Please restore fishing to be "fun" again

[geekgirl101]

Bots will bot regardless what you do to them, they'll keep botting 24/7 whether you stick limitations on them or not. So please enough of the nonsense fishing nerfs that make skilling up a painful chore for legit players. This is the worst profession in the game and it is not fun, and I for one play games for the fun factor not for 2-3 hours of boredom.

[dasva]

What is really ironic is that annoying fishing mini game of tug of war that was supposed to stop bots actually made it better for bots and harder for legit players lol.

[Draylo]

Fishing was never fun... at least this requires some thought if you do it manually lol. The old way you just wait for a bite and hit enter.. That was more fun?

[Stompa]

I don't remember it being any easier in 2005 when I got lvl 100. We didn't have the skillup rings back then either, and the skillups were totally glacial slowness, so this isn't really a new problem, if it is a problem. I always felt the slow skillups made it more of a thrill when you actually got a skillup lol . The problem with fishing today imho is that like everything else in the game now, the cash incentive has been undercut by the insane random marketplace where you can do a 3 minute colonisation rieve and get a Yorcia visage V which sells from 2-5m gil, and yet I with Ebisu and f110 can earn 0gil-190k gil in the same time depending on the target fish & bite rate. In the old game it was rare for those kind of huge multi-million gil drops, and they weren't just dropping from easy-prey enemies like the ones in colonisation rieves. Fishing is still grounded at 2003 core game prices meaning your lvl 100 fish is worth around 1.5k gil at vendors shops. I personally liked the core game prices and always hated the multimillion soaring AH price spikes, so I'm more saddened than ever by these random 3m~ drops people can get in two minutes of bashing chapulis in rieve. But fishing was always a passion and a hobby, if you like it you will do it regardless of the fact you are losing millions every day by not doing something else instead. I always loved ffxi fishing coz it is relaxing after work, and used to be a decent way to make gil selling stacks of black sole etc., but now that the random drops economy has killed the crafting economy to a large extent, I just fish for relaxing and coz it lets my mind wander.

[dasva]

Also doesn't help that despite the relatively poor gil/time return you mentioned people are still making more and more ebisu's making it harder and harder to find bait further cutting into profits. In fact ironically alot of those ebisu's were probably funded by the much better time/gil methods of making gil lol

[Stompa]

Yeh, fishing sort of stayed the same while the game changed around it. My understanding of fishing vs. other crafts was always that the incredibly slow skillups in fishing as compared to other crafts, were a balancing act because other crafts cost a lot of money to get to 100, even if for example you farm all your own threads and crystals in CC you lose money in real terms from failed synths. But fishing, at least when I began back in 04, was unique in that you really could get level 100 fishing for almost no investment at all, everyone back then was farming their own Lu-shangs, and many ppl as a point of pride insisted on catching all 10,000 carps and not buying a single one ;) And then you could basically just use your static baits carefully, lvl cooking for the ball baits etc. So it was in essence the one craft you could get lvl100 without losing lots of money every day on fail synths and rare mats, and with fishing you could pull almost endless money out of the sea for free. And the balance-out of that, was fishing had horribly slow skillups and the returns on your lvl 100 product was 1k~ in shops.
But now people make gil so fast, most just buy a lushang, and buy the ebisu fish too. That changes the free-craft nature of fishing, but it doesnt change the slow skillup or the tiny payouts at lvl 100.
I did farm the 10k carps back in 04 and all ebisu fish (ebisu took me 2008-2012 lol), coz its like sort of fun mini-goals you can have in the background when you're not doing events. But I wonder how fishing will fit in today, because it has been superceded as a casual moneymaker by rieves and even dom ops you can npc the dom notes weapons and make more per hour than if you were fishing.

