Infrequent windows for fish are good, Purse of Riches is too much

[Fruity_Snacks]

Purse of Riches is a big fish from High Tide Harbor in Tuliyollal added in patch 7.4. Through extensive and conclusive testing by the global fishing community, it was determined the window conditions it can bite in are during rain between 16 and 18 Eorzea time after cloudy weather (or, short hand Clouds -> Rain 16-18). This is a notable weather condition because it is the first time any fish has conditions which exclusively involve the rarest possible weather for the zone - a mere 5% chance each for Clouds or Rain to occur at any time. Add in that this weather has to occur in a specific sequence (Clouds INTO Rain) and at a specific time of Eorzean day, Purse of Riches has become the rarest fish in the game by a large margin.

With this weather condition, Purse of Riches will see an average time between windows of roughly 19.5 real world days. This average is nearly 3 - 4x higher than previous and much older ‘rare window’ fish, with the infamous Bobgoblin Bass having an average time between windows of ~5 real world days. Some players have submitted bug reports due to this unprecedented increase in infrequency. There have been some responses to the reports, but we have yet to hear if Purse of Riches’ weather conditions are correct or are just a bug.

With its current conditions, many fishers are feeling disappointed in their inability to have even a chance at the fish due to its infrequency within the next few months alone.


Regardless of whether Purse of Riches' conditions are intentional or not, it has brought forward a conversation around the frequency of fish windows and the core design principles of the Fisher job.

I, personally, don’t look at how frequent a fish’s window is - I look at how engaged I can be when going for a fish. How often am I using skills, abilities, and fishing hole knowledge? Or, how often do I get to see other players fishing and engage with them? These are core principles of what makes the fisher job so unique, even after 10+ years. Fish with infrequent windows typically fall into the latter’s category of engagement; they become informal and almost impromptu mini-community ‘events.’

Moderate infrequent windows for a fish is a positive aspect of the job, and supports the core design philosophy of the Fisher: interact with other fishers, share information, and build a community. But, during the time preceding a notably long period until the next window, we see a downturn in the morale and interest in the community, with increased frustration - until now, these only occur a few times a year. With Purse of Riches however, these moments will become much more common. When a fish window becomes too infrequent we will see negativity and demotivation appear more often, providing a bigger overall hit to the community. Simply put - Purse of Riches is too infrequent to positively impact the fishing experience as a whole.

Infrequent windows are not the only way to achieve this effect (nor should it be). We see similar, if not stronger, support towards this core principle through highly technical and uncommon windowed fish. For example, look towards when Snowy Parexus was added, or the continual Ruby Dragon windows for this in action. Players come together, helping each other on-site with sharing bait, strategies, and support. Not only do these (among other) fish support the Fisher job’s core design and philosophy, they contribute to a stronger community which in turn help build the confidence and knowledge of fishers as a whole.

Overall, I do think infrequent window fish are needed to support the core fisher job design, their infrequency should be reasonable to the average player so they do not feel like they lack ALL control over their ability to catch a fish. Purse of Riches is a step too far in that regard. Regardless of if Purse of Riches conditions are a bug, or are even changed - I hope that we see more engaging fish which utilize multiple abilities and continue to encourage community involvement.

[RareBirdAlert]

Seconded. As a player who works an office job Monday-Friday, I find that the upcoming Purse of Riches windows are not favorable for my timezone and availability. Predicting the weather windows out from here, in the next four months, the fish will have only ten windows where it is available to be caught. Of those ten windows, only ONE WINDOW occurs during the hours I can normally access and play the game. One more window (on 6/7, so the one FOUR MONTHS away) happens at 5:26am in my timezone. Historically I have refused to interrupt my sleeping hours just to attend a fish window unless I would be waking up soon after anyway, but a fish with this little availability to me would challenge me to make unhealthy decisions, like interrupting my sleep schedule, just to get that additional chance at it, especially if it becomes the first chance I've had in four months.

Fishers have seen other fish whose conditions have tempted them into making similar unhealthy choices about their engagement, but Purse of Riches' extremely low availability makes those unhealthy choices more tempting, and frankly, I don't find that very fun, or encouraging. I agree with Fruity Snacks that fish with infrequent windows do lend themselves to miniature community events where fishers congregate under those rare conditions, and this is good for the community, but Purse of Riches takes that too far. I also find downtime to be the least interesting aspect of a challenge. It is literally the least engaging way of making a fish challenging, because it literally means I cannot engage in that piece of content for an extended period of time. There is no "improve your skill, get better gear with better stats, learn how your abilities interact to make the most of your attempt" that can affect anything about a fish simply not being available.

