Meh, I think PI is somewhat fun. And making tons of fake money amuses me. Sure PI is like a highly abstracted city builder, but I like city builders. The main issue with PI is that whoever designed the interface is a complete moron and needs to be fired posthaste.
Assuming prices remain stable I will have managed to secure an income stream easily capable of PLEXing my current 6 accounts as soon as the end product rolls off the line and goes to Jita in the JF. I luckily happen to have picked the highest priced P3 product as the basis for my spin up. And indeed it happens that it is outperforming its P4 result on the market right now besides being the best priced P3 product.
If my goal was to make precisely 1trillion credits by the end of my quest for riches, I would require as little as 2 hours a day, split pretty evenly between hauling, extractor moving and factory optimization. Sure I have to play 2 hours a day, but once I spin up to full production I will be making a net 500mil an hour ISK. Compared to running shitty missions(read: renamed quest grinding) that are why I quit MMOs in the first place for a whole year. PI leads into several other industrial options like making T2 ships and various POS and Sov structures for nullsec. It also easily covers my PLEX costs. Also given 12-24 hour times for doing PI stuff, that leaves me a lot of time to AFK mine also which would be less for income and more to contribute to production of stuff.
2-3 hours a day of PI, 1 hour of active play to mine while I am doing PI, and plenty of time to also do other stuff like research that only takes 15 minutes a day. Once I max skills my same PI characters will be trained to mine and maybe research so no need for more accounts. Since max PI skills takes 1-2 months tops I can also train my extra characters for loads of combat roles as well.
I care nothing for killboards, this isn't MLG COD/HALO or something where high scores are the end goal. Since I make 500mil per hour(this is derived from the actual time played and not split over 24 hours) I can lose 2 fully fit Wyverns every week if I want and it won't matter to me. Hell if I am producing tech 2 ships I can afford to lose tons of sub caps a day since I am making them for myself.