I think destiny should work on bringing both elements together.
Example: World of Warcraft's Alterac Valley BG
In this example they have elements of pvp but on the side, it had pve elements to accomplish if your not that great at pvp. The things to take away from Alterac Valley is: Map size, player size, tug of war elements, pvp/pve elements, side quests, npc support, and a boss fight on each end.
With those elements in place, destiny could make a big zone map, much larger team sizes, and objectives to defeat the other teams boss/leader.
Another example: smite/dota/HoTS
Smaller player teams, but includes npc support and the map size is not as big as Alterac valley but still big enough to give everyone an advantage.
I know it's hard to make with the destiny elements of being a shooter game. But I think this would be a fun element to play with.
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May be limited by the net code. Remember our consoles function as both host and client...we are sending game data out to every other player in the instance. 1mbps upstream requirement for one console to support just 11 other players (need more bandwidth when two or more consoles are on same network). That could go up substantially with a large scale event.