Cosmic Exploration is CASUAL content with a pinch of midcore

[Supersnow845]

Something can be hardcore for no other reason than suddenly throwing a massive difficulty spike at you because somebody on the dev team thought it would be funny.

Hilarious example just tonight; I assumed Sightseeing Logs to be casual content until some buffoon decided I needed to do jumping puzzles for some of the Stormblood ones, thus rendering 100% completion impossible unless I'm good enough. Of which I am not, so I guess I'm done with this piece of content (because why even bother collecting them from Shadowbringers and beyond if it'll never be completely done?)

I've likewise given up progressing the Blue Mage story because if I can't clear 29, so I have zero hope of clearing 30 and so on. I've also got a permanent quest marker out in the Ruby Sea because I can't even clear floor 20 of Palace of the Dead, much less 50.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say the majority of FF14 is in fact midcore content with hardcore offerings with casual content being almost non-existent because even something as benign as fishing has Big Fish and the like, or how Triple Triad literally sends you up against cheaters. There is a shockingly large amount of content that can't ACTUALLY be sleepwalked contrary to popular belief, and it's harder than some people want to admit just because it was a breeze for them personally. I doubt I could even do proper crafting that didn't involve Trained Eye, so yeah, expert recipes might as well be mid/hardcore too for all the difference it would make in my ability to do them.

Again, it would be so so much easier if people here would just admit they're actually just super good at the game instead of saying everything is easy because the false hope of what casuals can actually accomplish in this game gets tiresome after awhile because this game keeps getting harder but I'm not getting any better.

In the nicest way possible have you considered the fact that you are just way below average in general, especially if you will barely even attempt normal crafting without trained eye or give up on blue mage for one spell you can ask for help for

[Kaurhz]

Something can be hardcore for no other reason than suddenly throwing a massive difficulty spike at you because somebody on the dev team thought it would be funny.

Hilarious example just tonight; I assumed Sightseeing Logs to be casual content until some buffoon decided I needed to do jumping puzzles for some of the Stormblood ones, thus rendering 100% completion impossible unless I'm good enough. Of which I am not, so I guess I'm done with this piece of content (because why even bother collecting them from Shadowbringers and beyond if it'll never be completely done?)

I've likewise given up progressing the Blue Mage story because if I can't clear 29, so I have zero hope of clearing 30 and so on. I've also got a permanent quest marker out in the Ruby Sea because I can't even clear floor 20 of Palace of the Dead, much less 50.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say the majority of FF14 is in fact midcore content with hardcore offerings with casual content being almost non-existent because even something as benign as fishing has Big Fish and the like, or how Triple Triad literally sends you up against cheaters. There is a shockingly large amount of content that can't ACTUALLY be sleepwalked contrary to popular belief, and it's harder than some people want to admit just because it was a breeze for them personally. I doubt I could even do proper crafting that didn't involve Trained Eye, so yeah, expert recipes might as well be mid/hardcore too for all the difference it would make in my ability to do them.

Again, it would be so so much easier if people here would just admit they're actually just super good at the game instead of saying everything is easy because the false hope of what casuals can actually accomplish in this game gets tiresome after awhile because this game keeps getting harder but I'm not getting any better.

In principle I agree with this, but at what point do we determine something to be a massive difficulty spike? The moment it asks you to play the game? I do ask this with sincerity, because if people were paying attention to their abilities as a crafter or gatherer whilst they were levelling up (In the manner that the game intended), instead of just plucking stats and macros from a guide, then I think the number of people struggling with this content would be few and far between, and there is no remedy for people that just refuse to interact with the game in the way the game intended. Beyond just rendering the entire game into macro mode.

(In this regard actually the guides are as much of a problem as anything else, since a few of them are just verbatim what the game tells you, with a macro thrown at you without saying why.. But in the same vein, a lot of this you can grasp by just asking the question yourself.)

I do agree that people do need to admit when they are super good at a facet of the game instead of declaring something easier, but this also applies at the opposite side of the spectrum as well in that some people just need to admit that they aren't bothering to interact with the content or read up on their own skills instead of trying to paint a specific piece of content as hardcore.

Because in this regard, the game suffers as a result of both ends of the spectrum, and in my opinion the perspective towards Cosmic Exploration is shifting more into the category of people that just aren't interacting or reading their abilities, than the category of people that are super good, because the reality is, unless you're aiming for a very specific achievement then the game doesn't actually demand that you are good.. Relics for Cosmic demand no less or no more of a player than what your standard master recipe macros do.

[Kohashi]

I fail to see how a AFK Clicker game is any content at all though

Why do you even play this game, since everything can be summed up as a clicker game, either done with the mouse, controller, or by clicking your keyboard? Well?

