Cosmic Exploration is CASUAL content with a pinch of midcore

[s32ialx]

My problem is this was touted as 'casual' content so adding try hard content in it just makes it no longer casual content at all.

For it to be casual content all of it has to be casual, I don't care if it takes twice or 3 times as long to accomplish things if it was fully casual, but gate keeping casual players into lower tier and rare spawn red alerts making it even harder and even more painful to them them to be fucked by the gacha rewards for participation and put in days no a week of work to not even get 1 relic max because doing even 5 red alerts a day (which no one could possibly even do since they are about 5 hours apart on busy servers) would not even give you enough points of IV to level from .7 to .8 once.

So you're asking people to spend weeks on weeks doing red alerts for a single relic, not even multiple, if they are even lucky enough to be able to play during a red alert and all their time and work they spend doing that to also then be told by the gacha system haha here have 10,000 Lunar Credits worth of Prisms.


P.S. lets not forget that all A-Class mission are time sensitive so a casual player would have to fail the mission multiple times just trying to learn if they could possibly even do it causing them to take even that much longer to obtain even just their first relic.


P.S.S. I'm not complaining on behalf of me, I have already 4 relics I try-harded bad, but I was expecting a nice relaxing easy going cosmic exploration not this BS.

[hydralus]

We're never going to agree what counts as casual or midcore or hardcore content since they're community-coined terms. Personally I think just because something takes a while doesn't mean it's hardcore/tryhard. However grinding out 4 tools in a week is pretty tryhard so no wonder you feel it's a grind.

[Catwho]

Casual content does not mean "you can easily grind out all achievements." The people who already have the black mount are NOT CASUAL PLAYERS and they should absolutely not be the standard against which you are judging yourself.

It's casual content in that you can drop in and drop out freely, with no set time commitments, and participate in the events though you're not already max level.

[Minali]

(snip bc. post length)

I hope it doesn't come off as rude, I am not you of course and you have to know what is or isn't fun for you, obviously. However, going by the examples you mention, like the sightseeing log, triple triad or crafting and gathering in this case, this feels like "perfect" is standing in the way of "good" a lot. It sounds like very binary decisions are being made here, leaving you with nothing to do due to not being able to do them 110%. There are hundreds of Sightseeing Log entries, and maybe a hand full after ARR involve jumping puzzles like the ones on the Kugane Tower or Bokairo Inn. And some of the ARR ones used to have jumping puzzles but are now nothingburgers due to the addition of flying in ARR regions. Considering the point of the Sightseeing Log is exploring maps and getting some nice extra lore about this world of FFXIV, and maybe unlocking paintings for housing or getting a minion or two, I can't help but wonder how not being able to do a hand full of them suddenly makes the experience of dozens of others really bad. It's not like you have to do them in order or have to have finished all HW entries to unlock the SB ones or so. (A part of the ARR logs seems to be hidden behind other ARR logs but as others already pointed out, the ARR ones are weird as hell and not representative for this whole feature anyway.)
And it's the same here: Plenty of people described in detail how there are many parts of Cosmic Exploration you can do with zero knowledge about gathering and crafting whatsoever, maybe 10-20% of knowledge for Stellar missions, should you decide to do some, it just takes more time. And yet just knowing there is an optional part somewhere in there that might not be your thing spoils the whole experience for you.

I am a person who has some completionist tendencies, and issues with being too perfectionist in some regards, so I fully understand of not wanting to do something maybe 70% instead of 100%. However, perfection is an illusion, not just in FFXIV but just in life in general. And I learned sometimes these 70% can also be a lot of fun one would otherwise miss out on entirely, limiting my life experience drastically.

Of course, as said, I am not you, but I know this kind of striving for experience that fulfill you 100% leads to a very lonely path with not a lot of options for enjoyment. If this is still enough and satisfying for you, sure, go for it, but maybe consider once in a while to look for fun in imperfect things as well...?

[Moomba33]

I was having trouble with a lot of the A rank missions on ltw because I was being stubborn and not using food on the first day. After I started using food and the cp tisane I found that most of them weren't bad, though there were still a couple that took a lot of attempts to gold. I like that the content gives you the materials for the crafts, it made it so I didn't feel bad experimenting with my rotation until I found something that worked. I honestly had fun trying different things, and even making use of specialist actions for the first time in awhile.
Silvers are still worth a lot of points towards the relic, so I encourage players who are struggling to keep trying and experimenting. There is a fairly wide gap in difficulty among the A rank missions so you may find some you can do even if not all of them.

