Fishing needs a total overhaul

There is only one real change I want to see. If a fish bites and you press whatever hook button you press, you catch that fish (patience, precision and powerful being the only exception to this). The fact that you can be waiting days for just chance for a fish to bite, and then going to the spot and sifting through all the RNG hoping for it to actually bit, and then when it does bite you hook it and it gets away is too brutal. I'm fine with having to go through multiple windows trying to get a fish to bite. I'm not fine with that fish getting away when it does bite. Especially when you have 3000 gathering stat when the fish at the time only required 500, that's just even further insult to injury.

That's the reality of fishing and frankly the very thing that keeps it interesting. If you could just pluck a fish out of the water at any given time, there would be no point or sense of accomplishment.

That also mostly only applies to Big Fishing, which is a RNG grindfest by design.

Yea, only a small fraction of fish have that. While no fish in the game has a 100% successful hook rate, all big fish have fixed hook rates as part of their 'personality.' Fish getting their own personalities is one of the myriad of things that makes fishing stand out, unique, and interesting.

That doesn't make it right. There is skill based difficulty and artificial difficulty. Skill based difficulty is generally considered fun while artificial difficulty is not. Everything up until the point that a fish bites is skill based difficulty. Figuring out it's weather/time patterns and then making the correct use of skills and bait to get the fish to bite are skill based. Once it bites though it becomes artificial difficulty since once you press that hook button, you lose complete control of the situation. It just becomes whether the game wants to tell you yes or no. You could make the hooking part skill based by making the different "personalities" of the fish influence how long you have to press the hook button, like in Animal Crossing. Completely removing the players control on the situation is not fun. The only way you could conceivably defend the chance to fail of fishing is if you are a gambling addict or you are on copium and the real reason is you don't want the fish you struggled to catch to be easier for the next person. I'm currently going for the Cinder Surprise and the next chance for it's 6 minute window to be up is in 26 days. This previous window it did finally bite just at the end of the window but got away due to the chance to fail. I'd been at 2 windows prior without it biting at all. The chance to fail is not fun or good, it's just annoying artificial difficulty.

PS: Also I think y'all are misunderstanding something. I don't just want to target a fish and catch it. Deveryn seems to think that's what I want. You can go multiple windows of a fish being up without it biting a single time. That's already enough difficulty there, especially when those windows can be up to a month apart.

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Originally Posted by BCPowers

That doesn't make it right. There is skill based difficulty and artificial difficulty. Skill based difficulty is generally considered fun while artificial difficulty is not. Everything up until the point that a fish bites is skill based difficulty. Figuring out it's weather/time patterns and then making the correct use of skills and bait to get the fish to bite are skill based. Once it bites though it becomes artificial difficulty since once you press that hook button, you lose complete control of the situation. It just becomes whether the game wants to tell you yes or no. You could make the hooking part skill based by making the different "personalities" of the fish influence how long you have to press the hook button, like in Animal Crossing. Completely removing the players control on the situation is not fun. The only way you could conceivably defend the chance to fail of fishing is if you are a gambling addict or you are on copium and the real reason is you don't want the fish you struggled to catch to be easier for the next person. I'm currently going for the Cinder Surprise and the next chance for it's 6 minute window to be up is in 26 days. This previous window it did finally bite just at the end of the window but got away due to the chance to fail. I'd been at 2 windows prior without it biting at all. The chance to fail is not fun or good, it's just annoying artificial difficulty.

PS: Also I think y'all are misunderstanding something. I don't just want to target a fish and catch it. Deveryn seems to think that's what I want. You can go multiple windows of a fish being up without it biting a single time. That's already enough difficulty there, especially when those windows can be up to a month apart.

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Looking back at your original comment, I don't see the difference. As I said, Fishing in this game is pretty much like the real thing. I believe we even have people around to confirm it. There's only so much control you have over the situation. It's generally a time to chill with nature and then all the sudden you (maybe) catch a nice sized dinner. :) Anything can happen when you hook a big enough fish. For a mercy, we never have to go through the trouble of replacing our rod.

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Originally Posted by BCPowers

That doesn't make it right.

