Big fishing is poorly designed and isn't very fun

After doing a lot of content in this game, nothing has made me realize more that it is all pointless and to unsub than fishing. The reason is the standard deviation of people who are lucky vs unlucky is just too big. In no way is it fun to see someone catch a fish their first try while you have to sit there window after window. This is not like some other horrible grind in the game (which are also extremely lazy game design, but that is beside the point) where everyone who has completed the grind has spent the same amount of time in it. And it's not like while I'm sitting there doing attempts I'm getting some other passive bonus. No, the junk fish I fish up are worthless, and most of the time the mechanics of fishing actively encourage you to not real anything in so you don't even get any spiritbond/other achievements, etc. You're literally just pissing away your time into the wind for zero progress on your character.

"But that's fishing, the rng/torture/whatever is part of the fun"

Yea no. 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. There is only a feeling of injustice that my shot at the reward was artificially harder than someone else's attempt.

I remember when someone quit the game after it took them 800+ Dragon's Neck dungeons to get the TT card, when everyone around them got it in like less than 10-50 runs. These kind of large variances should be protected against so the occasional player does not fall through the statistical cracks, anything else is poor and lazy game design. Think about it this way, a player that is excited for getting good rng and one-shotting this content is literally getting excited about not having to do this content anymore.

And on top of that the content just doesn't respect the players time. Having to wake up at ungodly hours, be out of luck if you have work or other scheduled events, etc is not fun. There is no world where anything involving a "jail" is fun in any way, like the literal name for the strategy shows you how negative the experience is.

How would I fix it? Change it so that player skill or decisions can greatly augment the chances of catching the fish. For example, the choices of ability usage, the timing of hooking in fish, etc. And add a method where the player can augment the timing windows so they don't have to get up at 4am. Fish Eyes should work for legendary fish, why the arbitrary limitation? There is ZERO skill in abiding to some 2 week long wait for some rare window.

"Just don't do fishing if you hate it so much. Just unsub if you don't like the game". That is not a valid excuse for poor game design. The devs put this into the game, added rewards that can only be achieved through this path, then therefore it is valid to criticize this content.

Here are some free ideas for better fish design:
1. intuition that pops if you catch 5 different fish in some specific order. The fishes have bite times or are slappable in a way that allows an informed fisher to correctly catch these fish in order.
2. an ability that removes the slip rate of the fish on hooking, but only usable under some condition such as catching 20 fish in the fishing hole. This allows better prepared fishers to augment their luck.
3. if you fish in a party, if one person catches the fish it gives a rate up buff to everyone in the party. In this way fishers can recruit buddies to help improve their odds.
4. Add some way to get a big fish masterball-type bait, maybe through some repeatable weekly questline involving doing other content in the game. That way the fisher can grind a big fish through a different means, or at least have some way to progress while waiting for a long fish window.
5. Maybe add a negative-intuition/super surface slap mechianic, like if you catch 10 copies of a fish at a hole you can pop this ability that gives you a 10m negative intuition buff that makes this fish not show up anymore like it was slapped. Players can prep and stack multiple of these for different fish to try to filter the pool for the big fish. Catching 10 of a fish requires some player agency since you have choices on how you want to identical/triple cast and how to manage your GP for such a strategy, and also the player can show up to a window early and be rewarded for being better prepared.

And I don't want some BS where in after adding these designs in the fish is tuned to be even more rare to offset the increased odds. Fish should take at most 2-3 windows to catch through blind luck, and a less than 30m of player time if some strategy is employed. If the devs want to increase player time, add MORE fish with lower rng spread instead of making a specific fish super rare that someone can catch it first try and someone else can take 20+ hours on it. That's not fun.

Fishing RNG and atma RNG are the same, and there is a reason nobody liked Atmas. Tsuyoshi “Mr. Atma” Yokozawa is not hailed as some genius for adding that to the game, nobody looks at the time spent on that fondly as fun or rewarding. A third party observer looking over my shoulder when I'm raiding can see why someone would want to play the game and why it is fun, but the same observer would conclude the game sucks if they see me grinding atmas or fishing. Mechanics based purely on rng are archaic and lazy in this day and age.

