Fishing Not Respectful Of Player's Time

[Mishen]

With the influx of players trying out the game and praising how it respects the player's time compared to WoW, where players complain it feels like a second job, there's one aspect of the ff14 that is the complete opposite...Fishing.

With Endwalker still months out and not much left to do until then I decided I would try completing my fishing log and catch all the fish in the game, little did I know I was about to step into a world of muti-layered rng mess. I enjoyed collecting every item with miner and botanist and it didn't take too long to get my shiny tools, but when it comes to fishing I'll be lucky if I finish in a year!

How does it make sense that I can fail to catch a fish from ARR when I'm in fully pentamelded end game gear (minus the fishing rod). It's even worse if it's a fish that has a short window and a long respawn timer that could take days before you can even attempt to try catching it again (good luck if the fishing window is in the middle of the night). Most of the rare fish have a extremely low chance of even appearing during the time they're available so most of the time you're sitting there getting the wrong fish to bite and when the one you want appears rng decides nope you're not getting it this time. That's not even counting the fish that need double mooches only for the final mooch to end up with the fish either getting away or getting a normally spawning fish appearing ruining your GP because you need Patience to consistently catch HQ fish needed to start mooching.

So you have 1000+ fish to catch to complete your log, most of which are on timers which could possibly take days for them to even be up, a low catch rate with even the best gear (that's if the fish even appears during it's window), and I haven't even started on needing 30+ different baits that takes up a ton of inventory space.

All of this leads to fishing feeling like a total rng game compared to the other gatherers and makes me not want to touch it until it's fixed. Fishing wastes player's time and needs a total rework.

What are some ideas you would implement to make fishing more enjoyable?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Just do what I do. Go by patch. Start with 2.0, and slowly move up.


I've just finished with catching all of the 3.x big fish, and am moving on to 4.x.

It you try to tackle it all as a big lump of course it's going to be terrible.


It's fishing.... It's going to be random

[Gelesto]

With the changes to fish eyes in a recent patch you now only need to worry about weather/transitions save for a handful of fish namely the legendary ones.
I think some fish need to be hard to catch or have limited windows for capture or else it ends up like botanist and miner and the log is done in a day, FSH doesnt really offer materials for crafting for like 95% of its fish its all flavour and satisfaction on the catch just take your time and try to have fun completing your pokedex.

[Kirika-]

To add, the rare catches and Big Fish have a fixed skill threshold required to have a chance to "spawn" for you to catch and then a fixed percentage to spawn/hook.
As in, as long as your Fishing stats meet the required threshold, you do not get any further "perk" to spawn/catch, even if you are the God of the Rod as far as Gathering/Perception.
It does suck, being a 100x over what is required to have a chance and it gets away, but in a sense, it does make it more like real-life fishing.

[Jojoya]

All of this leads to fishing feeling like a total rng game compared to the other gatherers and makes me not want to touch it until it's fixed. Fishing wastes player's time and needs a total rework.

Fishing is more of a hobby in this game than a gathering class. If you look at BTN and MIN, all the items you can gather have a specific use (or used to until some changes were made to the collectable/reduction systems). With fishing, only a relative handful were ever useful for crafting/collectables/reduction with the vast majority only good for getting Fine Sand (and why when you can mine it easier?).

It's a waste of time because it's supposed to be. You're not supposed to be able to easily catch the big game fish. They're supposed to have that chance to get away no matter how good your gear is, just like real life fishermen have their tales of "the big one that got away".

If you're not having fun with fishing, then don't do it. There's plenty of other content in the game.

Also, don't keep all the bait. Only keep the bait you're actively using and sell/discard the rest. Most bait is very cheap and easy to get when you do need it. Use the boilies or Versatile Lure for most of the fish on the log. Only switch to the specific baits when you're going after the big game fish.

[Tint]

I would appreciate it if people would stop trying to ruin one of my favorite activities in this game.

I enjoy fishing a lot, thank you.

[Theodric]

I enjoy it too, though the comment isn't exactly incorrect - locking something behind multiple layers of RNG is arguably not respectful of anybody's time and that's generally why some manner of failsafe or catch up mechanism is added elsewhere.

[DoH]

Common threads on the forums include:
- Players demanding access to Legacy items
- Players demanding access to past Feast rewards
- Players demanding that Fishing be nerfed so that they can easily catch all the fish

[NegativeS]

I don't think that fishing in any game is meant to respect your time. Or in real life.

Like... have you ever been fishing in real life? I don't think any activity in existence could beat "sitting by the water for 8 hours straight waiting for a stick to wiggle" in terms of total time disrespected, barring maybe watching paint drying.

[DPZ2]

All of this leads to fishing feeling like a total rng game compared to the other gatherers and makes me not want to touch it until it's fixed. Fishing wastes player's time and needs a total rework.

Have you ever spent time in the Real World fishing? With the exception of fish farms, where one can drop a hook with corn on the end of it and pull up a rainbow trout within seconds (yeah, they exist ... yeah, my dad 'caught' a bunch of them one family vacation years ago), fishing is a past time that appears to be entirely random to those who don't know, and only somewhat less random to those who do know.

Totally believable in-game.