Infrequent windows for fish are good, Purse of Riches is too much

[Stelle]

I really hope that this fish has a high catch rate because a fish being unavailable that much is worrisome. A slippery fish or challenging fish is one thing, but a fish that is unavailable for 3 weeks on average? A fish that will be unavailable for over 90 days later in the year? I wonder how people will feel about Purse during the 90 day downtime.

I already hear people joke about how fishing is a job for people who are unemployed. Do you work a job or have school? I guess you gotta be willing to ruin your sleep schedule and hope/pray you can attempt to fish for Purse every couple months or so.

I don't mind the idea of fish having less availability than others. I think it's nice to not constantly feel obligated to go to a fish every hour or every day, but a downtime of 3 weeks on average? This is going to have a similar impact anyway. There have been times where I really tried to catch a fish and had terrible luck, but I felt okay with taking a break because there will be other windows. For Purse, however, I feel obligated to go to as many windows I can because of how few windows there are and how many of those windows I'll actually be able to make.

As a fisher, I like to fish. I want to fish. The idea of waiting a couple months at a time so that I can fish for 5 minutes, especially a straight cast fish, doesn't feel great. Overall I've been very happy wish FSH this expansion. We got some great abilities and fun new mechanics. If this fish truly isn't bugged, I hope we don't see another like it.

If we are going to have extremely rare fish wish huge amounts of downtime, I think I would want to see that as a separate category from Big fish? Maybe legendary fish (fishing ultimate) and there's like one an expansion with it's own achievement(s).

[Carighan]

If we are going to have extremely rare fish wish huge amounts of downtime, I think I would want to see that as a separate category from Big fish? Maybe legendary fish (fishing ultimate) and there's like one an expansion with it's own achievement(s).

Not everything needs to be exclusively for achievement hunters and album collectors. A fish can just be super super rare and hence virtually nobody will have it.

Why is this fish something a fisher has to have?

[Canadane]

Not everything needs to be exclusively for achievement hunters and album collectors. A fish can just be super super rare and hence virtually nobody will have it.

Why is this fish something a fisher has to have?

It's the Fisher's way.

[Stelle]

Not everything needs to be exclusively for achievement hunters and album collectors. A fish can just be super super rare and hence virtually nobody will have it.

Why is this fish something a fisher has to have?

Sorry, I'm confused. Why does a fish tied to achievements need to be for achievements...? I don't know if I understand your question. A lot of fish are super super rare. I mentioned the idea of "legendary" fish not because it's something I necessarily want, but because this fish doesn't fit what is expected/reasonable for a Big Fish imo.

There's regular fish that aren't necessarily tied to achievements and there are big fish that are which are requirements for achievements and fishing titles. These titles are super rare and actually difficult to get. It's a form of bragging rights.

A fish like Purse of Riches is tied directly tied to achievements. Every expansion us fishers get the expansion achievement title and like Big Fish and The Final Fish. You mentioned how a super rare fish is a cool idea. That's what a lot of big fish are especially when you consider the x.55 fish like Ruby Dragon, Cinder Surprise, and Sidereal Whale. They might not be down for down for months at a time, but even so I've known people to spend months if not years trying to catch just one of these 3 (myself included).

I mean so long as the fish isn't needed for any quests or something, a super rare fish sounds cool, actually?


Plus let's not forget it's still on the quite easy/fast side of things to get, comparing actually difficult stuff like say, getting Insane in the Membrane in WoW back when it was first added

Insane in the Membrane is a achievement according to a data tracking website that 3% of active players have. According to a site that tracks XIV achievements, Endwalker's fishing title "The Final Fish" is a title that is owned by 1.5% of players who track their titles/achievements. Shadowbringer's fishing title "Big Fish" is owned by 2.1% of players who track their titles/achievements. And again for XIV, this is is a site for people who track their achievements meaning these titles are even more rare when you include people who don't care about titles/achievements. Plus fishing titles have only gotten easier to get with each expansion.

But like I said before. I like to fish and I want to fish. I have caught every single fish in this game whether that's regular fish, big fish, spear fish, or ocean fish. Every. single. one. Aside from Purse, but fingers crossed at the upcoming window this month. I enjoy fishing because of the community and challenge and Purse of Riches is disappointing to me. It is rare because of a time gate and won't give any sense of bragging rights unlike other rare fish that have challenged and united us. Also this is only a x.4 fish. The difficult fish of this expansion haven't even been released yet.