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

Here's the fun parts of big fishing that I think the devs should focus more on:

1. reading the lore about the fish in the log, looking at their cool art, collecting the fish like collecting pokemon, putting them in aquariums, etc.
2. in some fish you have to actively decide on how you want to use your abilities to maximize your chances. For example, sea butterfly you have to do your catches in a way that you end on slapping the scorpionfish while the intuition pops. Some strategy in the fishing process makes it more interesting. Being able to correctly predict which fish is on the line based on what you slapped and the bite time is fun and rewarding too, as in players who have done their research, have additional knowledge, and are paying attention are rewarded.
3. the community, a bunch of people at the same spot working towards the same goal is fun to participate in

What is not fun:
1. arbitrary long time between windows. I have work, a sleep schedule, other obligations, etc. Jailing and strategies that require me to not do other content while waiting is not fun.
2. RNG spread. I'm ok with RNG, but for extremely rare events you can have a very large spread of people who get something early and people who get something very late. Reduce the standard deviation or allow players to control their luck through skill or preparation.

Have you considered the idea that if it is not fun for you, you don't need to engage with it, rather than trying to take away what might be fun for others?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Have you considered the idea that if it is not fun for you, you don't need to engage with it, rather than trying to take away what might be fun for others?

---

Peeps having fun about this specific critisism OP told, they are mad.
OP didn't say fishing is crap at all.
He/she just picked up the most frustrating options and brought some ideas to make it more 'reliable' or 'rewarding' - in a positive way, like teaming up with other peeps or thinking more about different strategies than just looking up a YT vid or reading TC informations.

So.. OP did a good job even defs won't care. ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Have you considered the idea that if it is not fun for you, you don't need to engage with it, rather than trying to take away what might be fun for others?

---

What if I want the Title or finish the Achievement log for example? And it's not like I'm saying give it to me for free, I'm willing to go through the content to get it.

However it's also perfectly ok for me to say rolling a 500 sided dice at 4am in the morning to get such a reward is not fun. Yet even then I'm not saying to delete it from the game, I'm offering you suggestions on how to make rolling this dice fun. Cause right now looking at it in any objective way this is poorly designed.

Here's an example that would fix the issue, instead of a 2 week window that opens up a 4am, give players a weekly they can do every week to get a drop. After 2 drops the player can trade for a bait they can use at any time. If the devs wanted to artificially time limit us with these 2 week windows to get more subs, then that is still there, but now the player doesn't need to get up at 4am or miss a window due to work. Is that not acceptable?

perhaps, but the devs have had 10+ years to make any kind of significant nerfs to big fishing other than what they've already done with fish eyes. The appetite is just not there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

What if I want the Title or finish the Achievement log for example?

---

You either let go of that desire for an arbitrary and meaningless accomplishment, or you accept the content in the form that some may currently enjoy.

I want a lot of Deep Dungeon stuff, but I'm not out here asking to implement Duty Support for it or give it solo echo buffs etc. I accept the content is designed with intention and is overall fair, it's simply content design I'm not thoroughly invested in engaging with.

Like. You keep bringing up fish windows at bad hours for you. For you. The fish are up at the same time for everybody, time zones exist. What works for you won't work for someone else. And, more importantly, there are always more windows. You keep trying to "fix" a problem you are responsible for subjecting yourself to. Just go to bed and try catching the fish at another time. There is literally nothing about virtual fishing that is ever worth disrupting your sleep or work or whatever else.

I will agree I think we've gotten away from skill-based fishing for sure. It's all about reaching breakpoints, using the right bait, showing up for the 2 seconds the fish is up for the next 2 weeks, and getting lucky. It's not really a rewarding structure. Ironically, in my opinion the best fishing that rewards informed fishers who are also skilled is ocean fishing, where your knowledge, execution, and luck all come together to determine how many points you can get. I think fishing could definitely use a rework but at this point with 900,000 fish in the game the chances of a meaningful rework are slim to none ever, and the rng "get lucky" trend will simply continue endlessly until end of lifecycle.

As a Fisher, I''m more into the "fishing log" part ; the titles & achievements, sure, I'll take them.

