Destiny, Social Gaming, Shared World, and Numbers

by car15, Monday, June 10, 2013, 23:33 (3975 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The idea of having a shared world, AND the player becoming a legend is incompatible. Bungie describes Destiny as a shared world shooter, and also tells us our mission as a guardian is important and we can become legend.

So let's say the world is shared. You go through the wall, and find someone else has already take out all the enemies and gotten the loot. Drat, nothing to do! In fact, while you weren't playing someone went and did it all, and now they are the hero. And so in games like this, most people inevitably do NOT play a hero. They play the peon. Look at EVE or the old star wars galaxies. Most people in EVE just mine shit and work for a corporation; very few people get to be big players (heroes). Same in Star Wars galaxies. Most people made livings doing boring things, and becoming a jedi was outrageously hard that few people managed.

I think Destiny will work in a manner similar to SWTOR, in the sense that the game will be divided into the "public canon" and the "player canon." Certain events (like the public event we saw at E3) will be shared experiences that happen to all Destiny players. Other events, probably the main story events, will be more akin to traditional campaign missions and each player will experience these missions separately within their own personal canons. Hopefully there will be some choice involved a la Mass Effect so that players have a direct impact on the direction of the story. Either way, because each player will be able to complete the main story events separately in their own separate private canons, each player will in fact be a hero... just of their particular canon.