Well in the light of morning to answer Ben's concerns. Sure there's an element of control. Anyone who's worked the BGS knows that there's a balancing game. People do want to help. But BGS is a difficult game. Sometimes you want one commander, sometimes you want a hundred. Too many people doing the same thing can ruin your BGS plans and not enough doing the right thing can also ruin your plans.
The PI also has a lot of players, so missions and rewards are a way of directing people on a daily basis, either to important tasks we need complete or away from tasks that need a more subtle touch. It's also heavily tied in to our roleplay, which we do in our discord-roleplay channels, which is why the rewards take that form. And the market is the latest addition, given the diamonds started as solely a reputation reward we had to find something to spend them on, and that was about six months after the system originally started.
As regards 'control' I think my players would disagree, personally I have a pretty light touch and let people do their own thing, everything is entirely voluntary. The only standing order we have right this second is 'Don't shoot at Thargoids'. And even then that's 'Don't shoot at Thargoids 'in character', if you want to experience that gameplay I understand, but your character didn't do it'.
