Thoughts on Fishing After Weeks.

[Witch of Steam.5138]

After many burned Lures and TONS of hours spent waiting for that 5 minute window in multiple Maps, I've had plenty of time to ruminate on how I feel on fishing. 

Fishing Feels like a Minigame UI first and foremost, and everything else feels so Neglected that It must have been added on as an Afterthought of an Afterthought. 

Fishing Rods : Do nothing. Just skins and Gemstore Bait. If Gemstore Skins were just skins, and They had Alternate rods that Did Literally Anything. That'd be great. But it isn't. The ONLY function of the Fishing Rod : One of the most necessary Peices of fishing equipment, is to look pretty.

Same with Lures. There's no difference between Jade and Amber Lures, And They function more or less as just a Gold Sink. Sure, Below Amber / Jade lures you're often going to take a Fishing Power Penalty. However, with ARborstone access, which all EOD characters get after playing the story , You're never wanting for lures. They're just there. Ready to go. all the time. 

Fishing Power  Is also Horrendously Under-utilized for what it's meant to do . as it stands, It only prevents Penalties for Not having enough... While Not rewarding players, even if they Max out Fishing power . There's No benefit to going all out, And Any fishing power above the bare minimum to use a fishing Node is completely wasted. Yes, there are theories that Higher power means a better chance of catching legendaries. But if this theory is true, it's completely Swamped and Snuffed out by sheer RNG . 

Fishing Bait , Again, does nothing beyond preventing Penalites or granting access to an even more bloated Loot table. 

As a whole, The Loot tables are too Bloated with Junk. There's No benefit to " Playing all the cards right " , as doing the bare minimum to access the Loot table has the Same effect as pulling out all the stops and going above and beyond in fishing. 

The Rods mean nothing, The Lures mean nothing, Even your Fishing party stacks will more often than Not Amount to Nothing at all. 

It feels like every aspect beyond the Minigame UI just... Fizzles out. It means nothing to the actual minigame itself. And the Minigame itself lacks any form of Consistency. The Hardest fight of your life can be a Blue " Any Hole " fish. And the Lightest, most gentle catch can be that Rare Dusk/Dawn Legendary That other players have spent days, sometimes weeks, Trying to get. 

There already needs to be some overhaul to the Fishing minigame to make it feel as loved as the trailers and community hyped it up to be. 
 

[Gibson.4036]

There's room for new levels of rods and lures in future content along with harder fishing holes.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Khisanth.2948]

There is another annoyance. Your skiff getting attacked but there isn't really any indicator until it is destroyed and you are dropped into the water. You could jump into the water if you notice but you need to be able to kill everything in under 13s and get back otherwise it'll get destroyed anyway.

[Hesione.9412]

2 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

There is another annoyance. Your skiff getting attacked but there isn't really any indicator until it is destroyed and you are dropped into the water. You could jump into the water if you notice but you need to be able to kill everything in under 13s and get back otherwise it'll get destroyed anyway.

Yes, because the health pool becomes your own, the damage to the skiff is unknown. It is very annoying.

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

There is another annoyance. Your skiff getting attacked but there isn't really any indicator until it is destroyed and you are dropped into the water. You could jump into the water if you notice but you need to be able to kill everything in under 13s and get back otherwise it'll get destroyed anyway.

Boarding the skiff and then instantly anchoring it, to jump back into the water to finish the mob off resets that counter. It still is weird to not have skiff hp indicator anywhere.

[Animism.7530]

Maps closing then losing your 99 stacks.... Um k.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

There not being a more direct way to collect Saltwater or World Class fish is a real problem. The dawn/dusk fish will seem trivial in comparison when you try to finish those sets.

 

I have collected every fish in the game at least 10 times except for the Seahorse. Still stuck on the regular Saltwater collection.

[Nata.9812]

3 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

There is another annoyance. Your skiff getting attacked but there isn't really any indicator until it is destroyed and you are dropped into the water. You could jump into the water if you notice but you need to be able to kill everything in under 13s and get back otherwise it'll get destroyed anyway.

It happened to me twice. The worst part: the mobs can attack you (and your boat), but you can´t attack back while on the skiff...

Fishing should be a minigame focusing only on one thing: fishing. Unfortunately, there are many nodes that you need to deal with the mobs because they put you on combat and you can´t equip your rod.

[valfx.5416]

For Saltwater and international, they should put a specific bait for each fish to narrow the loot table and it will permit to avoid unwanted fishes.

It's been weeks that I'm stuck at 13/14 avid saltwater just because I know that I can't do anything to get the one I want. 

Many hours to get nothing it's kinda depressing after a while 😄

[Zephiron.8732]

Putting some valuable or rare items in the stomach contents of the fish, or even just junk items worth some vendor gold, would be a little bit more of an incentive to keep fishing. Would also feel a bit rewarding at times, too. Kinda like in WoW. You'd be sitting there fishing, relaxing after a hard day's work IRL (note: GW2 fishing is far from relaxing), when you catch a normal fish but only it says "bloated" in front of the name. Getting a chest to open or gear or mats or vendor junk for gold. Ah, yes! Those were the relaxful fishing days....

[Dante.1508]

Apparently the developers have never once gone fishing in real life.. Fishing is suppose to be a relaxing casual experience, not whatever this is.

[Mrs Lana.2506]

On 4/22/2022 at 8:59 AM, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

I have collected every fish in the game at least 10 times except for the Seahorse. Still stuck on the regular Saltwater collection.

I'm in the exact same boat. Only missing the Bonefish from the avid world class, but still haven't caught a single Seahorse so I'm stuck on the first Saltwater collection.

