[quote]Are they really such a problem.[/quote] Yes. Read Paul Tassi's Forbes article on Bungie's TWAB about cores. He does an excellent job summarizing the game play problems that enhancement cores creates. Then there is the matter that NO other loot-based game has ever done anything like this. In fact Bungie is stubbornly doing the OPPOSITE of what every other successful loot-game developer does with their progression systems. Oh....the price of he Cores you buy from Spider DOUBLES for each one you try to buy within a 24 hour period. The first one costs 10 shards. The second one 20. The third one costs 40....and so on. The bounties only allow you access to SIX guarenteed cores per week...and the things that you are asked to do are ridiculous with regard to getting a resource needed for such a mundane act as infusion. It will take you up to 2 hours of play time to get enough cores to infuse a maximum of THREE items. When we have EIGHT gear slots.....PER LOADOUT. The situation quickly balloons into a one where it simply becomes impossible to acquire the numberr of cores you'd need to play the game with any sort of freedom with respect to build variety. So everyone runs around in the same mismatched armor for most of the season....playng the same handful of pinnacle weapons. Because the game denies you the ability and the resources to play any other way.

Have fun with all that time doing bounties (which if done quickly, will take up to around half hour or longer) and only get 1 each. Also, the price for the cores increases way too high after a certain amount. Remove core requirements for infusion and this wouldn't be an problem.