[dasva]

Well fishing isn't that slow if you know what your doing. I can take a brand new account and from the time the 2 week trial wears off I can get from 0 to 100 and have the items for ebisus in about 3 weeks lol. But yeah outside of ebisus rod and Lu shangs almost no investment. Another boon over other crafts is pretty much all your customers are either cooks who need more and more or npcs that will buy them all for the same price always

[Kriegsgott]

Well fishing isn't that slow if you know what your doing. I can take a brand new account and from the time the 2 week trial wears off I can get from 0 to 100 and have the items for ebisus in about 3 weeks lol. But yeah outside of ebisus rod and Lu shangs almost no investment. Another boon over other crafts is pretty much all your customers are either cooks who need more and more or npcs that will buy them all for the same price always

write a guide i wanna test it next month :)
my fishing 28 or 29 is still from 200X where you had only to type /fish and do nothing ^^

[Sarick]

Well fishing isn't that slow if you know what your doing. I can take a brand new account and from the time the 2 week trial wears off I can get from 0 to 100 and have the items for ebisus in about 3 weeks lol.

I like to eat hamburgers with real beef not beef by products. I've leveled fishing I know you can get up to 80ish fairly fast but the final stages 90+ show down a lot. It all depends on the luck of the draw. At 108 I managed to get 110 in about 2 days of fishing. It was EXAUSTING. Fishing in general is a long process. If you don't on an ebisu good luck getting 110 on the cheap end.

[Deifact]

Fishing has never been fun

[dasva]

write a guide i wanna test it next month :)
my fishing 28 or 29 is still from 200X where you had only to type /fish and do nothing ^^

Well as someone stated the last part is more luck though not like it matters since the skill only helps your rates very slightly and you are already in your money fish the key really is getting the skill up ring and making sure you don't try to far a gap and get to fatigue cap each day... iirc I did shall shell to 50 or so. Silver shark to around 60 then off to nasmau to catch Mercanbaligi and Ahtapots capping at like 86 and 90 iirc. Usually got 1-2 lvls a day 2-4 with ring. But had a few crazy days of more like 8 lvls. After that I really just stay there since npcing them is decent gil till I get ebisus rod... and generally if you lvl up that quickly you will be waiting if nothing else on getting the gps for the KI lol. Then just plug away at money fish with ebisus and you will eventually get up there but again the difference between skill isn't huge so don't worry and let the skillups come while making gil. I don't have any sub 100 parses but the differences between 100 and 110 +full gear/setups were very minimal

of course there is the alternate method where you purposefully try to catch fish with the rod and get the "too small" message. It doesn't count towards fatigue so as long as your bite rate isn't horrible you could theoretically get crazy amounts each day.

And god I sorta miss the /fish days. Would have a maccro with /fish /wait 30 or whatever /fish etc so I could leave a couple minutes at a time

[Kriegsgott]

Well as someone stated the last part is more luck though not like it matters since the skill only helps your rates very slightly and you are already in your money fish the key really is getting the skill up ring and making sure you don't try to far a gap and get to fatigue cap each day... iirc I did shall shell to 50 or so. Silver shark to around 60 then off to nasmau to catch Mercanbaligi and Ahtapots capping at like 86 and 90 iirc. Usually got 1-2 lvls a day 2-4 with ring. But had a few crazy days of more like 8 lvls. After that I really just stay there since npcing them is decent gil till I get ebisus rod... and generally if you lvl up that quickly you will be waiting if nothing else on getting the gps for the KI lol. Then just plug away at money fish with ebisus and you will eventually get up there but again the difference between skill isn't huge so don't worry and let the skillups come while making gil. I don't have any sub 100 parses but the differences between 100 and 110 +full gear/setups were very minimal

of course there is the alternate method where you purposefully try to catch fish with the rod and get the "too small" message. It doesn't count towards fatigue so as long as your bite rate isn't horrible you could theoretically get crazy amounts each day.

And god I sorta miss the /fish days. Would have a maccro with /fish /wait 30 or whatever /fish etc so I could leave a couple minutes at a time

gonna try to shall shells next month gonna let you know how it worked for me thx /cheer
and i guess i try to get one of these skill up rings didn know there ar some.......

