Please fix this part of fishing :{

[Ianmaru]

I have the latest lvl 90 FSH BiS (ilvl 620 with ilvl 630 relic tool) with 3233 gathering point, and still takes ages to catch big fish in ARR areas that are meant for lvl 50. I can understand having to wait for the open window and then wait for the right fish to bite, its fair. but then not being able to catch them right away when they finally bite when I'm already way overlevelled and overgeared, is ridiculous.
What's the point of gearing and grinding for the relic tool then, if it doesn't help you making fishing easier? Imagine having 3k gathering point stat, but the chance of catching big fish that have taken the bait is just the same as those with 500 gathering point stat, which can go as low as ~25% success rate.
If it's to keep hard old content stay hard for the hardcore players, then maybe make it work like ultimate fight, make the gear synced down, and make it that way only on a handful of them, instead of one in every fishing hole.
Waiting for the window to open & for the big fish to bite is hard enough. Adding another RNG on top of it that's uncheeseable by gear & lvl is too much for a casual player like me I think.
So yes, I hope Yoshi-P's team reads this and consider doing something about it. :')

[Jojoya]

The relic tools do improve the part of fishing that is related to useful gathering.

They do not improve the Big Fish part of fishing that is designed more as a hobby than as a gathering activity. The RNG on ARR Big Fish even at higher levels is intended.

If you find it frustrating, don't worry about going after the Big Fish. There's Ocean Fishing for a more fun and casual fishing experience.

[Ianmaru]

well I just want to clear the logs.
clearing MNR & BTN logs need some effort, but still doable.
clearing crafting logs of all 8 crafter jobs is a lot of work, but again still doable.
clearing FSH log on the other hand, the sheer amount of fish to fish (1000++) already makes it a daunting task. now added with 200++ big fish that has multiple RNG on it, if one big fish take half an hour to catch, it would easily take 100 hrs just on the big fish alone.
the problem is the difficulty spike.
and again they can make the big fish of the current patch to be very hard & slippery to catch, but let the old ones get easier to catch as you get 'stronger', just the way how most of the thing in the game is, which is basically to give a sense of progression.

[fulminating]

If you want to clear the log you have to catch the fish. You can pretty easily get most of them in a couple of weeks because there’s so many windows open at the start. Prioritise the rarer windows, don’t forget surface slap and stop asking for freebies.

Really, what’s the point if it’s just handed to you?

[Ianmaru]

?? what freebies? having to pick the right bait, while fulfilling the condition is not freebies, and that should be the main challenge of fishing. But the current design has more RNG on top of RNG, with barely any player skill involved. no sense of character progression/grow too since stat doesn't matter. I would say the current RNG heavy fishing design is bad compared to the rest of the game.

to make it clear I'm not asking for the big fish to be completely nerfed. I'm asking for the success rate to be affected by stats, so the higher your stats the more likely you'll catch them once they're hooked. which means the big fish on the latest patch would still be as hard to catch as it is now. definitely not being 'just handed over to you'

[fulminating]

There is 1 (one) big fish that does not have a !!! bite.

Selecting the correct bait is the bare minimum and not strictly necessary when versatile lure exists.

Some fish are slippery ie will probably escape if hooked, some are shy and won’t bite often and others are both. Why should this change?

The entire fishing kit revolves around mitigating rng as much as possible; nearly every fish can be isolated based on bait used, bite time and surface slap if need be. Double/triple hook and identical cast can be used to control intuition windows, chum is invaluable in getting more attempts in and angler’s art stacks have very possibly gone too far in helping gp management. Not to mention just how far patience 2 and msb can take you on mooch-based fish.

If you don’t like fishing then don’t do it, the older fish are already easier than they were thanks to new skills and changes. Not that old fish eyes was a particularly good mechanic.

I would also like them to not feel the need to introduce fish with even shorter and less regular windows - ealad skaan last expansion is up for 30 seconds with a time and rare weather->weather condition. I strongly suspect deleting one type of gate will only lead to it being factored out and heavier dependencies on the others.

[Ianmaru]

it should change because just as I said it involves too much of RNG and lacks of player skill & the sense of character growth.

see, there are three main elements in most games:
1. player skill
2. character stats
3. RNG

FFXIV has a nice balance of all three of them in most of its content. but currently the big-fishing part leans toward RNG a bit too much. feels like 80% RNG, 10% player skill, 10% char's stat.
Even if it's designed to be an RNG heavy content, 50% RNG, 30% player skill, 20% char's stat would be better, basically make player skill & char stat matter more than it currently is.
Sure, now we can do the things you listed with our current skillset, but in reality it only raise the probability to catch the big fish roughly from 5% to 30%. If only they make the player skill matter more, like by using the skills properly it would raise the probability from 5% to 60%, then it would be overall a better design.
and currently the char stat is mostly only used to unlock more fish that you can catch, without really reducing the difficulties of catching them.

Actually if they choose to keep the success rate unaffected by the stat, but they do something with the skills and make them more useful in raising the chance of catching the big fish, then I would still be fine with it.

[Nezerius]

it should change because just as I said it involves too much of RNG and lacks of player skill & the sense of character growth.

Big Fishing is an entirely niche collection side of a class that's already relatively niche to begin with, outside of a handful of fish that are used in CUL recipes. It doesn't need a "sense of character growth".
Do Big Fishing if you enjoy going for it, not if it's just another thing to check off on a to-do list.

[VictorSpoils]

Selecting the correct bait is the bare minimum and not strictly necessary when versatile lure exists.

Uh, unless it's mooched from another fish, you definitely can't catch the big ones with a versatile lure, or at least it's virtually impossible.

[fulminating]

Fun is subjective. The fishing discord has around 10,000 online members with another number offline and mainly revolves around big fishing. It's a subset of the population that enjoy fishing as it is. As a subset of the population, it's a bit larger than blue mage discord, larger than the eureka/bozja one and larger than an ultimate one. Not everyone shares your view.

Uh, unless it's mooched from another fish, you definitely can't catch the big ones with a versatile lure, or at least it's virtually impossible.

Versatile should work on everything up to legendary big fish. I'm fairly certain I caught at least one ARR fish with it (green jester) and a sanity test in moraby bay yielded a !!! bite that escaped with no message about unsuitable bait/stats etc. It's not as efficient as using the correct bait for certain, but should work.