Ocean fishing is horribly designed

[RyuSaarva]

I kinda think we should get like a fish market where you could sell fish to npcs for more gil than the basic sale value with maybe different fish in demand for every day or ability to trade fish for food/other items.

[Hyperia]

I would bet the two hour interval is intended to group the instances of queuing all up neatly, so the queues don't take as long. The debuff wouldn't help with that; it'd actually make queue times worse since people would still be waiting two hours between, but now they wouldn't all be lined up neatly on the same two-hour windows.

Hopefully finding 24 fishers across an entire data center will not be that much of a challenge, the system will even start an instance with as few as 8 and adjust the requirements accordingly.

[Zarkovitch]

I got my shark today... Neat.

[Gula]

Copy/paste from another similar thread, but I feel:

Personally, I think ocean fishing should be overhauled.
1) Make a currency like anything else, so with enough currency you can buy XYZ. Then we don’t care if anyone else is fishing or not aside from less chance to proc rainbows. Perhaps trade in the fish for currency? Hell, make the fish spectral fish the currency.
2) Why don’t the boats move... (as in not parking at a location, but sailing through) that was a huge thing in FFXI. Just taking in the sights as the ship moved was great, relaxing fun.
3) Add other social things on the ship, so people can fish..but also can do other things to make friends, socialize. I was in a group randomly that just hung out for the trip and kinda gave up on fishing partway through because it was impossible to get 10k.. it was a lot of fun to just chat- basically forgot to fish for a good chunk. Was the best trip I’ve had.

I really think there should be more things like this where you go in as an alliance or full party, but there simply is no combat or pressure to individually do anything to push for more socialization/simple fun.

XIV can be actually terrible when it comes to socialization. On my first run, I was wide eyed and hopeful. By my third, I didn't care who was doing what, I just wanted to level up.

I expect that in a month, no one will make a single o/

[BluexBird]

There are no rewards or benefits from doing anything else.
The fish are essentially worthless.
There are no rewards for the super-rare fish.

The sad reality is that Square-Enix are too paranoid about inflation to EVER make fish be worth anything. The only fish that actually have any value are the ones you can trade in for levequests, that players leveling their FSH will buy for convenience and faster leveling. Which is ridiculous, TBH.

They need to come up with a new system that makes fishing valuable and worthwhile. At least gathering and mining have ties with many of the crafting jobs. Fishing though? It's a joke. Something to do when you're bored with the game, after you've capped your weekly tomes and done every raid tier, that'll ultimately give you nothing in return. Sad.

I kinda think we should get like a fish market where you could sell fish to npcs for more gil than the basic sale value with maybe different fish in demand for every day or ability to trade fish for food/other items.

Excuse me buddy but they're called "collectibles", and you can exchange them for yellow/white scrips. Oh what's that? You wanted to make ACTUAL GIL with them? HAHA good luck convincing Square-Enix and their paranoid anti-inflation brigade. They're more worried about making sure players don't get more gil from the game/NPCs, than tackling the real issue with inflation - players having too much money but nothing to spend it on.

[RyuSaarva]

The sad reality is that Square-Enix are too paranoid about inflation to EVER make fish be worth anything. The only fish that actually have any value are the ones you can trade in for levequests, that players leveling their FSH will buy for convenience and faster leveling. Which is ridiculous, TBH.

They need to come up with a new system that makes fishing valuable and worthwhile. At least gathering and mining have ties with many of the crafting jobs. Fishing though? It's a joke. Something to do when you're bored with the game, after you've capped your weekly tomes and done every raid tier, that'll ultimately give you nothing in return. Sad.



