Fishing is infuriating, stressful, and inconsistent

[zallesz.1650]

For a mechanic that is usually supposed to be about relaxing, this is absolutely not the case with this game's implementation of fishing. 

So once you filled your inventory with dozens of different types of bait and whatnot (further inventory clutter), you go out to try to find some fish. Either for the daily, or because of an achievement, the elite spec collection, gold farming, or maybe even to just have fun. 

Instead of finding a nice looking, cozy spot, you "need" to go to a designated location (fishing spot), which immediately limits the player freedom associated with a chilling activity. 

Then if you are lucky, and managed to find a spot AND the exact daytime required for X fish, it's time to actually start fishing. 

NOPE. Sorry, you just aggroed a bunch of enemies that you need to kill. Yeah, they're a group of veteran naga, it's fine, it's not like you already spent 10 minutes on preparation and searching for an ideal spot, you can deal with a group of enemies, right? Oh you need to get off the boat to kill them sorry. 

Ok, so now onto fishing. The mechanic itself is not terrible, it requires some skill, but it's still not as relaxing as fishing usually should be. 

Right, so you need to move after fishing 3 times?? Like... my 10 mins of preparation + getting rid of enemies, and now I need to move again? Fine. 

You found the perfect spot, there is some time left of your desired daytime. 

Something is hooked. This one, as opposed to all previous fish, is moving super fast, it's changing directions every millisecond, accelerating with 1000km/h. After 1 minute of wrestling, you finally get this mysterious, hopefully rare fish. 

NOPE, it's just a blue Mr. Fishy McFish Regularis. The one that you have been catching in the last 30 minutes (meaning, if you were lucky: 10 fish). 

Basically, you have a super convoluted system designed to sell something as complex and deep, when in reality it's just a bunch of hassle and inconsistent RNG hell. 

I just can't see how anyone is okay with this. 

[jason.1083]

2 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Another example of not being careful what is wished for when it comes to the community and Anet.

Yes exactly, Anet gives us what we wish, not what we want. It's the same with Turtle, we asked for a 2 seater mount, and Anet delivered... 

Edited July 25, 2023 by jason.1083

[Shuzuru.3651]

The fun fact is : if you simply want to fish to relax, none of this would ever happen. Except maybe the "hard fish", but letting it go has zero consequences, so you may as well just let it go if you got the "crazy" patern. 

Also, don't park your boat near ennemies if you don't want to fight them, the density of ennemies in the water is pretty sparce, for all I fished, I could count on one or two hand the number of time I got attacked... 

[Krajtin.8956]

I get that you want a laid back activity like WoW fishing, but I think Anet has done it this way to avoid the large amounts of "players" farming AFK and killing TP.

[Kinurak.5307]

I am an avid fisher and i do not have any of these issues. To me its very relaxing, the minigame is actually pretty simple. The going around makes it better then afking.  

[Randulf.7614]

Once you get your mastery up and maybe some fishing food, it becomes trivial. Yes it is over thought with too many layers like bait types, lure and fishing power, but it's still fun. Especially in a group on skiff.

They tried to make it more interactive, more in tune with being actual gameplay and just went a bit too far with it

It's otehrwise a feature I am very happy they added

[Parasite.5389]

wow, it's sounds like it's as unsatifying as.... fishing irl

[vares.8457]

I actually like how fishing works in the game. I would not want a boring afk activity. 

[Krajtin.8956]

In addition, I add that fishing in GW2 is better to do in a group since it helps you better capture legendary fish. So once again GW2 offers a better MMO experience than others in this type of task.

[Garrison Storm.3046]

Somewhere in the forums you will find merged-mega threads on this topic... Though I did enjoy reading your take on it!  While there are many aspects that could be improved, the overall feeling seems to be that the activity doesn't generate enough interest to warrant development time on these improvements... Hope I'm wrong, but I'd put more money on catching the Taimen (my personal fish-nemesis 🙂 )

That said, Randulf.7614 summarizes my feeling very well, and I'll add that once you've managed to cope with the inconveniences and optimize the activity, fishing does provide a viable alternative source of revenue with the price of Ambergris has been pretty stable of late... The activity is not for everyone, but it does provide those who do a nice change of pace and some variety...

