Fishing, Its time to bring it in line with the other gathering jobs!!

[TaleraRistain]

I don't think fishing itself is a flawed design. I would, however, go on record to say that there are some fish that are abysmally designed in their conditions, e.g., Cinder Surprise, Bobgoblin Bass, and Ealad Skaan to name a few. - In that, some of these fish can have downtime which extends beyond a week before it can be next caught, and then on top of this you have the question of whether the fish aligns with your schedule, e.g., are you at work? Are you on other matters? - I've met people that make it so their schedule fits around these fish, e.g., doing a Work from Home, skipping raid. - This is why to a degree I will always get a bit of comedy from people that say it's flawed etc., just because they've spent a couple of hours trying to catch a fish that has a 40%+ window rate.

I think even fish with conditions like those and others would be more forgivable if they would bite in their window. I can see the point being made that someone can practice Savage or an Ultimate and look for ways to improve but that player agency is missing a lot in Big Fishing when you can do everything right to prepare and it just never bites. They could substitute some of that RNG for more preparation and utilization of skills to give players more of that agency that is present in other aspects of the game.

[ForsakenRoe]

If you find big fishing to be too much of a 'problem' now, just wait till next expansion. It will become easier because we get new tools to use, which soft-nerf previous requirements. For example:

- ARR had fish which required multiple mooches (Kuno the Killer, for example). This was alleviated in HW when Patience was added, allowing much higher HQ rates for a window
- There are some fish which require mooching in a cannibalistic chain (eg Ruby Dragon, Ku'er will catch into Ku'er very often), and your Patience runs out. Mooch 2 allows an extra attempt using an NQ catch
- Plenty of fish are straight catches. A perfect example is The Unconditional. It's one of only two fish on the drop table, so Surface Slap added in SHB allows you to slap the 'wrong' fish, and every attempt thereafter is The Unconditional. What used to be one of the hardest to catch, is now one of the easiest

- Identical Cast/DoubleHook/TripleHook all pseudo-nerf any big fish that has an Intuition proc, such as Warden of the Seven Hues

The class has a skill called Patience for a reason: fishing is not meant to be something you can just 'complete' right away, it takes time and yes sometimes that means getting screwed by RNG, that's the nature of the beast. The only big thing you get from bigfishing is the titles, and if it's made easier, the title holds less prestige so you'd be less inclined to use it.

As for regular fish, sometimes they're used for CUL recipes, sometimes some desynth into aethersands for Potions/Alkahests. Could they do more with the grey-class ones? Maybe. Do I want to have to spend several extra hours of that Normal Mode week, fishing for a new kind of shrimp because its the only source of Astralblighted Aethersand or whatever name they come up with? Probably not, no, there's limited time in that week and I don't see why forcing people to take extra time with raid prep would be a good idea

[fulminating]

I’d be fine with it if there was a fishing desynth for more relevant materials, you can either do the mindnumbing mining/botany loop or spear/fish for a rock/wood-touched fish and get a couple per desynthesis maybe but adjusted to be on par or slightly worse than just going round in circles. Or relic materials again or just something more than often doa dol/doh food.

[CaptainLola]

Not as in you would be bad parents, but in the "I had it hard and I made it through so you can too!" kind of way. For veteran players I'm sure the challenge was really fun. New patch comes out and you spend months waiting for the next patch with like 5-10 new super cool fish to catch. For a newer player (little over a year) a backlog of over 200 big fish with super low RNG rates, several conditions, etc. is not fun anymore. I had tons of fun with the EW fish because it was a reasonable challenge at level. Going back to ARR and trying to fill out my full fishing log was super fun... for the first 100 big fish. Now every bite that slips away feels like a frustrating waste of time.

[SdeSpencer]

This post is just correct, though honestly i would go even further. Fishing (specifically rod fishing, spearfishing is good actually) is pure RNG, and pure RNG... isn't fun. There are skills, but those skill don't actually change the basic issue that the gameplay loop is "press button, wait for 5-10 seconds, press second button, hope you got the rng". It's a pure RNG grind to fill out, and in a way that just feels like wasting time without *doing* anything.

[Sindele]

Then just... don't fill it out. There's no real reason to. There's nothing interesting gated behind it.

If you don't crush the compulsive desire to 100% in a living MMO, that desire will crush you.

[Yuella]

We need Feast of Famine for each expansion

[Deceptus]

My main issue is the core of the gameplay loop, RNG on top of RNG, on top of RNG. To me, that's not fun, it's tedious. And if it's not fun, what's the point?

Have to have the right bait (which does nothing but bloat the inventory)

The right timeframe (which might not be conducive to your RL schedule)

The right weather (which combined with the above makes for some sh!tty windows)

RNG on the catch

RNG on the inevitable mooch

Compounded on more RNG if it's a mooch chain which most of the higher level fish are.

My stupid simple solution would be to make the fisher off hand a tackle box that functions as your bait (i.e. remove bait completely) so you don't have to manually select one every single fish.

Personal gripe: The fact we haven't gotten a new ilvl gig since lvl 60. Last expansion's Gatherer Relic would have been the perfect time to introduce it. Same with this expansion.

[ACE135]

My main issue is the core of the gameplay loop, RNG on top of RNG, on top of RNG. To me, that's not fun, it's tedious. And if it's not fun, what's the point?

Right, if it's not fun to you, there's no point in doing it. Others who have fun with it will do it.
Not every aspect of the game is fun for every player. So do that what actually is fun to you.

[NekoMataMata]

Right, if it's not fun to you, there's no point in doing it. Others who have fun with it will do it.
Not every aspect of the game is fun for every player. So do that what actually is fun to you.

Trust me, it's not fun for anyone.

The people who have fun doing this are lying to themselves, and to the rest of us. I assure you that I can find you or any other serious Fisher cursing their luck in a discord somewhere when the window closes and they realize that they're going to be spending 20+ hours to sometimes weeks waiting for it to open again so they can try again.

Very, very few people genuinely enjoy that, and most people that say they do are saying it to gatekeep.