[Lotto]

Bots will bot regardless what you do to them, they'll keep botting 24/7 whether you stick limitations on them or not. So please enough of the nonsense fishing nerfs that make skilling up a painful chore for legit players. This is the worst profession in the game and it is not fun, and I for one play games for the fun factor not for 2-3 hours of boredom.

If you don't like fishing or don't have enough time for it there's an easy solution : don't fish.

[dasva]

I think you may be looking thru slightly rose tinted googles. Maybe your server was just crazy ebisu fish were only 20-30k on Ramuh back in 2008... of course hardly anyone sold them. And you didn't have to farm bait then since zaldon was out

Anyways I don't really see any difference between "legit" farming and farming for gil to pay for something. I mean without that there would be litterally no game economy and pretty much no use for gil

[dasva]

It's probably more of a gil loss thing. Back when I was making my first ebisu I basically had to camp the ah to get the few that went up for 20-30k. I really don't see any difference. Being pragmatic I do or try to do what I feel is most efficient with my game time. If I'm trying to get something there is no real difference other than preception in effort applied to directly farming that exact item or some other item to effectively exchange it for something else. Purposefully going the hard route unless you actually enjoy that just seems like pride run amok. But it's your game so you play however you see fit. But think of it in real world terms. Would you do everything thing in stratch for your life from growing your food to making all the material in the electronics in the computer you are posting this on or do just a few and exchange the fruits of your labors for the things you want? Again your choice but no need to be angry at the people who actually participate in the economy for their benefit or the game for having one... and even without AHables there would be alot more mercing then there already is. Just cause it's ra/ex don't mean you can't sell it ^^

There has always been big ticket awesome items. kclub, scorp harness, PCC, novia etc.

Sure right now you can buy a staff that does more like 3 times the dmg of 99 magians but only on t1s the dmg is actually about the same on T5s. That's not bending over for gil that's new content having new stuff. Delve megaboss stuff has an high ilvl. But the direct drops are even higher so the only reason the usual best staff for nuking for those jobs is buyable is because there is no staff dropping delve boss... yet. But really still really good gear from skirmish 2 and plasm stuff. In fact alot of it is best in game sorta making you farm to stay the best. Anyways as far as acheivement it only robs you if you let it. Back when I was making first ebisus my lu shangs was breaking litterlaly 2/3s the gugs I got on the line and I didn't have a woodworker and even at 20k each it still took alot of fishing and ah camping to get it so still something of an acheivement. Plus sometimes you gotta do stuff to pay da bills not just cause it's what ya like lol. Also I'd say there was times when fishing was broken... the days of selling rusty gear to npcs for like 10k gil or whatever it was was kinda crazy

[dasva]

Well see it doesn't work for you because you seem to derive some enjoyment it. That's your thing. There are people out there that like to grow there own food and cook from scratch too. There are probably real life weavers out there that actually grow there own material and card it and weave it. Though many don't. But their is no one that does everything little thing of every little thing themselves. Not for awhile anyways. It's rather inefficient. You still do the same thing but with different things at least in real life. It's really just a choice of where you'd rather spend more of your time usually based on either what you are good at or what you enjoy. No reason to be down on someone because they like different parts of the game or life in different amounts than you do. This is an MMORPG that's kinda the whole point. Have tons of different things that appeal to different people.

I didn't back then :(. But then again I had horrible play time. And SH was like 14 mil <.<. This is actually part of why I lvld fishing. It was a steady source of income I could jump in and out of quickly so could be fit around my rather random play hours. Well see you are taking the effort needed to get the gil out of the equation again which is a false premise.And see you are once again comparing lvl 99 content to 117. That is the difference. Lvl 99 weapons are rather crazy compared to 75 as well it's gear progression. The only way for this not to happen is to litterally make nothing new worth getting ahable. But that would be rather silly thing to do especially with how fast this gear progression is going. Given how horrible the NA community and lss are over here I doubt I would every get a boss weapon without getting an EU shell to merc the boss for me. So the ah versions are litterally the only way for me to get stuff that is better than the NQ delves well either that or ditch my job so I can be on when the EU stuff goes or try to get into some jp shouts lol. Again if you don't like that and want to and can farm your weapon by all means go ahead and do it. But just as there is nothing wrong from playing that way (and in fact plenty of people are making gil doing that lol) there is nothing wrong from buying it either. I think the fact that they provided a few slightly worst buyable but left most of them requiring the fight to be a rather happy median between the 2 ideologies. Everyone gets there way unless there way is to make others do it there way lol

[Limecat]

I want to be able to throw ranged-slot explosives into the water and instantly catch a bunch of fish.

