The whole the fish gets away thing...

[Nenluen]

I've already had two 'got away' on Priest of Yx'lokwa, after getting one of the four fish to mooch, to get one of the three fish to mooch for the priest... and it's a small but frequently repeated rare window, so I'll only have to wait an hour before being able to try again, which I have that luxury, now being a full time work from home person, my lil lala just sits and fishes on my laptop while I work, only needing me to reach over and hit a button when I hear the 'plink!' sound of a fish on the line, many other players don't have the time available to hit 12+ hours of fishing windows and some of the windows are still quite egregious (Duskfish is now 21 days away)

Surface slap does not work on mooched fish, and if the Big Fish you're looking for is from a mooch, it gets a bit rough on GP to utilize it, and if the big fish is on a mooch chain, it's only slightly helpful. If it persisted, some fish chains would get easier, but still not be a cakewalk, like the Great Serpent. Instead of 1/4 x 1/3, it becomes 1/3 x 1/2 by slapping away a Yellow Pipira or Robber Crab to get to the Priest eliminating them from both the initial cast and the mooch catch.

Some pools would get somewhat trivialized (look at Loch Seld in particular), but I'm talking about changing things from previous expansions and ARR.. this is all older content after all and I think it should get easier over time, because while realistic elements are nice and all, this is still a video game, and the purpose of a game is to have fun. Failing something just because of a random, uninfluenceable die roll, just isn't fun for me. I land a rare slippery fish (like Charibenet, which I landed two days ago) and it's not 'Yeah! I overcame a challenge! Woo hoo!' it's 'Whew, finally, I got it, now I thankfully never have to do that again.'


The La Noscean fish wasn't Faerie Queen, because I was working on it with Fish Eyes and I think there was no weather requirement, I was working on it for quite a while, an hour or two straight, maybe more.

[Fruity_Snacks]

No, that is correct, Surface Slap does not work on fish which are caught off mooches, but the pool of fish that can be mooched is typically smaller than those that can't.

The thing is though, ARR, Heavensward, SB, ShB content have gotten easier over time. They don't get easier like Miner, or Botanist, or even the combat jobs - where your stats make it a higher chance to get more items, or to hit harder. Fishing gets easier with the skills that are added. All the ARR legendary fish - Shonisaurus, Helicoprion, Neptodragon, etc. Back in 2.0, you didn't have Patience to catch them. They got easier when Patience was added in Heavensward.

Stormblood brought us Double Hook - making all those Heavensward intuition fish (Sea Butterfly, Raimdell, Chari) loads easier - by letting you get multiple ints a window.
In Shadowbringers we got Surface Slap. The pivotal skill now that universally made every fish easier, and some trivial (Moggle Mogpom, The Unconditional in SB - for example).

Fish Eyes was changed to accommodate folks who - as you said - don't have the luxury of hitting all those long windows, but still kept the spirit of fishing. It made it easier and accessible.

So like, yea, content should get easier over time. And it has gotten LOADS easier over time. Might not have gotten easier in the way you'd like - but it's gotten so ridiculously easier.

[Nenluen]

Sure things have gotten easier, there's now visual exclamation marks instead of having to rely on the vibration of a controller, or identification of a particular sound of the reel being pulled, and the addition various abilities have mitigated some of the hoops that a player has to jump through. Those aspects I don't have too much problem with (after all, I did say it was a Magical Christmas land wish to have Surface Slap do more).

My main objection is the cap on the chance for a successful fish catch.

If I manage to be in the right place,
with the right bait (some requiring Gatherer's scripts),
sometimes at the right time (sometimes mitigatable with Fish Eyes),
sometimes with the right weather or weather pattern (unmitigatable),
sometimes after catching the right type of fish (and those might even have their own requirements, which Fish Slap and Double Hook can help),
sometimes requiring ALL of the above

and then I manage to get the thing on the hook after maybe a dozen dozen casts (using Chum to speed it up, slapping away an undesirable fish)
or having to mooch one or more fish in a row (Surface Slap for the first fish, Patience, Makeshift Bait, Prize Catch to help keep up the mooch chain)

after all of that... I should have earned my prize... not had an arbitrary RNG roll look at me and go 'nah, try again'.

