There’s no denying that Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion has been a smashing success, breathing new life into the game and keeping players hooked with dynamic content that continues to evolve even now. However, even an expansion as highly polished as Forsaken isn’t without cracks in the façade, and developer Bungie recently confirmed it will be addressing two of the larger cracks that players have found: the scarcity of Masterwork Cores and the severely low drop rate of Exotics.
One of the many miscellaneous changes that Forsaken made to Destiny 2’s existing economy was implementing Masterwork Cores as a necessary component for item infusion (to counterbalance the removal of the strict type-for-type infusion requirement which made pre-Forsaken infusion such a pain). However, it’s virtually impossible to build up a healthy stockpile of Cores using Forsaken’s current economy, and in the most recent This Week at Bungie blog post, Bungie outlined how it will be changing the implementation of Masterwork Cores in the near future:
(The below text is courtesy of Bungie)
Goals for adding Masterwork Cores to Infusion costs
- Make Infusing and Masterworking a meaningful choice.
- Infusion and Masterwork should not be mutually exclusive.
Problems with the current Masterwork Core Economy
- Masterwork Cores have a misleading name. When they were created, the definition of a pinnacle item put the emphasis almost entirely on Masterworking. We expanded that definition in Forsaken, but didn’t update the currency.
- There are not enough reliable sources to earn Masterwork Cores, which can make deciding what to spend them on too difficult.
Plans for addressing those problems
- Monitoring of Core supplies shows the numbers aren’t as high as we’d like. We are planning to create more reliable and plentiful Core sources.
- We are going to rename Masterwork Cores so their purpose is more obvious.
Along the same lines, Bungie also outlined how it will be changing Exotic drop mechanics, saying it understands player frustration over not only how rarely Exotics drop, but also how when one finally does drop it’s often an Exotic the player already has:
Goals for Exotic drop rates
- Exotics are intended to be meaningful long-term chases. Finding an Exotic should be rare but impactful.
Problems with the current Exotic drop rates
- Right now we are falling short of the “impactful” part of our goal. There’s nothing exciting or powerful about getting your fourth Fighting Lion when all you really want is a Two-Tailed Fox.
Plans for addressing those problems
- We plan to increase the chance for Exotics to drop something you don’t already have.