Just a week after committing to the swift removal of Destiny 2's maligned Unstable Cores, Bungie has wheeled the MMO to the operating room and excised this particular cyst in a new update that brings a much more reasonable cost to the game's infusion economy.
Unstable Cores were added in the Edge of Fate expansion as the new means to grease the wheels of Power-boosting gear infusion, and to sum up months of player blowback, they really, really sucked. Bungie was finally convinced that they sucked, and last week, said in its latest U-turn that it would be deleting Unstable Cores entirely.
Lo and behold, the studio's latest blog post, "the one about Infusion Costs," is headlined by good news. "Unstable Cores have been deprecated as the currency used for Infusion," Bungie writes. "They have been replaced with a flat cost of one Enhancement Core and 5,000 Glimmer across all Power levels."
Here lie Unstable Cores; they had it coming.
On the Destiny subreddit, in amongst a pile of players celebrating a rare economy win, Bungie says it made the change this quickly, after giving everyone 777,777 Unstable Cores to tide them over, because, "We wanted to make sure players could infuse without issue during the week where we made a bunch of rewards changes in the Portal. Didn't want folks getting power bumps and feeling too much friction with unstable cores."
I was also surprised the change arrived this early. As it happens, some of these changes were, indeed, meant to "land closer to Renegades," Destiny 2's upcoming Star Wars expansion. "Team found some smart solutions in the short term that helped bring the changes forward," Bungie says. "Hope it helps!"
Responding to one player cautiously hoping that the Destiny 2 metronome may be swinging to the "we're so back" portion, the Destiny 2 Team account says, "We have a lot more work to do."
When Bungie first announced that it would enact a new Infusion cost of Cores and Glimmer, players were understandably concerned that it would now cost an arm instead of an arm and a leg.
"Understand the anxiety," Bungie tells one relieved Redditor. "We're doing what we can to rebuild some trust here."
And if that ain't the crystallization of Destiny 2: genuinely good changes made with surprising speed in response to truly awful changes in order to earn back good will that is gained in drops and lost in buckets. I can't help but ask, how long can Bungie keep earning back trust?
Bungie brings in a new Destiny 2 global franchise director as its MMO bleeds – a Dragon Age, Starfield, and Elder Scrolls veteran who only just left Mass Effect 5.