Having that little bit of frustration before the prize, wears thin after the 60th or 70th Big Fish that keeps getting away.

I don't really care that having fish slip off the hook seems realistic, this is a video game, we're allowed to suspend some elements of realism in favor of fun.

[Nenluen]

An example of what I'm talking about:

Tonight The Unconditional, a Stormblood Big Fish, was up, so I decided to reel for its entire window, which is about two minutes long.

I arrived early at the fishing hole and prepared by Slapping away the Nhaama's Boon and then casting as soon as I thought the window was open, I guess I was a bit early and got a 'nothing bites' on my first real. Five 'gets away' in I'm starting to panic a little, as the window is closing, and won't be open until Next Week, I'm relieved I landed it on my sixth cast, but it shouldn't have been a concern in the first place.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

An example of what I'm talking about:

Tonight The Unconditional, a Stormblood Big Fish, was up, so I decided to reel for its entire window, which is about two minutes long.

I arrived early at the fishing hole and prepared by Slapping away the Nhaama's Boon and then casting as soon as I thought the window was open, I guess I was a bit early and got a 'nothing bites' on my first real. Five 'gets away' in I'm starting to panic a little, as the window is closing, and won't be open until Next Week, I'm relieved I landed it on my sixth cast, but it shouldn't have been a concern in the first place.

I dunno why it's called "Unconditional"... 2 min window and then until next week? It seems almost tooooooo "Conditional" to me! LMAOOOO!!!
This is like the "Patient Touch" action that they removed in Endwalker... That action was basically the most impatient action ever! LOL!

[Fruity_Snacks]

An example of what I'm talking about:

Tonight The Unconditional, a Stormblood Big Fish, was up, so I decided to reel for its entire window, which is about two minutes long.

I arrived early at the fishing hole and prepared by Slapping away the Nhaama's Boon and then casting as soon as I thought the window was open, I guess I was a bit early and got a 'nothing bites' on my first real. Five 'gets away' in I'm starting to panic a little, as the window is closing, and won't be open until Next Week, I'm relieved I landed it on my sixth cast, but it shouldn't have been a concern in the first place.

Uncond is notoriously slippery - and frankly I don't see an issue with it in this case. Especially now because you can just slap Nhaama's boon and get a guaranteed bite. Takes some persistence, but you can get it. Rarely will you go a window without catching Uncond.

The argument about suspension of reality is fine, but I don't really agree with it. There's a balance you need to hit to make something unique and have character, and I do not think SE has ruined that with the fish get away. Fishing is unique and should remain unique compared to other gathering classes. Each fish in each patch increases in rarity and difficulty to obtain, with the final fish being the "legendary' fish - and are notoriously the hardest fish in the game to catch. Unconditional is one of these fish. (Other well know fish include Ruby Dragon, Stethacanthus, Sea Butterfly, Ealad Skaan, and Sea Butterfly)

As for the fish with a lot of prerequisites, we'll look at Greater Serpent of Ronka. A legendary fish in the Rak'tika greatwood. It's a triple mooch fish, off a Priest of Yx'lokwa (which gets away often) that's up from 10a-12p every day. 6 minutes of real life up time, every hour (that's tied to Priest's window). It has a really tough set of requisites to get a chance at - and is balanced accordingly. We estimate it to have an 85% successful hook rate. If you get a Priest on your line and mooch it, you are more than likely going to get the Greater Serpent of Ronka. Fish like Mahar > Shonisaurus are like this as well. They balance the fish get-away rates to their rarity. It's not just arbitrary.

I see and truly understand where you are coming from, it's not a new argument that's been made and I'm sure it won't be the last time. I just haven't see anything about raising the success rate cap that I agree with.

