This seems likely, but I’m also adding in “no-one wants to mess with that because its not sexy development”.
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Well, the main issue with the old missions is that they were literally handwritten line by line by someone who no longer works at the company. As they’re handwritten pieces of code, working with them is very difficult, but CCP can easily change things like the attributes and objects called by the code. When the code says in computer-jargon “call object #437778 at x,y,z”, CCP can easily replace “437778” for another object, or change the attributes (like, the AI code) of that object, even if changing the mission code itself would be a messy thing.
A different matter is that CCP Affinity and CCP Reddawn wrote a mission builder tool, which later was used to create the Burner missions and probably still is used for other things, but what CCP never did, is to use that tool to make new dungeon-style missions (go there, kill ten rats, get back for reward) like those handwritten in the hero times of launching EVE.
The question is “why” and the answer is all the stuff we’ve been discussing here and the other thread. CCP don’t think it’s worth making dungeon missions as they want to use PvE as a gateway to multiplayer nullsec PvP. This is because the corporate decssion taken in 2013 about future development was to make content the multiplayer nullsec PvPrs should love, like structures to fight for, based on the idea that players doing that stayed longer, engaged more with other players and CCP and provided free advertising for the game when big battles occur. This is compounded with CCP’s general conception about who plays EVE Online and what can they do to make that kind of player happy, plus the usual difficulty to interact with customers.
CCP’s job includes keeping hundreds of thousand people happy with their product. They’ve tried hard but ultimately they’re failing because they are not experts in the matter and even when they hired someone who knows on it, that person only joined CCP in 2015, when Rubicon was underway and there was no way to change the collision course against the highsec lows. Now they hope that the ship will pass the lows and won’t wreck, but their chances look slimmer the more you know about highsec, PvErs and CCP.
Addendum: and as pointed by Chan’aar, also turns that “level design” isn’t exactly a cool thing to do compared to writting AI code and all the other cutting edge things a developer does in CCP for the modest price of being paid well below industy standard, living in a sh*t place, never ever be promoted and be fired whenever higher ups mess up even as those higher ups have never been fired for nothing; CCP’s failed enterprises are lined with the corpses of grunt developers, but executives never lost their jobs over those blunders… which is an interesting corporate culture thing.
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You do not want better PVE, you want an ISK printer.
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I’m not following the analogy…you are buying something you don’t like. Then when the quality goes down you stop…why were you buying in the first place?
Sorry, this seems contradictory to me. They hate change…but they’ll gleefully take any improvement…isn’t that change? Why are they gleefully taking something they hate?
Uhhh…wait a minute here. Let me see, CCP wants to funnel players into NS PvP because…players that go there stay longer, are more engaged with other players and provides free advertising…but this is…bad?
Edit:
Just to be clear, you have raised some good points, IMO. My initial reaction was, “Oh God, not this again.” Then I thought, you know I hate PvE, especially HS PvE. It is horribly stultifying…maybe it is time to give that another pass and inject some new stuff there. After all, not everyone wants to move on to NS.
But PvE in EVE has always been crappy. The idea that crappy PvE is causing the decline in players logging in strikes me as…well not a really compelling story. Sure, maybe it is, but I’d give higher weight to other explanations given that PvE has always been crappy–i.e. people have rarely stay because of the PvE.
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Well they did but only a tiny bit. Look at “Dread Pirate Scarlet” as an example of missions done right - you don’t know what you will be facing and if you warp out to deal, you get a nasty surprise.
In the same way the infinite isk anomalies should react to the ship(s) you bring. You bring a super - deal with an annihilation force with much less bounties on but much more difficult to deal with.
Bring a HAC and the anomaly will be like you know them.
Words matter. Do you “love” everything you “like”? Or are there things you like but could skip if they stopped being convenient? Low engagement is a key to understand how highsec PvErs interact to EVE and the changes in it.
Second, some people hate all changes (there’s a whole personality archetype about this), but most people is flexible enough to take on improvements without missing a heartbeat. Did you hesitate to shift to DSL/cable/optic fiber from your 56kbps modem? “It’s the same, but better” is the #1 selling argument of literally everything conceivable.
Third, the point is not that PvE is crappy. The point is that people buys it as it is and like it this way and although they would buy any improved version, CCP has either dismissed adding content (like just adding new dungeon missions) or is actively working on things unrelated to what floats the boat for highsec PvErs. That gives the impression that either they don’t do anything, or do it for somebody else, so people quit because don’t like what they get.
So, it’s not crappy PvE what kills the population. It’s the fact that it never expands (thus it grows stale) and whenever CCP does something, it’s developed according to people who don’t do the crappy PvE, or it’s even crappier than the existing content.
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Hmm if they wanted to improve PvE we have to look at what makes it stale in the first place.
Lets look at incursions, people have run the same incursion 500x they probably know exactly where each rat would be at a certain time period their key presses are probably pretty similar each time, and this adds a lot to safety and takes away excitement.
If you would want to shake that up one could:
Split rat types into groups, Dps, Tackle, Logi, Ewar. And with the help of AI analyses the situation each time a group of players run it and adjusts their amount of each type of rat groups and distances they are from each other and positioning, this will allow a fresh challenge with a lot less safety and as a bonus the rewards would be naturally higher because of this difficulty. You can’t just bring the best ships and expect to win each time you will have to adjust strategies as the AI is adjusting strategies and just hope that the AI doesn’t become like Open Ai and just wipe the floor with all players.