Haven't tried much gathering yet so I can't comment on them.

Edit: I realize I kind of talked around the point, but overall I think it's ok for the content to have some harder recipes mixed in since all rewards can still be earned by players with easier missions, the red alerts, ect. Admittedly I don't know how much slower it is if you avoid A ranks altogether.

[Gwenkatsu]

/snip/

I am pretty much in the same boat as you, as I also ignore a lot of the content this game has to offer since it's just too hard for me.

But there's one difference between us regarding the mindset. My mindset is "try it out, and when it sucks, just stop doing it". Your mindset seems to be "Read about it, and when I get the feeling I can't do it to 100%, don't even start".

For example, I went into CE, did some crafting, all goes well. Then up comes a recipe where my workpiece suddenly takes on some states I've never seen before. In the forums I learned that this is nothing special, expert recipes do this for years. Ok. Obviously, I never did an expert recipe before, since I never saw this stuff before. "Screw this sh**, I'm not going to learn 20 new states to finish this ***". And I was gone in no time.

Couple of days later I decided to give it another try. This time I found out that my tool experience bar (or however it is called) can be filled, even if I get only bronze state on a mission. Guess what? I never used a Touch action again, just finish every piece ASAP, and level up my tool. I do a couple of quests per day, get my 1000 Lunar currency for the daily mech ride or gambling, and have fun.

I will never score gold on all the missions, I will never finish CE to 100%. And I don't care, it's just a nice little side activity to me. And this is all it should be IMO.

[Kaurhz]

My problem is this was touted as 'casual' content so adding try hard content in it just makes it no longer casual content at all.

For it to be casual content all of it has to be casual, I don't care if it takes twice or 3 times as long to accomplish things if it was fully casual, but gate keeping casual players into lower tier and rare spawn red alerts making it even harder and even more painful to them them to be fucked by the gacha rewards for participation and put in days no a week of work to not even get 1 relic max because doing even 5 red alerts a day (which no one could possibly even do since they are about 5 hours apart on busy servers) would not even give you enough points of IV to level from .7 to .8 once.

So you're asking people to spend weeks on weeks doing red alerts for a single relic, not even multiple, if they are even lucky enough to be able to play during a red alert and all their time and work they spend doing that to also then be told by the gacha system haha here have 10,000 Lunar Credits worth of Prisms.


P.S. lets not forget that all A-Class mission are time sensitive so a casual player would have to fail the mission multiple times just trying to learn if they could possibly even do it causing them to take even that much longer to obtain even just their first relic.


P.S.S. I'm not complaining on behalf of me, I have already 4 relics I try-harded bad, but I was expecting a nice relaxing easy going cosmic exploration not this BS.

This all or nothing mindset with whether something is casual or not is ultimately very detrimental as it is very practical and more than accessible to the casual audience.

I don't think casuals need to rely on Red Alerts or lower tier ranks to get their data logs. There's more than an abundance of A-Ranks which people can use to get their data logs, especially the Experimental recipes. If they cannot do them independently then that's fine... For the most part they do the same with master recipes and melding their gear anyway. People just need to be patient and wait for the resources to be uploaded and available in guides. Give it a good week or 2 more and guides will start making their rounds, which will include optimal accessible missions, and they will more than likely include macros which are scaled to both max melded players and those on scrip gear. Some people are just basically up in arms that there's no guide specifically saying what to do and how to do it.

I do somewhat agree on the complaint regarding the missions being time sensitive... Given the factors behind the recipes they are scaled to be casual, and the presence of a timer sort of contradicts this, but in the same vein expert recipes are not where you go to learn the core aspects of crafting.

[Misutoraru]

Edit: I realize I kind of talked around the point, but overall I think it's ok for the content to have some harder recipes mixed in since all rewards can still be earned by players with easier missions, the red alerts, ect. Admittedly I don't know how much slower it is if you avoid A ranks altogether.

It could be very slow if you avoid A ranks unless you have all day and camp for Red Alert. Red Alert does not have a fix spawn time and I have seen players notifying it pop in 3/4am mid night.

Some A ranks are dorable by orange script gear with some meld and accessories. Orange script left without main hand give you around 4XXX stats, if someone just hit 100. Takes about 2 cycles/4 full custom deliveries to get enough orange script to reach around 5000 stats.
4000 stat is quite a struggle even with food, 5000 feel more comfortable.

