Cosmic Exploration is CASUAL content with a pinch of midcore

[Astronis]

The missions shouldn't be impossible without materia, it should be harder but not impossible (this is casual after all and telling players to just do the lower tier stuff is NOT the answer it's suppose to be casual).

The ranking system is gate keeping casual players from even attempting to qualify.

As for the it shouldn't take weeks this I am specifically referring to leveling your relic tools it's not like they are better than Penta crafted tools and are completely useless outside of CE anyways so making it harder for a casual to even benefit from the tool if they are already level 100 before they even get into CE or in between 50 and 90 having no missions for those levels like firmament had.

Thank you for answering me. I personally don't think having harder stuff to do while there is still stuff available to casual players is unfriendly to casual players, but opinions obviously differ.

I did shove random materia in my scrip crafter gear so can't speak to that...but...as an actual exceptionally casual crafter, the finished tool (should I bother to get it, since my scrip tool serves my casual crafting needs perfectly well) will be more than sufficient since I won't be pentamelding a different one ever anyway. I'll let you know how long it takes me to make it, should I bother doing so...I might, just because the research bonus will make the botanist axe less miserable to get with the forced GP regen downtime, and I actually would use the botanist tool with some frequency.

IMO, if a tool took a week and a half to level (which would be roughly three times how long it took me to make my fishing pole), I, as a very casual crafter, would never do it, no matter how easy it was to do.

Crafting in FFXIV exists in two phases: the easy macro-spam phase, which has no gameplay, and the expert crafting, which is the same but requires 20,000,000+ gil. Crafting can hardly be called video game content because, unlike combat, botting isn’t simply a cheat, it’s baked in to the design. You press a macro button and it works.

This is almost certainly why I actually kind of like fishing but can't stand crafting in FFXIV. The CE fishing quests are at least somewhat engaging mini-puzzles, even when I didn't manage to figure out the trick to all of them.