[quote]I was playing with one of my friends the other day who hasn't played in a long time, and while we were playing he was inspecting his gear looked over at the infusion option and said "what's an enhancement core?" I have sincere worries about bringing new players into D2 when the year 1 content becomes free to play. It will be hard to have a new player who was curious, but not necessarily interested in the series to keep playing when they have to abandon a cool weapon because they won't have the resources to upgrade that weapon's attack power. Yes they do have avenues to obtain cores in the form of masterworked leviathan gear, gunsmith bounties, and a rare chance from dismantling weapons. But 2 of those 3 avenues require a player to want to play the game enough to go down those routes... My point is even though some of us (including me) have plenty of cores, they could be a turn off for new players come September. TL:DR New players good. Cores bad. Edit: I made this post because my entire friends list had said that they will play this game when it becomes free to play but one of my friends who played this game became disappointed BECAUSE he had to leave his favorite guns behind practically every 5 power levels. He hasn't played the game since he mentioned it. And another friend quit because his 2 favorite year 2 weapons require cores he doesn't have. So I know that this topic will be a determining factor into their interest in playing this game. I know that my friends would enjoy this game, but I don't want them to have this steep price to play how you want. Especially when they play other games that don't demand steep sacrifices early-ish in their time playing. And I AM NOT calling for enhancement cores to be removed, they are simply just a steep asking price for newer players (who would only have 2 or 3 free methods to obtain them) to use their favorite gear. And for those saying they make using gear a meaningful choice. Yes they do kind of. They flow like water for people who know how to farm them and play the game a good amount already and are as scarce as copper for new players. Yes I understand it won't be a problem for them in TIME. But that's way after their first impression has settled. If there was a workaround to where newer players could not be turned off while still providing a meaningful choice for infusion I believe many players would be satisfied. (Perhaps reducing the core cost to 1 or 2 while doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the glimmer cost since that would still limit infusions but make infusion more pertinent to time invested rather than luck.)[/quote] Why should new players get everything the rest of us has taken months to get. They already can get powered up almost completely. Something that took me months to do. It’s insulting to the me and the players that have worked at this for months, and your going to just give new players all the light level and cores and free play. Ridiculous. Get your free game and light level and quit complaining about the cores. You shouldn’t have the whole blaming game handed to you. When the rest of us had to earn it. It’s so easy now for a new player. Make them go through a few trials and tribulations like the rest of us had to.

EVERYTHING about this game is going to hurt players. They've managed to make longer and longer grind quests that require playing the SAME , TIRED , CONTENT Over and Over and Over again, for a CHANCE at a good roll. Now they want to split everything up into even more components., and I guarantee the grind for each of those added up will be exponentially longer than what we currently go through for 1 piece of armor or weapon..

I have a couple former clan mates that quit because of what cores became - and I’m having a real hard time convincing them to come back because this exact issue!

i played the other day. i just came back for warmind, which is where i stopped having skipped CoO. i was coming from D1 really. warmind is actually fun, but i quit at level 26 because i wasnt getting enough legendary gear for shards. now i come back and there are enhancement cores added. uuhhhh. wtf? so, fine. I read that I should do gunsmith stuff. k. daily stuff is fine. weekly stuff is annoying. i don’t mind crucible. its a great way to increase light level fast, especially between stories when you dont meet the requirement. strikes? i mean, must i? gambit? sigh. I hate the weeklies already. so, im looking at my cores. start with 3. end up with 10 after bounties. what am i supposed to do? i dont have orpheus rigs yet, so whatever i do i only get my super twice, if im solo. i really want to masterwork a weapon, i could do it in a day or two with rng, but ive also jumped level 31. i should upgrade since im 10+ higher in power. i probably wont do everything bc some of the highest stuff are blues, and thats just too expensive. even still, i wont be able to masterwork. not for a long time, so if i want orbs,i have to depend on one of the few exotics, use a raid weapon I don’t want to or hope for rng. this sucks. the whole point of working through this is to finally be able to wear legendary gear and an exotic. instead, im wearing a bunch of blue crap most of the time since I cannot level any legendary with them...and an under-levelled exotic. this sucks!

