Disagree. We've been down that road. Cozmo compiled a list of community greivances that ACCURATELY reflected how we feel about the core economy....and took it to the devs. They just dont' CARE. They just want to keep us playing at any cost...and just don't care if we enjoy the experience. They simply don't respect us enough to dialogue or treat us as equals here. That is why what Sols is proposing will fail. Not because Bungie doesn't understand how we feel. Its that they simply dont' care, and aren't operating in good faith.

[quote] They just dont' CARE. They just want to keep us playing at any cost...and just don't care if we enjoy the experience.[/quote] That's a contradiction. If they didn't care, we wouldn't even be hearing what we do from them. People would get more irritated than they are now and we would all leave. I've seen it before and compared to some other companies, Bungie's spreading it's cheeks and inviting us in. Before you start your angry retort on that one, think about it. All of the "Nerf MIDA/Uriel's/Firebolt/Thorn/TLW/Shotguns/Juggshot/etc." posts that flood the forums. They all get changed. Not immediately, but far faster than they did in D1. How long did we have to suffer under the Warlock Firebolt grenades? Remember when Titan Hammers were the first three or four pages in the forums? That got knocked down FAST. The only reason that I can see as to why Bungie hasn't changed the cores so far is that something is holding it up. Be that a coding issue or an economy issue, something is holding that train at the station. As to the point of "They don't care." They wouldn't even be replying with what they have been. Could they have worded it better? Yeah, but saying something is more often than not better than saying nothing. We all remember when they went radio silent for a few months. The conspiracies were rampant. I think that if Bungie took a camera behind the scenes to the devs for a Q&A a LOT of things would get cleared up quickly. Just knowing whether or not someone is actively working on it is all the difference between a righteous argument and an impatient person.

They care about our continuing to play. They don't care whether we **enjoy** that play. If they did, we wouldn't be having this fight...and they woudlnt' be digging their heels in like this. The reason why Bungie han't changed cores is because they feel they need them to stretch out player engagement for this minimal level of content for as long as possible.....and they feel that weaponizing randomness and frustrating effort as a means to keep us perpetually grinding for ITEM level rather than chasing loot is the way to do it. The problem is that this feels like a chore....and fun is replaced by anger and frustration. So they are looking for a short-term benefit that will likely damage the franchise in the long term.

See, the **enjoy** part is the sticker. You know what most folks do when they don't enjoy playing a game? They quit. The game dies and more than likely the studio/franchise with it. the game's not dead, we're still playing it and there are still people looking forward to the fall. Was it similar numbers as before? Nope, but there are still people around who continue to have fun in the game. I've said that cores should be more for masterworking than leveling, but we need some medium between "no cores" and "Everything is fine." If we simply removed cores from leveling, then we go back to Y1 where you can instantly have all of your weapons at max light within the first month or two. I've mentioned a system similar to Spider where your first infusion is ten legendary shards, planetary mats and some glimmer. Double that for the second and so on until daily reset. That gives those with TONS of mats the option to have everything on day/week one while the rest of us can move at our own pace. What we need is to have deej or cosmo go to the devs with a camera, a few questions from us and in their own words explain what's going on. That would quickly sort all this out.

[quote]I've said that cores should be more for masterworking than leveling, but we need some medium between "no cores" and "Everything is fine."[/quote] No, we don't. What Bungie is doing is atrocious game design....and IS causing people to quit this game. Daily engagement is down almost 50% over the last 3 months...and Season 6 is failing to bring people back to the game. So the notion that everyone is going to just **forget** what's going on here. Especially Bungie's obstinate refusal to adequately address what is one of the two biggest complaints about the game, is being a bit Pollyannish. [quote]What we need is to have deej or cosmo go to the devs with a camera, a few questions from us and in their own words explain what's going on. That would quickly sort all this out.[/quote] Again, no it wont'. People are quitting this game....and threatening to quit....because Bungie has stupidly messed with the reward loop that sustains games like this. Not only is this game no longer fun to play as a loot game....it has become tedious and frustrating. The clan that I belong to is DEAD. Its three weeks into the season....and we still haven't reached Clan level 1 yet. That is how few people are playing. The people that I used to raid with during AoT in Y3 of D1? THEY'RE NOW MY CLAN IN THE DIVISION 2. Even kept the same clan name. ALL of them are playing The Division 2. NONE of them still play Destiny. There is nothing that DeeJ or Cozmo is going to say at this point that is going to make interacting with these BROKEN game system fun....or start feeling good. And Bungie's IT either need to start hearing this message....or they risk crippling this franchise. Because----with The Division 2----they not only do not have this market cornered. They're not even the best game in it any more.

