Legendary fish and the upcoming update

Dear FFXIV devs,

I'm a big fan of fishing in the game and I was excited when a fellow FC member told me you were planning to bring some changes to fishing soon.

Are you planning to update the mechanics of the legendary fish? I hope you are. Even though it's quite a thrill, the frustration of the RNG is incredible.

I have completely finished the ARR fishing log and am currently working on the HW fishing log. Some of the remaining fish are giving me a lot of trouble, namely Problematicus, Charibenet and Raimdellopterus. Honestly I don't know how you came up with the requirements to catch them but it's nothing short of soul-crushing :mad:

Even if we put aside the absurb weather/time requirements for the rarest fish (and it is pretty hard to ignore when you work and can't even try your luck when their window is up), the RNG involved is crazy, especially when you realize that when ALL the insane conditions are met and the legendary fish finally bites, there is a high chance it will go away even if your gear is flawless.

I understand the appeal is to catch all the fish and I was pretty happy when I finished the ARR fishing log. That being said, I wish you would make RNG less of a factor and if that is not possible, at least make the Intuition buffs last longer than 3 minutes... (Kuno the killer comes to mind, it took me a long time to get Intuition, but at least when I got it it lasted about 20 minutes and I think that's fairer).

There is a fine line between a feeling of accomplishment that is fun and one that is overly frustrating and I believe it is being crossed much too frequently when it comes to fishing.

I understand some players who have slogged through it might find it hard to swallow that the fish they struggled to catch might become easier to reel in. That being said, I believe this is a necessary change to keep the fun factor as the centerpiece of the job.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the festivities :)

As a person who slogged through every big fish in the game, I have no problem with making it easier for others. Some of them are absolutely brutal, and the most brutal thing about big fishing is unlike other content, it doesn't become any easier as you level up, get better gear or better abilities. Some of the new abilities do help, yes, but not *that* much.

The other thing is, it is actually harder for new players to catch all the big fish because they are staring at a 212-fish high wall whereas most of us who have done it as the fish were released only have to worry about the dozen or so newest fish in the newest areas. If I was just walking into end-game fishing now I wouldn't know where to even begin. Older big fish should really have their bite rates or catch rates adjusted so it doesn't take as long to get an ARR big fish as it does to get a ShB big fish.

Or cases like the Priest of Yx'Lokwa, who constantly get away.

I am starting to lose my sanity with Charibenet: I've done over 20 windows and got a grand total of 2 bites, no catch though of course... I guess I should be grateful I know it exists at least :rolleyes:

If it's made any easier, the satisfaction levels go down.
Big Fishing seems to be the last thing that has gone un-nerfed in this game. I'm looking for more challenging content that has a continuous challenge to it. (LFG Ultimate)

For the record, I'm only missing 3 fish in the game myself. I love actually getting the hook. It being difficult and low chance RNG doesn't bother me in the slightest, that's just how this works.

Only thing I would like them to do is do something about the pure RNG Chance of failure when you hook a big fish.

I find it absurd that a level 80 fisher with more than adequate gear would still just up and fail to hook a level 50 big fish just because RNG wasn’t having it.

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Originally Posted by Erudito

I find it absurd that a level 80 fisher with more than adequate gear would still just up and fail to hook a level 50 big fish just because RNG wasn’t having it.

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A world of this. Just started trying to catch up on my fishing log after years of ignoring it, alternating between just general catches and big/legendaries when their windows are up. I'm lv.80 in full 460 gear (430 in the other slots, all fully melded but not overmelded), and I still can't catch the lv.40 Matriarch legendary among others. There was one that got away from me in Central Thanalan that CBH classifies as lv.5! That's a 75-level advantage, and the game still lets it get away! That, if nothing else about fishing, is terrible design. If I take MIN out to gather, say, darksteel ore (something I consider an equivalent since it's in a formerly endgame node), I don't have a miss chance anymore; the only question is HOW MUCH I get, not IF I get it. And no, I don't find it "fun" or "challenging" when I can do everything perfectly at double or more the content's level and still fail because RNG.

On one hand, I wouldn't mind if at least some layers of RNG were taken away, or if there was someway to put more skill into it so it is less reliant on RNG. I think I probably get the most frustrated when I don't even get an attempt, or I just can't seem to be available at the same time a rare window window opens up.

On the other hand, I like it how it is as real life fishing can be pretty frustrating as well, and for some fish out there, opportunities to catch them come around only so often. Putting it in this perspective helps, and I like to tell myself I am simply not meant to catch every fish in the game. If I did, there would be kind of a void there. Like if Joker killed Batman by accident, or vise versa.

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Originally Posted by Erudito

Only thing I would like them to do is do something about the pure RNG Chance of failure when you hook a big fish.

I find it absurd that a level 80 fisher with more than adequate gear would still just up and fail to hook a level 50 big fish just because RNG wasn’t having it.