[dasva]

I want to be able to throw ranged-slot explosives into the water and instantly catch a bunch of fish.

But then they would already be pre cooked :(. Speaking of which how does shooting a tiny rabbit with a huge cannon not ruin the meat?

[dasva]

I agree with you on a lot of your points, which you have made very well by the way. Especially that people should play games in the way that makes them happiest. I hope people enjoy playing ffxi and stay in the game lol. I'm not 'down' on anyone. But this game was cherished by many people for being a fairly challenging and stratified game where you earned stuff slowly through effort. Now you can sleepwalk to 99 on a new char, get some online gil, buy ebisu, buy a skillup ring via the RMT mules that sell ranking fish for 15m~ each, which btw they are often selling five or six fish at 100% base min/max weight which is impossible to catch five or six nullpoint fish, you might fish all day for weeks and get two or three fish that are close to the min/max, but I see RMT mules selling bagfuls of min/max weight fish at 15m each and I dont see how they doing that without hacks of some kind. So you can buy ebisu rod, buy skillup ring, buy a gaxe that is twice as powerful as the one used by a WAR who played the job for ten years and he started working on REMs years ago, your AH weap can out-DD him and you can do all this in your new-adventurer pyjamas. You cant really compare that to farming ksnm ODS etc. for a few weeks or months to save up for a SH in the old days.
But really if you are enjoying fishing that is what matters, if you buy your rods or w/e. This thread however is saying basically 'I don't like fishing, will buy lushang/ebisu and want to go afk while fishing anyway coz its boring' which sort of defeats the point of being in the fish guild to begin with imo, which was about travelling vanadiel, seeing the sights and having fun catching different fish and relaxing and stuff, doing the fishing quests using persistence, while also obtaining ingredients for your cooking at the same time.
:)I think this is kind of where the crux of our difference is. RMTs are a problem and indeed seriously harm gameplay in lots of ways for lots of players. I think most people who aren't RMTs or buy gil from them can agree to that. But where we seem to differ is you seem to at least somewhat blame the system for the cheaters and not the cheaters themselves. Like someone who just goes and buys gil online (though in sense you could apply the whole time efficiency argument to that if it wasn't cheating) and buys whaterver yeah they definitely kinda bypassed the game and in some ways can lower harm gameplay of others not to mention themselves. But actually going out and farming things yourself to exchange either directly or thru medium of gil still keeps the spirit of the game so to speak. And ya know doesn't violate the ToS <.<

As far as the whole skillup ring thing... ya know I've kinda wondered that. I mean I've looked into various bots a bit and know people online that use/make them but haven't heard of something like that... but then again I've also heard a story of someone that could hack the game so good he could do things like DC other people including GMs or put your relics in your bazaar forever lol. So I'd guess something like fish weight could be hackable. I mean speaking of the KSNM I'm told a long time ago that you used position hacking you could warp right from 1 KSNM instance to another till you used them all up with only having to enter once. I mean look at salvage people were duping stuff like crazy. NNI people were getting full sets within a month walking thru walls and running at speeds that make flee look like crawling lol. And that I think is the real problem here. Fishing or farming or gear or whatever gil or no gil if someone wants to cheat hard enough they can get pretty much anything in this game without the effort and time and well just the gameplay that it should require. It's sad but it's going to be there no matter what...

