Big fishing is poorly designed and isn't very fun

[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 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)

[Fruity_Snacks]

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.

[Lydia77]

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.

[Fruity_Snacks]

...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.)

[UkcsAlias]

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.