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Yes, I completely agree with this. Even if it is frustrating to never get a bite once in a blue moon and even if some requirements require a lot of work, I think it's part of what makes fishing interesting. The part that sucks is that no matter how perfectly you execute everything and how overgeared you may be, the fish can still get away once it does finally bite. That and Fish Eyes randomly choosing a fish when multiple windows are active (and because it's so GP-intensive) are what make it frustrating. I'm ok with the rest and with keeping it "hard" but the random aspect is what frustrates the most.

Personally, I would hate it if big fish were given guaranteed hook rates but had their bite rates lowered.

Of all the fish in the game, the ones that hurt the most are the ones that never bite. You go through the process of setting up your Fisher's Intuition or Mooching that perfect fish during Fish Eyes in the tiny window, and you don't even get a bite to verify that you're doing it right. That's brutal to me. If I go through all that and at least get a bite, but it escapes, I at least know I'm on the right track and it's only a matter of time.


While I disagree with many of the points made here, I'm not without sympathy and I do think there are areas where the overall experience can be made less frustrating while retaining the difficulty and niche that it's gained. A perfect example is a fish mentioned above: The Priest of Yx'Lokwa. This requires a double mooch, starting with a Clown Tetra which is one of four fish in the associated fishing spot that all have light tugs and are all within a bite timing of about 6-12 seconds. Since this is a double mooch, we can't Mooch II the Clown Tetra and are forced to Patience it and potentially use a lot of GP gambling on wether we have a Yellow Pipira or the desired Clown Tetra on the line. Surface Slap helps a lot with issues like this where fish can't be differentiated by their bite time or tug strength, but it has massive limitations, so going an extra step to make more clear indicators for what fish is on your line would offer a bit more depth while also relieving some frustration in having to gamble on reeling something in. It sounds like 5.2 will be making some changes to tug animations so we'll see if this gets addressed.

I can mostly agree with Fish Eyes randomly choosing a fish being a nuisance. Getting two Barrel-eye windows instead of a Proto-Hropken window for Opabinia was a very sad time, though that was somewhat mitigated by having the window for Opabinia be so large. This seems to have been addressed because I don't think a single fishing hole since HW has had two Fish Eye targets in the same spot, though I could be wrong.

Finally, the one thing that I never want to see happen again is have a weather window like we have for the Ruby Dragon. Perhaps this was just an anomaly for the time, but shortly after this fish was released, the required weather pattern in Ruby Sea was unseen for over 20 real world days. I made a thread about this when it happened and while the window eventually stabilized to a more normal one that was spaced out in 1-3 day spans, I think it shows the absolute worst of what rare window fish can be.

All that being said...don't give up Nilheim! Charibenet still remains my ultimate nemesis for the fish that took me the longest time to catch. Despite how difficult some fish may prove to be, the only windows you can't catch a rare fish in are the ones you don't show up for. You can do it!

The ones with absurd requirements feel so satisfying to finally catch for that reason, though.

I can understand making things easier if they're a barrier to getting to other content, like catching up on levels/story to play with friends, but fishing is an optional activity for those who enjoy this kind of challenge. I know I'd be very disappointed as a new player if I started fishing and learned I was getting a significantly different experience for the sake of ease, as has happened with other activities in other games.

What I do think would be helpful without directly affecting the actual fishing is to take the older expansion baits off the scrip table and make them cost gil (or just further reduce their cost) so they aren't competing with newer content's bait and players can more easily work on all fish if they want to. Not that it's a huge problem but I'm still spending all of my delivery scrips on stonefly larva and it's kind of annoying.

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Originally Posted by Nilheim

Yes, I completely agree with this. Even if it is frustrating to never get a bite once in a blue moon and even if some requirements require a lot of work, I think it's part of what makes fishing interesting. The part that sucks is that no matter how perfectly you execute everything and how overgeared you may be, the fish can still get away once it does finally bite.

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It's definitely frustrating. Last weekend at Prism Lake I can honestly say I earned the catch that trip with how well I was playing FSH to secure two miracle post-window Mooches, but still it didn't even bite that Intuition. Damn if it won't feel good to put that thing in an aquarium once I get it though.

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Originally Posted by Sated

I know I'd be very disappointed as a new player if I started fishing and learned I was getting a significantly different experience for the sake of ease, as has happened with other activities in other games.

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I agree up to a point, but consider it this way: if you go into, say, T5 at level as a new player, with barely the minimum gear and only moderate experience with the game, you expect it to be a challenge, especially if everyone goes in blind and has to learn as they go. If you unsync it as an established 80 with even halfway decent gear, you expect to roflstomp Twintania with little to no effort. If, as a lv.80 crafter with current-era gear, you go back and try to craft any of those challenging recipes 2.x threw at you for the sake of lucis tools or zodiac weapons or whatever, you'd actually have to try harder to FAIL the craft than to succeed. And repeating my example from earlier, if you go to the darksteel node as a lv.80 MIN with current-era gear, it would be infuriating if the game somehow caused you to miss even ONE strike. Why should fishing be different?

