EVE pulls it off frequently

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, July 25, 2013, 12:16 (3933 days ago) @ Risay117
edited by Ragashingo, Thursday, July 25, 2013, 12:21

Not only that there is always some other big event to come. It allows for great story time and helps keepbthe community stay great. Overall you know it happened once and you know it will happen again. The stories draw in new users. Yeah you missed it but there will be a new one you can be part of.

EVE is a good example of how to run a continuing story, but it's not Destiny. As Urk said in this interview:

Destiny is a sweeping, cinematic story with a phenomenal beginning, middle, and end…

EVE has a beginning I suppose with its backstory of this area of space being cut off from the rest of Humanity, and I suppose you could call what everyone is playing EVE's middle, but it doesn't have an end. Or at least CCP doesn't want it to! I like EVE and all, but its actual, in game story telling is nowhere near the level of competency of something like Halo or Mass Effect. PVE mission text is badly written, the way the devs give info to the player (via dialog box or local system chat) is inconsistent at best, and besides the game being a pretty game with well rendered spaceships and cool space phenomena, it has little to no cinematic content as opposed to something more story driven like Halo. Yes, EVE tends to create neat player driven stories, and the devs can add in events to spur even bigger player driven stories, but one can also brush off a major, game changing event of any size, because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much, because as you say, there will always be another one.

I think EVE has its place. I think it's great that it will (hopefully) continue on forever having an unending number of big events. But with Destiny I've been promised a 10 year story arc with an actual end. And with that actual end (if it affects all players equally like the EVE events do) comes players not just missing an event that will happen again, but missing critical story and world details that won't. If The Traveler loses power and smushes The Last City and that smushing affects the guy who bought Destiny at the midnight launch and the person who buys it five years in and doesn't even get to experience being a Guardian of the Last City then that's a much different situation that EVE.

Does Destiny's eventual end mean that Bungie can't affect their world as much as CCP can theirs? Maybe, perhaps even probably. But they are two different styles of game, and while they are comparable on some levels, the way they are going to tell their stories really isn't.