I know this isn't exactly a revolutionary topic, but who seriously enjoys the current fishing system? I've been fishing all day because I want to like it, I want to finish the fishing log, but looking at the system as it stands it just seems so broken.

My main complaint is on the special fish in each fishing hole, I understand they're supposed to be difficult, but the current system involves zero skill, doesn't feel engaging or rewarding, and is just the worst type of rng hell possible. Between time of day, weather, weather chains, and mooching (sometimes up to a triple mooch) it just seems like an unintuitive mess, even with a wiki.

But what's worse, is that even if you get the stars to align, you're there at the right time of day, at the right weather, mooched the right fish, you divined a strong vs a weak bite (big fish can have either one, with no visual indicator for which it should be) and you see that "!!!", you still only have a roughly 50/50 shot of actually catching the thing, regardless of how good your gear is. Even in ARR zones with EW gear, you can do everything right, and the game just decides "nah, do it again." This isn't challenging, this isn't engaging, this isn't rewarding, this is just frustrating.

And when I say "get the stars to align", in some cases, this is hardly an exaggeration. Look at the Ealad Skaan in Longmirror Lake, it requires a thunderstorm to clear skies weather chain, and can only be caught between 23:30 and 00:00 ET. A whole 90 seconds of irl time. This gives it a total uptime of under 0.1% according to ff14fish (the only website that can divine this unintuitive mess of a system.) While is is the most extreme example, there are plenty others with a sub 1% uptime, as I write this, the Suiten Ippeki wont be able to be caught for another 12 days. This isn't fun, this is sadistic.

Meanwhile, the spearfishing rework is the exact opposite. It's not an rng hell that requires more grinding than the average EVE player does in a year, it's engaging, skill plays at least a little bit of a factor, and it feels rewarding when you start being able to tell different fish apart based on size and swim speed. It's not ground breaking, but it's genuinely fun. It's honestly shocking how to totally opposite systems can exist in the same exact gathering job.

I don't write all of this to sound toxic or to say that the game as a whole is bad, I love this game, I have a stupid amount of hours in it, but I can't understand why these design decisions were made. Not only were they made, they were reaffirmed with every expansion, with the average uptime only shrinking with newer content. So not only did someone look at the system and said "this is fine" they said "this isn't sadistic enough."

As the title says, who actually enjoys the fishing system as it currently stands?