[Yoshihara]

I dunno, cosmic exploration is casual content with a pinch of casual and some more casual.
There is no skill involved it's just a timesink Korean MMO grind.

[Rsmeers]

People saying it's not casual content don't mean it's created for hardcore players or completely unapproachable by newcomers, they mean it has a more steep learning curve that is unfitting casual content (especially one created so that players who fell behind in levels can catch up). That is undeniable with how much RNG matters on this content and how you have to adjust your play style because of that and tight time limits. A simple yet prime example is not being able to progress as a DoL without Hi-Cordial (or at the very least HQ Cordials), even if you're wearing best in slot. On normal content you never have to use Cordials to progress, only if you are farming specific items or going for loads of endgame high collectability items.

Is it hyper complex for seasoned players? No, just freaking annoying and time-consuming.
But it is more complex for players returning or just getting into DoL/DoH than it makes sense for it to be.

[Minali]

We just had a Red Alert.
Red Alerts are every 4h (at least on our well populated world, don't know if this is different elsewhere...?)

I was a few minutes late and the delivery spot was in Narnia, so I used maybe 15 instead of 20 minutes.
I was taking part as a botanist. My research level is at 7, so I don't get any boosts from my current relic step because using it would still be a downgrade for level 100.
I didn't really pay attention because I was busy reading the latest posts on this thread and some other things. Therefore I didn't use any cordials and only pressed "Blessed Harvest II" for speeding things up occasionally when I had 500 GP at hand, except the first time where I added "Ageless Words" (Eureka Moment didn't proc) out of habit. I didn't bother with boosting Gathering Boon because the base chance was only at 36% or something at these nodes.
Because I took part in a mech op as ground support yesterday, which involves aiming your character of whatever level into the general direction of an obstacle and press "1", and run to the point where you hand stuff in once in a while, I had some leftover +10 credit boost that expired shortly before the end.

Results for these gathering missions alone:
354 cosmocredits
1179 lunar credits

143 points for Cosmic Botanist IV
88 points for Cosmic Botanist II
88 points for Cosmic Botanist I

On top of that for taking part in the Red Alert to begin with:
200 Cosmocredits
1500 Lunar Credits

I suppose if you are not max level or in an odd level range, you need to include whatever level of "Field Mastery" you have at your disposal for more guaranteed hits, or "Flora Mastery". But that aside, this is - despite being on the moon - not rocket science, and even less than what you would do for average gathering regular materials for whatever recipe you're after in the regular FFXIV world, unless you're bothering with ephemeral nodes, rare nodes or collectables or whatever shenanigans, where you might desire some sort of optimization.

Now, I don't know if there is a level limit for achieving IV, the normal stellar missions Class B and below don't reward them, but as said, I got them for Red Alert missions, so these might be a workaround. Someone else has to report about this. (They didn't show up for me until I unlocked that relic stage though, and because they didn't award III, I thought they'd be capped at II at first.) But even if you have to do Class A missions, you still don't have to finish them on gold, it just speeds things up. Collectables are a bit of a beast, but you can just wait until a mission appears that doesn't require collectables or is paired with expert crafting, if you don't want to bother with this somewhat confusing can of worms.

This is not in any way "hardcore". It might be "not my cup of tea". But this doesn't make any of the things I just described "hardcore". And I really fail to see how this is considered a "steep learning curve", especially with many basic guides for gathering and crafting around, that can tell you why "you obtain nothing" appears on your screen if it happens, and probably with guides explaining you how cosmic exploration works, if the guide the game gives is too overwhelming.

(I was in there yesterday with a person who hadn't gathered anything for ages and got a lot of "You obtain nothing".However, they also got a prompt repeatedly telling them their gear is below the required item level and where to buy better one, right at the hub. Afterwards they didn't get "You obtain nothing" anymore. It's not like the game is completely letting you alone.)

[Jeeqbit]

For clarification, Red Alerts happen 3-5 hours after the last. The exact difference in respawn time seems to be random. So it's similar to the hunt (A rank) respawn times.

Mech Ops seem to respawn about as often as FATEs, which is within 20 minutes.

I agree that I have been getting I and II research from Red Alerts. And there is no skill needed for Red Alerts so far, at least for gatherers. They aren't nearly as challenging as the steller missions. So if you just want to tab out and only do Red Alerts when they come up, it seems to be workable so far.

[Supersnow845]

Red alerts for crafters are just as easy. They dynamically scale and for people at level 100 you don’t even need melds to do them and you can do them in thunderyards, you don’t need everseekers.