[Khisanth.2948]

2 hours ago, Krajtin.8956 said:

In addition, I add that fishing in GW2 is better to do in a group since it helps you better capture legendary fish. So once again GW2 offers a better MMO experience than others in this type of task.

You can now replace people with a few pieces of jerky 😛

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

If you want to fish in a spot more than 3 times, use a Booster easily acquired with Laurels.

[Omega.6801]

Fishing was a mistake. Should have spent resources on something else.

[Sobx.1758]

4 hours ago, zallesz.1650 said:

For a mechanic that is usually supposed to be about relaxing, this is absolutely not the case with this game's implementation of fishing. 

So once you filled your inventory with dozens of different types of bait and whatnot (further inventory clutter), you go out to try to find some fish. Either for the daily, or because of an achievement, the elite spec collection, gold farming, or maybe even to just have fun. 

Instead of finding a nice looking, cozy spot, you "need" to go to a designated location (fishing spot), which immediately limits the player freedom associated with a chilling activity. 

Then if you are lucky, and managed to find a spot AND the exact daytime required for X fish, it's time to actually start fishing. 

NOPE. Sorry, you just aggroed a bunch of enemies that you need to kill. Yeah, they're a group of veteran naga, it's fine, it's not like you already spent 10 minutes on preparation and searching for an ideal spot, you can deal with a group of enemies, right? Oh you need to get off the boat to kill them sorry. 

Ok, so now onto fishing. The mechanic itself is not terrible, it requires some skill, but it's still not as relaxing as fishing usually should be. 

Right, so you need to move after fishing 3 times?? Like... my 10 mins of preparation + getting rid of enemies, and now I need to move again? Fine. 

You found the perfect spot, there is some time left of your desired daytime. 

Something is hooked. This one, as opposed to all previous fish, is moving super fast, it's changing directions every millisecond, accelerating with 1000km/h. After 1 minute of wrestling, you finally get this mysterious, hopefully rare fish. 

NOPE, it's just a blue Mr. Fishy McFish Regularis. The one that you have been catching in the last 30 minutes (meaning, if you were lucky: 10 fish). 

Basically, you have a super convoluted system designed to sell something as complex and deep, when in reality it's just a bunch of hassle and inconsistent RNG hell. 

I just can't see how anyone is okay with this. 

If you want to just relax while fishing, you can easly do that. But it looks like you want to maximize profit or "hunt" fishing achievements instead?

[Acheron.1580]

Fishing to do the achievements = frustrating timegated random garbage.

Fishing when you are done all of the achievements = relaxing pass time

I honestly hated the whole dusk/dawn fishing thing, I hated trying for hours to get just 1 legendary fish I was missing, I hated needing to pay attention to day/night cycles to get to places I needed to be at the right times.

If you don't care about completion, or it's already done, then fishing is ok. Not amazing, but ok.

[Holmindeboks.3490]

I also wanted fishing in guildwars 2 like i loved it in WoW. Nice fishing for mini’s or skins. But nope. Not gonna happen. As you mentioned its pure rng. The bar move like crazy without sound at when it should move. You kill 1 keyboard in a year if you do guildwars 2 fishing. When i saw that guildwars 2 fishing didnt gave any reward i didnt continue. There was 1 nice thing and thats raccoon replica. Further fishing is nothing different then looting chests after a meta but just fish icons. I mean its just mats that are worth a few silver. So no matter what you farm. A meta or fishing. 
sure the fishing is made nice and they did a good job adding it to the game. But if it doenst give any or any exclusive reward besides a title then its not worth it. 
if it has a bigger collection or a chance to fish up a special turtle skin it would be awesome. 
again a missed chance.
 

And yes it looks like i am only hating last times on the forum. But i am honest and i hate greed. I am done with this rewardless time wasting. 

[Solvar.7953]

I suppose like most stuff in an MMO, not everything is for everyone.  Though ideally the developers make content that a lot of people like, because making content that only 5% of players play may not be the best investment in resources.