That said, Fishing in itself isn't really that rewarding ; and for some fishes, the best part is being done with them and never going back.
The relief after a few dozens windows is a truly great feeling that the lucky people getting it first try due to RNG will never know XD

Still, I wouldn't complain if there was a bit more skill involved or if some big fishes were at least more frequents.
The S.Whale just took a 2 week breaks, and due to work/sleep/etc, I'm unlikely to have a go at it for another 2 weeks myself, so I guess I'll log once a week to the chores and wait till the next I can try... Not really worth a sub.

Quote:

---

I think fishing could definitely use a rework but at this point with 900,000 fish in the game the chances of a meaningful rework are slim to none ever

---

Weekly random fish delivery or just changing desynth pool from sand to whatever would be easy to make and add usefulness to the class that it lacks deeply

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Like. You keep bringing up fish windows at bad hours for you. For you. The fish are up at the same time for everybody, time zones exist. What works for you won't work for someone else. And, more importantly, there are always more windows. You keep trying to "fix" a problem you are responsible for subjecting yourself to. Just go to bed and try catching the fish at another time. There is literally nothing about virtual fishing that is ever worth disrupting your sleep or work or whatever else.

---

I literally gave a suggestion in the post you quote that fixes the problem for everyone, while maintaining whatever arbitrarily long window SE wants.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

You either let go of that desire for an arbitrary and meaningless accomplishment, or you accept the content in the form that some may currently enjoy.

---

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.

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.

Anyway, I've already mentioned that in the end it's all pointless. Of course the next sub cycle my solution is to unsub, but since I do still support the game the devs deserves to know why I decided to unsub. To a good dev player feedback is more valuable than the actual sub.

I'd feel like your points would have more weight if this game wasn't a subscription game, but 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?

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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:

Quote:

---

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

---

----

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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?

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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:

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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)

Quote:

---

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

---

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lydia77

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

---

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.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fruity_Snacks

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.

---

the max downtime thing is completely irrelevant though, we have to talk about averages.

For an average person with average workday, of the 24h per day, 70% is gone (work/sleep/travel). Any argument about planning is NOT an option here as i already considered the entire 30% of free time as plannable. And since it can be done days ahead, its reliable on that end at least

Its still just a game, so pushing it in front of IRL stuff is generaly bad. Now ofc, there is a social aspect that can demand more specific online times as well, and special events etc that can motivate you to plan the game in front of IRL, but doing this for something RNG oriented is a very bad and unhealthy choise. So for this, we must assume only free time is available here.

Since only 30% of the day has an option, and the moments are equaly spread. This makes an average of once per 2 days in opportunities turn out closer to 16 days. While long, for opportunities and a dedicated person, its still well managable as long as its only for a very limited number of fish.

The more fish with such condition, the more opportunities will be spread upon the free space. Sure, a certain one might have a 20 day gap for you, but 3 other fish might have 3x the number of attempts instead. Its truly only anoying when its your last fish, but still well managable.

The 29day case for someone with just 3h a day might have only resulted in 30 or 31 days of a gap. Everyone suffered equal here, and hence its fair.

In my opinion OP, you are devaluing your critique of big fishing by making a majority of your post a complaint against your recent luck and displeasure in seeing others have better luck than you. You made the effort to provide some examples of additions to fishing to help improve RNG which is great, that's the kind of feedback people can debate and can give a dev ideas by reading; but so much of your post is just complaints about bad RNG.

In regards to your displeasure with the RNG...I have to point out a few things. 1) If seeing other people get fish annoys you, I can't recommend enough that you treat big fishing as a solo activity. Turn off "Others Gathering Messages" in your chat log, make a tab where Shout and Yell are turned off, and just get in your own little zone until you catch that fish. 2) You mention raiding being an example of a fair system. As a hypothetical, let's say you are a healer and your static clears a final boss and your co-healer has their weapon drop and it takes weeks of weapon coffers going to DPS then tanks before you finally get yours because your weapon never drops. And even if you don't go as high as Savage, what about all the extra time some players spend needing 99 totems for an extreme trial mount when others can just get it on their first clear? It sounds to me like what you want with big fishing is a totem system so you know that each failed attempt is getting you closer to the end goal, which in my opinion completely defeats the exhilaration of finally beating the RNG and reeling in your catch.

