Cosmic Exploration Opinions

[Supersnow845]

I’ve been playing a lot of cosmic since it came out and I now have 9 relics out of 11 (the 8 crafters and BTN)

In that time I’ve come to realise that cosmic is incredibly well designed content…….within a very narrow niche. As someone who likes crafting for the sake of it the crafting side of cosmic basically breaks all the norms expected from crafting, massive progress required with tiny durabilities, huge quality with no progress needed, using the special action to actually turn a normal craft into an expert craft. Basically every way you can bend the current crafting formula is present here (the only thing really lacking is brutally difficult experts that basically NEED a specialist to be done but honestly specialists are basically vestigial content since they redid the crafters in ShB and they should just figure out how to distribute the specialist system in a different way). However none of this means anything if you don’t like crafting in the first place. If you hate crafting then cosmic amounts to 10,000 macros for 8 ugly stage 1 tools then logging off

Gatherers are similar, the gatherers A ranks have some RNG involved but they are basically a hard GP wall + correct use of potions to properly gold and like the crafters they are basically built around bending the gathering formula as far it can possibly bend in this game. Collectibles encourage meticulous woodsman use not just the same boring scour+scrutiny. Fates require you know where the three groupings of nodes are and start at one before the timer starts etc. again it’s all very well designed (I can knock a few points for GP not restoring between missions but you can sub that out by just doing a crafter)……..for people who already like gatherers. If you don’t then it’s just some brutally hard leves you probably don’t understand what you are doing wrong for 3 ugly first stage relics

Then the actual building aspect. The moon alone has 15 stages and we are only on 3. And everything contributes, even spinning kupo of fortune.

I’m genuinely impressed that the devs did something so rich with the crafters and gatherers……….but as I said if you don’t already like them there is nothing here for you but frustration as the A ranks have hard walls on them for expected competency. A ranks are not where you learn these skills which is frustrating.

I don’t give out praise to the devs often (as most people probably know) but I genuinely think cosmic is a joy for those of us who already liked the crafters and gatherers but I do hope it’s made less frustrating for people casually flitting in trying to figure out what’s going on and how they can contribute

[OtherworldSeeker]

I’m genuinely impressed that the devs did something so rich with the crafters and gatherers……….but as I said if you don’t already like them there is nothing here for you but frustration as the A ranks have hard walls on them for expected competency. A ranks are not where you learn these skills which is frustrating.

It's not about liking. Like everything else it always comes down to how you play. Are you casual about it or are you hardcore.

Me, I'm a casual crafter and gatherer. I enjoy leveling them. I enjoy using my crafter to make money. I enjoy using my gatherers to get mats for my crafter. I've never in my life done an expert craft. But I have the newest crafting and gathering gear. That's how I enjoy crafting and gathering.

Apparently, Cosmic Exploration is not designed for people like me. So far, I've only been working on my Botanist. I don't have a ton of time to devote to this. At first I was like "wow this is fun!" Then I got to the A rank missions. Not ALL of them are terrible. There are some I can get gold on. But there are a lot more I can't even get silver on or can't even complete at all. Right now if I get bronze I earn around 5 or 6 points toward Cosmic Research. I'm progressing at a snail's pace. No, I'm not pentamelded. I'm not at max efficiency. I have trouble remembering how collectibles work when I haven't done one for a while. I'm just a casual crafter/gatherer. I just wanted to participate and have fun and not be frustrated all the time or have to spend 5 years to get a relic.

As a casual player of FFXIV, I'm beyond disappointed.

[Supersnow845]

It's not about liking. Like everything else it always comes down to how you play. Are you casual about it or are you hardcore.

Me, I'm a casual crafter and gatherer. I enjoy leveling them. I enjoy using my crafter to make money. I enjoy using my gatherers to get mats for my crafter. I've never in my life done an expert craft. But I have the newest crafting and gathering gear. That's how I enjoy crafting and gathering.

Apparently, Cosmic Exploration is not designed for people like me. So far, I've only been working on my Botanist. I don't have a ton of time to devote to this. At first I was like "wow this is fun!" Then I got to the A rank missions. Not ALL of them are terrible. There are some I can get gold on. But there are a lot more I can't even get silver on or can't even complete at all. Right now if I get bronze I earn around 5 or 6 points toward Cosmic Research. I'm progressing at a snail's pace. No, I'm not pentamelded. I'm not at max efficiency. I have trouble remembering how collectibles work when I haven't done one for a while. I'm just a casual crafter/gatherer. I just wanted to participate and have fun and not be frustrated all the time or have to spend 5 years to get a relic.