[quote]No, we don't.[/quote] Yes we do. See there? I can make simple answers that don't address the problem or possible solutions as well. Now we can both be little smartypants on the internet. [quote]What Bungie is doing is atrocious game design....and IS causing people to quit this game. Daily engagement is down almost 50% over the last 3 months...and Season 6 is failing to bring people back to the game. [/quote] Did you hear me argue that people have left? No, I said the game isn't dead yet. If the game design were as "atrocious" as you say, then the numbers wouldn't be down, there would be NO numbers at all. Halo 2 had atrocious game design and yet people continue to play the hell out of it even today. [quote]So the notion that everyone is going to just **forget** what's going on here. Especially Bungie's obstinate refusal to adequately address what is one of the two biggest complaints about the game, is being a bit Pollyannish. [/quote] Nobody other than you has said anything about **forgetting** what's going on here. What I have been saying is that both sides need to get back into a healthy communication where we can ask simple questions with possible solutions and get something of a simple answer back. If that's being overly optimistic, then I'm guilty as charged. I'm sorry if I'm not as despondently pessimistic as you are. [quote]Again, no it wont'. [/quote] Again, yes it would. We would either see that the devs don't really care and we would leave, or we would see that they're busting their asses to get everything done. Knowing if Nancy from the sandbox team doesn't give a rat's ass about us or if she's staying late at night to fix problems is all the difference. [quote]People are quitting this game....and threatening to quit....because Bungie has stupidly messed with the reward loop that sustains games like this. Not only is this game no longer fun to play as a loot game....it has become tedious and frustrating. [/quote] Messed with the reward loop? Do you even remember why we had to use the freaking loot cave in D1Y1? Hours of farming each planet for materials to infuse our weapons/armor and then having to get multiple of a higher light because infusion wasn't 100%. [quote]The clan that I belong to is DEAD. Its three weeks into the season....and we still haven't reached Clan level 1 yet. That is how few people are playing.[/quote] So your clan is the entire player base of Destiny 2? How egocentric can you get? [quote]The people that I used to raid with during AoT in Y3 of D1? THEY'RE NOW MY CLAN IN THE DIVISION 2. Even kept the same clan name. ALL of them are playing The Division 2. NONE of them still play Destiny.[/quote] While it's nice to hear that you all stayed together it's still [i]your[/i] clan, not the [i]entire[/i] playerbase of this game. [quote]There is nothing that DeeJ or Cozmo is going to say at this point that is going to make interacting with these BROKEN game system fun....or start feeling good. [/quote] Okay, when the new hotness drops, I'll just paste this all back up for you. Jeez, you're as bad as those "Boycott Left 4 Dead 2" folks. [quote]And Bungie's IT either need to start hearing this message....or they risk crippling this franchise. Because----with The Division 2----they not only do not have this market cornered.[/quote] Gee, a business not thinking of it's future...Maybe if they had a sit down with IT/Devs and they told us what was going on LIKE I SAID, people would be able to decide whether or not to stay and play, or leave forever. [quote]They're not even the best game in it any more.[/quote] Everytime I see this I laugh. Anthem, Division 1, CoD, etc. Every few months I see "I'm leaving for CoD/Anthem/Division/Warframe" a few months later, I usually see them slinking back to the forums and the game because they missed something about it. It's a game, not a nation. When I stop having fun with this game, I play something else. When I get bored with that, I usually end up back here annoying the piss out of crucible tryhards with y1 weapons.