It's just really odd to me to see many of your suggestions talk about how much you like the communal aspects of fishing and yet it is so obvious that you are mad about other people getting this latest title before you.

As someone who constantly 100% the fish all your points are totally valid. However heres something even more infuriating that you didn't consider. I am Over Melded specifically for fishing with Ilevel 585... so why is it when I just went to catch the Nepto Dragon, for something I had planned, I couldn't. I have at minimum 10 Heavy pulls all in the range of Nepto and every time i reeled in, no patience on, he got away every.. single.. time... This is a fish from patch 2.4 with an ilevel of 80 putting me OVER 7 times it's Ilevel. Yet it got away every time...

Anyone who thinks Fishing doesn't still need some serious over hauling is full on ignorant to what fishing in FFXIV entails. They know fishing needs reworking which is why they added Ocean Fishing b/c without Ocean fishing you can be guaranteed 90% of the players would still NOT have fishing leveled.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShadowNyx3

In my opinion OP, you are devaluing your critique of big fishing by making a majority of your post a complaint against your recent luck and displeasure in seeing others have better luck than you...

It's just really odd to me to see many of your suggestions talk about how much you like the communal aspects of fishing and yet it is so obvious that you are mad about other people getting this latest title before you.

---

I think you are making some unfair assumptions about my motivations here. I mean I'm going to 100% complete the achievement no matter what since progress is always cumulative (as in I can't lose any fish prog and go backwards), so whether or not other people have the title or not has no bearing to me. I didn't even start fishing day 1, I only recently did this so I have no expectations to get the title before or after people. This is not a skill based achievement like ranked pvp or something, seeing someone else with the title does not indicate to me anyone has more skill here, just more time was spent. It is literally impossible to "lose" on this achievement.

I'm more concerned with wasting time and the fun aspect of that. And I know video games are a waste of time yadda yadda, no I don't mean it like that. What I care about is the excess time I wasted compared to someone else to get the exact same thing, which I don't think is fun.

And no I'm not expecting to 1-tap a fish, I'm don't even care about the expected value of hook attempts, I'm saying being 3+ standard deviations from norm for failure from no fault of your own is not at all fun.

"but RNG is RNG". No that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the fun aspect of the long-tail in the rng. There is no universe in where if you are 3 standard deviations on the unlucky side without any way to control your chances would be fun. If I lose 99/100 pvp games because of skill issues I am completely fine with that. If I lose 99/100 fishing sessions when the expected average is 10 sessions that is not fun. And on top of that the whole thing doesn't even respect your time. "but don't wake up at 4am to fish, just do it when you feel like it" I will predict that someone only limiting fishing time to a couple hours after work, between raids, and casually will never complete the achievement before more fish get released or even the end of the game as a whole.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

What I care about is the excess time I wasted compared to someone else to get the exact same thing, which I don't think is fun.

---

Why do you harp on comparing one person's big fishing experience to another's if the achievement doesn't mean anything to you? I don't have to assume anything when you repeat the same things over and over again.

Congratulations on saying that horrifically bad luck is not fun. Pretty certain exactly zero people are going to deny that fact of life. But what are you aiming to get from responses here if all you do is repeat this arbitrary "3 standard deviations" talking point? Without providing any kind of data or evidence to support that big fishing is empirically worse than bad luck in other areas, you literally just sound like someone who's angry their luck is shit.

To your point about it not respecting the player's time, there is nothing more fair than the ffxiv weather algorithm. It does not care where you live, it simply cycles through and creates fishing windows whenever the code allows. If you want to catch all the fish then you find the time to make it happen. I don't believe anyone who complains about an indiscriminate system like fishing windows has any respect for the fishing journey, they just want the rewards.