There is a lot of content in the game that I enjoy playing and I don't play simply for the fishing, but the fishing is a major part of what I enjoy doing. This situation where a fish will be unavailable to me for so long simply because its overall availability is the lowest of any other fish (by a wide margin) is just very frustrating and disheartening.

[NobleJanobii]

While I echo Fruity's sentiment that a moderate infrequent window is a positive aspect of the job, Purse of Riches's availability is a detriment to itself. I work an office job Monday through Friday. Missing windows is not uncommon for me, but it has never been this drastic before. Of the upcoming ten windows, none of them occur during hours when I would be able to access the game without interrupting my sleeping or work schedule. The first window that would not require this of me is in August.

When Purse of Riches was first discovered on January 10, I unfortunately slept through the window. At the time, I didn't sweat it. I have always had a steadfast rule that I will not interrupt my sleep schedule specifically for a fish. The mantra has always been "there will be another window". However, that mantra was always said with the belief that the next window I could attend would be within a reasonable period of time. A few weeks, maybe a couple months depending on the fish. Not seven months. This single missed window has haunted me for the last month and has greatly contributed to the temptation to wake up at 5:06 AM on 2/19, just so I don't miss it again.

This is the first time in my entire journey catching Big Fish that I've been seriously tempted to get up at an unreasonable hour, all just to catch this fish before August. I also personally find downtime to be the least interesting aspect of a challenge when it comes to fishing and while I don't mind it, an extremely low availability only acts to the detriment of the fish and the player base by encouraging unhealthy choices such as disrupting sleep schedules. I greatly dislike that I even have to seriously consider such a thing and the only reason I am is because of this downtime.

I am the type of person that, knowing my usual work schedule, will wake up as soon as the servers go live on big patch days just so I can squeeze in a little bit of time to play the new content before I have to go into work. It is something I do with excitement and have never done out of obligation, because I know whatever content I don't get to before work will still be there after I get back. This is not the case with Purse of Riches. If I don't get up to see that 5 AM window, Purse of Riches won't be there for another month. And if I don't get up for that 5 AM window, Purse of Riches won't be there outside of working hours for another two months. And if I don't get up for that 2 AM window, the cycle continues on. I feel no excitement at the prospect of getting up for this fish window. All I feel is an extreme sense of fear and dread at the prospect that Purse of Riches slips from my grasp or never even bites, meaning that I would have disrupted my entire sleep cycle for nothing, and would have to do it all again a month later for another shot at it before August.

[smallpotato]

I also agree that absurdly rare big fish windows are unhealthy for the game and fishing community. I don't think its enjoyable for players who enjoy fishing content to just have fish out of reach because they cant even make it to the fish window. I think rare fish are interesting and drive discussion and interest in fishing, but once a month windows are absurd. I think weekly windows would be a lot more reasonable for future rare big fish.

And I agree that the "mechanics" and strategies behind each big fish are much more interesting than the availability!

[IhzaMhaskova]

It should be important to note the short window as well. Not only is the downtime extremely lengthy (current tracking is 9 hours, 20 days, 18d, 28d, 1d, 1d, 14d, 11d, and 10d) but there's only 5 real world minutes per window.

Next 10 windows are from 18/02 to 07/06 and of these 10 windows:

• 1/10 is one a weekend (6:26a Eastern 07/06)
• 3/10 are between 1:26-5:06 am Eastern
• 5/10 are during prime 9:00a-5:00p Eastern work hours
• 1/10 (the 18/02 window) is during evening hours on a weekday (7:46p Eastern)

I like some waits between windows but I think for a worldwide game waits of this length that are almost exclusively at these kinds of hours is pretty bad for a large portion of players. I set alarms and would wake up 3-6 times through the wee hours of the morning to finish off the ARR-ShB Log and it was honestly a miserable experience.

Time requirements, weather requirements, and moderate waits between windows doesn't just make the FSH content more enjoyable to figure out but it is also semi-representative of real life fishing where different fish will respond differently to weather and time of day.

However, the current standing knowledge of Purse of Riches goes far beyond this into absurdity in my opinion. There's supposed to be a down time of 92 days according to existing weather pattern knowledge and belief of required conditions!