[Carighan]

Insane in the Membrane is a achievement according to a data tracking website that 3% of active players have.

Now, yes. You weren't around for late TBC / early WotLK, I take it? Insane in the Membrane (granting the "xyz the Insane"-title) was a very well-named achievement. It was made easier multiple times in WoW's lifetime, and still only 3% of active players have it, back then it required ~4-6 hours of farming each day for roughly 6 months, assuming you want weekends off.

(back to the topic I agree it should be its own achievement, just that fish, ideally give a title, too)

[Stelle]

I only have a little experience in WoW so I'm honestly not familiar with it at all, but my partner was an OG WoW player and did get the achievement while it was current. This is what they told me when I asked them about how it compares to fishing achievements in XIV:

"It was a grinding achievement and not hard to get. There's no research required and most people that got the achievement already had a good chunk of the progress done before the achievement came out. My guild would do stuff to gain rep for fun on the weekend for example. Getting insane in the membrane is more similar to getting the original relic weapons in XIV than it is to fishing achievements. Fishing achievements aren't grinding, they're research heavy, time sensitive, and luck + skill based."

Even though I don't know much about WoW, I am still familiar with actively working towards achievements in XIV that take 6+ months if not years to accomplish not including fishing! c:

Anyway yes back to topic! In my opinion, I don't think Purse is interesting enough to warrant a title on it's own because it's difficulty isn't based on fishing. And it's kinda boring ^^;

It's difficulty is based on being able to make it to a window because of real world constraints the average person may have (ex. having a job, going to school, spending time with family/friends, sleep, game/life balance, etc.) Additionally, it's a only a straight catch. Even just adding an ambitious int would make this fish more interesting imo. However, if this really isn't a bugged fish, I'm guessing this is intentional because they wanted the "difficulty" to be getting to the fish window rather than actually fishing itself. Thus extending how long the average fisher is "progging" without having to actually fish. Maybe they wanted to try a different way to increase the rarity of a fish by making it less accessible to the average player. Some players might be able to go to a lot of windows, but the average player might only be able to go a handful times in a year.

However I'm not sure what the bite rate is. I've heard people say it's easy to catch so maybe the average player will be able to catch it within a year after a few windows of attempts, but idk. I've also had my fair share of terrible luck with "easy to catch" fish lol. I went to the previous window and there were a decent amount of us considering how early it was and a few people caught it including one person who caught it twice. I'm really curious what the bite rate of the fish is, but at this point I think we only have data from two windows.

We'll have to wait and see!

Edit: I dont think I was clear on what I meant when I brought up the idea of legendary fishing. I don't want Purse to be separate from Big Fishing, but if XIV decides to continue with intentionally increasing rarity of fish by making them significantly less accessible to the average fisher I think I'd like them to put those fish in their own category outside of Big Fishing, but idk. Purse is unlike any other fish we've experienced so far so it's new ground.

[Carighan]

Yeah that's how I understood it. I'd even go as far as having some insanely crazy rare fish - like this - be their own unique achievement + maybe even a title. No material impact, cool for bragging rights.

[Nezerius]

Now, yes. You weren't around for late TBC / early WotLK, I take it? Insane in the Membrane (granting the "xyz the Insane"-title) was a very well-named achievement. It was made easier multiple times in WoW's lifetime, and still only 3% of active players have it, back then it required ~4-6 hours of farming each day for roughly 6 months, assuming you want weekends off.

(back to the topic I agree it should be its own achievement, just that fish, ideally give a title, too)

I was around during late TBC / early WotLK, and even had a friend decide to grind for the Insane title prior to any of the nerfs. While it definitely was a grindy title, it was something that you could essentially work on at every moment (and you could even speed it up by throwing copious amounts of gold at it). You put in the time for those 6-ish months, you get your title. In comparison, The Final Fish could easily take you just as many months (or less, if you're extremely lucky), simply because you're not guaranteed to get a big fish to bite.
The 3% vs. 1.5% is kinda hard to compare too, considering the Insane's 3% is based on a larger number of players (data taken from the Blizzard API) vs. the Final Fish's 1.5% from players that specifically made a profile on ffxivcollect (with that 1.5% being 4129 characters).


At the end of the day, both titles are incredibly rare for different reasons.

