Lol. Maybe but I bet all you do when you play is grind cores. Wouldn’t you rather be actually playing the fun areas of the game.

If cores weren't tied to infusion or master working guns and armor, and weren't needed at all, what would you do when playing D2? If all your gear and guns were automatically at your level, and your level automatically went to max power every time new content dropped, what would you do in D2? Once you played all the new content, would you just quietly wait for new content? Or would you come to forum, and complain, that the new content you paid for only lasted 2 weeks? Like it or not it takes months for Bungie, or really any dev team to create and implement new content. Most amazing games with only 60 to 100 hours of gameplay, take more than 5 years to create. GoW took 8 years. Bungie learned about the community's dislike for content droughts. So this time around they created the annual pass. As well as tweaked progression, using cores, to extend the endgame refinement of gear and guns. For people that have tons of time to play, they can still level quickly, and start endgame refinement earlier. But more casual players, will take more time to get maxed and tweaked, leaving less time of absolutely nothing to do for those players in between content drops. Perhaps if the community hadn't been so content hungry and then complained so much about the rate of content, Bungie wouldn't have seen a need to artificially pace progression. But the community just gobbles up new content so fast, and then complains, so this is where we find ourselves now.

I’m not even reading all that sorry there’s no need, I can answer it after the first paragraph... It worked just fine using normal materials in Destiny 1. Much easier to get, much more efficient time wise and you get to actually play the game in your spare time rather than wasting most that time hunting for cores. 👍 That’s what you would do, play the activity YOU choose.

Ok I'll keep it shorter I guess. If Bungie removes the grind from progression, will you be ok with new content only lasting 2 weeks? And when did you start playing D1? Because infusion materials like D2 cores, were in the game, until the very end of the game's life. They reduced the infusion costs for Rise of Iron, when just the small live team was catering to players and everyone else was working on D2.

Well that’s all a game usually lasts content wise, a couple of weeks. The real test is on bungie then with how fun the replayability is. It worked in D1 because the content was enjoyable, some of D2 would probably suffer, but it would definitely push bungie more to create quality engaging content in the first place. And I played D1 from just before dark below, I know the cost was there but it didn’t take half the time to gather planetary materials and motes because you didn’t have to do anything specific to get them. It costs way too much time and resources to do it in D2. If they just dropped like notes did then great, but bungie insist on making the moment “special” which is bullshit. More like we want it to take “longer” to keep the player count numbers artificially inflated.

Ok, so if you played just before Dark Below, you played through the adding of ethieric light, a material considerably more rare than cores in D2. You also experienced progression through armor collection. Where we had to rely purely on RNG, and playing the raids, or just Iron Banner to increase our light/power. Do you really think those 2 systems would be more welcomed today, than our current systems? Not to mention infusion not being 1:1, but some weird average back then.