As far as fishing goes I almost think the old style of fishing would bring back more honest fishers. I mean lets face it fishing is rather boring to most so being able to /fish every now and then while watching TV in the background is alot more appealing then reeling a fish in. On the other hand botters don't care at all since they aren't there anyways and the reeling the fish in requires the game to know what fish it is for fatigue so once they learned how to read that it actually made things alot better for them. Before they actually had to be able to kill a monster they might reel up now they can just not reel it up. So now bans mean alot less since they don't have to lvl or gear or skillup characters at all. Either that or they could just reprogram how it works and just keep that info server side until it's reeled up and only send a fatigue value and then ya know make sure fish overlap and such. And of course there is doing your part and sending in reports to the STF whenever you see fishy behavour :).

[dasva]

That's what I mean I blame the cheaters not the system. As cheaters always gunna cheat. Man 15 mil... I don't think I'd pay more than 100k... cause in the end I'm waiting on gps to get my ebisus and the faster skill up rate wont make it's money back on stuff you can catch with lu shangs unless you get lucky spot in the market with cooking. But yeah if you can throw away 15 mil on a single fish just to get to 90 or so in 2 weeks instead of 4 why the hell are you fishing? You clearly have better ways of making gil and don't enjoy fishing for itself. Your server is scary. People with way more gil than sense. Then again I made ebisus for people for gil for a good year or 2 and didn't see anyone fishing up in beau... then in a period of like 2 weeks 30 people were fishing at all times. And I also see same people winning the game a few times even though you shouldn't need more than 1 ring to get to ebisus lvl....

As far as the guy RMTing... well you see you can't ban people just for bazaaring stuff. You actually have to catch them breaking the rules. Wouldn't make any sense for them to do anything. You'd lose so many subscriptions if you just started banhammering people left and right for just looking suspicous. Not completely sure but there may even be some legal reprecussions or at the very least very bad press. And considering this is one of the few subscription based MMOs out there right now and one of the few things making SE money since they have failed recently with other stuff they kinda can't afford to not play by their own rules.

As far as monitoring rmts themselves... it's rather hard (read impossible) watching so many accounts at once with very limited manpower. Ever notice how you usually get the same 1-2 GMs answering your calls? If you even get anything other than an automated go to SE support center online lol. That's why I encourage you and others to report actual rule violations or potential ones currently in progress. Not something after the fact unless you know they going to do it again soon or it's something that can be tracked down thru logs and such. So like for those suspicious fisherman maybe follow them sometime while trying to catch your own ring fish. Then report him. I'd have to defer to someone with more knowlodge on what GMs can see and not but I'd bet they'd be able to tell if someone was catching something they shouldn't have in progress... at the very least since they are probably using a bot he can see them reacting at fast enough where they will go on a watch list. And if he is really afk and doesn't respond to tells das boot. I've definitely seen that work :)

The little mini game is fun I guess the first few times but god gets boring after awhile. But either way imho that change was what made it really profitable for people to afk bot fish. Since that's what allowed them to know what was on the line ahead of time which lets them not catch crap or things that can break or monsters that kill them. Also lowered the likelyhood of snaps and such. That said I think they might be investigating fishing soon since someone reported something in the bugs section as a bug that looked rather suspicious problem to be having to me and they accepted it. So in a round about way they might have another serious fishing investigation. And I know every few weeks to months they tend to just go around beau poking all the fishers and jailing the afk ones. It's fun to hear the whines.... how did they know I was botting theres no way they can prove it... well they sent you 20 tells that you didn't respond to and then you continued to try in fish in jail <.<

[dasva]

True it probably is some mischeif going on though could just be teams of fishers getting 200 a day and throwing out all but the best and 1 guy selling. But really in the end you can't punish on just seems suspcious. Generally speaking I can win if I put enough effort into it. The amount needed depending on the fish. Like something easily gotten to and caught like say Jungle catfish it will likely take either alot of luck or fishing to 200 everyday during the 2 weeks to get one that is good enough to get top 20. If it's something annoying like sea zombie I sometimes see less than 20 entries lol. Needless to say it's really not worth my time to do it when it's something common but often can catch just one if it's more uncommon and maybe a couple of others to bazaar. Though usually the bazaar prices I last saw were more reasonable. Like 200-300k at most. If I could get 15mil I'd do that all the time lol.

