Fishing in ARR

[LlenCoram]

Personally I had more fun spearfishing than actually fishing in 1.0. It at least had me moving around instead of zombie like eyeballing that fail mini game that actual fishing had. From the small amount of details he gave its almost sounding like the fishing from back in the NA FFXI launch days. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the fine details but I remember it being equip and cast. Yet it actually was fun in that I could relax with friends and chat while fishing. There was fishing gear, bait and poles. You could technically use whatever but you really wanted to use proper pole for the water type you were casting into and also bait to target the fish.

Before anyone knocks it you need to realize that if this is exactly the system they are going for then they have actual statistics and feedback from XI on how many people used and liked/disliked that system. From what I remember they added some mini game to it after a while (for bots?) but it was just lame and killed fishing chat.

I'm a bit dubious on exactly how much they are unlinking it from the crafting though. In XI I can only really remember it being cooking and turn in only in XI but am to lazy to check if there wasn't a random alch use. It worked though.

Going to have to look and see if there are any youtube vids from launch.

The chatting argument, when applied to the system we had in XIV, is baseless. I never had a problem chatting while fishing, and many others have said the same. I don't know about others, but chatting isn't my main goal when I fish, fishing is my main goal. My biggest problem with this is that the plan does sound like the old XI fishing, without the minigame. Is it really a good idea to go to a system so old that the already-old FFXI doesn't use it anymore? I don't think it matters much if they have stats from who liked it in XI, the fact remains that many will find it absolutely, mind-numbingly boring.

Taken separately, sure, I can see that maybe he wants fishing to go the easy route and allow us to chat, for some reason. That actually might be fine (I'd still hate it) because at least then the fish might still be useful. However, he's saying that fishing won't be useful at all in the economy. If that's the case, then fishing as a hobby has to have something more to it than just "cast and chat." You can't build a hobby out of boring your playerbase to tears, not without some form of payoff. Without a tie to economy, a boring fishing is going to be dead in the water. No economic tie but a fun fishing system, or a boring system but with strong ties to the economy. You can't have both.

I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt though, given your knowledge on the area. I'll admit, I never played the older XI fishing system, but as someone who's used to the actual player input involved in the XIV system, I'm very hesitant to what's been proposed.