Big fishing is poorly designed and isn't very fun

[PotatoTree]

In my opinion OP, you are devaluing your critique of big fishing by making a majority of your post a complaint against your recent luck and displeasure in seeing others have better luck than you...

It's just really odd to me to see many of your suggestions talk about how much you like the communal aspects of fishing and yet it is so obvious that you are mad about other people getting this latest title before you.

I think you are making some unfair assumptions about my motivations here. I mean I'm going to 100% complete the achievement no matter what since progress is always cumulative (as in I can't lose any fish prog and go backwards), so whether or not other people have the title or not has no bearing to me. I didn't even start fishing day 1, I only recently did this so I have no expectations to get the title before or after people. This is not a skill based achievement like ranked pvp or something, seeing someone else with the title does not indicate to me anyone has more skill here, just more time was spent. It is literally impossible to "lose" on this achievement.

I'm more concerned with wasting time and the fun aspect of that. And I know video games are a waste of time yadda yadda, no I don't mean it like that. What I care about is the excess time I wasted compared to someone else to get the exact same thing, which I don't think is fun.

And no I'm not expecting to 1-tap a fish, I'm don't even care about the expected value of hook attempts, I'm saying being 3+ standard deviations from norm for failure from no fault of your own is not at all fun.

"but RNG is RNG". No that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the fun aspect of the long-tail in the rng. There is no universe in where if you are 3 standard deviations on the unlucky side without any way to control your chances would be fun. If I lose 99/100 pvp games because of skill issues I am completely fine with that. If I lose 99/100 fishing sessions when the expected average is 10 sessions that is not fun. And on top of that the whole thing doesn't even respect your time. "but don't wake up at 4am to fish, just do it when you feel like it" I will predict that someone only limiting fishing time to a couple hours after work, between raids, and casually will never complete the achievement before more fish get released or even the end of the game as a whole.

[ShadowNyx3]

What I care about is the excess time I wasted compared to someone else to get the exact same thing, which I don't think is fun.

Why do you harp on comparing one person's big fishing experience to another's if the achievement doesn't mean anything to you? I don't have to assume anything when you repeat the same things over and over again.

Congratulations on saying that horrifically bad luck is not fun. Pretty certain exactly zero people are going to deny that fact of life. But what are you aiming to get from responses here if all you do is repeat this arbitrary "3 standard deviations" talking point? Without providing any kind of data or evidence to support that big fishing is empirically worse than bad luck in other areas, you literally just sound like someone who's angry their luck is shit.

To your point about it not respecting the player's time, there is nothing more fair than the ffxiv weather algorithm. It does not care where you live, it simply cycles through and creates fishing windows whenever the code allows. If you want to catch all the fish then you find the time to make it happen. I don't believe anyone who complains about an indiscriminate system like fishing windows has any respect for the fishing journey, they just want the rewards.

[PotatoTree]

Why do you harp on comparing one person's big fishing experience to another's if the achievement doesn't mean anything to you? I don't have to assume anything when you repeat the same things over and over again.

Congratulations on saying that horrifically bad luck is not fun. Pretty certain exactly zero people are going to deny that fact of life. But what are you aiming to get from responses here if all you do is repeat this arbitrary "3 standard deviations" talking point? Without providing any kind of data or evidence to support that big fishing is empirically worse than bad luck in other areas, you literally just sound like someone who's angry their luck is shit.

To your point about it not respecting the player's time, there is nothing more fair than the ffxiv weather algorithm. It does not care where you live, it simply cycles through and creates fishing windows whenever the code allows. If you want to catch all the fish then you find the time to make it happen. I don't believe anyone who complains about an indiscriminate system like fishing windows has any respect for the fishing journey, they just want the rewards.

If your favorite thing to do is big fishing I am not attacking that or the content. In fact I enjoy the process of collecting stuff, whether it be pokemons or achievements or just fish. The rewards don't even matter, big fish could have 0 rewards but the fact that there is a checkmark that shows completion on a log makes me interested. In a similar vein I am not interested in collect all the the gear pieces or eating every piece of game food, but if they add glamor system that checks for previously obtained gear or add some "gourmet" achievement that logs all the food you've eaten I'd have fun completing that.

Lets lay out the points:

- bad rng is not fun (you and I both seem to agree, I have made suggestions that protect against long-tail distributions)
- the players time is not respected (we can disagree on this one, although I have made suggestions that improve the experience without affecting your experience, in my suggestions a 2 week long fish is still a 2 week long fish, just that the player can choose the play time)
- there is no player agency involved (you made no comment on this so I don't know your stance here. By player agency I mean a better skilled fisher should be able to improve their odds, like Snowy Paraxes is nice since you increase your chances by knowing timings, gp control, etc).

I don't think mentioning 3 standard deviations is arbitrary at all, especially since the entire fishing journey can be modeled a rng from simple coin flips.

[ShadowNyx3]

- there is no player agency involved (you made no comment on this so I don't know your stance here. By player agency I mean a better skilled fisher should be able to improve their odds, like Snowy Paraxes is nice since you increase your chances by knowing timings, gp control, etc).

You can optimize every fish in the game by doing these things, not just Snowy Paraxes. A "skilled" fisher is going to get way more casts per window than one who is inexperienced with the depth of using GP, but luck will always play a factor.

That being said, you only really feel that difference the more complex a fish's conditions are and unfortunately it feels as if a lot of non-legendary fish fall into the "slap something and spam chum" design, which is very worthy of criticism. It's important to have simple fish like these to balance the content but it would be nice to see some older designs come back into play that we rarely see these days. Double Mooches (mooch chain has taken over now) and intuition on non-legendaries would be nice to see revived, and there's so much room for new ideas and mechanics as well.

In conclusion, I think there's plenty of agency in improving your casts per window rate but a lot of room for expansion in fish design to really make that apparent.

[Lydia77]

As our fisher pro says: you just dont have to do this since its just side content and is not affecting the game.
I wonder what is main aspect for people who dont like unreals etc and want to fill those checkmarks like me and you.
I do find it unnoying for any stat but GP meaning nothing for any fish in the game (besides min requires of current content). But removing it will trivialize 99% of the fish and its not fun. Its like going through the game with unsync only.
I say it again: my only issue is VERY rare windows. Fish geting 1-3-12-30-100 days of CD only to appear when you cant go for it AND being one of the most annoying to get as well. Right now a freaking whale will be up in 3 days and then 12 days! Almost a whole sub and guess what? i cant participate in any of them due to work / IRL stuff. And if i follow this "famous" fisher i dont have to jail myself to get the only chance in a month i have. Just give up and ignore the thing you are dedicated to complete. Enjoy it as is for a year untill you get all the RNG meet your conditions.
You want full PVP achives - just go do pvp. You want ultimates - get a party and do it. You want last fish? Wait for 2 months till you can try it and hope for 0.5% chance of success. Or you can willingly chain yourself on a freaking space island listening to "Whispers...", get prefish done and go for 20% success. I wonder what i should choose... Ive had my share of annoyance with ruby dragon which i fished for 8 real life months. But at least it was more common to try. Its jsut unfair % fish and my general bad luck allign.
I love the idea of weather / time requirements for fish just like IRL. But when this condition is met once every week its not OK and definetly not fun. Make them more common. Leave the chances and requrements the same. just LET. ME. FISH!
Ps. Good luck with Levequest and expert craft achives.