Gathering on the other hand I feel it is less of equipment or stat but the need of GP generation. Hi-Cordial could not keep up especially given the very tight time limit and how far spread the nodes

The real kicker I found is the “leve” sync. I believe they are created with 10/50/90/100 level in mind. For example my 90 crafter have a much easier time doing this the same B ranks unless than my 99 crafter.

[Valence]

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.

You don't need to do A-rank missions. That little 10% of midcore is not even mandatory.
You're also purposely quoting the lowest rewarding B-ranks to the highest reward A-ranks (A-2s and A-3s). I can do the same the other way around and say that they're all similar for 9 points (B-rank) vs 10 points (A-rank) because that's also true.
I am also not pentamelded by far, I run mid tier builds from teamcraft which I do believe is pretty standard for most crafters, and it's way enough for the non expert A-1s.

I swear do you people even craft casually out of cosmic? Beyond society quests and customs?

The worst part is if people asked questions, like "How are you progressing your relic? What missions are you doing", and literally many people would jump in and help, many may even be inclined to give macros to help with it, or a resource that they are using. I would literally do the same on this forum in this thread, but some people are more concerned with thinking the content is wrong, too hardcore, too try hard, or whatever.. Than what they are with actually asking questions

To be honest, a lot of this issue is just compounded by guides more often taking the path of least resistance rather than trying to convey how the actions interact with each other, which in many respects I understand, but it is a major contributor to these all these issues happening with Cosmic... People for the past several years have googled "Levelling guide", and in most instances all you get is macros. I get that the onus is on the player to ask why or figure out the actions, but guides compound this issue massively.

It's literally the raidplan disease that has spread all over pve since at least the same amount of time (it was macros before raidplans). People have stopped actually engaging with the content mechanics and gameplay, they just log in to get it solved for them so they just have to execute.

I never suggested hard content can't exist or that it should be "deleted" I've only said that when that hard content suddenly happens as a requirement for progress within a certain piece of content touted as "casual" it ceases to be exactly that because without clearing that difficulty spike, you are literally stuck and you can't just fall back on Duty Support or unsync for that content... assuming the fights even allow you to solo due to mechanics, as the case often was with Stormblood trials I found, especially Extreme when I went trying to farm cards by my lonesome (because lord knows there's nobody on my home data center I can ask for help, and people on Aether/Primal/Crystal already seem to think people on Dynamis are "bads" without me coming over there and proving it).

It is not a requirement, unless you do consider normal crafting recipes hard, then yes, normal crafting is a requirement to progress content about crafting.
A-ranks are not mandatory. And some of them are nothing more than endgame master recipes if you really have to.

What is how it's always been, is that doh relics have been gated behind expert recipes since their inception. It's actually the first time you can do them WITHOUT doing expert recipes if you dodge the expert A-1s (and all of the A-2s and A-3s), or do red alerts.

I do not understand why you keep insisting this is hardcore content. As I already explained above, this is normal, baseline crafting. All you have to do is decide if baseline crafting is hard or insurmountable for you, which can be a valid take. Or, if you don't consider the content worth to you because you cannot 100% it.

Admittedly I don't know how much slower it is if you avoid A ranks altogether.

Not much in reality, because even the players attempting the A-ranks, especially the 2s and 3s, will meet consistent failures, and for example when you're getting an average of 50-80% on A-3s like me then obviously not getting gold on everything is a given for those. I'd probably not go any slower if I did only A-1s, nor much slower with Bs, that can be 100% gold without any rng or uncertainties thrown into the mix.

[s32ialx]

You don't need to do A-rank missions. That little 10% of midcore is not even mandatory.
You're also purposely quoting the lowest rewarding B-ranks to the highest reward A-ranks (A-2s and A-3s). I can do the same the other way around and say that they're all similar for 9 points (B-rank) vs 10 points (A-rank) because that's also true.

Actually I was referring to the highest rewarding ones, there is not a single B rank that I have seen that is higher than 11 the MAJORITY of them are 6-7 NOT TO MENTION you are suggesting that you get to PICK which ones are available for you, which you know is flat out not true.

It's literally the raidplan disease that has spread all over pve since at least the same amount of time (it was macros before raidplans). People have stopped actually engaging with the content mechanics and gameplay, they just log in to get it solved for them so they just have to execute.

OH NO people are playing this game just like other MMO's and looking up how to do things instead of wanting to spend hours learning something when they have a life and job that they also need to take care of, insane.