I just want them to stop making big fish where we have to jail in the zone for hours before hand or log off to get intuition. Two massive offenders of this right now in the game Lancetfish, which required me to jail for hours in the Tempest in the pond of despair as people call it back in ShB. Then they added Sidereal Whale which is similar requiring major jailing due to trying to catch Phallaina for the intuition. It can be highly frustrating to go to 5 to 10 hours of Phallaina windows and not get it to even get the intuition for the Sidereal Whale window. Overall Big fishing isn't to bad but I think a lot of us can be critical of fish like this that they add into 0.55 patches. Of course I am aware jailing is a choice, but increasing the chances to get the chance to catch them, will be the choice of most people if they can. You can of course get these in a single window if you are lucky. But i would still like the development team to consider not making fish like this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShadowNyx3

Why do you harp on comparing one person's big fishing experience to another's if the achievement doesn't mean anything to you? I don't have to assume anything when you repeat the same things over and over again.

Congratulations on saying that horrifically bad luck is not fun. Pretty certain exactly zero people are going to deny that fact of life. But what are you aiming to get from responses here if all you do is repeat this arbitrary "3 standard deviations" talking point? Without providing any kind of data or evidence to support that big fishing is empirically worse than bad luck in other areas, you literally just sound like someone who's angry their luck is shit.

To your point about it not respecting the player's time, there is nothing more fair than the ffxiv weather algorithm. It does not care where you live, it simply cycles through and creates fishing windows whenever the code allows. If you want to catch all the fish then you find the time to make it happen. I don't believe anyone who complains about an indiscriminate system like fishing windows has any respect for the fishing journey, they just want the rewards.

---

If your favorite thing to do is big fishing I am not attacking that or the content. In fact I enjoy the process of collecting stuff, whether it be pokemons or achievements or just fish. The rewards don't even matter, big fish could have 0 rewards but the fact that there is a checkmark that shows completion on a log makes me interested. In a similar vein I am not interested in collect all the the gear pieces or eating every piece of game food, but if they add glamor system that checks for previously obtained gear or add some "gourmet" achievement that logs all the food you've eaten I'd have fun completing that.

Lets lay out the points:

- bad rng is not fun (you and I both seem to agree, I have made suggestions that protect against long-tail distributions)
- the players time is not respected (we can disagree on this one, although I have made suggestions that improve the experience without affecting your experience, in my suggestions a 2 week long fish is still a 2 week long fish, just that the player can choose the play time)
- there is no player agency involved (you made no comment on this so I don't know your stance here. By player agency I mean a better skilled fisher should be able to improve their odds, like Snowy Paraxes is nice since you increase your chances by knowing timings, gp control, etc).

I don't think mentioning 3 standard deviations is arbitrary at all, especially since the entire fishing journey can be modeled a rng from simple coin flips.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

- there is no player agency involved (you made no comment on this so I don't know your stance here. By player agency I mean a better skilled fisher should be able to improve their odds, like Snowy Paraxes is nice since you increase your chances by knowing timings, gp control, etc).

---

You can optimize every fish in the game by doing these things, not just Snowy Paraxes. A "skilled" fisher is going to get way more casts per window than one who is inexperienced with the depth of using GP, but luck will always play a factor.

That being said, you only really feel that difference the more complex a fish's conditions are and unfortunately it feels as if a lot of non-legendary fish fall into the "slap something and spam chum" design, which is very worthy of criticism. It's important to have simple fish like these to balance the content but it would be nice to see some older designs come back into play that we rarely see these days. Double Mooches (mooch chain has taken over now) and intuition on non-legendaries would be nice to see revived, and there's so much room for new ideas and mechanics as well.

In conclusion, I think there's plenty of agency in improving your casts per window rate but a lot of room for expansion in fish design to really make that apparent.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by All_Nonsense

I will agree I think we've gotten away from skill-based fishing for sure. It's all about reaching breakpoints, using the right bait, showing up for the 2 seconds the fish is up for the next 2 weeks, and getting lucky. It's not really a rewarding structure. Ironically, in my opinion the best fishing that rewards informed fishers who are also skilled is ocean fishing, where your knowledge, execution, and luck all come together to determine how many points you can get. I think fishing could definitely use a rework but at this point with 900,000 fish in the game the chances of a meaningful rework are slim to none ever, and the rng "get lucky" trend will simply continue endlessly until end of lifecycle.

---

This sums it up nicely. I do Big Fish now and I do get something out of it so I keep doing it. But I do think it can be better. It would be nice if we had more agency and were able to be more active participants in the process. A lot of the time it feels like we are just captive audiences to RNG.

