Cosmic Exploration is CASUAL content with a pinch of midcore

[FuturePastNow]

My guess is that Red Alerts use the same spawning system as the big boss FATEs- around 3 hours after the last one ended, a window opens, and as long as players are in the zone doing stuff in that window, it rolls the dice every <time unit> for a chance to start a new RA. With the chance increasing over time. So the window is something like 3-5 hours but on average it happens every 4.

[Astronis]

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.

Don't quote me but I don't think you can get III research from Red Alerts, it's I, II, and IV. But you CAN get III from B missions, so if the A missions are too difficult, you never actually have to do any of them to finish the tools.

[LilaIronman]

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?

We speak about ff14 here not the entirety of gaming, sure all games are point and click, happy?

OP said its basically mindless clicking, how is that content?

[s32ialx]

After reading a lot of feedback from people I really do think this community needs a reality check for a moment.

• The community based group fates (MechOps and Phase Progression) are the most "casual"content there is in the game: it's all about clicking on quest items mindlessly, going back and forth between them. There is literally no skill involved in those and they're designed for everybody to get by.
• Every mission from D to B ranks are literally standard content found in any piece of DoH/DoL stuff that has been everywhere in the game, between leves, collectables, and normal crafting. There is literally nothing newfangled, different nor hard about them. This is literally casual content.
• A-ranks are spread between 1) expert recipes and/or weird dura/progress/quality recipe stats, and 2) normal high end recipes. In the case of 2), it's not much different from endgame gear crafting but with an added timer with a lot of margin especially once you macro things out. In the case of 1), then yes, we're entering relic expert recipe territory and other newfangled challenges like on DoL missions: this is what I'd qualify as midcore content here. I have yet to see anything truly hardcore like resplendent recipes back in their prime, or the ARR masterbooks I and II.

It needs to be reiterated that if you do not want to engage with a bit more involved content, you can stick to D to B-ranks in order to level up, and B-ranks for the last stages of your relics. B-ranks are like standard endgame lvl99-100 recipes. If you cannot do them, then perhaps you leveled your jobs to 100 and never actually got to play them beyond copy pasting macros because that's literally the recipes you've been getting at every expansion so far. A-ranks swing between harder endgame normal recipes and actually difficult expert recipes with steep requirements, and they're just here for people that want to engage further with it, and I'm glad they're here. Nobody is forced to go through them at all.

But perhaps some expectations relied on getting content on the level of community fates literally everywhere, and if that was your expectations, then I can understand how engaging even with baseline DoH/DoL leves/recipes suddenly looks like a steep endeavor.

LOL calls it casual content with a pinch of mid core but then admits that the a-class missions require try hard levels of penta melding to even do. and telling people to do b-class mission to level is i'm sorry buddy but unacceptable the time different especially on your first relic for 6 points (B-Class) vs 19+ points (A-Class) it takes to level is too much it's not 'casual' in the slightest. how hard it is to make lunar credits at b-class even with a maxed weapon and a-class is still forever only to be slapped in the face with prisms 50 times in a row is NOT 'casual' friendly.

Esp considering on small or medium servers it's not like a Red Alert happens every hour or two or three you'll be lucky to get 2 red alerts in a day amazing if you see 3.

[s32ialx]

Don't quote me but I don't think you can get III research from Red Alerts. But you CAN get III from B missions, so if the A missions are too difficult, you never actually have to do any of them to finish the tools.

Actually in order to get IV which is what is required for max 0.8 and max tool you need A-Class.

[Astronis]

Actually in order to get IV which is what is required for max 0.8 and max tool you need A-Class.

No, Red Alerts give absolute gobs of IV. That's how I finished my fishing pole. Managed to fit seven or eight fishing missions in and got a ton of IV XP. I don't believe they give any III though, at least the fisher and miner critical missions don't.

[s32ialx]

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.

PREACH IT SISTER

[s32ialx]

No, Red Alerts give absolute gobs of IV. That's how I finished my fishing pole. Managed to fit seven or eight fishing missions in and got a ton of IV XP.

I was referring to them saying just do B-class to level to max which is impossible I have leveled 4 relics already there is no IV on B-Class. and telling people to do Red Alerts which some servers will be lucky to see them at most 2-3 times a day is not acceptable for 'it's casual' cause casual people might not be able to make a single red alert

[Astronis]

I was referring to them saying just do B-class to level to max which is impossible I have leveled 4 relics already there is no IV on B-Class. and telling people to do Red Alerts which some servers will be lucky to see them at most 2-3 times a day is not acceptable for 'it's casual' cause casual people might not be able to make a single red alert

"Them" was me, and I said, "You don't have to do any of the harder A missions", which is true. There's nothing more casual than the critical missions, just have to be online at the right time. Which I assume a casual player will, at some point, manage to be. Unless we're defining "casual player" as someone who logs in 30 minutes once a week...in which case, no, they'll *still* manage to catch a red alert at some point.

[s32ialx]

"Them" was me, and I said, "You don't have to do any of the harder A missions", which is true. There's nothing more casual than the critical missions, just have to be online at the right time. Which I assume a casual player will, at some point, manage to be. Unless we're defining "casual player" as someone who logs in 30 minutes once a week...in which case, no, they'll *still* manage to catch a red alert at some point.

*at some point* is not casual friendly. and unless you gold star those less harder A-class missions you will get piddly squat for points to your relic, in fact in order for me to actually even start getting points on a-class on ALC I had to 4x meld my tools even though my entire gear was penta my tools only had 1 materia on them for ALC and I would fail basically every single time, macros would fail everything would fail and I wouldn't even get enough points for bronze or silver, Gold is a if the RNG gods wish you luck on quality statuses.