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Apologies for implying that Big Fishing, which is absolutely and irrefutably side content that has no impact on the game itself, players experiences, or anything (really) beyond just something to do, should have something considered 'not right'

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Originally Posted by BCPowers

... and the real reason is you don't want the fish you struggled to catch to be easier for the next person....

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If you spend any time in the fishing community, you'll find that this is absolutely the opposite of what people want. Fishers want more people fishing because it's a fun past time, they want more people to enjoy it. It's one of the very few (if only) things you can do in the game that slows you down and forces you to enjoy the zones. Fishing encourages you to see parts of the game that aren't normally (or are rarely) ever seen. Takes you to places the MSQ never comes close to. The developers goal (and this is true) with fishing was to have it be different, and be a job that "allows the player to enjoy and communicate with nature."

It's designed not as a usual DoL, but instead, it's closer to a Limited Job. Think of Fisher as the Blue Mage of DoL - you don't always have a guaranteed chance to get the spell you want, but people do it anyways. It's skill up until the end. Same thing goes for Triple Triad.

These are not complaints that are new or revolutionary and I'm sure have been a thing since 2.0 - To which I'll add that fishing has gotten RIDICULOUSLY easier since then, and will most likely continue to over the coming expansions. It's the nature of the job.

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Originally Posted by Fruity_Snacks

Apologies for implying that Big Fishing, which is absolutely and irrefutably side content that has no impact on the game itself, players experiences, or anything (really) beyond just something to do, should have something considered 'not right'

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So if they released a fish that occupied a space in your fishing log but had a 0% chance to hook, then would that be right. I mean you don't have to fill out that space in the log, it's completely optional content with no impact on the rest of the game. No matter what the content is for, at a certain point of difficulty of that content, it becomes unfair in other words not right. A 0% hook chance is an extreme example but doesn't make it any less valid that there is a percentage of hook chance that becomes not right. And this will vary player to player based on their own personal opinions on difficulty. It's impossible to get everyone to agree on what a fair difficulty is. Saying my opinion is wrong because it's different from your opinion is also not right.

The fact that fishing is only really enjoyed by the few shows that it's not fun for the many. Of course it doesn't have to be fun for the many. Not everyone piece of content is for everyone. But the only reason it's not fun for the many is because of the many layers of difficulty. If you got rid of just that last layer of difficulty, the artificial layer of difficulty where you just have a guaranteed chance to fail after you have done all the previous steps correctly, then I believe more people could enjoy fishing. Like I've said previously, you can go literal months without even having a bite on some of these fish. And then after all that time when it does finally bite, you just have this guaranteed chance to fail that is outside your control, and your back to waiting months again for another chance. That can't ever be seen as fun or right. Removing control from the player is not fun or right. That's all I've been saying. I'm perfectly fine with the fact the windows can be few and far between. I'm fine with having to research a fishing hole to figure out the best bait and combinations of actions to use. This is all fun content because it's all in my control. But once things become just a dice roll at the end of it all, it's just not good gameplay. I'm sorry if your opinion defers from mine, but that doesn't make you or me right or wrong. This is supposed to be a forum for discussion not a place to just be condescending because you believe your opinion is fact.

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Originally Posted by BCPowers

So if they released a fish that occupied a space in your fishing log but had a 0% chance to hook...

This is supposed to be a forum for discussion not a place to just be condescending because you believe your opinion is fact.

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First, you are right, I definitely had a condescending tone in my response and for that, I apologize. This argument, as I've stated, is old and tiring because most of the time it comes from a place where people don't understand the balance of fishing and how that lack of control is handled from the design. I did not respond appropriately. Fish that get away often typically bite often, or have very little window conditions so that while it might get away, you rarely have to wait very long for a second (third, fourth, etc) chance. Even fish with rare windows ones that are down for days or weeks, are balanced so that once you DO get to the point where you can catch it, more often than not it's going to successfully hook. Not 100% chance - I will give you that - but far more than you think. It's the personalities of the fish (defined by their bite time, bite rate, and hook rate) that contribute to fishing uniqueness in the game and make it interesting. Your point is correct, and I should've been clearer on this. The Game doesn't really explain this. (Conversely, your same argument could be applied to Triple Triad, which gets - as far as I can see - far less flak than fishing despite having parallel arguments)

Secondly (and a bit more of a pedantic point) - there is an opportunity for a variety of fish now to have a 0% catch rate, and take up a log space. Spearfishing did add the chance that if your gear is too low, there is 0 chance you will be able to spear a fish as its hitbox will be non-existent.

