Getting Gold in all Cosmic Missions is really not fair or fun at all.

[Doki]

So this week, after spending a few days gathering timed nodes, crafting\gathering even more for scrip materials, etc, I have a full set of 750 gear and off-hand tools.

I had 500+ of every materia saved up from tons of grinding over the last month or so so I would be ready when this new gear shows up since it's going to be the best we see til 8.0.

I got everything penta-melded based off suggestions on the Icy-Veins site. I had a good stack of the best HQ foods & Tisanes. I figured I'd see if I can go back to Cosmic Exploration to clean up the remaining final missions that were nigh impossible with the previous 720 stuff & 690 accessories. I know they could be completed with some RNG luck, but I was not very successful in a good number of them.

Those missions are STILL NOT MACROABLE. Even tried calculations to see if 750 main hand with penta melds and\or specialist actions made a difference. It gets CLOSE but not 100% quality which those missions require for gold.

Making missions basically rely on luck alone to complete is bad design, especially when you already have to either spend hours & hours to make the gear and attain the materia, or spend several million gil.

Too much of this game is the devs basically saying "Just wait a year or two and it will be trival."

[Supersnow845]

So this week, after spending a few days gathering timed nodes, crafting\gathering even more for scrip materials, etc, I have a full set of 750 gear and off-hand tools.

I had 500+ of every materia saved up from tons of grinding over the last month or so so I would be ready when this new gear shows up since it's going to be the best we see til 8.0.

I got everything penta-melded based off suggestions on the Icy-Veins site. I had a good stack of the best HQ foods & Tisanes. I figured I'd see if I can go back to Cosmic Exploration to clean up the remaining final missions that were nigh impossible with the previous 720 stuff & 690 accessories. I know they could be completed with some RNG luck, but I was not very successful in a good number of them.

Those missions are STILL NOT MACROABLE. Even tried calculations to see if 750 main hand with penta melds and\or specialist actions made a difference. It gets CLOSE but not 100% quality which those missions require for gold.

Making missions basically rely on luck alone to complete is bad design, especially when you already have to either spend hours & hours to make the gear and attain the materia, or spend several million gil.

Too much of this game is the devs basically saying "Just wait a year or two and it will be trival."

You answered your own problem with what you emboldened. The high level cosmic missions aren’t supposed to be macroable. Even if you high pentameld the tools as well as the gear you’ll still end up short. Because they are designed to be done manually

This is exactly the same as the resplendent tools and the top end of the ishgardian crafts

[Doki]

Yeah except these missions only show up for a short time window so you only get like 2 tries then have to wait an hour or longer for them to show up again just to lose to RNG again. It's just absurd considering this is still just the FIRST planet of 4.

[Supersnow845]

Yeah except these missions only show up for a short time window so you only get like 2 tries then have to wait an hour or longer for them to show up again just to lose to RNG again. It's just absurd considering this is still just the FIRST planet of 4.

It’s likely they desire the planets to be more horizontal rather than vertical

Each phase of IR would nerf score generation of the previous phase because they didn’t want people spamming the easier crafts. They likely want to avoid people dumping the moon as soon as there are new planets so all planets are roughly even in difficulty

[GlowClam]

I gave Cosmo Exploration another chance when patch 7.3 came out – but honestly, it just annoyed me even more. All these idiotic restrictions, like no mounts, having to run everywhere, and the tight time limits… it’s just plain frustrating. I ended up quitting – my miner, botanist, and leatherworker are all still only level 4 (see my post: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...08#post6732508).

The main problem for me is that leveling up my gatherers and crafters just drags on forever and is really tedious. The B-level recipes barely give any progress points, special assignments with machines give nothing towards leveling, and I spend hours doing the same boring crafting over and over again. That’s just not fun anymore.

I’ve decided to stop doing Cosmo Exploration. For me, it’s just boreout: I’m grinding through leveling up and meeting the requirements for the next Cosmo tools, and I constantly feel overwhelmed—even with fully pentamelded gear for all my gatherers and crafters. Have you ever considered how expensive this is for us, Square Enix?

