Please fix fishing

[vonn]

1. Getting skill on fishing is at least 10x more difficult than ANY other trade.
2. 90% of my catch it items/monsters. I know you're going to say "use the gear that reduces items" but how can i ware it if i can't even get to the skill level to purchase it?

I love fishing in ffxi, but to combat gilsellers, it has been getting less and less fun. Please give us a compromise! Better skill accumilation would be a great start! I am using pelican rings and wearing them on both finger slots and still getting no skill up!

thankyou

[Showmo]

I think fishing is fine the way it is. I believe the reason it takes much more longer to skill up is because you can get all of your skills literally for free (while selling your catches for about 10k a stack without really spending anything). Fishing everyday until the 200 fatigue cap from level 0 (only on fish that give skill ups of course) can get you level 100 fishing in about a month, maybe 2 months at most if you stayed dedicated. Now unless you were rich, leveling a normal synthesis craft to 100 would take roughly 1-2 months as well with enough dedication.

As for catching many items or monsters, have you tried checking wiki for a good bait combo for the fish you're trying to catch? Although sometimes wiki can be wrong, certain baits (or even the location) may not be that great for catching certain fish. Areas like Bastok tend to have a lot of rusty buckets or items compared to other locations.

[Godofgods]

fishing absolutly should be changed. Its beyond a tideous and boring task. Im in the process of finishing my WW from 95 to 100 and my very last subcraft from 51 to 60, but i will not touch a fishing pole again. I simply cant stand it. You can sit their for hours fishing and not even get a single +.1

[Corwin]

I am greatly curious as to how much of this is possible. With Pelican rings, fishing gear, and a Lu Shang you can literally stand in one spot 0-86 within a few months and be making 50k+/day from vendoring the fish to an NPC standing 5 feet away.

It is true skillups get slower and slower, especially 70+, but I was about to do 11-40 in less than a week of fishing to cap.

[Martinius]

not to go all "back in my day," but really, stop complaining, it used to be a lot worse.

i did 0-70 under the original system, and at one point went three weeks of fishing every day for minimum 4 hours a day, without a single skillup.

if you're getting a majority of monsters/items, you're doing it wrong.

go to www.finalfishing.com and use the database to find a rod/lure/bait appropriate to your skill level. their database is up to date up to WotG (and if you're still skilling, that means it covers any fish you can catch).

showmo is absolutely right, fishing is the only craft where you can make money skilling up at all times. do you have a lu shang's? if you don't and your skill is higher than 35-40, stop what you're doing, and either start fishing moat carp every day, or find a fish that either sells well on AH or NPCs well and fish those and buy your carp.

but honestly, just do some research. if you're only interested in skilling, find a fish that's 10-20 levels higher than your skill, that bites a lure (so you don't spend money on bait) and won't break your rod/snap your line and just fish. you are literally pulling gil in with every fish.

[Nicholiathan]

The major problem with fishing is that it is all but impossible to catch a fish without using a fishing a bot. It takes about a half second to respond to the pole moving into position so that the fish can be weakened. It stays there for a half to two seconds and then moves back to the neutral position. During the half second it takes to release the button at least all of the health that the fish had lost recovers. With a bot the response time is fast enough to actually catch a fish.

[Showmo]

The major problem with fishing is that it is all but impossible to catch a fish without using a fishing a bot. It takes about a half second to respond to the pole moving into position so that the fish can be weakened. It stays there for a half to two seconds and then moves back to the neutral position. During the half second it takes to release the button at least all of the health that the fish had lost recovers. With a bot the response time is fast enough to actually catch a fish.

This has been an issue with newer and fast PCs for a couple of years now. The issue is related entirely to client side lag, so there is no easy solution for Square Enix to work with other than reducing the difficulty of harder fish, which in return will make the fish incredibly easy for slower PCs and PS2 users. Because new and fast PCs have almost no lag, the response times to react while depleting fish HP is instant, giving little time to react.

Basically, the more lag you have (to an extent), the easier it is to deplete the fish's HP. This means older PCs and PS2 users are at an advantage while fishing. Users with fast PCs have been known to use programs such as CPUGrab to add some extra lag to their CPU, thus simulating a slower PC and making it easier to pull up targeted fish (or rather, simulating the difficulty it was intended to be).

[Godofgods]

and at one point went three weeks of fishing every day for minimum 4 hours a day, without a single skillup.

yea.. thats kinda the point of asking for it to be revised. Not only does everyone not have the option of spending THAT much time on a game every day for such a long period of time, but even if you do, its a waste of ALOT of time. Time that ppl could use doing more important things.

[Martinius]

yea.. thats kinda the point of asking for it to be revised. Not only does everyone not have the option of spending THAT much time on a game every day for such a long period of time, but even if you do, its a waste of ALOT of time. Time that ppl could use doing more important things.

that was under the OLD system. back when there was no "mini-game." your delay between casts was determined by your fishing skill (14 seconds to start, removing 1 second every 10 levels), there was no fishing message about good feeling or terrible feelings, and the only way to discern fish (or for that matter, monsters) was to go into first person mode and try to see how much your character was sweating.

that all changed with the major fishing update in early 2005. the rate of skillup is honestly not that bad. vonn, i don't know how you managed to get two pelican rings and not know where to fish with appropriate bait/lure, but as i said earlier, use finalfishing.com to find the best combos. (all i can think is that you read somewhere that you could use robber/rogue rigs to catch moat carp and are using that instead of insect paste, but you didn't give enough info in your post)

@nicholiathan, the best advice i can give is to get a controller for your computer. that will make it significantly easier to catch fish. there are still fish that are awful to catch, but most of the time they become manageable using albatross and penguin rings. that said, when i was going for my ebisu, i dug out my old ps2 for fishing gugs. they were the only fish i was unable to catch on a pc. and no, i've never used a bot.

[vonn]

vonn, i don't know how you managed to get two pelican rings and not know where to fish with appropriate bait/lure, but as i said earlier, use finalfishing.com to find the best combos. (all i can think is that you read somewhere that you could use robber/rogue rigs to catch moat carp and are using that instead of insect paste, but you didn't give enough info in your post)

I typed like 3 long responces to this already and they didn't post right, so i'll TL;DR it. I know rod/bait combos and research them on all fish i go after to isolate them from other fish. Items and monsters aren't prevented by rod/bait combos they bite on all rods and baits. It's probably because i am going after too high level of fish. my fault.