I know it is more work but it's an effort to add value to the game regardless. Enhancement cores are fine, and so is the idea of making meaningful choices. However the bottleneck is harsh, and forcing people to play certain things that aren't ready to get people together for it is not a good idea. Introduce a new avenue for light leveling through glimmer. Purely a glimmer cost. At the very least excluding cores and equally hard to get materials/items. So legendary shards and planetary materials would be acceptable. Now assuming it is just glimmer, you can reintroduce RNG leveling. Only with glimmer leveling and since glimmer is abundant you can keep leveling this way. It allows players a means of doing it outside of activities, while also preparing them for them, but remains less efficient than running certain activities as you want. Though there's also the path of just guaranteed costs and gains you can take as well. Maybe both based on whether you have max glimmer or not. Having enhancement cores bring low rarity gear up would add to the meaningful choices the team wants the game to have also. Further than that, allowing mods and perks to be collected is another. Doing these things adds to the meaningful choices, and the overall progression at the same time. Making cores the center of attention for these things, and fixing the collections so players can use it even more so. Much more than forcing meaning into something by slowing down progression.