Yeah discernment does make it way too easy now. Well for real fishers bots already know whats on the line lol. Ha that reminds me I had a friend who had his kids fish for him cause they found the minigame fun. Child labor!

[Rustic]

I want to be able to throw ranged-slot explosives into the water and instantly catch a bunch of fish.

We just need to be able to use grenades as bait.

Suddenly, crafting them becomes relevant and you get "raw fish bits" to make sushi with. Everybody wins!

[geekgirl101]

Restoring topic rather than starting a new one on the same subject... SE, your fishing system blows. It's too boring, too slow, and a wasted opportunity for encouraging people to take up new crafts. I have yet to understand the mentality of why you put so many limitations in the fishing system (and in all other gathering jobs) and why you continue to turn a blind eye when players complain about it. You made it boring notoriously boring enough to drive people to bot, and then you wonder why so many people run bots. Good job!

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/scsc.gif

[Mitruya]

Yeah ... I've been working towards getting a Lu Shang's rod, and I don't even like fishing really. It's just something to do.

[Dragoy]

geekgirl101,

What would you prefer the new system would be like instead?

Aside from being divided by zarrro at times, I don't mind the current system. I'm not a fan of the huge on-screen arrows either, but my skill does seem like it matters more now. The lower level fish feel like less of a chore, while the higher level ones can still put up a fight.

It never felt boring to me, but that's probably because I tend to watch videos or do something else on the side, which I prefer being able to do. That might make the difference. While I don't look for it to be a more complex mini-game, at this point I probably wouldn't be against it either, as it could be made more fun fer sure.

I can't say much for the lower levels, as I think I was around level 100 of skill when the renovation of the fishing system went through, but from what I can tell, I appreciate the changes there, too.


I don't think the 'boring' aspect makes people use them bots. I think it's more about lazy, profit, and profit. And lazy, probably, but mostly about profit.

Not that I can really say, since I never ever did that myself; I can only guess!


Something I would greatly appreciate, would be less line-snaps by things such as matsya. I already mentioned these numbers in another thread, but I think it's fitting to do it here, too, as they display an aspect of fishing I do not find fun.

Here's a bit something (manually kept notes, which are probably not absolutely 100% error-free) from between

07/07/1198 Watersday 10:22
Waxing Gibbous (62%)
28 Apr., 2014 0:10:30

and

05/07/1207 Firesday 10:55
Waning Crescent (29%)
04 Sep., 2014 12:40:13

with a skill level of 101 (start) to 109 (end), with all the equipment on top including Mega Moglification towards the end of the way (which only seemed to make things worse, hahahadgfh...):

Total Casts 3592

Matsya 166
Snapsya 275
Jellyfish 373
Monster 290
Dividedbyzarrro 4
Failfish 5
Nothing 1050
Arrowwood log 352
Rusty 1082
bucket 264
leggings 522
subligar 296

That's about 740 drill calamaries and/or dwarf pugils, from which actually only 426 I fished for myself between

3/1/1193 Watersday 10:41
Waning Gibbous (62%)
7 Feb., 2014 14:32:52

and

11/09/1206 Watersday 6:10
Waxing Gibbous (71%)
23 Aug., 2014 18:14:21

which was about 1673 cave cherax (that is, 25% of them had bait). The rest, if my notes are to be believed, came from log-in campaigns (in which by the by I think their price is still too high!). I did not keep a record on the exact amount of bait I got from these campaigns, unfortunately, but as long as my matsya and cave cherax notes are not wildly off, the numbers should be quite accurate.

That's almost half a year for two (2) shaper's shawls and indeed only 166 matsya.

Obviously I did not fish every day, all day, but when I did, it would be pretty much the only thing I would/could do that day in Vana'diel.


I don't mind the pattern of getting bait from one prey to get to fish another prey, but the rate at which the bait can be obtained as well as the time consumed take away from the fun factor.