[Fruity_Snacks]

I also want to quickly add that the catch rate only applies to big fish, gray-background common tier fish catch rates do scale with gathering and while they are not 100%, they are pretty darn close.

[Tyonto]

There are nearly 1400 fish in the fishing log and more than 1100 appear to function the way in which you want.

White-rarity fish have zero hard gathering or perception breakpoints, meaning you can technically catch them at any gathering rating though at low gathering ratings they will almost always escape. Meeting their soft gathering breakpoint makes them have an incredibly low (1-3% at worst) chance of getting away. Fish used in crafting are these types of fish.
Fish that get farmed for scrips are the same. There is always one high-tier scrip fish that has a very poor bite rate, but every other scrip fish option is either always up or up often and very easy to farm.

If big fish behaved like white-rarity fish, why have big fish exist at all? They would just be like the >1100 fish in the Fishing Log that aren't big fish.

I suppose maybe it's a matter of how you perceive big fishing. Big fishing is its own piece of content and there is no point to doing it other than catching them. The only rewards you get from it or titles or fishing rods which only benefit FSH and which are only relevant for their stats for the final patch of an expansion.
Some of the early big fish had some unique desynths, but all of those are easy to catch and have very good bite/catch rates (or have alternatives that do). At this point there's been nothing unique from FSH desynth in years, big fish or not, so at this point you are not missing anything tangible if you don't catch big fish at all except things which provide a benefit for big fishing.

Probably because the fish are 'fickle' (the game's word to describe fish with weather/time conditions), big fishing is content which is pretty much completely self-contained. It doesn't interact with other jobs at all. As such, I find them having immutable catch and escape rates, in addition to the other possible conditions they can have, appropriate (though catch rates for big fish from ARR - HW did get nerfed in 4.2, you can see it in the patch notes).

Part of why it's a lasting piece of content because it is not completely trivialized by outright nerfs to the fish, though as stated has been made substantially easier over time and pretty much every big fish has been indirectly nerfed multiple times. I believe you brush past or overlook just how substantially easier it has gotten in your response to the above message. The immutable characteristics have not changed much (though they have for ARR - HW fish, as stated), but big fishing from ARR - SB is completely different than how it used to be when relevant, and all in a way that makes it much easier.
The intent appears to be to make it more accessible via new skills and some special baits, which they have, while also keeping this completely optional and unique piece of content still relevant in its entirety.

[Nenluen]

Again. My main complaint is that at the end of jumping through ALL of the hoops, all of the interesting and unique things that fishing already has you can still just get randomly told 'No'.

Like, fishing is already quite unique, you have to pay attention to the Weather, you have to have specific bait (some of it, relatively expensive), you then have to Randomly pick through a pool of items you can pull with your gather attempt, waiting for up to a minute to see what it is you actually get and then you only get the one item. There's no Gatherer's Intuition procs, even spearfishing is now a minigame instead of a BOT/MIN style gathering node. You can just sit at a pool and fish until the game tells you to 'please move'.

An arbitrary Failure rate, to me, is not interesting or unique, it's artificial content padding. EQ used to have arbitrary failure rates on their crafting system, and it was utterly crushing after spending days gathering and farming all the materials for a complex craft.. and then clicking the button to make it, at Max Skill, and it just going 'lol, nope'.

The argument that 'things are much better than they used to be' falls flat with me, because to me it reads like 'welp, we've done all we can, this is as good as it's gonna get, please just give up already.'

So again, to me, the Catch Cap is like getting to the end of a race, seeing the finish line just ahead of you, and then being stopped and told 'wait hold up' as an official rolls some dice, looks at the result, shakes their head at you and then says 'oh, sorry, you have to run it all over again'. It was bad in 2.0 and it's still bad now.

[fulminating]

It sounds awfully like what you’re asking for would end up being implemented as far lower chance to see !!! and a bit more inflation on ocean fishing scores