Big fishing is poorly designed and isn't very fun

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

I'm still completely in my right to complain. After all, that's what these forums are for, and devs won't know their content is not good if nobody ever complains.

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I would be upset if someone eg changed summoner from a pet and dot based caster to a vfx lightshow single button masher phys ranged. Some people enjoy big fishing for what it is despite the flaws and asinine decisions - for example the other recently active thread suggesting that maybe it is a mistake to have the common window rare scrip fish as an intuition requirement for the rare window one.

And to answer the quoted question, a large part of me believes their current purpose is a lightning rod or containment board for negativity so twitter etc can lean more saccharine.

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

So far all I hear is "the content is what it is, just deal with it". Surely you'd desire for the game to improve and not to drive people away right? There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking from improvements on a forum dedicated to discussing these topics. And really the even the biggest SE supporter or fishing supporter can see that some of these mechanics are very anti-fun.

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Of course I want improvements. But you are not asking for imporovements, you are asking for a complete rework. Of course people who enjoy the current gameplay are telling you to just look for something else.

It also didn't looked like you were here to discuss things, when you basically dismissed any other opinion right from the start:

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TLDR: Big fishing is not fun, does not respect the players time, and anyone who says otherwise has some Stockholm syndrome.

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When I finish this stupid achievement it won't be pride I feel, only anger that it took so long when it could have taken so much less time.

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You know, I cleared Coils of Bahamut back in ARR and this was exactly how I felt. No pride, just glad it was finally over.

And after that I started with big fishing and finished the fishlog back then before HW released. And it was the most fun I ever had in this game. And I stopped raiding. People simply enjoy different things.

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

... needing to wait for additional windows due to bad timezones is literally costing players money. Maybe that was SE's intent, but surely you agree that keeping people subbed through arbitrary time locks instead of engaging content is really bad form?

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I'm just going to drop in and say that what might be a bad time for you or others in your timezone is perfect for another player in another region. What might be bad for Europe might be perfect for Japan. What's bad for Japan, would be great. It's a system of time that - while I agree downtimes can suck - has to account for a global audience.

Honestly, I feel like a lot of big finishing complains would stop if they just changed a few of the achievements.

Stop tying legendaries to 'go big or go home' and give them their own separate achievements and titles instead.

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Originally Posted by Tint

Of course I want improvements. But you are not asking for imporovements, you are asking for a complete rework. Of course people who enjoy the current gameplay are telling you to just look for something else.

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I really don't think my suggestions are a "complete rework" as you describe it. The SMN change, PVP changes, diadem changes, etc are complete reworks. In comparison my suggestions are like allowing you to 2 stack certain abilities for better rotation flow in PvE.

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Originally Posted by Tint

It also didn't looked like you were here to discuss things, when you basically dismissed any other opinion right from the start:

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I'm not part of the fishing community in any big way so I thought that was just a commonly used joke I as I saw some other big fishing people make this joke before. Anyway, I apologize if it was taken the wrong way.

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Originally Posted by Tint

And after that I started with big fishing and finished the fishlog back then before HW released. And it was the most fun I ever had in this game. And I stopped raiding. People simply enjoy different things.

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I also did all big fishing pre HW and caught all the fish, and it was more enjoyable before they added the Egg, Durdina, Whale, etc. They saw "people like rare fish" and went too far with it.

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Originally Posted by Fruity_Snacks

I'm just going to drop in and say that what might be a bad time for you or others in your timezone is perfect for another player in another region. What might be bad for Europe might be perfect for Japan. What's bad for Japan, would be great. It's a system of time that - while I agree downtimes can suck - has to account for a global audience.

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I feel like one of my suggestions fixes this with the quest obtainable weekly bait.

Also if it's commonly accept that timezones suck, why not make the window more common?


I'd like to pose one more question to everyone. What do you think is the acceptable standard deviation for big fish capture times?

Ie: for the 90% most lucky fishers and the 90% most unlucky fishers, what is an appropriate gap of time between those two? For some fish, it seems to be bordering on months, which IMO is extremely unfun for those stuck on the bad end of the probability curve.