1. No. We. Don't. No other game treats progression as anything other than the MUNDANE act that it is. Name me ONE other loot game that is **successful** and tries to frustrate the basic act of leveling up and acquiring power like Destiny is doing. (Hint: Don't waste your time. There aren't any). 2. The issue isn't whether the game will "die" from lack of participation. Very few games every reach that point. The issue is whether the game's participation gets CRIPPLED to the point where it ceases to be financially viable. Activision wouldn't have taken their stake in Destiny and WALKED unless they felt that the game had reached that point.....or was going to reach that point. 3. Season 6 failed to bring people back to the game to play content that they had already paid for. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK ANYONE IS GOING TO GIVE BUNGIE ANY MORE MONEY...when their response to one of the biggest complaints about the game for the last 6 months has been, "Shut up and deal with it." 4. Bungie's agenda is to keep us playing, and to stretch out thin content. They are no longer concerned about our enjoyment....or else they wouldn't have taken the utterly tone-deaf position they have on this issue. 5. Yes I remember the Loot Cave. I also remember the Loot Cave was an issue because the game's loot system was stingy and unrewarding....and Bungie has gone full circle and REPEATED many of the mistakes that led to the Loot Cave. By---once again----being stingy with rewarding the player with power....and frustrating the player's efforts to progress their character. 6. Apparently you've never heard of a "representative sample." My clan represents the 600K players who were actively playing this game back in December who no longer show up on a daily basis to play it any more. Six hundred thousand people who don't buy MTXs...and are unlikely to give any more money to Bungie for DLC at this rate. 7. Season of the Drifter WAS the "new hotness"....and how's THAT working out? The game is engaging FEWER people during the week than it did during Black Amory....and I bet that most of the people who are still playing are largely playing for LORE and the pinnacle weapons. Because there is a huge uptick in engagement on Fridays when the Invitation to the Nine drops. 8. Wow. Clueless. Actually short-term thinking or the "I'll be gone by then" mentality is one of the biggest problems in business and executive management strategies today. Most CEOs only stay in a position for a few years before moving on. The biggest investors in most companies are institutional investors who are only concerned about quarterly returns. 9. The Division 2....and it isn't going ANYWHERE. YOU may be willing to come back and play Destiny 2 in its current state. But the number of people who are willing to do that is decreasing daily...and you are in DENIAL about how big that number of people who are walking away from this game is growing. So large that Bungie has now felt compelled to have to address this issue of cores THREE times now.