Fishing has been gaining a lot of popularity recently, and many more folks than you might think are showing that it's actually as fun as people say it is. It won't be for everyone, as you say, but it's definitely something that carries a bad wrap for reasons beyond how it works.

I've been steadily clearing out rare fish in my log and I do see what you are saying with fish that don't bite often typically have a lower fail rate, especially if intuition is involved. These fish seem to have the lowest fail rates I've seen or they bite often during their intuition window. But, there are still the absolute worst offenders here and there, namely the Cinder Surprise and any fish that requires a mooch. We have significantly less tools to deal with fish that mooch into multiple things making those fish some of the most annoying to catch with their fail rates. And Cinder Surprise is just evil, windows massively far apart, low bite chance, and high fail rate. And if they changed the fail rate to instead be a layer of skill where fish bite and let go faster, so you have to press your button faster like in animal crossing. I think that would be more fun and still keep some of that difficulty that's added at the end but still give the player control over the situation instead of making it a dice roll.

The absolute worse offenders are the 24 legendary fish in the game - and of those some very select few that people truly dislike. Cinder Surprise, Ealad Skaan, and Ruby Dragon are typically the worse. Legendary fish are the last fish released in an expansion and typically the rule they follow is "there are no rules."

That's a new idea that folks haven't suggested before, and it would align a bit with how they're doing Spearfishing. It would need to be tested against latency and player accessibility though. Maybe they could test something like this in Island Sanct.

They could also just add Big Fish to spearfishing.

The changes I want are.
1. Change all the bait to a bait box.
2. Allow all fish to be cooked by culinarian.

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Originally Posted by rxantos

The changes I want are.
1. Change all the bait to a bait box.
2. Allow all fish to be cooked by culinarian.

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1. See: versatile lure
2. While I agree that there should be some more use for fish, coming up with recipes for everything is quite daunting (as is the thought of checking those off on the craft log. :p )

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

2. While I agree that there should be some more use for fish, coming up with recipes for everything is quite daunting (as is the thought of checking those off on the craft log. :p )

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Made a suggestion a while ago about about fish desynth giving fish bone/meat/steak/slice (depending of Lv.) instead of sand ; with something like that you need fewer recipes than one for each fish and it make every fish useful.

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Originally Posted by Calysto

Made a suggestion a while ago about about fish desynth giving fish bone/meat/steak/slice (depending of Lv.) instead of sand ; with something like that you need fewer recipes than one for each fish and it make every fish useful.

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These items will oveflood the market board and will be just as worthelss as the sand.

By the way the fish are not useless. They prevent you from catching the fish you actually want and thus keeping the whole fishing minigame interesting.

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Originally Posted by Tint

These items will oveflood the market board and will be just as worthelss as the sand.

By the way the fish are not useless. They prevent you from catching the fish you actually want and thus keeping the whole fishing minigame interesting.

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I'm not saying that it's something that will make you rish, mostly than it's easier to implement than adding 1k+ recipes and more logical than having fishing supply mainly the construction industry.

As for the use of fishes : sure, but that was not the point.
Do most fishes have an use once they become an inventory item ?
If not you could as well have "conceptual fishes" that don't exists as actual items.

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Originally Posted by Calysto

I'm not saying that it's something that will make you rish, mostly than it's easier to implement than adding 1k+ recipes and more logical than having fishing supply mainly the construction industry.

As for the use of fishes : sure, but that was not the point.
Do most fishes have an use once they become an inventory item ?
If not you could as well have "conceptual fishes" that don't exists as actual items.

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A lot of them can be used for paintings or otherwise sold for gil if you're done leveling desynth. Sand just makes the most sense for desynth. The food idea would require varying levels of output because there are so many different sizes across all the levels. That just makes things complicated when they could just use different quantities of the whole fish in the recipes.

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Originally Posted by BCPowers

If a fish bites and you press whatever hook button you press, you catch that fish (patience, precision and powerful being the only exception to this).