I would love fishing and big fishing as it is if not common problems.
1) some unfair fish with such bizzare requerments it is not fun anymore. 29 days downtime only to get next window 3 am your time? Wait another 6 days i guess. Make it rare bite and slippery as well (hello egg)
2) jailing. enoth said on this topic (stupid whale. Imagine rare bite slippery whale in 7.55)
3) some annoying fish that concentrate a combination of pure design choises all at once. Is it a VERY rare bite? big deal. keep trying. It bites but escapes 46 times in a row (true story. Hello wanderer of.... i call it prismatic b**h). Lame prefish requirements? go ahead. Ill use my accumulated knowledge of every fishing trick there is and get it. But let us combine it all and make ULTIMATE BS fish.
I honesly think that noone test these. Just listen to feedback and fix some of the worst game designs, SE! Jailing is not fun! Waiting for a REAL MONTH is not fun. Wasting 50 hours playing RNG roulette is not fun. And then someone who doesnt know how to hold a fishing pole gets it first try because RNG i guess.
And of course you have to link your lucky catch in /shout chat so we all can feel even *better*.
No i dont think fishing needs a rework. What i want is those responsible for this actually TEST this. And if it turns out to be a disaster - change it one way or another.
P.S. There should be some kind of notification about min gathering level. It is anooying to get salad 2.0 bite after 27 windows only to see the message *you dont have enoth gathering for this* (no it wasnt me)

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Originally Posted by Lydia77

I would love fishing and big fishing as it is if not common problems.
1) some unfair fish with such bizzare requerments it is not fun anymore. 29 days downtime only to get next window 3 am your time? Wait another 6 days i guess. Make it rare bite and slippery as well (hello egg)
2) jailing. enoth said on this topic (stupid whale. Imagine rare bite slippery whale in 7.55)
3) some annoying fish that concentrate a combination of pure design choises all at once. Is it a VERY rare bite? big deal. keep trying. It bites but escapes 46 times in a

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Just a couple little things here.

1) A 29 day downtime has only ever happened 4 times in the history of FFXIV. Of the three fish that have had 29+ day downtimes in those 4 years, two (Bobgoblin Bass and Duskfish) of them can be mitigated by Fish Eyes, which greatly increases the chance of a fish being available. The last one (Ruby Dragon) has really only ever had massive downtimes like that maybe... twice since it was add in 4.56, 5 years ago. If you want to bump it down to 25+ day dowtimes, you bring in Cinder which has only broken that once, maybe twice. So a grand total of 4 fish out of 289. 4 out of 289 don't define a problem, even if half of those 4 are legendary fish.

2) Jailing is a thing that exists that if you do it, that's fine, if you don't, ok. Nothing forces you to do that, and even if you just show up and go for the conditional fish when the window is up, you will still eventually get the fish. I can give you plenty of examples of where people didn't jail for Lancet or Whale and still got int during that window. Fishing is, and has always been, designed to be a feature that slows you down. You don't need to get every fish in a week - and rarely - will you. Allowing yourself to lose sleep or get frustrated at this fact really only makes it worse on yourself.

3) Again, you're pointing out just a few fish, most of which are legendary fish (Warden of the Seven Hues, is the name of the fish you're referring to). Legendary fish take all the rules and throw them together - as you said, they are meant to be the "Ultimates" of fishing. Are they all perfect? No. Do they need to change their MO for legendaries? Probably not.

I think it's silly to assume that these things aren't tested, considering out of the whole 10+ years of FFXIV existing there has only been 2 instances of fishing ever being 'bugged' and only 1 of those could - arguably - be because of lack of testing.

Fishing isn't perfect, but if we're going to be giving feedback out about things, let's at least be giving feedback with better context.

I can agree that rare windows with long stretches of downtime between them are frustrating, and are not a very fun method of augmenting difficulty in the design of an intentionally difficult fish. "You have to wait a long time between attempts" doesn't test anything about skill usage or obtained knowledge, and it can be rough on people who, by chance, end up in unfavored timezones when rare windows do pop up--though it will, over time, tend to balance out. Not the most satisfying answer, but it's not like the windows are locked to be preferential to certain timezones. I feel like the fisherdevs have seen the situations caused by Ruby Dragon and Cinder Surprise (and perhaps to a lesser extend Ealad Skaan) and their frequent extended downtimes, because none of the fish in Endwalker have patterns nearly as bad. Yes, Sidereal Whale has gone down for two weeks, but most of its windows are a few days apart, the long breaks are less frequent than they are for those other notoriously difficult fish with rare windows.

