, and they eventually stop having fun, compared to those who seek “satisfaction”, who usually have long-term interests.
So, to end this, and I hope I didn’t make any serious mistakes:
Fun/hr is for mobile games, with an audience CCP seems to be attracting now. (see also: the threads about CCP’s marketing tactics). Satisfaction / Session is for games like EVE ONLINE. When you only look at the fun things, you will eventually end up with a LOT of bored people who will eventually quit the game after playing through all the “fun” activities, because these people only ever care about their own fun and not about anything for the long term. Just like those who only play to level their ravens.
“The Agency” is another sign that CCP caters to people who seek fun. They have no actual reason to play anymore and CCP needs to give them content they can do so they can have fun. In my eyes it’s pretty obvious that these people really aren’t good for the game, but that’s not the point of this post.
Shades of grey exist everywhere, but it’s fully valid to seperate these people into two groups. That’s why I do not play mobile games, because they’re made to milk addicts. Kudos to anyone who plays them without ever paying anything, but you’re still being caught by the addicting content they provide.
So, please … differentiate. It matters.
Thank you.