[Izzy.2951]

I find fishing perfect how it is nowadays. The only thing it annoys me, it sometimes bug to stop the skiff and start fishing.

[Omega.6801]

Fishing is a low effort minigame with RNG grind attached to it, how very shocking, no one could have seen this coming... I laugh so hard at each of these threads, thinking about the hundreds of threads that wanted fishing and proclaimed it to be this awesome cool feature.

[kharmin.7683]

My thoughts on fishing after weeks?  I still think it was a waste of resources to implement.  But that's me.

[Loosmaster.8263]

21 hours ago, lokh.2695 said:

Fishing is a low effort minigame with RNG grind attached to it, how very shocking, no one could have seen this coming... I laugh so hard at each of these threads, thinking about the hundreds of threads that wanted fishing and proclaimed it to be this awesome cool feature.

Sort of like the Warclaw.  Great mount and then they butcher it until it's no better than the PvE version...

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

It doesn't feel like they put a lot of thought into the fishing.  "Hey, lets put in a system that annoys our customers!"  "Yeah, the best way is to put in RNG, they love that!"  "Oh!, and add in catches they can't do anything to help themselves with!"   "Brilliant!" 

 

While the titles are punny, the last one could have easily been "RNGesus loves me!"

 

[Wolfb.7025]

Yeah, Fishing is ok except for the Dawn/Dusk requeriment.

 

On 4/21/2022 at 1:45 PM, Khisanth.2948 said:

There is another annoyance. Your skiff getting attacked but there isn't really any indicator until it is destroyed and you are dropped into the water. You could jump into the water if you notice but you need to be able to kill everything in under 13s and get back otherwise it'll get destroyed anyway.

This too, you should be able to attack from the Skiff but somehow the enemies are unaffected to everything unless you jump into the water.

[Khisanth.2948]

On 4/24/2022 at 5:39 PM, Zephiron.8732 said:

Putting some valuable or rare items in the stomach contents of the fish, or even just junk items worth some vendor gold, would be a little bit more of an incentive to keep fishing. Would also feel a bit rewarding at times, too. Kinda like in WoW. You'd be sitting there fishing, relaxing after a hard day's work IRL (note: GW2 fishing is far from relaxing), when you catch a normal fish but only it says "bloated" in front of the name. Getting a chest to open or gear or mats or vendor junk for gold. Ah, yes! Those were the relaxful fishing days....

All those are already in game

[opie.5467]

I want to STRONGLY echo the above comments on Dawn/Dusk fishing: aggravating and NOT fun. Five minutes, srsly?!

 

Personally, IMO, dawn/dusk should be a crossover time for day and night fish, where in that 5 MINUTES(!?) you have a chance to catch either. NOT have its own category of fish.

 

Also skiffs being attacked. Not a huge deal, but not having a clue on if or what damage I'm taking while actually fishing is WTF.

Fishing is generally not fun and/or relaxing (in game, it is in RL). Once achievements are done, I doubt I'll spend much time, if any, doing it. Could have been better.

[Zok.4956]

4 hours ago, Blockhead Magee.3092 said:

It doesn't feel like they put a lot of thought into the fishing.

Fishing in GW2 seems like a copy of fishing in Stardew Valley: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Fishing 

[Dante.1508]

5 hours ago, opie.5467 said:

I want to STRONGLY echo the above comments on Dawn/Dusk fishing: aggravating and NOT fun. Five minutes, srsly?!

 

Personally, IMO, dawn/dusk should be a crossover time for day and night fish, where in that 5 MINUTES(!?) you have a chance to catch either. NOT have its own category of fish.

 

Also skiffs being attacked. Not a huge deal, but not having a clue on if or what damage I'm taking while actually fishing is WTF.

Fishing is generally not fun and/or relaxing (in game, it is in RL). Once achievements are done, I doubt I'll spend much time, if any, doing it. Could have been better.

Fishing is a very relaxed past time. If you aren't relaxed doing a spot of fishing you are doing it wrong.. Its not only about catching fish either.

[Ipomoea Jalapa.6897]

There are a lot of great things about Fishing. I like chilling with the scenery I know and love, and I'm okay with the low drop rates. The recent UI improvements are nice. But I also get stuck in this loop a lot:

1. (Approach a fishing node on my skiff)
2. (Hit the Move Backward key to shift into reverse gear)
3. (Remember that there is no reverse gear)
4. (Steer wildly off-course instead, because I'm using action-cam at an angle)
5. (Attract some mobs)
6. (Lose mobs)
7. (Finally settle near fishing node)
8. You cannot anchor a skiff while moving.
9. Skill Recharging
10. You cannot perform this action while transformed or mounted.
11. <auto-attack> (trying to set cast target area, but rod isn't equipped yet)
12. <auto-attack> (trying to cast line, but rod still isn't equipped yet)
13. (Equip rod and cast line)
14. (One of these:
    • Attract a nearby mob and hope it's not damaging my skiff
    • Attract someone else's mob, and ditto
    • Accidentally hit Board key, then accidentally hit Depth Charges key trying to reset line, dealing 1 Damage to all mobs within earshot
    • Accidentally press Dismount key)
15. (Skiff is destroyed)
16. (Fishing stacks are gone)
17. Oh no, Dawn is over.
18. (Repeat)

Edited April 27, 2022 by Ipomoea Jalapa.6897

[Blue D Phoenix.7260]

Yeah I already said, fishing and skiffs only go together both just for achievements nothing else. 

[Dante.1508]

Can we fish off our mounts?