Jeremy Wade could complete a season of River Monsters in that amount of time.

[LyssaLittleBear]

The weather conditions for Purse of Riches makes me sad for everyone who is not able to be in FFXIV at the drop of a hat. Rare fish are fun events to get together with other fishers and celebrate friends getting the rare catch, but this level of duration between windows promotes an unhealthy relationship with the game. Do I wake up in the middle of the night to go try and catch a fish? Do I put off a social engagement or try to take a day off of work to try and try to hit the window before it's gone for 90 days?

This level of downtime artificially lengthens the amount of time the average fisher will be able to progress towards completing their Fishing Log. If the rarity was caused by a technical difficulty that let me attempt to catch it more frequently I wouldn't care but this will have the side effect of encouraging the players to have a hostile relationship with self-care.

[Carighan]

I mean so long as the fish isn't needed for any quests or something, a super rare fish sounds cool, actually?

As someone who loves fishing in the game, that's neat. More like that please, for other jobs, too!

Plus let's not forget it's still on the quite easy/fast side of things to get, comparing actually difficult stuff like say, getting Insane in the Membrane in WoW back when it was first added, legendary precursor drops in GW2 before the rate got upped or even worse, many of the epic spawns in early EQ1, like the Enchanter stuff where you needed a Monk to essentially camp stuff days and nights for you to be ready to ideally IRL give you a ring that your 20-50 people need to log in and you should start the phone chain. (none of these were or are good designs, it's for illustration)

Those were all bad because they were needed for something. This just being fluff for bragging rights if you did actually manage to be by chance in Tuli when the stars align? That's kinda neat!

[kaitscralt]

Hi, I reported Purse as a potential bug or mistake, and received this response confirming it is working as intended:

"We understand that you feel there may be an issue with an aspect of game play not functioning properly, and we apologize for any hindrance this may have caused you. Based on your description, we have found that your reported concern is not in error and working as designed."

For reference, this was my report:

"Purse of Riches appears to have abnormal spawn conditions, either due to copying assets from an adjacent item number (Punutiy Pain) or from perhaps a simple oversight when selecting the weather conditions (max possible rarity was chosen for the first time ever for a fish), resulting in erroneous and unusual downtimes of up to 90 real world days. Regarding Punutiy Pain, both items were added in Patch 7.4 and have Clouds --> Rain weather. Since their item numbers border each other in the client, I am cautiously filing a bug report in the event that the Purse of Riches spawn conditions are unintentional. Thank you."

[Fruity_Snacks]

It should be important to note the short window as well. Not only is the downtime extremely lengthy (current tracking is 9 hours, 20 days, 18d, 28d, 1d, 1d, 14d, 11d, and 10d) but there's only 5 real world minutes per window.

Next 10 windows are from 18/02 to 07/06 and of these 10 windows:

• 1/10 is one a weekend (6:26a Eastern 07/06)
• 3/10 are between 1:26-5:06 am Eastern
• 5/10 are during prime 9:00a-5:00p Eastern work hours
• 1/10 (the 18/02 window) is during evening hours on a weekday (7:46p Eastern)

I like some waits between windows but I think for a worldwide game waits of this length that are almost exclusively at these kinds of hours is pretty bad for a large portion of players. I set alarms and would wake up 3-6 times through the wee hours of the morning to finish off the ARR-ShB Log and it was honestly a miserable experience.

When it comes to specific times for fishing, we do need to remember that FFXIV is a global game and fishing is a global activity (even more-so now with the CN/KO expansions). What is bad for one region is good for another, and while it sucks to be in a region where a string of windows don't align the full randomness of windows is needed in order to help support the flavour and style of Fisher. So when the times happen is not an amazing argument - the frequency of them would be stronger to point out.

[NaiaLalita]

I would consider myself a casual Fisher, but I do like to chase achievements. In particular, I go after achievements that align with dedication, determination, perseverance, and skill—and actively avoid ones that boil down to luck, especially ones that hoist layer upon layer of luck. Just as Fruity_Snacks outlines, there is a "sweet spot" where some chance fosters community and doesn't damage morale.

Within and without FFXIV Fishing, once you cross the threshold where people feel like the main factor is pure chance and personal luck, most will lose interest. Their own personal contributions to the effort don't matter so much as an arbitrary dice roll. Then you further limit how many times you can even get that dice to roll, and people won't even bother. There's a balance to be struck, but this is tipped much too far in the realm of rarity as-is.