Cosmic Exploration Opinions

[Valence]

What I like (surprisingly):

- The progression system for individual characters (lvl10 -> lvl50 -> etc)
- The achievements which give good rewards and goals to go for.
- This is something that Firmament direly lacked and they nailed something there to drive people forward besides the world race and big contributors.

What I don't (unsurprisingly):

- The only shared thing is a glorified scoring progress bar for everything that's done in common, but in reality we play alone in our corner while other players are just a silent background noise to keep the illusion that we're not alone there. Everything in this game once more, is done to minimize player interaction to zero so players do not have to think and just have to follow a list of procedures and work like busy bees in a sweatshop. Everything feels fake and it doesn't feel I'm contributing to anything, feels like I'm just crafting and gathering in the void.
- MechOps and big rocks and whatnot respawning haphazardly everywhere and nobody actually sharing the same area to clear feels terrible and ridiculous. Totally immersion breaking. And the gameplay loop about spamm clicking the same things is impressively dull and shows a blatant lack of creativity.
- Chain crafting and gathering is incredibly boring and tedious, and even expert recipe perks, which are always nice, quickly devolve into the same boring mass production grind. But I guess this type of content is fundamentally not my thing so if grinding brainlessly, then this is the content for you.
- The UI is bad or weird. There is obnoxious gating notably when first entering the area: it took me running over and talking to every NPC and then more than 15min even when asking people what I was doing wrong to understand that I had to complete at least one leve quest for me to unlock half of the menu (mechops, successes, infrastructure).
( - Relics are exclusively tied to this system. You have to engage with the system to progress them, but I guess it's not gonna be much different from what we had anyway, it's crafting and gathering all the same, it's just included in the area instead of outside, so tomato tomato. )

[DynnDiablos]

With all my crafters/gatherers 100 and pentamelded, and the rewards being absolute crap, I have decided it is a big NO THANKS for me. And I loved Ishgard Restoration (plenty of mounts and hairstyles and cool stuff). This? It is all junk and the progress happens so fast, if you're an adult who works you miss all the fates and stuff anyway.

[ShadowNyx3]

Initial impressions from almost exclusively Fishing for about 8 hours:

- The variety in Stellar Missions for Fishing is phenomenal. Gold Medals require actual thought and execution, with a palatable dose of RNG on top. The downside to failing to Gold Star missions is a wait for GP regeneration, which we could probably do something about. I don't know if a full restore on mission completion is the best decision, but I'm definitely feeling like we needed a buff to regen or the addition of a new cordial.

- Tool research is an interesting system. While a grind like previous tool relics, mission selection can be targeted to get the most out of the desired level of research instead of just spamming x number of catches or crafts.

- Mech Ops feels well balanced. Getting a buff for 20 missions allows me not to feel pressured to have to do all Mech Ops that appear. I can simply apply as a pilot and only join as ground support if I need to refresh my buff.

- The cosmetic and gameplay rewards don't feel great, however the inclusion of title achievement for attaining Gold Star rank on all missions is easily the best goal-oriented achievement that has ever been added to this game. We need more achievements like this in our content instead of the mindless "Gather 30,000 resources on Island Sanctuary" slop.

Overall, really enjoyed my time with it. However, I'm fully aware that was because I was fishing which is my favorite thing to do in the game. The prospect of completing missions for 8 crafters is daunting and makes me wish we had consolidated crafters long ago. I'm definitely going to have varying opinions on the content as I do it for multiple crafters and the less-engaging gatherers.

Edit: Forgot to mention that no flying is a wonderful decision. The area itself is not as interesting as it could be, but flying would make it irrelevant as it does to the standard 6 expansion zones. Mounts locked to the ground would be okay though and look a bit better than sprinting like a madman/woman everywhere. Though it's pretty clear that the cosmoliner is going to expand so when that happens the really far fishing holes should be fast to get to.

[Gortys]

This zone feels very underwhelming for me. I did not participate in the Ishgardian Restoration when it was current, but I enjoyed leveling 5 of my jobs in the firmament/diadem. There is a lot of XP for leveling in the Ishgardian area so when they announced this new zone I quit leveling my other DoH jobs. I assumed I would level here just as quickly, but this just feels very slow and boring by comparison for leveling. The crafting is super easy (I'm only lvl 62 though) and even when it tells me my gear isn't good enough to finish the "quest" (due to iLvL) I still have no issues finishing and getting HQ items (even for "gold") with no food or pots. Will you take extra steps to get HQ with lower iLVL? Yes, but not enough that it matters to me. Maybe the difficulty increases the closer I get to 100, but right now it is very easy and boring. The events are boring as well. You just go and hit one button regardless of job. You don't even need to know how to gather rarer items to do this stuff. I hope this isn't what the new "bozja" is going to be like. But if you just started a job and don't know how to do a gathering/crafting rotation? Well you won't be compelled to learn here either, but you can still participate.

I also liked that Diadem items could be sold on the MB for extra gil once you surpassed a certain level. I understand they may be doing this in a way to reduce bag space used or so people don't have to use a retainer. To me this just removes another avenue for players to use the MB which is a bit disappointing for me.

And yes, on my server it was up to level 3 and all of the top players had similar names. I'm not saying anyone is botting or using multiple accounts necessarily. It is possible they all coordinated to rename their characters and top the boards?

