Big fishing is poorly designed and isn't very fun

[DrWho2010]

perhaps, but the devs have had 10+ years to make any kind of significant nerfs to big fishing other than what they've already done with fish eyes. The appetite is just not there.

[All_Nonsense]

I will agree I think we've gotten away from skill-based fishing for sure. It's all about reaching breakpoints, using the right bait, showing up for the 2 seconds the fish is up for the next 2 weeks, and getting lucky. It's not really a rewarding structure. Ironically, in my opinion the best fishing that rewards informed fishers who are also skilled is ocean fishing, where your knowledge, execution, and luck all come together to determine how many points you can get. I think fishing could definitely use a rework but at this point with 900,000 fish in the game the chances of a meaningful rework are slim to none ever, and the rng "get lucky" trend will simply continue endlessly until end of lifecycle.

[TaleraRistain]

I will agree I think we've gotten away from skill-based fishing for sure. It's all about reaching breakpoints, using the right bait, showing up for the 2 seconds the fish is up for the next 2 weeks, and getting lucky. It's not really a rewarding structure. Ironically, in my opinion the best fishing that rewards informed fishers who are also skilled is ocean fishing, where your knowledge, execution, and luck all come together to determine how many points you can get. I think fishing could definitely use a rework but at this point with 900,000 fish in the game the chances of a meaningful rework are slim to none ever, and the rng "get lucky" trend will simply continue endlessly until end of lifecycle.

This sums it up nicely. I do Big Fish now and I do get something out of it so I keep doing it. But I do think it can be better. It would be nice if we had more agency and were able to be more active participants in the process. A lot of the time it feels like we are just captive audiences to RNG.

[Calysto]

As a Fisher, I''m more into the "fishing log" part ; the titles & achievements, sure, I'll take them.

That said, Fishing in itself isn't really that rewarding ; and for some fishes, the best part is being done with them and never going back.
The relief after a few dozens windows is a truly great feeling that the lucky people getting it first try due to RNG will never know XD

Still, I wouldn't complain if there was a bit more skill involved or if some big fishes were at least more frequents.
The S.Whale just took a 2 week breaks, and due to work/sleep/etc, I'm unlikely to have a go at it for another 2 weeks myself, so I guess I'll log once a week to the chores and wait till the next I can try... Not really worth a sub.

I think fishing could definitely use a rework but at this point with 900,000 fish in the game the chances of a meaningful rework are slim to none ever

Weekly random fish delivery or just changing desynth pool from sand to whatever would be easy to make and add usefulness to the class that it lacks deeply

[Brightamethyst]

Honestly, I feel like a lot of big finishing complains would stop if they just changed a few of the achievements.

Stop tying legendaries to 'go big or go home' and give them their own separate achievements and titles instead.

[RareBirdAlert]

I can agree that rare windows with long stretches of downtime between them are frustrating, and are not a very fun method of augmenting difficulty in the design of an intentionally difficult fish. "You have to wait a long time between attempts" doesn't test anything about skill usage or obtained knowledge, and it can be rough on people who, by chance, end up in unfavored timezones when rare windows do pop up--though it will, over time, tend to balance out. Not the most satisfying answer, but it's not like the windows are locked to be preferential to certain timezones. I feel like the fisherdevs have seen the situations caused by Ruby Dragon and Cinder Surprise (and perhaps to a lesser extend Ealad Skaan) and their frequent extended downtimes, because none of the fish in Endwalker have patterns nearly as bad. Yes, Sidereal Whale has gone down for two weeks, but most of its windows are a few days apart, the long breaks are less frequent than they are for those other notoriously difficult fish with rare windows.

I have yet to catch Sidereal Whale myself, and I have had to ask myself questions about whether it's healthy for me to try to get up for an early morning window/stay up late for a late night window, and have made decisions that as much as I do want this last fish left for my achievement, there will be another window eventually. It's frustrating, yes, because my accumulated skills and knowledge over the years of doing this content only take me so far, and it hasn't been far enough: I just haven't gotten a Whale bite in over a dozen intuition attempts.

I don't know what's the "right" level of standard deviation for big fish catch times. I bet the devs have a whole lot of data on that sort of thing, though, and I bet they take it into consideration when they design things. There's some methods of their design I disagree with, like how Crystalline Mean and Studium add a fish to fishing holes that isn't there for those who don't do the quests, which changes the outcomes for fishing in those fishing holes. I think that design has led to fishers choosing to avoid content made specifically for them until they've caught all the hardest fish in an expansion, and I don't think that's the intended takeaway. But when it comes to "what should be the average experience of how difficult this fish is," I think they have the data, I think they examine the data, and I think the fact that the EW fish have less egregious downtimes than StB and ShB fish is a good indication that they've acted on that.