[quote]1. No. We. Don't. No other game treats progression as anything other than the MUNDANE act that it is. Name me ONE other loot game that is **successful** and tries to frustrate the basic act of leveling up and acquiring power like Destiny is doing.[/quote] 1. Yes. We. Do. Destiny 1. [quote](Hint: Don't waste your time. There aren't any).[/quote] Again as stated above, Destiny 1. [quote]2. The issue isn't whether the game will "die" from lack of participation. Very few games every reach that point. The issue is whether the game's participation gets CRIPPLED to the point where it ceases to be financially viable. Activision wouldn't have taken their stake in Destiny and WALKED unless they felt that the game had reached that point.....or was going to reach that point. [/quote] Activision walked because there weren't enough microtransactions in the game and that Bungie wasn't whoring as much as they would like. [quote]3. Season 6 failed to bring people back to the game to play content that they had already paid for. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK ANYONE IS GOING TO GIVE BUNGIE ANY MORE MONEY...when their response to one of the biggest complaints about the game for the last 6 months has been, "Shut up and deal with it." [/quote] But Bungie is getting money from other companies to finance their operations. A Chinese company called NetEase gave them 100 million. Try and keep up with the news. Now as to the "Shut up and deal with it." the only place where that was uttered was your head. Try to keep fantasy and reality separate. [quote]4. Bungie's agenda is to keep us playing, and to stretch out thin content. They are no longer concerned about our enjoyment....or else they wouldn't have taken the utterly tone-deaf position they have on this issue.[/quote] Right on the first bit, wrong on the second. While Bungie is not giving us the entire meal all at once, it's because they learned what happens when they do. You burn through everything in the first month or two and then do nothing but whine and cry on the forums for the next nine until the next expansion comes along and we repeat. [quote]5. Yes I remember the Loot Cave. I also remember the Loot Cave was an issue because the game's loot system was stingy and unrewarding....and Bungie has gone full circle and REPEATED many of the mistakes that led to the Loot Cave. By---once again----being stingy with rewarding the player with power....and frustrating the player's efforts to progress their character.[/quote] Wrong again. The loot cave was an issue because of a problem with the rng system. Rahool turning my Legendaries into blues and greens wasn't being stingy, it was outright fubar RNG. I haven't seen Rahool try that shit since we sent his ass to HR. [quote]6. Apparently you've never heard of a "representative sample." My clan represents the 600K players who were actively playing this game back in December who no longer show up on a daily basis to play it any more. Six hundred thousand people who don't buy MTXs...and are unlikely to give any more money to Bungie for DLC at this rate.[/quote] [quote]A representative sample is a group that closely matches the characteristics of its population as a whole. In other words, the sample is a fairly accurate reflection of the population from which the sample is drawn.[/quote] According to Destiny Tracker, there are over 10,600,000 people still playing. Hows that for "representative sample"? In my case, my clan represents all of these people who are still here and still playing. So, I guess mine's bigger than yours and that's all that matters in an internet argument. [quote]7. Season of the Drifter WAS the "new hotness"....and how's THAT working out? The game is engaging FEWER people during the week than it did during Black Amory....and I bet that most of the people who are still playing are largely playing for LORE and the pinnacle weapons. Because there is a huge uptick in engagement on Fridays when the Invitation to the Nine drops. [/quote] So far, me and my clan's "representative sample" are enjoying the current Season of the Drifter. Still playing for lore, still playing for shenanigans and most importantly, still playing to have fun with my friends. [quote]8. Wow. Clueless. Actually short-term thinking or the "I'll be gone by then" mentality is one of the biggest problems in business and executive management strategies today. Most CEOs only stay in a position for a few years before moving on. The biggest investors in most companies are institutional investors who are only concerned about quarterly returns. [/quote] Yeah, if you're Walmart. Clueless? Nah, I've been in corporate and have friends who still are. Game companies know that they are in the trenches living and dying by what they work on. [quote]9. The Division 2....and it isn't going ANYWHERE. YOU may be willing to come back and play Destiny 2 in its current state. But the number of people who are willing to do that is decreasing daily...and you are in DENIAL about how big that number of people who are walking away from this game is growing. [/quote] Wow, must have hit a nerve. Well, go on an enjoy Division, me and my "representative sample" will continue to enjoy our weekly shenanigans. The only thing that I'm in DENIAL about is boxers vs boxerbriefs. They're just too comfy! [quote]So large that Bungie has now felt compelled to have to address this issue of cores THREE times now.[/quote] They've addressed the issue of cores more than three times. They address it daily and until we can get a sit down with the actual folks in charge of working on the changes, the message will continue to be "we're working on it."

1. Vanilla Destiny 1 did it (Forever 29)...and the developers talked about the mass exodus to leave the game after level cap...and then there was the Loot Cave. Vanilla Destiny 1 was a perfect example of what NOT to do. So Epic Fail. 2. LOL. Activision doesn't care HOW its makes its money. In fact they just flat out said that the FAILED to win back the players it lost...and Forsaken's sales were disappointing in their eyes. Sales that are only set to go LOWER based on what Bungie is doin right now, and player reaction to it. Bungie has turned their back on everything they did last year to try to win back player good will. 3. That $100 million dollars is less than Bungie had to pay to buy out Activision's stake in Destiny....and what ever it is they are working with Net Ease isn't making them any money yet. And you've clearly never worked for a large organization. "We have no plans to remove their cost at this time"=="We aren't going to remove them. So you need to just deal with them" 4. Fantasyland. They've basically added almost NOTHING lootwise to this game for year 2....and they aren't just time-gating things. They are doing everything they can to SLOW down our progress and avoid rewarding our efforts. Thats' why people are getting frustrated. 5. What? People turned to the Loot Cave because the game was just STINGY with the rewards. It was more profitable to stand in Skyshock and shoot at monster spawn cave and get a few Legendary engrams an HOUR....than it was to play the game and get that many in a WEEK. Which is why Bungie backpedalled so quickly. 6. You just have no idea how to read statistics. In December, this was a game that 1.2 million people showed up every day to play PVE in. We are now in March, and we are down to about HALF that number. About 600K show up...and its questionable as to whether or not Bungie is padding those stats by double-counting Gambit as both PVE and PVP. 7. See above regarding the decrease in daily engagement. My situation is more representative of what's actually going on than yours. 8. LOL. I've been in the business world 25 years. Please kid. 9. No you haven't hit a nerve. The point is that The Division is doing everything right...and Bungie is doing everything wrong at the moment. Just that simple...and just wishing their competition to go away isn't going to work. 10. They "address" the issue without FIXING it...and there is no FIXING it without either removing them....or making them freely farmable because the game design IDEA that its based on is terminally flawed. So the only way to deal with a square-peg-and-round-hole is to either stop....or get a round peg. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time.