Excuse me buddy but they're called "collectibles", and you can exchange them for yellow/white scrips. Oh what's that? You wanted to make ACTUAL GIL with them? HAHA good luck convincing Square-Enix and their paranoid anti-inflation brigade. They're more worried about making sure players don't get more gil from the game/NPCs, than tackling the real issue with inflation - players having too much money but nothing to spend it on.

fishing collectables are useless, it's so much easier to get scripts with miner/botanist and it does not need to be gil it can be a new system something like ishgard restoration where you need to bring a lot of items which can be traded for unique items.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I can only shake my head at those that can only see ocean fishing being dead content in the future. Can people not see that the current system is set up for expansion with 2 or even 3 more ships?

The Endeavor is the simplest lowest level (and likely lowest scoring) ocean voyage they have planned. They likely intend to have future ships with level requirements to access where getting scores of 10k, 16k and higher and getting the various "What did [Fish type] do to you?" bonuses will be far easier.

fishing collectables are useless, it's so much easier to get scripts with miner/botanist and it does not need to be gil it can be a new system something like ishgard restoration where you need to bring a lot of items which can be traded for unique items.

Spearfishing may be one the easiest way to get gathering white scripts as the Unspoiled Teeming Waters are easy to spawn and farm for white script fish.

[BluexBird]

fishing collectables are useless, it's so much easier to get scripts with miner/botanist and it does not need to be gil it can be a new system something like ishgard restoration where you need to bring a lot of items which can be traded for unique items.

Oh I know, I was trying to be sarcastic. Like, if you try to bring up that idea to SE, I'm pretty sure they're gonna reply with collectibles and how you can trade them for scrips.

Also, what sort of unique items would you like to see being able to be obtained from fishing?

[Lersayil]

I can only shake my head at those that can only see ocean fishing being dead content in the future. Can people not see that the current system is set up for expansion with 2 or even 3 more ships?

The Endeavor is the simplest lowest level (and likely lowest scoring) ocean voyage they have planned. They likely intend to have future ships with level requirements to access where getting scores of 10k, 16k and higher and getting the various "What did [Fish type] do to you?" bonuses will be far easier.

I mean, sure, but whats the point? If the rewards stay in the same vein, its a very short lived content bite by design. Once you get your achievments and leveled fully, it IS dead content. The only long term benefit for doing it is white scrips, which is both extremely unreliable, and low income compared to other sources.

Not to mention that the higher level ones might invalidate the older ones if the mount / title is shared between them.

I mean I liked it, but now that I got my mount, I really don't have a reason to stick with it.

[PangTong]

I want to give my perspective on this content from someone who has engaged with it quite a lot. I've managed to get the Ocean Fisher title, have caught 3 of the 4 five-star blue fish, and have earned over 10k points on at least 6 or 7 occasions. While there are things I enjoy about Ocean Fishing and it's probably the most fun I've had with fishing in a long time, I do think there are some problems with it. I haven't read the thread so I'm probably just echoing the sentiments of a lot of people here.

The core problem is of course that the potential for your score is completely dependent on the boat's ability to trigger spectral currents, which is 100% RNG. If a spectral current triggers, you stand to get 2000, 3000, even 4000+ points at a single location depending on your luck and how well you use your GP. If you do not trigger a spectral current, you will probably only manage a few hundred points, maybe 1000 if you are extremely lucky. When you need to finish with around 6000 points to stand a good chance at the mount, not getting currents is simply unacceptable.

Because all the main rewards from this content (the minion, mount and title) are tied to your score in a single trip, players are extremely pressured to try and trigger a spectral current, even though it's pure luck. If you don't get at least two spectral currents in a single trip, then your chances of getting the mount are virtually nil. For the title, you want three spectral currents. You could theoretically get these achievements with fewer currents, but the probability is so low as to not be worth thinking about.

Because of this, if you can't get enough spectral currents then it's ENORMOUSLY frustrating because you've essentially wasted your time, the trip is effectively worthless. The scrip payout isn't great and it's not like the content is fun on its own when the results are completely out of your hands. It's literally like playing a slot machine, just pulling a lever over and over hoping to hit the jackpot. Only if you fail, you've just wasted 25~ minutes of your time and must wait 2 hours to try again. It's so bad that a common strategy is that if the boat doesn't get a spectral current on the first stop, several players simply quit the duty and queue again to get on another boat for another chance.