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This would be a good start in solving the issues with big fishing. I'm about 7 fish away from the title and have not caught anything in over a month despite many hours spent prepping windows for fish just to have them bite and bail even with best equipment, food, etc. Part of it is RNG dependent, we know that going in, but the current RNG rates are too harsh. It's made me hate fishing honestly, if I wasn't so close to the titles I wouldn't even be doing it anymore.

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Originally Posted by player12304895

This would be a good start in solving the issues with big fishing. I'm about 7 fish away from the title and have not caught anything in over a month despite many hours spent prepping windows for fish just to have them bite and bail even with best equipment, food, etc. Part of it is RNG dependent, we know that going in, but the current RNG rates are too harsh. It's made me hate fishing honestly, if I wasn't so close to the titles I wouldn't even be doing it anymore.

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Given that big fishing has no influence at all over the primary gameplay loop. No. It's fine as is. Buck up or quit

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Originally Posted by player12304895

This would be a good start in solving the issues with big fishing. I'm about 7 fish away from the title and have not caught anything in over a month despite many hours spent prepping windows for fish just to have them bite and bail even with best equipment, food, etc. Part of it is RNG dependent, we know that going in, but the current RNG rates are too harsh. It's made me hate fishing honestly, if I wasn't so close to the titles I wouldn't even be doing it anymore.

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It sounds like you just need a break. I've been on and off with this and recently getting back into it as I don't have a need for much else right now. RNG is harsh and that's to be expected, especially with this. If you could catch everything in the first window, it would be pointless.

I still have no clue how to catch Titanic Sawfish. I got Pirate's Bane before I did that and I dunno if I'm doing something wrong or if RNG is just THAT terrible

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

I still have no clue how to catch Titanic Sawfish. I got Pirate's Bane before I did that and I dunno if I'm doing something wrong or if RNG is just THAT terrible

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Here's a guide. (show more for the text version)

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Originally Posted by Zer0

How about I don't know, 1 freshwater bait and 1 ocean bait? And everything else gets a special bait provided by the quest or a vendor like the special Diadem bait and Relic Bait? That's an option so we don't need external sites to look up for EACH AND EVERY GOD DAMNED FISH.

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My thought is you buy them like books and they just get added to the bait box, turned into a built in ability option rather than inventory. Increase the Gil price to by about 1000 times, boom, fixed

Having just 1 bait for freshwater and just 1 for saltwater fishing would, infact, make fishing significantly more difficult.

Let's look at unconditional - a legendary fish in the Azem Steppe. It can be caught with only Stonefly Larva, it'd an easy catch because of this too. Despite there being 4+ other fish in the fishing hole, stonefly larva only attracts two fish, nhaama's boon and the Unconditional. So the strategy is you cast out with stonefky larva, catch a boon, use surface slap on it, then cast out again. This guarentees the Unconditional will bite (during its window). Without this, it's a rare bite and pretty slippery.

Now if there was only ONE freshwater bait, all the fish would bite, even if boon was slapped. This is making it significantly harder to catch Unconditional.

Bait choice is hella important when fishing not just Big Fish, but common fish as well. Thavnairian Calamari can be caught with a versatile lure (which is an all-water lure, similar to what is being suggested)... but with a versa lure, it bites slower (as with all lures, this is stated in the game to the player), and overlaps more with other fish. This makes it harder and less efficient to catch.

Same goes for Blue Crab, sweetmeat mussels, etc.

Bait bloat is mostly due to ARR and its hella diverse fishing hole biomes. Making just 1 bait for each type of "water" might seem like it's a good thing, but overall would make fishing SIGNIFICANTLY harder.

If people took the time to focus on specific regions / expansions, bait wouldn't be such a problem. I made a lot of progress on my log in the past couple months and it was very easy when I wasn't hopping all over the place. I checked off each city state area and continued down the list, removing bait and changing to something new as I went through. I'm down to 5 fish and 4 pre-EW baits to complete the main log.

I know I wouldn't be able to do this as quickly as I did if I only had one particular type of bait. I tried to use the boilies and they didn't help in a lot of cases. You may as well versatile lure at that point. On rare occasions you can hook the rarer fish, but it's not worth it for the sake of simplifying the inventory.