Legendary fish and the upcoming update

[Sated]

The ones with absurd requirements feel so satisfying to finally catch for that reason, though.

I can understand making things easier if they're a barrier to getting to other content, like catching up on levels/story to play with friends, but fishing is an optional activity for those who enjoy this kind of challenge. I know I'd be very disappointed as a new player if I started fishing and learned I was getting a significantly different experience for the sake of ease, as has happened with other activities in other games.

What I do think would be helpful without directly affecting the actual fishing is to take the older expansion baits off the scrip table and make them cost gil (or just further reduce their cost) so they aren't competing with newer content's bait and players can more easily work on all fish if they want to. Not that it's a huge problem but I'm still spending all of my delivery scrips on stonefly larva and it's kind of annoying.

Yes, I completely agree with this. Even if it is frustrating to never get a bite once in a blue moon and even if some requirements require a lot of work, I think it's part of what makes fishing interesting. The part that sucks is that no matter how perfectly you execute everything and how overgeared you may be, the fish can still get away once it does finally bite.

It's definitely frustrating. Last weekend at Prism Lake I can honestly say I earned the catch that trip with how well I was playing FSH to secure two miracle post-window Mooches, but still it didn't even bite that Intuition. Damn if it won't feel good to put that thing in an aquarium once I get it though.

[Elizar_Naki]

I know I'd be very disappointed as a new player if I started fishing and learned I was getting a significantly different experience for the sake of ease, as has happened with other activities in other games.

I agree up to a point, but consider it this way: if you go into, say, T5 at level as a new player, with barely the minimum gear and only moderate experience with the game, you expect it to be a challenge, especially if everyone goes in blind and has to learn as they go. If you unsync it as an established 80 with even halfway decent gear, you expect to roflstomp Twintania with little to no effort. If, as a lv.80 crafter with current-era gear, you go back and try to craft any of those challenging recipes 2.x threw at you for the sake of lucis tools or zodiac weapons or whatever, you'd actually have to try harder to FAIL the craft than to succeed. And repeating my example from earlier, if you go to the darksteel node as a lv.80 MIN with current-era gear, it would be infuriating if the game somehow caused you to miss even ONE strike. Why should fishing be different?

Don't get me wrong: if I was only a lv.50 FSH trying to catch Matriarch (or any other older legendary), then yes, I'd expect it to take longer. Just as I wouldn't advocate the lv.80 legendaries being easier for a lv.80 FSH regardless of how frustrating they are to catch, or how unfair I might consider the requirements for them. But as a lv.80 FSH, ARR and HW legendaries SHOULD be easier, if not automatic catches, once you have them hooked. Your level and stats SHOULD give you some kind of advantage in the catch attempt, just as they do anywhere else. You wanna keep the time/weather/Intuition-based aspects as is, fine; nerfing those would be like nerfing the spawn conditions for old S ranks. But even if those old S ranks rightfully remain a challenge to SPAWN, they can be killed by 1 or 2 lv.80 players (assuming nobody else shows up to kill it in seconds) once they're on the map. Likewise, if a legendary fish has any factors involved in making it available, leave those in place, but the ACTUAL CATCH should be influenced by level and gear. The challenge in every other area of the game is in the CURRENT content, with older content being little more than barely-challenging catch-up work if you do it later. IMHO, the fishing log--even legendaries--should be no different.

[Sated]

Why should fishing be different?

Fishing is a very different kind of activity that doesn't hinge on watching numbers go up incrementally week-over-week, it's really nothing like raiding and that's why I enjoy it. It's a very different kind of progress, not one that becomes trivialized, just receives general QoL improvements from abilities you pick up from leveling. The gear helps an appropriate amount, not an unrealistic amount. There's no reason for legendary fish to be trivialized unless they add a story to it, it's entirely optional and exists specifically for the challenge of doing it, where raids offer rewards and lore that should be more accessible over time from a gameplay standpoint.

At the same time, making it easier wouldn't affect me as long as they also include a means for it to still be done with an appropriate difficulty for those who actually enjoy fishing, so I don't mind if they do make it easier as long as there's also a way to preserver the challenge, I just don't understand why anyone would do it if it wasn't for the satisfaction of actually doing it - that's kinda the main draw of fishing being a side activity.

Edit: Being honest it's very difficult to resist an "easy mode" button when one exists. The hardest part of catching fish for me wouldn't even be the missed bites anymore, it would be resisting flipping on easy mode and that's not fun. So yes, ultimately I'd prefer it stay the way it is so that I don't have to make that decision in the first place, but also because it makes sense to me the way it is now.

The fish doesn't care. The fish doesn't care that we're the WoL. Those abilities don't help. Buying new shoes to be more comfortable wading in the water helps marginally but that's about it. The fish cares what bait we have and if it's raining today. It might care about Powerful Hookset in a few seconds but otherwise there's no power-creep that would make sense to me for it to be any easier at "level 80", which is a arbitrary/meta concept. I think that's the root of why I enjoy fishing, and why it wouldn't make sense to me for it to magically become easier. Fishing is pretty mundane, and that's kinda why I like it.

Or maybe I'm just sadistic and enjoy watching my WoL struggle with something that "should be easy", I donno.

[Elizar_Naki]

*snip*

I couldn't disagree with your initial paragraph here more, though that largely stems from me defining fishing less as "challenging" and more as "tedious." "Challenging" implies to me that the task can be completed via practice and improving your skills as a player; fishing doesn't really do that, it's mostly just layers of RNG that may or may not eventually smile on you enough to land the catch. There's marginal skill involved in knowing when to use what skills to improve your chances, but that still isn't enough if RNGsus isn't on your side that day. And me personally, I don't really feel any sense of accomplishment from that. I only started catching up on the fishing log because it was bugging me that I had MIN and BTN's blessed tools but not FSH, and I certainly didn't enjoy the catch-up process, so it's unlikely that I'll ever start using this class on a regular basis now that I've done enough to accomplish that goal. But agree to disagree and all that.

Edit: and to be clear, I do respect that you disagree with me. Not everyone enjoys the same things, obviously, and this clearly isn't a part of the game that's "for me" long-term. I will point out, however, that I respect your opinions MORE because you managed to express them politely. In my experience, folks with unpopular opinions online get lambasted more often than not by people who think their internet anonymity gives them free rein to act like jerks, and it's refreshing anytime I see someone who doesn't seem to subscribe to that theory.

[ern815]

Hi guys, I just got onto fishing and am not sure if there's any chances since HW? Do you still need to get a Giant Takitaro first before getting Namitaro?

[Recon1o6]

Unfortunately yes

I've been suffering that Namitaro bastard repeatedly. Even getting GT is a trial in and of itself and I must have blown about 2000 glowworms by this point. 4 times now I have gotten the intuition procced, and then afterwards not got it. 2 of them the Namitaro escaped my line! Level 80 felt like it was worthless with that

[Shadygrove]

Doesn't mater about stats in big fish. Not past a point anyhow.

If they have an escape chance its baked in.

[Brightamethyst]

A small change that would be a huge QoL improvement would be to give Surface Slap a duration. Increase the cost to compensate, but I'd rather pay 400 GP to never see that fish again for 75 seconds than spend 200 GP on a single shot.