The forums are designed to prevent this. People are afraid their thoughts will be burried in layers and layers of comments (and they're mostly correct), so they start their own thread and dilute consensus. Not to mention the fact that there are unknown algorithms ruling this place. Set the forums to display "newest," start a new thread, then try to find the damn thing. This placed is designed to be scattersot, unorganized, and fractured.

I don't think such a thread would be possible, though I've seen a few come close. Beyond the binary "cores bad/good" argument there is a pretty wide variation in the range of opinions and thoughts. The best route Bungie could take in my opinion is to setup a survey or poll and blast it out to their whole player base and see what comes of that. I feel like that data combined with their internal data would provide them the best route forward. One thing I would humbly point out, that any meaningful call for action loses some of its impact when it's capped with "down with the lazy copy and paste idiots". Insulting people, whether they're wrong or right rarely solves problems, frustrating though they may be. At the end of the day whether you are for or against cores/any other issue with the game, we're all here writing our thoughts because we're invested in the game we're all playing. If we start with that, and remember these are all real people at the other end we might start having some meaningful dialogue again.

Sorry, I meant it more as a call to original posting and less to the same thoughtless boilerplate copy and pasting that I've seen just inundate the forums lately. Then when you try to make an argument or even try to reason with them, they continue to ctrl+v their way through the conversation. It gets really old, really fast. While I would LOVE to see a summit of people from the community, not so much the content creators, it would be hundreds of times more difficult to organize. Getting Byf, J3z, Mr. Fruit, Datto, and the rest of them is far easier than getting Randy, Steve, Daniel, and Jenny to stop their 9-5 for a few days and fly to their conference. If they could have some sort of online summit, where you could facetime/comment/talk to the devs directly, I think that would go a long way towards repairing relations between the players and the company.

Dude that article has been written by about a hundred people. There is usually a top ten post thread to that effect, although maybe less so recently as people’s views aren’t even being listened to so people have just stopped bothering.

[quote]Dude that article has been written by about a hundred people. There is usually a top ten post thread to that effect, although maybe less so recently as people’s views aren’t even being listened to so people have just stopped bothering.[/quote] There's the problem right there. Multiple articles written by multiple people with the same message instead of ONE article written in a concise manner backed by facts and options for fixing it. Most of the articles go from clearly pointing out the problems to the usual "Bungo don't care". None of the threads that I've seen lately have had options for the devs to work with. Simply saying, "Just remove the cores" doesn't solve the problem that we're currently under. Maybe there's a coding issue with it. Maybe there's an economy issue with it. We don't know because we haven't asked that question. TLDR- Ask precise questions, give alternatives and try to stay civil. Do that and I guarantee you'll get a better, faster response from anyone.

Erm, as I said, it’s been done to death. Eloquently, bluntly, rudely, concisely, detailed...and a combination of all of the above. I’m sure Bungie are acutely aware of all of the issues. The main issue is we don’t really know what they are focusing on fixing, how, and when by. As for cores, they said as recently as last week they want them to be rare for infusion to be meaningful...so you already have a clear answer to that question.

Which is why we need to have Cosmo/Deej/DMG/whoever take a camera right to to the dev team with a copy of questions and possible solutions that we have for the main issues right now and hear it directly from them. That would solve more in my opinion than any summit with content creators.

Yeah I’m sure they know what we want but I agree some more feedback from THEM would be great. Not simply ‘we are listening’ or to take our feedback and come back with things like nerfing Whisper which NO ONE had asked for. Also sorry for the caps, but I feel it’s WARRANTED 😂

You do realize your argument can be made for the other side too right? Read both of the sides and you basically see the same thing. "masterwork cores do nothing for the game" "lel, get good scrub and farm them they're so easy." That's why I chose to watch this dumpster fire instead of joining it.