As a casual player of FFXIV, I'm beyond disappointed.

That’s literally part of what you quoted on my post. The A ranks have hard walls on competency and breakpoints. I’m not necessarily saying that’s a good thing. Just that it exists and it’s causing frustration for people. If you want to consistently do A ranks you NEED pentamelded gear and likely food. And you need to know what you are doing with the job, that’s just how A ranks work specifically, but A ranks aren’t the be all and end all of cosmic

One thing to note is that starting with a gatherer relic is a really bad idea, they naturally level slower than the crafters and completing relics increases the experience you gain from other relics, if you made 5 crafter relics as an example (I know it’s a lot I’m just using it as an example) then all your gatherers would get 4 times the experience they currently get. So B ranks give totally viable amounts of experience. The only time you HAVE to do A ranks is for rank 4 experience which only comes from A ranks but gatherers have special cross fates with crafters that have low requirements in both and give lots of XP

your method of enjoying crafters and gatherers is totally valid, it just doesn’t jive with A ranks specifically, but cosmic is designed so you don’t need to do A ranks if you don’t want

[Valence]

I’ve been playing a lot of cosmic since it came out and I now have 9 relics out of 11 (the 8 crafters and BTN)

In that time I’ve come to realise that cosmic is incredibly well designed content…….within a very narrow niche. As someone who likes crafting for the sake of it the crafting side of cosmic basically breaks all the norms expected from crafting, massive progress required with tiny durabilities, huge quality with no progress needed, using the special action to actually turn a normal craft into an expert craft. Basically every way you can bend the current crafting formula is present here (the only thing really lacking is brutally difficult experts that basically NEED a specialist to be done but honestly specialists are basically vestigial content since they redid the crafters in ShB and they should just figure out how to distribute the specialist system in a different way). However none of this means anything if you don’t like crafting in the first place. If you hate crafting then cosmic amounts to 10,000 macros for 8 ugly stage 1 tools then logging off

Gatherers are similar, the gatherers A ranks have some RNG involved but they are basically a hard GP wall + correct use of potions to properly gold and like the crafters they are basically built around bending the gathering formula as far it can possibly bend in this game. Collectibles encourage meticulous woodsman use not just the same boring scour+scrutiny. Fates require you know where the three groupings of nodes are and start at one before the timer starts etc. again it’s all very well designed (I can knock a few points for GP not restoring between missions but you can sub that out by just doing a crafter)……..for people who already like gatherers. If you don’t then it’s just some brutally hard leves you probably don’t understand what you are doing wrong for 3 ugly first stage relics

Then the actual building aspect. The moon alone has 15 stages and we are only on 3. And everything contributes, even spinning kupo of fortune.

I’m genuinely impressed that the devs did something so rich with the crafters and gatherers……….but as I said if you don’t already like them there is nothing here for you but frustration as the A ranks have hard walls on them for expected competency. A ranks are not where you learn these skills which is frustrating.

I don’t give out praise to the devs often (as most people probably know) but I genuinely think cosmic is a joy for those of us who already liked the crafters and gatherers but I do hope it’s made less frustrating for people casually flitting in trying to figure out what’s going on and how they can contribute

I have only done one relic so far but I do agree with this assessment. I don't especially enjoy crafting (especially when spammed), but unlike for pve I would be genuinely at a loss in telling you what to change or improve to make me like it more. The expert recipes especially bring a lot of rng and agency to every trial and having recipes change their crafting and recipe parameters that much is very good.

I think the thing that keeps me into this content is the progression system, it's very well made imo, where there was none in firmament beyond the relic quests that were more... bog standard until expert recipes. But here you collect datasets, you have to target the right missions to get what you need, it's not much but I really like that somehow, in spite of me being relatively mid/neutral toward crafting in general, especially when I have to do it for a lot of crafts in succession.

I also think that A-ranks aren't different from expert recipes from previous relics, where getting to tier 3 consistently (or even on occasion) actually demanded skill and attention. For everybody else that couldn't bother, they could just aim for tier 1 collectability and be done with bruteforce macros/good gear or a minimum amount of skill, it would just ask for more grind. If people dont like A-ranks, they can stick with B-ranks and be perfectly fine (B-ranks reward half of what As do on average). A-ranks are just for players that want to push further, like ex/savage is for pve people that want to push further.