One of the biggest problems with PvE in eve is saturation, if something is good everyone jumps on the bandwagon and then eventually that bandwagon is traveling at 1/1000th of its original speed, look at when the new relic/data sites where introduced:
Loot spew was great because you had gotten a lot more components so on those first few hours of launch you where getting billions within a few hours after a day you where getting hundreds of millions within a weak you where bearly getting anything at all becuase everyone was doing it but now that it wasn’t super good anymore people where leaving it to go try other things and then it got decently good again, same as mining you have huge amount of people mining in high sec for 10 / 20mil an hour while most of the older players are making 60-200mil an hour doing incursions/exploration/the new moon mining, and then hundreds of millions to billions from wormholes, Tbh I’m not sure if people are still farming sleeper sites with citadels which is very unhealthy for the game.
Some Idea’s to spice up PvE:
Mining:
An alternitive mining module that allows a type of game similar to data/relic sites, this way miners that have good skills could learn to play this game faster and faster each time and each time they win they get a spew of a random type of ore, the faster they finish the more ore they get, while other miners still have the chance to afk mine with old modules that mine slower. This will allow people that are passionate at mining to break the normal isk/hour rates with skill which in my mind is healthy for the game.
For incursions:
Adaptive Ai and none-static rat configurations.
For Ded sites:
Adaptive Ai and none-static rat configurations.
Maybe increase the rat bounties in Ded sites so that even if you get nothing at the end it will still be worth the time and risk of the increased difficulty through unpredictability.
Relic/Data:
These are in a good spot atm, they offer good rewards with a healthy risk in low/null/wormhole of players killing you off, might be a bit more balanced with slightly less cans 4 per site or something atm its really easy to kill of relic hunters becuase it takes them quite long to finish the sites.
Mission Running:
Adaptive AI and none static rat configuration, ups the difficulty of the sites a lot but then the reward will have to be upped as well favouring isk more than lp thou as lp is already super saturated.
Belt Ratting:
The changing of rat amounts per belt is nice, but the faction spawn rate is a little low, as faction spawns are very exciting even thou more often than not they drop nothing.
Anom’s:
Adaptive Ai and none static rat configurations, spice it up a bit maybe add higher faction spawn chance with web/neut cruiser something dangerous. Web will help a lot vs the anom afker’s who run their 10mn vexor navies, but the none afk’ers wouldn’t mind the extra faction spawns.
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That is what is actually going on when you make rats too much like players. Too hard, too niche.
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Yip got to find the balance, right now its probably too easy for the players in my opinion for the older content of the game i’m not sure about the strongholds thou as I have not done them yet, wormholes are relatively difficult but its the same thing over and over so once you figure it out it becomes easy.
There you could introduce risk with real players in low sec, with those epic escalation missions i proposed, A lot easier and you include players.
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Anything that gives players more reasons to bump into each other in dangerous area’s for nice rewards is great imo 
, look at when those drone sites just came out a few weeks ago it was amazing.
I think you lost your narrative here. You seem to have moved from a solid position to…a not so solid position. Sorry.
CCP is not doing what highsec PvErs like or want. PvErs leave when their things change to worst and when those things don’t expand or improve. It’s quite simple.
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To what extent are ‘HS PvErs’ alts of NS PvPrs? You seem to have a rather black-and-white view that if one is a PvE player they are not a PvP player and vice-a-versa. But perhaps that distinction is not so black and white…perhaps the issue with players logging in and staying with the game is not so…clean?
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Oh, not this sh*t again… read the charts from 2015 Fanfest, NS players with HS alts are just 30% of the customers, the rest of customers barely do NS at all. The highsec PvEr is a notorious sector of demographics, and back in 2015 was the largest demographic of all. Maybe they’ve shrinked now, as I logged in a few weeks ago at my former HQ -a notorious highsec hub-, and it was quite emptier than back in 2016. I had the same impression as I travelled to Jita an back, emptier systems, just with lots of citadel spam.
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I was one of those calling for more engaging PVE content. And I was taught my lesson with burners… In any case now we have group content and T1 ships that are actually good so the real balance is to make sure that the player doing this content does not end up out of pocket if they lose a ship, but does not reward them for failing… Anyway…
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To be clear, I am not opposed to this in this thread. As shocking as it may seem I am in agreement with @Dracvlad. I am not opposed to making PvE “better” in HS, in LS and in NS.
As I indicated in an edit above, sure, HS PvE stinks. And if iterating on it/improve on it can help with numbers I’m all for it. I like @Yiole_Gionglao list for how to do this back up stream.
@Yiole_Gionglao try not to go off your narrative. Improving HS PvE could have salutary effects for the game. Both in terms of funneling players into NS (those who want to) and also those who want to stay in HS and find interesting content. I do agree that getting players to interact will help with retention. Problem is it seems to me that many HS players are more inclined NOT to interact and thus are more prone to quit.
And FYI…me agree with Dracvlad is NOT the norm…well not really, in many ways I agree with him at a macro level, but disagree at a micro level. For what ever that is worth. BTW…still waiting for those recipes @Dracvlad! 
Edit: Why do I always type ‘quite’ when I mean to type ‘quit’…
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If the customer base barely does NS at all, then (no sarcasm intended) who were the people in the large battle?
The silent majority?
@Ramona_McCandless do you sleep at all? 
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I try not to lol.
But it does let me see how the TZs seem to be split when it comes to discussions like this lol.
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