Here's an idea. How about you let players set up machinima accounts?
Hear me out. Accounts completely dedicated to making machinima. There could be things such as
-Special player/world conditions (such as treating PvE maps like crucible, bigger player cap)
-Flexible loadouts (perfect loot for certain story scenarios)
-Improved, specific machinima controls (i.e controlled weapon lowering, non-glitch camera ,)
-ID changing/player changing (changing player names for story e.g. Toland, Panahin, changing race, design, class ect.)
There would have to be some obvious restrictions involved such as
-no access to competitive multiplayer
-no loot drops
-dedicated servers not accessible to normal accounts
I think these concepts would make for some great machinima projects the whole community could enjoy. It would probably only need a slight tweaking of the base code to work too. Please consider this. It would extend the life of this game for a while.