Crafters even you don’t even need to raise quality. You can just submit 9 100% progress 0 quality or 3 100% progress 100% quality

So you can literally roll your face across the keyboard and still finish the crafters

[Valence]

Something can be hardcore for no other reason than suddenly throwing a massive difficulty spike at you because somebody on the dev team thought it would be funny.

Hilarious example just tonight; I assumed Sightseeing Logs to be casual content until some buffoon decided I needed to do jumping puzzles for some of the Stormblood ones, thus rendering 100% completion impossible unless I'm good enough. Of which I am not, so I guess I'm done with this piece of content (because why even bother collecting them from Shadowbringers and beyond if it'll never be completely done?)

I've likewise given up progressing the Blue Mage story because if I can't clear 29, so I have zero hope of clearing 30 and so on. I've also got a permanent quest marker out in the Ruby Sea because I can't even clear floor 20 of Palace of the Dead, much less 50.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say the majority of FF14 is in fact midcore content with hardcore offerings with casual content being almost non-existent because even something as benign as fishing has Big Fish and the like, or how Triple Triad literally sends you up against cheaters. There is a shockingly large amount of content that can't ACTUALLY be sleepwalked contrary to popular belief, and it's harder than some people want to admit just because it was a breeze for them personally. I doubt I could even do proper crafting that didn't involve Trained Eye, so yeah, expert recipes might as well be mid/hardcore too for all the difference it would make in my ability to do them.

Again, it would be so so much easier if people here would just admit they're actually just super good at the game instead of saying everything is easy because the false hope of what casuals can actually accomplish in this game gets tiresome after awhile because this game keeps getting harder but I'm not getting any better.

I don't disagree with your sightseeing log, although the platformer part of it was there in ARR with a couple of them already, and they were tied to annoying weather/time windows. They got rid of most of it in HW only to reintroduce and try out the kugane inn and tower in SB because they had that new idea of doing jump puzzles, so sightseeing seemed like the right place for it. Counterpoint though, it was merely 3-4 logs in SB, so is that a problem that some people could get a little challenge as well or should the entirety of the content have been dedicated exclusively to you there? Genuine question: do you need them ALL done for something? Is there a specific reward attached to this?

Anyway, that's beyond the point, where is the difficulty spike here exactly? It's baseline crafting recipes, and A-Ranks are either hard or expert recipes, which has been a requirement for every DoH relic since their introduction in ShB. Where is that wrench that came out of nowhere supposedly there? Or are you just unhappy that the relics require expert recipes? Because that argument, I can hear. It's valid. Doesn't mean that I agree or disagree with it, but it's valid (and has some have said above, you can bypass A ranks for your relics anyway apparently). But let's not pretend a second that it's something that came out of the blue?

The fundamental issue I take is that you try to conflate the whole game as "midcore" or "hardcore" as soon as a small part of it is above the baseline (yes big fishing is a small part of fishing, like A-ranks are a small part of cosmic). This sounds genuinely disingenuous to me. Aren't people allowed to have more challenging things to do as well? 90% of this new content is literally casual, yet you're trying to shoehorn it under a hardcore umbrella? All your examples, I feel like that you're taking offense that a part of the content is targeted at a higher difficulty than the majority of the baseline. Should we also delete extreme trials and whatnot because they suddenly render ALL pve "hardcore"?

But it also doesn't really counter what I said that the content in this game is harder than people want to admit just because it was a snap for them personally

You're trying to shift the subject on what the OP wasn't about. You're perfectly within your right to find the current content hard for you. You're perfectly within your right to find baseline crafting hard for you (because again, 90% of cosmic is baseline crafting).
But saying this is hardcore? Just no.

I fail to see how a AFK Clicker game is any content at all though

Truly riveting content right?
But the point is, can't do more casual than this...

[Supersnow845]

snip

These relics are arguably easier because you can complete them entirely without experts. There are A rank missions that give IV research data that aren’t experts

Better yet there are actually 2 other facets that allow you to “take advantage” of experts without actually interacting with them. Firstly a good chunk of the expert A1 ranks are basically just non expert recipe stat distributions but with expert conditions applied. This is actually better than normal because if you macro you never lose out to getting poor condition at the wrong time (as expert doesn’t have poor and excellent is useless) and if you manually craft normals then the expert conditions don’t matter anyway because none interfere with how you do a normal (because they all basically amount to different flavours of conditional CP saving depending on action priority). The second advantage is the stellar action can also turn non experts into pseudo experts conferring all the advantages above as well

For your average macro/casual crafter experts are superior in every way to normals. It’s only when you get experts that actually force you to engage with them (which is really only A3’s) that you actually have to consider knowing how to do an expert recipe