Don't get me wrong: if I was only a lv.50 FSH trying to catch Matriarch (or any other older legendary), then yes, I'd expect it to take longer. Just as I wouldn't advocate the lv.80 legendaries being easier for a lv.80 FSH regardless of how frustrating they are to catch, or how unfair I might consider the requirements for them. But as a lv.80 FSH, ARR and HW legendaries SHOULD be easier, if not automatic catches, once you have them hooked. Your level and stats SHOULD give you some kind of advantage in the catch attempt, just as they do anywhere else. You wanna keep the time/weather/Intuition-based aspects as is, fine; nerfing those would be like nerfing the spawn conditions for old S ranks. But even if those old S ranks rightfully remain a challenge to SPAWN, they can be killed by 1 or 2 lv.80 players (assuming nobody else shows up to kill it in seconds) once they're on the map. Likewise, if a legendary fish has any factors involved in making it available, leave those in place, but the ACTUAL CATCH should be influenced by level and gear. The challenge in every other area of the game is in the CURRENT content, with older content being little more than barely-challenging catch-up work if you do it later. IMHO, the fishing log--even legendaries--should be no different.

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Originally Posted by Elizar_Naki

Why should fishing be different?

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Fishing is a very different kind of activity that doesn't hinge on watching numbers go up incrementally week-over-week, it's really nothing like raiding and that's why I enjoy it. It's a very different kind of progress, not one that becomes trivialized, just receives general QoL improvements from abilities you pick up from leveling. The gear helps an appropriate amount, not an unrealistic amount. There's no reason for legendary fish to be trivialized unless they add a story to it, it's entirely optional and exists specifically for the challenge of doing it, where raids offer rewards and lore that should be more accessible over time from a gameplay standpoint.

At the same time, making it easier wouldn't affect me as long as they also include a means for it to still be done with an appropriate difficulty for those who actually enjoy fishing, so I don't mind if they do make it easier as long as there's also a way to preserver the challenge, I just don't understand why anyone would do it if it wasn't for the satisfaction of actually doing it - that's kinda the main draw of fishing being a side activity.

Edit: Being honest it's very difficult to resist an "easy mode" button when one exists. The hardest part of catching fish for me wouldn't even be the missed bites anymore, it would be resisting flipping on easy mode and that's not fun. So yes, ultimately I'd prefer it stay the way it is so that I don't have to make that decision in the first place, but also because it makes sense to me the way it is now.

The fish doesn't care. The fish doesn't care that we're the WoL. Those abilities don't help. Buying new shoes to be more comfortable wading in the water helps marginally but that's about it. The fish cares what bait we have and if it's raining today. It might care about Powerful Hookset in a few seconds but otherwise there's no power-creep that would make sense to me for it to be any easier at "level 80", which is a arbitrary/meta concept. I think that's the root of why I enjoy fishing, and why it wouldn't make sense to me for it to magically become easier. Fishing is pretty mundane, and that's kinda why I like it.

Or maybe I'm just sadistic and enjoy watching my WoL struggle with something that "should be easy", I donno.

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Originally Posted by Sated

*snip*

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I couldn't disagree with your initial paragraph here more, though that largely stems from me defining fishing less as "challenging" and more as "tedious." "Challenging" implies to me that the task can be completed via practice and improving your skills as a player; fishing doesn't really do that, it's mostly just layers of RNG that may or may not eventually smile on you enough to land the catch. There's marginal skill involved in knowing when to use what skills to improve your chances, but that still isn't enough if RNGsus isn't on your side that day. And me personally, I don't really feel any sense of accomplishment from that. I only started catching up on the fishing log because it was bugging me that I had MIN and BTN's blessed tools but not FSH, and I certainly didn't enjoy the catch-up process, so it's unlikely that I'll ever start using this class on a regular basis now that I've done enough to accomplish that goal. But agree to disagree and all that.

Edit: and to be clear, I do respect that you disagree with me. Not everyone enjoys the same things, obviously, and this clearly isn't a part of the game that's "for me" long-term. I will point out, however, that I respect your opinions MORE because you managed to express them politely. In my experience, folks with unpopular opinions online get lambasted more often than not by people who think their internet anonymity gives them free rein to act like jerks, and it's refreshing anytime I see someone who doesn't seem to subscribe to that theory.

Hi guys, I just got onto fishing and am not sure if there's any chances since HW? Do you still need to get a Giant Takitaro first before getting Namitaro?

Unfortunately yes :(

I've been suffering that Namitaro bastard repeatedly. Even getting GT is a trial in and of itself and I must have blown about 2000 glowworms by this point. 4 times now I have gotten the intuition procced, and then afterwards not got it. 2 of them the Namitaro escaped my line! Level 80 felt like it was worthless with that

Doesn't mater about stats in big fish. Not past a point anyhow.

If they have an escape chance its baked in.

A small change that would be a huge QoL improvement would be to give Surface Slap a duration. Increase the cost to compensate, but I'd rather pay 400 GP to never see that fish again for 75 seconds than spend 200 GP on a single shot.