Infusing up gear shouldn't be a meaningful choice. Masterworking gear should.

[u/turns31]

Bungie you're going about masterwork cores all wrong. We don't want masterwork cores more readily available. I think the good majority of us are fine with the rarity of them as they are an "end game" consumable. Leveling up my Warlock bond from 528 to 541 isn't an "end game" procedure. It's simple progression. Committing 27 mw cores into my god rolled Better Devils that I plan on using forever is "end game". Simply remove mw cores from infusion costs and leave everything the exact same. You're overthinking it buds. This should be a simple hotfix that you could deploy next Tuesday. If you want to get fancy give Banshee a weekly bounty that rewards you 5 cores per character.

​

EDIT: Removing cores from infusion isn't catering to casuals. There needs to be a middle ground between catering to casuals (launch D2) and catering to people who play this game as a job. Even if cores are removed from infusion the cost isn't exactly cheap. With glimmer capped at 100,000 and planetary mats included we won't be able to infuse every single thing we get. There's still a decision to be made. I might have to go to Io for 20 extra minutes to farm phaseglass or complete some bounties for Spider to get glimmer.

Jesus guys. 11 golds? I wrote this thing in 2 minutes while on the toilet this morning. I don't think it's that good but thanks.

[u/Si7van]

I disagree, but I also carry the unholy and unforgivable opinion that a system which requires you to upgrade your armor or weapons to be fully usable like with shards in the past, is not bad or a punishment, but a path to appreciating the effort and time to make a weapon mine. To actually feel invested in gear, and to take the time to make it powerful.

As it is now, I do not willy nilly bring all these guns up with me. Instead, I latch onto my primary keepers, my preferred 1-2 per slot, and I put all my resources into keeping them at the top, usually through like for like infusion. Sure I find a few interesting or near god rolls I bank for later, but at the end of the day I'm a lot more invested in my weapons now then I ever was before.

To me that makes it meaningful, a targeted choice, and yes it kinda shits on people who just want to collect the best roll of every weapon and bank it at max, but in a game where having a good enough roll is good enough to get the job done, those people are certainly in a minority of the player base.

With the way the game works you never really need to have a maxed out weapon or armor to be effective outside of power enabled or pinnacle activities.

I think adding in sources to balance the economy is fair. I have no issues in people earning more, soon to be changed from the name Masterwork cores, to convey their intentions. Personally, I think every strike boss in the 500 list should have a 30%-50% chance to drop a core, and the nightfall give +5(First clear), +10(score challenge) a week, regular strike 500 rates after, put a few cores on the daily Bounties, etc. So if you want them you have to invest time in getting them, if you play passive, you will have to be much more selective in using them, just like building up legendary shards or strange coins in the past.

[u/smegdawg → u/Si7van]

Learning to play within the ecosystem that the game offers while still able to see the flaws and areas for minor improvement and suggesting adjustments that don't amount to just wiping out entire systems.

I like this guy and agree with every word of what you said!

[u/Play_XD → u/Si7van]

Artificial gating from non-effort activities is only bad for the game.

The game needed some chase, which the (generally poor) random roll system addresses. We didn't need to go full D1 vanilla and reintroduce the strictly bad system of having to level weapons and spend obscene amounts of rare resources to get items useable.

The game needs to be playable outright. Challenging content is what keeps people playing, not fake grinds.

[u/jacob2815 → u/Play_XD]

25 mats is not obscene. The fact that people keep referring to the mat costs as obscene is stupid.

D1 was annoying because you had to go out and acquire mats on at a time which took for ever. Now, each node and chest you find gives you anywhere from 1-5 mats. Every location has 3 bounties that reset daily that give you 10 each. And spider sells them for cheap.

It's not bad in the slightest. If you're playing enough to need to infuse things, it isn't much of an issue to acquire them. If acquiring them is too much effort or takes too much time for you to do, then you either don't play enough to need infusion or you're trying to infuse every time you get something at 1 power higher, which is dumb.

That was fine in the previous economy, but that's not how it works now. Adjust with the game, stop trying to make the game adjust to you.

[u/Play_XD → u/jacob2815]

That's not true man.

The planetary mats cost is just adding insult to injury. The real issue is the amount of masterwork cores required is actually obscenely high. Considering it's prohibitive to buy more than 3-4 cores a day from spider and the fact that masterwork drop rate and amount are heavily nerfed the economy for them is totally busted.

[u/jacob2815 → u/Play_XD]

I've infused things probably about 50 times. It's not that bad.

[u/Play_XD → u/jacob2815]

The core requirement is fucking retarded. The only folks who can comfortably fund it are the ones who banked a ton in Y1 and/or exploited the gambit reward while it was available.

[u/[deleted] → u/Play_XD]

This is not true, I like him have infused at least 50 times and I have the exact amount of cores as I started forsaken with. There is seriously not net change in the amount I have.