I have yet to catch Sidereal Whale myself, and I have had to ask myself questions about whether it's healthy for me to try to get up for an early morning window/stay up late for a late night window, and have made decisions that as much as I do want this last fish left for my achievement, there will be another window eventually. It's frustrating, yes, because my accumulated skills and knowledge over the years of doing this content only take me so far, and it hasn't been far enough: I just haven't gotten a Whale bite in over a dozen intuition attempts.

I don't know what's the "right" level of standard deviation for big fish catch times. I bet the devs have a whole lot of data on that sort of thing, though, and I bet they take it into consideration when they design things. There's some methods of their design I disagree with, like how Crystalline Mean and Studium add a fish to fishing holes that isn't there for those who don't do the quests, which changes the outcomes for fishing in those fishing holes. I think that design has led to fishers choosing to avoid content made specifically for them until they've caught all the hardest fish in an expansion, and I don't think that's the intended takeaway. But when it comes to "what should be the average experience of how difficult this fish is," I think they have the data, I think they examine the data, and I think the fact that the EW fish have less egregious downtimes than StB and ShB fish is a good indication that they've acted on that.

Again we come back to your topic: just fish and you get it.
Sure i may jsut go every window possible in hopes of hiting that juicy 0.5% lucky 7 all staars alighn moment. That is not how i and many others go. And my pesonal examples shows how unlucky these windows may be. i spent more than 30 hours combined geting phallaina. If i didnt jail myself it would mean 30+ windows of a whale which are 1-6 days apart from each other. That is a no-no.
Despite 29+ days being an exception rather than a rule we still remember it. And some of these fishies still have 4-7 average downtime (hello salad). It is not fun to wait for a real week hoping you hit that 1% chance. That is if its not 3 AM your time. I dont ask to make this fish easier. Make the windows more common. I know Duskfish holds the record of downtime. And we dont care because its an easy catch. Waiting for months just to try and get one only to meet a real BS like an egg or lancet is not FUN.
Some people spend 90% of their playtime on fishing only. Sure. have *fun* with it. But some of us have other stuff to do. I want to have it done eventually. I dont want to spend half a year fishing (pun intended) for 1% chance. Especially knowing my luck. I want to have more chances to go for it. I dont want to cancell all my IG and IRL activities to go for a fish, knowing that if i will ignore it i will have to wait for 5 days and it will be mid of the night for me. so 5 more days after that.
You may compare it to pve endgame but you can do that one whenever you want. As for fishing - game decides when i can try it. If i cant participate - too bad! Better luck next week.
As for jailing, fishing is pure RNG. All we can do is manipulate that RNG to a bit. Use tricks. come 20 min earlier and prefish. Hold HQ mooch till the window starts, slap the right one, use collectable trick etc. Jailing is one of those tricks as well. come earlier to catch the required fish so you can get on to it as soon as possible. As for your logic we dont have to get fisher intuition stacks. We dont have to surface slap. we dont have to count / macro countdowns. Just come in, cast a line and hope. No. Thats is not the way to go.
If you want to have super rare fish - let me try it for a resonable time period. I will be OK with something like an egg if i can try it once a day. I will be fine with a whale if i can try it once a week guaranteed.
You saying "you dont have to jail" is like saying you can choose not to fish at all.

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Originally Posted by Lydia77

...You saying "you dont have to jail" is like saying you can choose not to fish at all...

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For purely optional content that effectively has no impact on the main game or the main game experience... yes, that is actually what we're trying to say.

You don't have to fish.
You don't have to jail.
You don't have to cancel your ingame or IRL activities to fish.
The game says when you have a chance for a fish, yes.

YOU make the decision on if you want to go for it or not. YOU decide how you want to react to it. YOU are the sole decision maker here.
Fishing is intentionally designed to be slow, and is probably the only thing in the game that does it successfully.

Now, you want more common fish? Sure, you have ~275 big fish that are more common than most. ~5% of fish (and there are numbers to back this up) are estimated to take more than 4 days to catch.


(Also Bobgoblin bass holds the record for 1st and 2nd longest downtime at 39 and 37 days respectively. Duskfish is #3/4, but the point about it being easy to catch is still valid.)