[Fruity_Snacks]

If we are going to have extremely rare fish wish huge amounts of downtime, I think I would want to see that as a separate category from Big fish? Maybe legendary fish (fishing ultimate) and there's like one an expansion with it's own achievement(s).

Legendary fish already exist and are already a classification of fish - that is, they are the last fish added in the expansion in the X.55 (or equivalent) patch. Ruby Dragon, Opabinia, Namitaro, Cinder Surprise, Unconditional, Shonisaurus - these are all legendary fish. They do not need their own achievement. Fabled Legendary Fish also exist, for what it's worth. Those are the blue-background legendary fish like Sothis, Glass Dragon, Jewel of Plum Spring, Elasmosaurus, Sea Faring Toad, etc.

Additionally, why? What value does a separate achievement for "long downtime" fish provide? What does it do? What would you define as a long downtime fish? The achievements themselves are fine as-is.

There's regular fish that aren't necessarily tied to achievements and there are big fish that are which are requirements for achievements and fishing titles...

For clarification on this for those who don't fish - all fish in the 'overworld' (not diadem, cosmic exploration) and ocean fishing contribute to titles, achievements, items, etc. Big fish included. It's the "I Caught That" series of achievements. The "Go Big or Go Home" (and variants) series are tied specifically to big and legendary fish from each expansion.

Not everything needs to be exclusively for achievement hunters and album collectors. A fish can just be super super rare and hence virtually nobody will have it.

Why is this fish something a fisher has to have?

(This is not directly a response to you, Carighan, just more that I'm answering your question to broadly address some trends in this thread so far)
Fishing is a completely optional and you-do-it-because-you-want-to-not-have-to piece of content in the game. No one needs the fish, but many would want it. The issue I see - even in this thread - is the bewildering and completely weird idea that it needs to be gotten now. There is no rush, there is no immediately need right now, and there is absolute reason anyone should be pushing for Purse of Riches right now. It's not going anywhere, it's not a race*, it is not time limited availability like the diadem titles were. You can choose not to get it for a year and nothing about your day to day will be impacted. The perceived rush to get any fish immediately, quickly, and easily is counter to the core design of fisher in FFXIV.

Also this is only a x.4 fish. The difficult fish of this expansion haven't even been released yet...

I'm also seeing a lot of comparing Purse of Riches to the likes of Ruby Dragon or Cinder Surprise within the context of 'taking ""years"" to catch'. I'm also seeing this comment a lot about 'oh it's only .4 what horrors will the .5 fish bring???'

The former comment is not a great comparison to make. There has been 0 (ZERO) indication or evidence that Purse of Riches will reach anywhere near the level of length as Ruby or Cinder might take even in the usually exaggerated timelines people give (as is tradition with fishing, "years" to catch fish is rarely if ever actually 'years'). It's an empty equivalency. Additionally, the X.4 fish have never been a bellweather for the upcoming .5 fish frequency or state. There is some patterns we've seen in the past where we see "downtime" fish come up in .4 patches (like Bobgoblin Bass), but we also see them in other patches as well. While the patches do progress from more common to more rare, that is not a hard metric or pattern that can nor should be adhered to. For example, the we got one of, if not the lowest, uptime fish in patch Endwalker patch 6.3 (Vidyutvat Wrasse), but didn't see anything as infrequent until 6.55 (Furcacuada, and even then that's cheating with its 90s window).


The goal of this thread was to discuss fish infrequency, not the convenience of getting titles or achievements or even if it's necessary to do so quickly (it's not). I would ask we continue on that topic. What alternatives to infrequent fish would be good to see (or have already been seen) in the future?

[RareBirdAlert]

What alternatives to infrequent fish would be good to see (or have already been seen) in the future?

We haven’t had an always-up big fish since Shadowbringers. ARR through Shadowbringers, there were big fish with no window conditions. Often these fish hate rarer bite rates and/or a high chance of slipping the hook, to compensate for the constant availability. I enjoy the combination of always up with a high slip rate, like Dammroen Herring or the Matriarch. It’s nice to have a fish that I can attempt whenever I have the time for it, and if I decide to take a break from my attempts, I can come back whenever I want, whenever is convenient for me, to continue.

I would far rather have another Dammroen Herring, always available and voraciously snapping up my premium scrip bait only to have a 90% or greater chance to slip, than a fish like Purse of Riches, that is a straightforward fishing experience that I can only go for a handful of times in a year.