[dev1274] Favored Baits and Placement of Fishing Schools

[Orophin]

Hello community and devs,

I've been messing around with fishing since the patch since it's one of my passions in the game. I'm finding the change to the favored baits a pretty good one, however there's a couple things I want to point out about it based on the information I've gathered so far.

First of all, I've written up a moderately lengthy post about my data gathered so far. It can be viewed at http://www.disciplesoftheland.com/fo...?g=posts&t=676

To sum it up here, the favored baits respond very well in fishing schools. (nodes that are detected via Gulleye) The bite rate is a little bit slower in non-schools, but that's not too big of an issue. Below are the two main issues I have:

1. Some baits (namely the NPC bought ones) do not favor fish at all. I don't know if this is by design or what, but it'd be nice if they'd at least favor fish in the Grade 1 schools. This would help the people just starting up fishing progress through it a little faster. I do believe once people move on to Grade 2 that they should progress into more specialty baits like the ones crafted from other fish or crafted lures.

Also, sort of tied in with this is there are some fish that don't seem to have a favored bait at all. Based on the data I've gathered, Monke Onke and Black Eel don't respond to any of the freshwater baits in a school, so I doubt it'll be different in non-schools. It would be nice for these to have at least a few baits that they respond to in case people are targeting them specifically.

2. Some areas either don't have fishing schools at all, or have them that are located in a very inconvenient manner. I feel the fishing schools are important to minimize the time spent in trying to catch fish, and when you're doing the Grade 4 achievement to catch however many 1000 of fish that is, it will take quite a while fishing at a non-school location.

Some examples I have are:

Humblehearth (Grade 4 Black Shroud), Horizon (Grade 3 Thanalan), and Nophica's Wells (Grade 4 Thanalan) have no schools whatsoever.

Tranquil (Grade 3 Black Shroud) has only two schools and they're located in such a way that it takes way too much time to travel in between them. One is at Rootslake and the other is at Quarrymill. I feel it would make more sense to either put three schools around Rootslake, or to put the schools in the same streams where the spearfishing nodes are currently.

It seems like almost every other area that the achievements for fishing take place in only have two schools to fish from. This forces you into having to deplete a spearfishing node to start the cycle over again.

I would just like to point out that what was done with the secondary nodes was great. No longer do I have to totally rely on having to always look at an outside website to locate them.

In closing, I know this game is going to undergo a lot of changes, especially to the maps, in between now and 2.0, but it would be nice to see some of the above changes be made in one of the coming patches to help out the people interested in fishing. It's no secret that crafters and gatherers are taking a backseat to the battle classes, but keeping things convenient for gatherers would really be nice. Making things more accessible will help stimulate the economy for desired items for crafters and people needing items for Grand Company turn-ins.

[Orophin]

Updated original post for some additional information. I hope to see some input or get some likes on this topic if you support the devs expanding on the fishing schools.

[lvicious]

Great post Oro and I agree on all points. You summed it up very nicely.

[viion]

I dont gather/craft myself but when I think of it relating to other classes such as DoW/M, they can hop from mob to mob to mob to mob with relatively small distance, I would figure DOL should be kind of similar, maybe not making points every few feet away, but at least short enough so the next one is within 10-15 seconds running distance.

Just my 2 cent

[Alzelia]

Good points man!