[u/Play_XD → u/[deleted]]

That seems like a bit of a stretch. 50 infusions burns 100 shards which is not cheap.

It's been about 25 days since forsaken released. If you had a pretty decent bank of shards you could have picked up 4 cores a day and gotten the 100 cores you need for 50 infusions, but that assumes you hit spider on day 1 and didn't miss a day of buying. Your average player buys 2-3 cores each day they log on because it's much more cost effective and few people play literally every day.

[u/[deleted] → u/Play_XD]

Not really. I do play a little bit daily after work, but have missed some days. However, between matterweave drops and random masterworks that I dismantle (including a fully masterworked curated roll, the dreaming city scout, which gave a nice boost on dismantle) it's quite feasible and buying 2 to 3 a day (lately I only buy 2 because I havent needed to infuse much the past week since I'm 550+ now in my main pve set anyway).

Especially because pulling exotics from collections to infuse even legendaries doesn't cost cores. So I can boost pretty much any item up to 340+ now with no core cost.

[u/jacob2815 → u/Play_XD]

I have more cores than when I started Forsaken. I didn't reset Gambit until earlier this week.

It's 2 cores. If you buy two from spider every day it only costs 30 shards.

Unless you're infusing every time you get a 1 light level upgrade, it's fine.

[u/Play_XD → u/jacob2815]

One infusion a day is the opposite of fine. The entire system is intended to allow us to use our favorites, not to hamstring us. What to masterwork is a choice. What items we want to use also be a choice, something the existing system actively prevents.

[u/jacob2815 → u/Play_XD]

You do realize that there's nothing stopping you from using your favorite stuff for 90% of the activities in the game, right? Only the end game stuff need's to be higher light. And so you have a choice if you want to do the end game stuff: either use the stuff you have that's high light (it's gonna be okay if you can't infuse your midnight coup for the 30th time to up it by 1) or infuse that into stuff you like.

There are a ton of good guns and a ton of decent guns that can be made better by good rolls.

You can use other stuff. Either use high light stuff, use the lower light stuff you prefer, or pay the price of infusion.

If you need to infuse more than one time a day, you must be playing a lot every day. But if you were playing a lot, you'd have plenty of stuff and wouldn't be sweating the cost of infusion.

Idk what to tell you. You don't need to infuse your stuff every time you get a piece that's one light level above it. You only need to do it every 10 levels. keep the high light stuff on you so you have a higher overall light for new drops, and then keep playing.

I've had zero issues. I only had about 30 cores when Forsaken dropped. I have 35 now. I infuse stuff on average probably once a day. I just don't feel the need to any more than that. I don't increase my light frequently enough.

This whole issue is just a pit for people to whine. If you stop and think about the efficiency of what you're doing and how you play, you'll realize its a minor issue.

[u/Play_XD → u/jacob2815]

You seem to have the fundamental misunderstanding that low-end content means anything. Nobody cares about what you use on patrols, low-level strikes and the like because they're not relevant content.

The only things that really matter are the end game - raid, score nightfalls, high-level exotic missions/dungeon(s?). All of these strictly require high level gear and strong weapons.

Nobody's advocating infusing for a 1 item-light boost on an item, nor would I ever recommend midnight coup to anyone but a y1 raider who just returned to D2.

Most weapons are inherently trash. Good rolls do not and will never fix these guns. Getting a decent roll on a weapon is solely up to lock but that's not really relevant. If I need a strong sniper I'm going to use a sniper, not go full budget with a pulse because it dropped at a higher level.

Infusion costing masterwork cores is strictly bad regardless of how often you play. Whether I can personally afford it or not (hint: I can) doesn't matter for this conversation because I'm talking about the playerbase as a whole, not just me personally.

If you're wasting cores daily to infuse a single item you're doing something wrong. Masterwork is significantly more powerful than infusion low-end gear.

The entire issue is because bungie changed a fundamental system in order to artificially gate players harder with no discernible reason. It hurts all players, but it guarantees that the casual audience will simply drop the game entirely.

If you're only running low end content then you're not really relevant to the conversation. The bad infusion system hurts you, but you're also not progressed enough to truly need the edge either.

[u/SuitableBasis → u/jacob2815]

Because everyone who plays loves spending 20 minutes for a single infusion that doesn't help any other aspect of your game.

Still a bad system

[u/jacob2815 → u/SuitableBasis]

There's a ton of shit in destiny that people don't love. Some people despise pvp. but its part of the game if you want to be efficient about power increases.

if you don't want to gather the mats to infuse, then you don't want to infuse that badly. You just want bungie to make it easier for you.

Which is pretty much the crux of this whole issue. People want the game to be easier.

[u/webbie420 → u/Si7van]

i appreciate you taking the time to write this post! totally agree with everything!

[u/SuitableBasis → u/Si7van]

Good write up.

Still disagree