As our fisher pro says: you just dont have to do this since its just side content and is not affecting the game.
I wonder what is main aspect for people who dont like unreals etc and want to fill those checkmarks like me and you.
I do find it unnoying for any stat but GP meaning nothing for any fish in the game (besides min requires of current content). But removing it will trivialize 99% of the fish and its not fun. Its like going through the game with unsync only.
I say it again: my only issue is VERY rare windows. Fish geting 1-3-12-30-100 days of CD only to appear when you cant go for it AND being one of the most annoying to get as well. Right now a freaking whale will be up in 3 days and then 12 days! Almost a whole sub and guess what? i cant participate in any of them due to work / IRL stuff. And if i follow this "famous" fisher i dont have to jail myself to get the only chance in a month i have. Just give up and ignore the thing you are dedicated to complete. Enjoy it as is for a year untill you get all the RNG meet your conditions.
You want full PVP achives - just go do pvp. You want ultimates - get a party and do it. You want last fish? Wait for 2 months till you can try it and hope for 0.5% chance of success. Or you can willingly chain yourself on a freaking space island listening to "Whispers...", get prefish done and go for 20% success. I wonder what i should choose... Ive had my share of annoyance with ruby dragon which i fished for 8 real life months. But at least it was more common to try. Its jsut unfair % fish and my general bad luck allign.
I love the idea of weather / time requirements for fish just like IRL. But when this condition is met once every week its not OK and definetly not fun. Make them more common. Leave the chances and requrements the same. just LET. ME. FISH!
Ps. Good luck with Levequest and expert craft achives.

I'm going back fishing for something; wearing BIS, Relic, Food, FC Buffs (6.58) and have seen "The Fish Gets Away" more than a dozen times off a mooch and only getting that single mooch during a window. The window is 9 minutes every 1 hours. Fishing is by far BAD DESIGN. Too many RNG layers and I feel like I'm just wasting time , zero fun. On top of that YOU ARE REQUIRED TO USE 3RD PARTY WEBSITES TO UNDERSTAND FISHING or TRACK WINDOWS. There is no Time, Weather, Bait, or even hits to how to catch fish in the game AT ALL. There is ZERO in-game information about Fish. Unlike Mining/Botany. Speaking of fishing-windows. What a scam. Want this Fish ? To bad you are at work and it won't spawn for another 15 days. Absolute dog-water. To those who have fun that I've met, they tend to have good RNG or a lot of time to fish because they minimal outside responsibilities.

big mistake trying this as I found out the hard way..
Why does a level 50 fish still get away from a level 100 fisher?
It's already RNG to fish it, and then another RNG to hook it?!

Given its already been like this for years I dont see them changing it anytime soon DESPAIRGE

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zeeb

big mistake trying this as I found out the hard way..
Why does a level 50 fish still get away from a level 100 fisher?
It's already RNG to fish it, and then another RNG to hook it?!

Given its already been like this for years I dont see them changing it anytime soon DESPAIRGE

---

All *BIG* fish have a chance of slipping at a fixed rate. Common tier fish (which make up like 80% of all fish) will typically *not* slip as long as your gear is at-level or higher. There's always a rare chance a Lv1 fish will slip to a Lv100 fisher in 100 gear, but it's much lower than if you are say, Lv1 going for a Lv1. Been this way - to your point - for a decade.

One thing I see a lot of people who say that fish are slippery doing is they're using Patience II (or even Patience) to catch big fish and then using the wrong hookset - or not using them at all. Patience II isn't required to catch any fish, and using Patience and Patience II gives you an inefficient hookset debuff, forcing you to use Precision and Powerful Hookset to nullify it... if you use the wrong hookset though, the fish is way more likely to get away. If you don't use the right hookset or you just use normal hook during it, then the fish is SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to get away, regardless of your level.

i just started big fishing and i can understand the frustration, but i feel like being at the mercy of luck is just par for the course with stuff like this. some people get a kick out of trying again and again to win big. i personally like it so far but ofc ive barely scratched the surface being new to it and all, but as someone who loves things like shiny hunting in pokemon it kinda scratches that itch for me. have heard plenty of horror stories tho lol