[ShadowNyx3]

In my opinion OP, you are devaluing your critique of big fishing by making a majority of your post a complaint against your recent luck and displeasure in seeing others have better luck than you. You made the effort to provide some examples of additions to fishing to help improve RNG which is great, that's the kind of feedback people can debate and can give a dev ideas by reading; but so much of your post is just complaints about bad RNG.

In regards to your displeasure with the RNG...I have to point out a few things. 1) If seeing other people get fish annoys you, I can't recommend enough that you treat big fishing as a solo activity. Turn off "Others Gathering Messages" in your chat log, make a tab where Shout and Yell are turned off, and just get in your own little zone until you catch that fish. 2) You mention raiding being an example of a fair system. As a hypothetical, let's say you are a healer and your static clears a final boss and your co-healer has their weapon drop and it takes weeks of weapon coffers going to DPS then tanks before you finally get yours because your weapon never drops. And even if you don't go as high as Savage, what about all the extra time some players spend needing 99 totems for an extreme trial mount when others can just get it on their first clear? It sounds to me like what you want with big fishing is a totem system so you know that each failed attempt is getting you closer to the end goal, which in my opinion completely defeats the exhilaration of finally beating the RNG and reeling in your catch.

It's just really odd to me to see many of your suggestions talk about how much you like the communal aspects of fishing and yet it is so obvious that you are mad about other people getting this latest title before you.

[Choco_Breeder_Twirly]

As someone who constantly 100% the fish all your points are totally valid. However heres something even more infuriating that you didn't consider. I am Over Melded specifically for fishing with Ilevel 585... so why is it when I just went to catch the Nepto Dragon, for something I had planned, I couldn't. I have at minimum 10 Heavy pulls all in the range of Nepto and every time i reeled in, no patience on, he got away every.. single.. time... This is a fish from patch 2.4 with an ilevel of 80 putting me OVER 7 times it's Ilevel. Yet it got away every time...

Anyone who thinks Fishing doesn't still need some serious over hauling is full on ignorant to what fishing in FFXIV entails. They know fishing needs reworking which is why they added Ocean Fishing b/c without Ocean fishing you can be guaranteed 90% of the players would still NOT have fishing leveled.

[PotatoTree]

In my opinion OP, you are devaluing your critique of big fishing by making a majority of your post a complaint against your recent luck and displeasure in seeing others have better luck than you...

It's just really odd to me to see many of your suggestions talk about how much you like the communal aspects of fishing and yet it is so obvious that you are mad about other people getting this latest title before you.

I think you are making some unfair assumptions about my motivations here. I mean I'm going to 100% complete the achievement no matter what since progress is always cumulative (as in I can't lose any fish prog and go backwards), so whether or not other people have the title or not has no bearing to me. I didn't even start fishing day 1, I only recently did this so I have no expectations to get the title before or after people. This is not a skill based achievement like ranked pvp or something, seeing someone else with the title does not indicate to me anyone has more skill here, just more time was spent. It is literally impossible to "lose" on this achievement.

I'm more concerned with wasting time and the fun aspect of that. And I know video games are a waste of time yadda yadda, no I don't mean it like that. What I care about is the excess time I wasted compared to someone else to get the exact same thing, which I don't think is fun.

And no I'm not expecting to 1-tap a fish, I'm don't even care about the expected value of hook attempts, I'm saying being 3+ standard deviations from norm for failure from no fault of your own is not at all fun.

"but RNG is RNG". No that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the fun aspect of the long-tail in the rng. There is no universe in where if you are 3 standard deviations on the unlucky side without any way to control your chances would be fun. If I lose 99/100 pvp games because of skill issues I am completely fine with that. If I lose 99/100 fishing sessions when the expected average is 10 sessions that is not fun. And on top of that the whole thing doesn't even respect your time. "but don't wake up at 4am to fish, just do it when you feel like it" I will predict that someone only limiting fishing time to a couple hours after work, between raids, and casually will never complete the achievement before more fish get released or even the end of the game as a whole.

[ShadowNyx3]

What I care about is the excess time I wasted compared to someone else to get the exact same thing, which I don't think is fun.

Why do you harp on comparing one person's big fishing experience to another's if the achievement doesn't mean anything to you? I don't have to assume anything when you repeat the same things over and over again.

Congratulations on saying that horrifically bad luck is not fun. Pretty certain exactly zero people are going to deny that fact of life. But what are you aiming to get from responses here if all you do is repeat this arbitrary "3 standard deviations" talking point? Without providing any kind of data or evidence to support that big fishing is empirically worse than bad luck in other areas, you literally just sound like someone who's angry their luck is shit.

To your point about it not respecting the player's time, there is nothing more fair than the ffxiv weather algorithm. It does not care where you live, it simply cycles through and creates fishing windows whenever the code allows. If you want to catch all the fish then you find the time to make it happen. I don't believe anyone who complains about an indiscriminate system like fishing windows has any respect for the fishing journey, they just want the rewards.