Modern gear with normal materia should be enough for Cosmo Exploration—with macros! These recipes are clearly designed for mass production in this content. Having to do all of them manually for hours is just stressful. I want to do this comfortably with macros, which I always set up and run for each recipe anyway. That’s what crafting means to me!

For the next planet, I hope EVERYTHING will be totally different!

[HappyTrees]

I gave Cosmo Exploration another chance when patch 7.3 came out – but honestly, it just annoyed me even more. All these idiotic restrictions, like no mounts, having to run everywhere, and the tight time limits… it’s just plain frustrating. I ended up quitting – my miner, botanist, and leatherworker are all still only level 4 (see my post: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...08#post6732508).

The main problem for me is that leveling up my gatherers and crafters just drags on forever and is really tedious. The B-level recipes barely give any progress points, special assignments with machines give nothing towards leveling, and I spend hours doing the same boring crafting over and over again. That’s just not fun anymore.

I’ve decided to stop doing Cosmo Exploration. For me, it’s just boreout: I’m grinding through leveling up and meeting the requirements for the next Cosmo tools, and I constantly feel overwhelmed—even with fully pentamelded gear for all my gatherers and crafters. Have you ever considered how expensive this is for us, Square Enix?

Modern gear with normal materia should be enough for Cosmo Exploration—with macros! These recipes are clearly designed for mass production in this content. Having to do all of them manually for hours is just stressful. I want to do this comfortably with macros, which I always set up and run for each recipe anyway. That’s what crafting means to me!

For the next planet, I hope EVERYTHING will be totally different!

Patch 7.3 lets you use mounts, increased the time limit for most stellar missions, gives you back all the GP that you used, and even resets your Cordial cooldowns. Outside of going from one area to the next, there's almost no downtime compared to 7.2.

As for crafting, a lot of A rank missions can already be used with macros, and they don't even need full pentamelded 720 gear. There are a few that can't, but that's the point of them. It's like Ishgard restoration; the expert crafts gave more points to reward the people who did them manually.

[hydralus]

Patch 7.3 lets you use mounts, increased the time limit for most stellar missions, gives you back all the GP that you used, and even resets your Cordial cooldowns. Outside of going from one area to the next, there's almost no downtime compared to 7.2.

As for crafting, a lot of A rank missions can already be used with macros, and they don't even need full pentamelded 720 gear. There are a few that can't, but that's the point of them. It's like Ishgard restoration; the expert crafts gave more points to reward the people who did them manually.

Yeah unlike what OP is implying, the vast majority of stuff is easily macroable in 720 gear. There's a reason the mount is so cheap, and it's because Cosmic Exploration is easy. Yes, I consider a roughly ~50% chance to get a gold star rating with even the most difficult of crafts (higher if you bother using specialist actions) as easy. That means on average you can spend 10 minutes and get gold for the achieve. Certainly a sight easier than getting the bunny blessed title.

[Big-Isaac]

That attitude in the OP seems really off to me.
"I can't use macros to skip the high end crafting content. That is bad design"
Like... what? I'm a filthy casual who uses macros, too, but I don't expect them to 100% everything for me.

[BlisteringFrost]

The OP is saying Expert crafting and gathering is trash game design because it adds an element of tedium that renders completion of the task up entirely to RNG even if you yourself are a master at utilizing the system to its fullest.

And I agree. That's trash game design.

[Kaurhz]

Personally, I think the problem is not the content, but the abilities.

Unless they completely restructure, crafting will always need RNG in order to enable some form of difficulty, otherwise all you're left with is something that you can macro.

Ideally, abilities should have a means of counteracting this RNG... Heart of the Crafter delineations were a good example of this, you would use a delineation, this would increase the probability of material condition being good... When coupled with WWYW/Satisfaction/Nymeia's Wheel, it scaled really well and could counteract RNG significantly (Ahead of its time, but high-end experts is where abilities like this would truly shine). Then you had things like Maker's Mark... controversial but the progress step buffer meant you had pretty good chances of actually recouping a lot of CP... Pretty evident in pre-nerf Ala Mhigan crafts in 4.1.

All of this is to say... They should be looking at the ability suite of crafting long before looking at the recipe scaling for the higher-end recipes in Cosmic Exploration -- As that is the core problem.