Fishing Party buff - design flaws and potential suggestion(s)

[JSmooth.7654]

Intro:

Hey there!

First, I like the idea of the fishing party buff. In theory, it encourages players to work and have fun together while fishing. However, Fishing Party buff encourages a player to continue fishing without leaving their skiff while staying in one area for long periods of time. In doing so, the buff's current design introduces competing (contradicting) gameplay systems that are at odds with each other.

 

Example problems:

1) Empty maps: The Volunteer's Blessing buff encourages a player to leave a less populated map instance in favor of a more populated instance. This tells me that the Devs want to minimize the number of "empty" instances of a map. The Fishing Party buff encourages players to stay on an empty map for as long as possible so as to not lose the buff. This also creates "feels bad" moments when a fisher is forced off of a map.

2) Unhealthy play sessions: Since the Fishing Party buff punishes a player for leaving their skiff for more than 15 seconds, this design can encourage unhealthy play sessions where a player feels they "cannot" leave the game for fear of having to grind back the time it takes to replenish the buff stacks. This design is further compounded with the dusk/dawn fish design; which encourages a player to work really hard for 5 minutes out of an hour and then AFK for the 55 minutes. For example, a few days ago, I spent 9+ straight hours on a dusk/dawn fish. But most of that time was either spent AFK or staring at my screen waiting...

3) Discourages helping others: GW2 is fundamentally designed to encourage players to help each other. However, when I'm fishing and I see another player in need, I have to make a bad choice between safely keeping my Fishing stacks or helping another player and risk losing a significant time investment.

 

Potential Solution(s):

a) The debuff timer should be extended to at least 1 minute. 

b) The buff stacks should persist through map changes / logging off.

c) The debuff timer should pause while the player is not actively in the game world. 

 

I realize that one potential workaround would be to ask players to "share" their buff stacks. However, my personal experience is that most players do not want to fish with strangers. If I ask in map chat for help with (or even to share) the buff, more often than not I'm met with the sound of crickets chirping.

 

Outro:

Thank you for reading! If you have any other potential suggestions, please list them below!

Edited March 27, 2022 by JSmooth.7654
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