This core thing is crap and should be done away with . The old upgrade method was grindy enoug,and what scares me about D2 going FTP is the upsale/lootbox options for things like cores . I can only imagine once this game goes ftp we're going to see "Core packs " for sale in eververse for new player's as a "short cut" . Bungie is heading in a good direction but all it takes it one Domino to fall and Bungie is done . What's even worse is players will buy them , again reinforcing game companies bad behavior, and then wonder why games suck ? When you're willing to except less for more ,why would any company in their right mind not sell garbage.

Yeah, nobody have time to farm those, we have over 5 raids, nightfalls, and many other events, and all that for all 3 characters we have. We cant use the gear we love because of that, and it’s a pain to constantly infuse. Just remove the cores already!! Many of us with logical reasoning will thank you! And everyone happy!

How about just returning the infusion system to how it was pre-Forsaken? That would fix the issue completely. This will never happen though. In true and typical Bungie fashion, they will undoubtedly continue to double down on their poor decisions and insist on dictating to the playerbase how they are to play their game.

To expand on your post, I’ve spoken with no less than 30 former Destiny 2 players from my friends list I used to raid with who have stated that the over-burdensome, excessively time-intensive currency and rewards structures eventually drove them to quit playing the game permanently. Exactly zero of them have plans to ever return to the Destiny 2at any point in the future. Now take my sample size, and extrapolate that out across millions of former players, and hundreds of thousands of currently active players, accounting for the fact there are over 150 former Destiny players who I didn’t speak with. The potential number of players who’ve thrown their hands up and walked away from the game is staggering.

I disagree. With the gunsmith bounties, it'll be easy to get cores on a consistent bases. The problem would be the need of legendary shards and planet mats and glimmer for said mats if they buy from spider and for infusing.

I thought they said that new light would put players right to 750 so they could jump right into the new armor system and all that jazz. The 2.0 stuff looks like grinding for mods for the gear and perks and all that jazz.

Benedict quest brings players light to 690. Most of Destiny 2 content is below 690. The only time that a new player cannot bring their favorite weapons and glamorous looking armor is in the new raid and the menagerie. This is only assuming that the player wants to spend ZERO enhancement cores. When new or returning guardians want to join in on September 2019. They can still use their favorite gear on the majority of the other available milestones.

Bungie has no intention of letting you masterwork your gear easily. I use whatever guns and armour I want generally and then if I want to do a raid I'll infuse; although infusing the last week has made me masterwork core poor xD. I don't really care though because masterworking is only really useful on weapons and I practically use the same ones for pve; most of the following came pre-masterworked anyway: Breakneck, Austringer, Threat Level, Outbreak Perfected, EP Shotgun, Loaded Question, Oxygen SR3, 1K Voices and Doomsday. Although I should probably masterwork my Doomsday considering how much I like using it; maybe when I'm not poor :'). Used to use Sleeper, Whisper and Thunderlord regularly but Bungo butchered them :p.

Bungie management is so terrible that they keep shooting themselves in the foot, dismissing feedback & fighting the player base, thinking they know best. As if the massive player and viewership drop offs are not a clear indicator that they are too incompetent to make the right decisions regarding the game. Then again, it’s the asshole luke smith at the helm still so go figure.

Apparently all new light players are gonna be 750 capped immediately so they can play all the content available

Quit crying about cores. For any NEW or RETURNING players. Everyone has to grind to 50 so any cores used before then is stupid. Tell the new players to go visit Werner-99 he gives you 690 gear, equip and go do public events for better gear then start working on the Forges. The Forges provide weapons and armor. All gear acquired will be high enough to do any activity with Match making. If you follow these steps you'll be 700+ in a week. And I never one time mentioned Enhancement Cores, trust me they'll drop while you play.

I believe the point is to wait to infuse, and to be able to infuse your weapons in the endgame rather then consistently infusing. Forces you to use different weapons/gear.

Well, considering the changes to Eververse in September, I'd like to see Cores be rewarded every time we leveled up much like Motes of Light in D1. We will no longer level up for Bright Dust. I mean, I don't understand how people struggle with cores in this game as it is unless they only play like 1 hour a week. But I see that as a fair middle ground. Especially with the concept of New Light being brought into the fold.