What is the reason for hiding the slots on a timed node?

[LineageRazor]

You're right, your Gathering stat can be low enough that you don't uncover the item in one hit, and yes, items like Dark Matter Cluster, Unaspected Crystal, Mazlaya Greens, and Gregarious Worm are part of why this mechanic exists, as they may not even be present on the node. But obviously this design was abandoned, probably because it's dumb and annoying.

However I wouldn't hold your breath on a quick response even though we got a community response. Changing this mechanic would mean changing Endless Toil to something else, and, well, they've got more on their plate right now.

Actually, this mechanic was in place WELL before "variable location" items became a thing. The "clutter" was in place from the very beginning of ARR, while the first variable items weren't added until, I think, Patch 2.5, nearly two years later. While it's possible that they had planned for variable items from the beginning, I think it's far more likely that they put the clutter in place to give gatherers a feeling of discovery when they figure out where the treasure is, and to give them something to memorize in order to be a successful gathering class (much the same as DoW, DoM, and DoH classes need to memorize action rotations in order to be successful in their roles).

The problem is, memorizing times and slot positions isn't nearly as engaging as memorizing job rotations, and every other patch added MORE items that needed to be memorized. It's to the point where the individual who can keep track of where everything is is pretty rare, and that's even with SE trying to help out by having certain slots be "common" (mining hidden nodes are 3 or 6, more often than not, for instance).

Bad as Gathering is, Fishing is so much worse. A myriad of external resources is practically required for Fishing, and while they EVENTUALLY started adding some of that information in-game (time and weather requirements for certain fish), what they have is vague yes/no answers, and even those are unavailable for Big Fish.

[Brightamethyst]

Bad as Gathering is, Fishing is so much worse. A myriad of external resources is practically required for Fishing, and while they EVENTUALLY started adding some of that information in-game (time and weather requirements for certain fish), what they have is vague yes/no answers, and even those are unavailable for Big Fish.

That actually seems to be gone in ShB. All ShB fish just show ??? for time/weather/conditions (except the Crystarium delivery ones, which display like normal.)

[LineageRazor]

That actually seems to be gone in ShB. All ShB fish just show ??? for time/weather/conditions (except the Crystarium delivery ones, which display like normal.)

I don't remember for certain if it was the case for Stormblood, or not, but revealing the time/weather/conditions only applies for fish from previous expansions. The current expansion keeps it mysteeeeerious, even for regular fish. Again, this is likely to give fishers who do their homework an edge over those who don't.

[Gemina]

Bad as Gathering is, Fishing is so much worse. A myriad of external resources is practically required for Fishing, and while they EVENTUALLY started adding some of that information in-game (time and weather requirements for certain fish), what they have is vague yes/no answers, and even those are unavailable for Big Fish.

Agreed. Though while I wouldn't say that the outside resources are required to fish, they are extremely useful if you want to be efficient with time and bait, and also be proactive towards targeted fish with limited windows in order to maximize your opportunities to catch them.

I think a lot of the guessing game is to simulate actual fishing while still making a game out of things. Nothing in this game has more layers of RNG than fishing. I think this is fine when discovering holes, and adding simple normal fish to the log. After doing a fair bit of fishing you start to catch on with what baits to exclude and what various tugs and line cast times can clue you in to what has taken your bait. These are usually crash courses we learn quite quickly at any given hole so there is not much need to memorize.

However, for certain fish, I can't even begin to imagine seeking them out without external help. Is it a mooch? Does it require fish eyes or fishers intuition? Is it a straight catch with a ridiculously low gathering rate? What are the time and weather requirements, and is it a weather chain? Is this fish a combination of the aforementioned? Hell, one fish I caught required me to mooch a damn lord to catch the final fish. Jeezus!

How those sites acquire this information, I do not know. What I do know is that I would not be as successful of a fisher as I am without them, that is for sure.