Ocean Fishing late queue lockout

TIL that if someone in your premade group fails to commence the duty when the queue pops after the 15 minute window to queue for a boat ends, you all get slapped with a penalty count and your duty does not commence, causing you to completely miss your ocean fishing window because it's now 15 minutes past.

This has just happened to me and 7 other people after we all planned to hunt a specific big blue fish, queueing for a late boat in order to give us the best possible chance of a spectral current where it's just us. The entire plan has gone to waste now and we now have to wait 17 real-time hours to try again, because someone in our PF did not ready up in time. Either due to a poorly timed disconnect or deliberately griefing us into missing our window. I'm leaning towards the latter because the ready check at 13 minutes past showed us all as ready 8/8 and you would need to have an extremely justifiable story to explain to me why a disconnect happened after that time.

Why does this work the way it does? If someone in our PF doesn't ready-up for a time-sensitive duty at the very end of the window it's available for, it should force us in regardless even if everyone isn't ready and we definitely should not all be penalised due to the fault of a single person.

Better yet, why can't we just send out our own party boats to specific areas with a boosted spectral current chance to try and hunt a big blue fish during the window it's available? If you have achievements and rare fish that require a great deal of co-ordination to have the best chance of catching, then I would surely expect having the option to queue as a party or even solo rather than being forced into an instance with 23 or less other people who likely have different goals in mind.

I've seen other posts listing changes needing to be made to Ocean Fishing but here's one I'd like to personally volunteer. As someone who is trying to hunt every single fish in the fishing log, it's extremely annoying when you completely miss your window for a rare fish, without even getting on the boat in the first place, due to the fault of someone in your party and you basically lose an entire day before you can get another attempt.

Any blue fish enjoyers or achievement hunters, please share your thoughts.

The exact same situation you describe has happened to me before in the past when attempting a title. We lost the chance to try because someone disconnected exactly one minute before although we got it the next day.

I suppose they could change it so that it puts you inside even if some in your party decline but does any duty work like this? You do get in if people not in your party say no but that's it.

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Originally Posted by Fluffster

Better yet, why can't we just send out our own party boats to specific areas with a boosted spectral current chance to try and hunt a big blue fish during the window it's available? If you have achievements and rare fish that require a great deal of co-ordination to have the best chance of catching, then I would surely expect having the option to queue as a party or even solo rather than being forced into an instance with 23 or less other people who likely have different goals in mind.

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This is a topic as old as time. Even on low-people boats with fishers that know what they are doing, there will often be drama about what spectral current or achievement to go for. I personally don't mind either way because if you don't get it one day, there will be plenty other chances but I understand the frustration. Maybe SE will come up with a system that is more middle ground for this.