Destiny 2’s The Dawning was another successful holiday event, joining Festival of the Lost as a free offering in the game that was a lot of fun for everyone to participate in. The central focus of The Dawning was the cookie-baking oven provided to us by Eva Levante, which supplied not only tokens and gear, but also proved by a steady stream of Enhancement Cores.
I don’t think I would have gotten to triple 650 on my characters without The Dawning giving me cores, and now that the event is over, Enhancement Cores are back to being bad and unhealthy for the game, and I refuse to change my position that they need to be removed from infusion entirely.
Why are Enhancement Cores bad? Let me count the ways, because I’m not sure I’ve ever written all this down in one place before:
Casual V. Hardcore
The Enhancement Core system disproportionately punishes casual players while hardcore players still are ascending to max level faster than ever. Playing infrequently will get you a scarce handful of cores and makes it so that it’s not enough just to hit your weekly milestones, but you also have to devote time specifically to core farming. But hardcore players with large stashes of cores can rocket up instantly, which is why we saw people hitting 650 within a week of Black Armory arriving. The core system does nothing to prevent that.
Core Sources
The sources of cores in the game are just…bad, even with recent changes. Dismantling legendaries for cores is super inconsistent and a trickle of supplies at best. Matterweaves are even more rare than dismantle cores. Spider bounties for cores require two levels of grinding because you need to first get Ghost fragments to even get the bounty. And Scrapper bounties are fine if that’s the activity you want to be doing anyway, but running an entire 12-15 minute strike for a single Enhancement Core is not a good use of time. There is enough to do in Destiny both for casual and hardcore players right now where the Enhancement Core grind is just not a useful or enjoyable use of game time.
Masterworking
Ah yes, remember Masterworking? It seems like a distant memory now. I have not masterworked a single weapon since Black Armory launched because it does not seem worth the 20-25 cores it would take to do so, given that I have to spend everything on infusion instead. While I have a number of new weapons I like, the core system makes it so that I have to be like “well do I really like this?” so anything that isn’t a picture perfect god roll is not going to be masterworked. And on things like snipers and swords, even if they do have great rolls, it just doesn’t seem worth the cost. Past this, I have not masterworked a single piece of armor since Forsaken launched. Not one. Not only because the benefits are relatively terrible (and they are), but because again, the cost doesn’t seem remotely worth it and armor is last on the priority lists behind infusion and weapon masterworking. There are just not enough cores to go around. Even with the Dawning’s extra supply I still have only devoted cores to infusion and ended up with a much smaller pile than when I started, with none of it going to masterworking.
Build Diversity
To me, this is the biggest sin of the Enhancement Core system. The introduction of cores to infusion was done with the objective of making each thing you infuse a “meaningful choice,” but all it does is severely limit build diversity and experimentation for no real reason. I have my Hunter, for instance, at 650 in a build that specializes entirely in making my Pillager SMG amazing with dexterity, reloading and aiming perks. But it’s exhausting to think that if I want to switch to a pulse rifle or hand cannon-focused build instead that it’s going to cost me at least 10 cores for each new armor set. And past that, when exotics are three cores per infusion, it’s really unmotivating to spend that try to and play around with different ones at max power, especially when you know that in a few more months the cap will raise again and you’ll have to do this all over. As such, I feel stuck in 1-2 builds per character when I’d love be experimenting with way more than that without sacrificing my power level.
I simply do not see the upside to the core system. It does not slow down the race to max level for hardcore players, only for casuals. It limits build diversity under the guise of “meaningful choice.” It hamstrings the masterwork system because the currency is shared across two wildly different types of upgrades. It adds another grind that is not fun and that the game does not need in its current state with plenty of other things to do.
Take them out. Just…take them out. You will be able to hear the community’s celebrations for miles.
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