Please Fix Fishing

[Dugahst]

(also posted in the big thread)
I don't know if devs look at these posts or not (probably not), but i feel alone in Vana'diel. Fishing used to be a very popular hobby, but changes to the game have ruined it. The actual act of fishing is still fun, but it is no longer profitable and fish are no longer desirable (for example nebs don't sell on the AH anymore because you can just get the shihei a vendor). That combined with the nerf to vendor prices, people have seemingly abandoned the hobby.

I propose the following changes to help it back to greatness;
- Raise vendor prices for fish (this would make sense given the time investment and the fact that the most common way to make gil is with sparks, this makes sense)
- Nobody likes fishing up monsters, a cool change would be to give fishers a buff upon defeating a fished up monster. The buff could be something like an increase to bites for 3 minutes.
- add some easy to make Cooking recipes with fish in each difficulty tier that are actually REALLY good.
- add gold carp, tricolored carp to acceptable fish for Lu Shang quest
- Make the Key Item for the Lu Shang quest provide a buff to fishing, perhaps doubling or alltogether removing the fishing fatigue. This will add incentive to complete the quest itself (rather than just buying the rod on the AH).

Edit (thought of another):
- It'd be really cool if there were unique NMs that could be fished up too, they could drop fishing related goods

[Isola]

All of those do sound quite reasonable. NPC prices, is always a touchy issue, but with sparks... I really don't see a problem.

More AOE meals would be really nice. AOE sushi platters etc

[Sirmarki]

Vendor prices for fish used to be fairly high but were massively gimped down, probably as an anti-RMT measure, back in the day.
I know forest carp are included in the fishing competition, so yeh, other carp would make sense I guess.

[Dugahst]

right, but now that getting gil is so easy (via Acheron Shields from sparks) there really isn't any reason to have the vendor prices be low anymore.

[Sirmarki]

right, but now that getting gil is so easy (via Acheron Shields from sparks) there really isn't any reason to have the vendor prices be low anymore.

I agree. There is no reason why in this day and and age, considering the unlimited amounts of gil people are gaining from what you have mentioned.

[Alhanelem]

weren't fish vendor prices previously nerfed BECAUSE they were used by RMT to farm gil (since it's so stupidly easy to bot)

RMT still exist, so unless RMT are actually playing the game to farm sparks, it's probably best to leave it alone.

[Nyarlko]

weren't fish vendor prices previously nerfed BECAUSE they were used by RMT to farm gil (since it's so stupidly easy to bot)

RMT still exist, so unless RMT are actually playing the game to farm sparks, it's probably best to leave it alone.

The prices were nerfed prior to the minigame being added, so it made sense to do so back when fishing was literally nothing but a cast>reel-in activity making it a perfect target for RMT. Nowadays tho, they could make every single fish sell for 1k and it would still be a pittance compared to sparks.

Let's be generous and say the average catch rate is ~30sec each. (I know that it takes longer per catch normally, but for example's sake.)
That would be 2 fish per minute, or 120 per hour, assuming every single thing that bites is a fish, and you don't lose any of them.
That would be a mere 120k per hour, at something like 5-10x the current NPC prices.. Practically, I don't think it'd be possible to actually reel in 120 fish per hour, so the actual gil/hour would be even lower. Don't think it'd beat sparks farming (which it probably shouldn't tbh) as long as the average price per fish sold was under 10,000 each in fact.

Fish could stand a price bump. >_>

I don't fish. I would not benefit from prices going up on fish beyond the garbage I get out of Mog Garden. I still say our fishing brethren should stop getting screwed over.

[Sirmarki]

Nowadays tho, they could make every single fish sell for 1k and it would still be a pittance compared to sparks.

Yep. There is no way fishing will ever come close to the gil generated from sparks. Factoring in the catch rates, and the daily cap too. The most valuable fish are extremely low catch rates. For example, Matsya require rare/ex bait, and you'll be lucky to get 5 per hour. Same with some of the pop item fish, the catch rate is low.

Obviously, fishing is an important factor when it comes to cooking ingredients though.

[Seriha]

Yeah, if you make NPC costs too great, people will become less likely to AH them since quick sales will precede sharing with the community unless there's a significant margin to be had. Then again, it's not like there aren't a ton of (near) useless fish, already, but I chalk a lot of that up to the mediocrity of food that's not commonly used. Do something about that and you'd probably see more profitability than just vendoring.

[Gwydion]

I too wish that fishing was more relevant...but in a fun way that doesn't break the game.