(It doesn't help that the fish which trigger the currents have an obnoxiously high escape rate, even with my 1889 Gathering stat, tugs which I assume to be spectral fish get away at least half the time, meaning I assume their catch rate is capped at around 50%. This is extremely frustrating especially because these fish take so long to bite.)

When you're continually abused by things that are totally outside your control, it's maddening. Rather than being fun, it makes you absolutely hate the content.

It's hard to simply enjoy ocean fishing for what it is when you're so pressured to maximize your score while being completely at the mercy of RNG. You can't really just chill out and accept whatever happens, because what happens directly affects whether you can reap the rewards of the content. Plus you only have 7 minutes per location to maximize your points, so you are under extreme time pressure and can't afford to waste a single second, which only makes the content more stressful.

After getting all the rewards I'm interested in, I find that the content is actually reasonably fun on its own when you're not concerned about getting 10k or 16k points. But most players aren't yet free of that and will simply get more and more angry as they are continuously beaten down by bad luck.

On top of this, even if you DO have all the rewards already like me, you still want to get spectral currents for several reasons. Firstly, more points means more scrips. The point values of the fish outside spectral currents are so low it's insulting. Secondly, there's not actually much FUN to be had outside a spectral current. You can go for the intuition fish, but this is again 99% luck, your input makes almost no difference. These fish are not even worth much, and the amount of white scrips they award for catching them is truly pathetic considering how hard they are to catch. You can easily get 5-10x that amount with 30 minutes of gathering mining/botany collectables. Inside a spectral current though, there are actually things to pay attention to like trying to isolate the tugs of the high value fish versus the low value ones, and using your GP accordingly. This is what makes the content fun. Outside a spectral current there's nothing to pay attention to since all the fish are garbage, you just keep hooking and hooking and hooking trying to land a spectral.

Imagine if there was a raid where before players could go in and fight the bosses, they first had to win a dice roll game. If they lose, the bosses are locked away and the players must wait 2 hours to try again. How stupid would that be? It's not fun for anyone, all you're doing is holding back people from the good part of the game in an excruciating way. That's basically what Ocean Fishing is like.

There's a few things I think SE could do to help make the content better, but knowing what they are like I expect that nothing will be done, especially so as not to disappoint people who already worked hard for the rewards:
1. The point values of fish outside of spectral currents should be GREATLY increased. They should be worth at least 70-80% of what spectral current fish are worth. This includes the intuition fish.
2. There should be high-value fish outside of spectral currents (besides intuition fish) which skilled players can attempt to isolate to get more points. This makes the overall experience more FUN.
3. Intuition fish should reward WAY more white scrips if they remain at their current rarity. Landing an intuition fish should be worth at least 180 white scrips, more if you get them in HQ. This makes it more worthwhile and rewarding to get these fish, because right now they don't feel worth going for.

and while I think there's no chance of them doing this

4. The main achievement rewards (particularly the mount) should be tied to CUMULATIVE points across all trips, rather than the points earned in a single trip. This would mean that it doesn't really matter if you don't get spectral currents, you will get the rewards if you just keep gradually working towards them. This would be MUCH more fun, MUCH less frustrating and MUCH less stressful for EVERYBODY. There can still be some rewards tied to maximizing points like titles.

Failing that though, they should re-examine the system of spectral currents. Either the chance to proc them should be increased, or the way they are triggered should be changed. Like maybe its tied to total points, total fish caught, or some skill-based thing rather than just being a complete dice roll. I would even go so far as to say it would be fine if any given voyage was guaranteed at least 1 or 2 spectral currents no matter what happens. Because right now this content is just too frustrating for people. You know you've messed up on making something good when people just leave the content part way in because RNG screwed them over.