This is a long post. No one is holding a gun to your head to make you read it, so don't complain just skip it :P Otherwise, read on :) There are several issues with the shader system actually. It's not really a matter of them being consumable that is "the" problem, because (as Bungie has mentioned, along with other players as well) over time we all will be accumulating a ton of these shaders and will end up with more of them than we know what to do with (kinda like how I always seemed to have a few thousand of spinmetal in D1 lol). But that doesn't mean there are issues. I see them as follows: (1) Bungie would try to lead us to believe we can all be swimming in fantastic shaders, right now even. That's not really true. Not "fantastic" ones. It's like they took their design team, let them create the most amazing and beautiful shaders they could come up with, then ran those through some computer programs to dull and desaturate them in order to make the "freebies" that we'd get when doing patrols & opening chests etc. Basically, the majority of non-Eververse shaders are ugly. They're the ones we'll all be getting a ton of, and they're also the ones we don't really want nor will be using a lot (and Bungie knows this). They did this on purpose of course (made them dull, desaturated, and some just downright ugly) because they want to milk more money from players via microtransactions. Sure, we all get a taste here & there from our bright engrams, they have to entice us after all. In D1 you could get the cool shaders mostly by completing activities not by making purchases. Solution? Give out the shinies in our patrols and such too, or make the common ones more attractive. (2) One of the biggest problems with the consumable shader system isn't the consumable nature, it's the cost. Now I know we all have many ways to earn glimmer, and overall it's not difficult. Still, no one wants to grind this game any more than they have to (oh but Bungie sure wants us to!) that's why the glimmer cost for equipping some of these shaders is so ridiculous. It's not really bad for armor pieces, even weapons (and that's good, because you may be swapping out those things quite often, even discarding them, which by the way it'd be nice to get that shader back along with some extra glimmer you spent equipping it in the first place, I'm not aware that we do but if I'm wrong someone please enlighten me). However, the costs really become what one might call exorbitant when you start talking about applying shaders to ships & sparrows. It can eat through your glimmer pile rather quickly! Bungie might try to argue "oh well, you're not going to be changing those very often" but why not? Why should we even pay a glimmer cost at all? There's never been an associated cost with equipping a shader, this seems like something they just pulled out of their collective minds as a way to suck glimmer back out of the market. Idk if that's necessary but if feels like players get shafted for no reason in particular. Again, realize it's not that I'm saying people are going to run short on glimmer. I'm saying this cost is an unneeded mechanic in the game, and really doesn't belong. (3) Related to #2: When you buy something in a game with your own money, you shouldn't have to "pay" to use it with some other form of game currency, at least that's generally been my experience. Say I've bought a bright engram (although for simplicity's sake, I think it should apply to any bright engrams you earn as well) I think it's a total slap in the face to be asked to pay again, this time in glimmer, and just that you're asked to pay even MORE glimmer because they're Legendary shaders than if you were using one of the (dull, desaturated, generally unappealing other than a few) Uncommon or Rare shaders. Maroon Moon is actually decent, too bad I really don't like Maroon. And none of the Legendary shaders I've seen so far (and I've seen most of not all) actually turn weapons bright red idk what's up with that. Too much blandness in overall application, too much sameness (a problem the seems to have carried over from D1 where we had several shaders that were a combination of the same 3 drab colors, other shaders were almost identical). I've only played my Hunter so far, but the regular armor (Uncommon up through Legendary) is mostly dull, uninteresting cloth anyway. The Uncommon & Rare shaders don't make things much more colorful I'm afraid. Too much earthen tones for my liking. We're space-faring warriors, we're not going on long walks in the forest, camping in the woods lol. Maybe after I get started with my Titan & Warlock things will look better, different, but I've seen Warlock clothes they've seemed fairly bland too iirc. Anyway, seems only fair to me that if you're paying for bright engrams, the shaders you receive should become permanent items (in fact I think it'd be much simpler and fair to just have all the legendary shaders be permanent, no matter how we acquire them, this is all a bit out of hand and clearly Bungie made them much higher quality than the other shaders most of which are garbage and the weapons come with "worn" versions of shaders and they look even worse who seriously thought we needed to play the rest of the game with flaking paint on our weapons?) I think the flaking paint is just another subtle way to try & get people online with making use of the shader system. Most of all though, the glimmer cost for equipping any shader needs to go, that's really the most ridiculous idea I think they've come up with yet! Although the vault is pretty bad, don't get me started. Only 200 spaces to start? Memory isn't an issue, we're all on current gen now. And the organization is absolutely terrible. Basically unusable without an app.