I tried fishing when it came out, and pretty quickly found it tiring and asked "what's the point", and have never touched it since.  I'll play content that I enjoy.  My only issue is that if there isn't enough content that I enjoy (and instead most new content is stuff I'm less interested in), that impacts my playing performance and makes it more likely I'll stop playing GW2.

 

[Izzy.2951]

8 hours ago, zallesz.1650 said:

For a mechanic that is usually supposed to be about relaxing, this is absolutely not the case with this game's implementation of fishing. 

So once you filled your inventory with dozens of different types of bait and whatnot (further inventory clutter), you go out to try to find some fish. Either for the daily, or because of an achievement, the elite spec collection, gold farming, or maybe even to just have fun. 

Instead of finding a nice looking, cozy spot, you "need" to go to a designated location (fishing spot), which immediately limits the player freedom associated with a chilling activity. 

Then if you are lucky, and managed to find a spot AND the exact daytime required for X fish, it's time to actually start fishing. 

NOPE. Sorry, you just aggroed a bunch of enemies that you need to kill. Yeah, they're a group of veteran naga, it's fine, it's not like you already spent 10 minutes on preparation and searching for an ideal spot, you can deal with a group of enemies, right? Oh you need to get off the boat to kill them sorry. 

Ok, so now onto fishing. The mechanic itself is not terrible, it requires some skill, but it's still not as relaxing as fishing usually should be. 

Right, so you need to move after fishing 3 times?? Like... my 10 mins of preparation + getting rid of enemies, and now I need to move again? Fine. 

You found the perfect spot, there is some time left of your desired daytime. 

Something is hooked. This one, as opposed to all previous fish, is moving super fast, it's changing directions every millisecond, accelerating with 1000km/h. After 1 minute of wrestling, you finally get this mysterious, hopefully rare fish. 

NOPE, it's just a blue Mr. Fishy McFish Regularis. The one that you have been catching in the last 30 minutes (meaning, if you were lucky: 10 fish). 

Basically, you have a super convoluted system designed to sell something as complex and deep, when in reality it's just a bunch of hassle and inconsistent RNG hell. 

I just can't see how anyone is okay with this. 

I think that 80% of your post doesnt make sense. Aside of the hard RNG on certain fishes and the amount of inventory space.

Its cool that different locations have different fishes. Its cool that you have to move around a bit (fishing spots are like 25 meters away from each other anyway). 

[Randulf.7614]

The inventory space is prob my lasting bugbear. I'd drop gems on bait bag at this point

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

This is why you don't ask for things that are boring in real life to be added into the game.

[Hashberry.4510]

Fishing just seemed a natural activity for chilling in these gorgeous zones, but it was added to late to be anything but an annoying scavenger hunt. I don’t expect anything else from this team.

[leila.7962]

I assume they did this so people wouldn't just be stacked on an empty corner of the map afk and earning fishes like it is on most games. If you just want to fish for the sake of fishing, anywhere works. Now if you want to get specific fishes, you will have to earn it.. you need to go to specific places, at certain times of the game's day, use specific baits.. just like IRL lol.

People that like to fish often will probably have a geared character to only fish. I have a DH that's just for that.. her bags have everything that I need to fish anywhere on the game AND I can kill things without leaving my boat using a ranged weapon. You are just overcomplicating things.. the achievements even tell you when to fish, where to fish, which bait to use.. everything is handed to the players.

Edited July 26, 2023 by leila.7962

[Sobx.1758]

I think it still wasn't explained by anyone: what stands in the way of anyone "just wanting relaxing fishing" to fish in open water (or random fishing holes), at random times with random baits?

Edited July 26, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Acheron.1580]

There isn't exactly valuable fish in open waters. The legendary fish which gives ambergris is always tied to specific pools with specific bait, so open water fishing just anywhere isn't exactly profitable, and the fish you get from open waters yields the least reward.

[Sobx.1758]

3 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

There isn't exactly valuable fish in open waters. The legendary fish which gives ambergris is always tied to specific pools with specific bait, so open water fishing just anywhere isn't exactly profitable, and the fish you get from open waters yields the least reward.

So is it about just enjoying it or, again, maximizing profit that isn't as easy as you'd like it to be?