[Meillquei]

Yea... this was clearly not designed with Dynamis and Materia in mind. We're struggling a lot because of a lack of people. As of writing this, only 3/8 Dynamis servers, Seraph, Hali, and Maduin are on stage 3.

[Anonemoose]

Pre 7.2 LL: "the game is dead the sky is falling and there are so many longstanding problems with the game"
Post 7.2 LL: "the game is saved! Best content ever! all of our dreams have come true and everything is fixed! based yoship!"
7.21 released: "hmmm this is actually kinda shit" <-- we are here
7.25 released: "so its just more of the same with the same problems just with a new coat of paint, like lipstick on a pig."
Pre 7.3 LL: "the game is dead the sky is falling and there are so many longstanding problems with the game and the devs refuse to listen to us!"

The only difference is that the talking heads, streamers and content creators will pretend like they weren't criticising the game pre 7.2 LL
and feign ignorance so as to not jeapordise their media tour and fanfest invites.

It's all so tiresome.

[Khryseis_Astra]

I think my disinterest may stem from the fact the name Cosmic Exploration sounds pretty cool, but what we're doing on the moon is not.

"Cosmic Construction" might have been better

With a name like Cosmic Exploration, I was hoping for more… exploration! I get that we’re just on the other side of the Moon we already know, but I hope there’s some kind of exploration aspect when we get to a new planet or moon. Like maybe we have to explore before we can gather in certain areas…

My personal experience… got on about 11am my time (an hour after reset). It had already progressed to the point where the hoverboard launchpads were there. I don’t really mind missing out on the growth stages. Firmament was like that too, I think I got to participate in 2-3 major events like that because of my work schedule. No one can be there 24 hours a day…

The Fates are what I enjoy most in there at the moment… the only thing where you really get everyone together. I started off on one of my specialist crafters. Did a few sets of recipes, only managed to get one silver and one gold, but I only have orange scrip gear and barely any current materia so far. I wonder how those not at max level are finding the recipe difficulty? I’ll go back to crafting when I have better gear/materia. But it does feel like we’re missing the “starter” recipes that Firm had for each level grouping, 5 recipes ranging from easy to expert.

Gathering… I never thought I’d miss Diadem so much! lol With Diadem, you could put on a podcast or a show, do your endless loop and enjoy the local chatter. I’m not enjoying the timed levequest format. I really wanted an endless gathering loop like that, but in space! Still have to have 500k in each for the title, and this is going to feel like much more of a grind than Diadem did. It feels rushed with the time limit, and honestly the “challenge” is running from node to node since we can’t use mounts, and waiting for our tools to be put away at the end of each node eating into our timer.

Rewards in general feel too expensive for the amount of credits you get per craft/gather… 6000 for a framer’s kit?! The gear is on par with Firm gear, but again, it was much easier to earn Skybuilder scrip than it is to get the Cosmic/Lunar credits. The amount of time/effort to reward ratio is a bit daunting. I spent 7 hours in there yesterday and couldn’t afford anything as a souvenir of my first day! lol I also didn’t get selected as a mech pilot all day, and only got one spin on the wheel of fortune, which I did before realizing that was the currency I needed for the pilot’s license! LOL Again I feel like the scratch tickets in Firm were a lot easier to earn than wheel spins here.

I’ll probably plug away at it, at least for the gatherer title… I love all the titles, but I know I’m not going to have the patience to grind for all of them.

[Catwho]

With a name like Cosmic Exploration, I was hoping for more… exploration! I get that we’re just on the other side of the Moon we already know, but I hope there’s some kind of exploration aspect when we get to a new planet or moon. Like maybe we have to explore before we can gather in certain areas…

(snip)

Gathering… I never thought I’d miss Diadem so much! lol With Diadem, you could put on a podcast or a show, do your endless loop and enjoy the local chatter. I’m not enjoying the timed levequest format. I really wanted an endless gathering loop like that, but in space! Still have to have 500k in each for the title, and this is going to feel like much more of a grind than Diadem did. It feels rushed with the time limit, and honestly the “challenge” is running from node to node since we can’t use mounts, and waiting for our tools to be put away at the end of each node eating into our timer.

Also hoping that once we get to other planets, we'll get more exploration and a gathering loop - but I suspect the reason they DIDN'T do that this time is because they didn't want to clog people's inventories any more than they already have. When I was active in Diadem, I had a retainer dedicated solely to holding all the stuff.

Since crafters are gifted the raw materials for their missions, it's unlikely that crafters will have physical items either.

Perhaps they can create a loop for non physical items? And get to a stack of 99 to turn in, at your own pace?

[BunnyBrat]

Is it me or is the a rank doh missions too difficult? Like I can figure out how to do them but I never seem to have enough skill for them even though I'm wearing the crafted ilvl 720 gear. And the cosmo tool they give you is insufficient for the missions.

[Kaurhz]

Is it me or is the a rank doh missions too difficult? Like I can figure out how to do them but I never seem to have enough skill for them even though I'm wearing the crafted ilvl 720 gear. And the cosmo tool they give you is insufficient for the missions.

What are your stats because some people have insane meld combinations, e.g., like 6,000 craftsmanship and no CP