Fishing is infuriating, stressful, and inconsistent

[Resident.7421]

Personally I wouldn't mind fishing so much if I didn't have to deal with clunky skiffs. Having to drag that thing out takes away the spontaneity of fishing, and then moving it every 3 bites. It's far too much ceremony for a cellphone-grade minigame. Sometimes in low-FP-required zones I prefer to stand on the shore and fish open waters, or a node if it's within reach. It's not rewarding, but it's kind of pleasant.

I guess I'd either like a more involving minigame to maximize fun, or less fooling around with skiffs and nodes to maximize chillness.

At the moment I only have 1 good idea/suggeston. I'd like bait to deposit into material storage so that all of my characters can access it thru the tackle box function. Right now fishing is a pretty character-bound activity. With this change I could at least poke at my achievement casually, wherever/whoever I am playing.

 

[Garrison Storm.3046]

3 hours ago, Resident.7421 said:

 Sometimes in low-FP-required zones I prefer to stand on the shore and fish open waters, or a node if it's within reach. It's not rewarding, but it's kind of pleasant.

I don't get this... if you're not concerned about the reward, you can do this already?  You don't need to use the clunky skiff...
 

3 hours ago, Resident.7421 said:

I'd like bait to deposit into material storage so that all of my characters can access it thru the tackle box function. Right now fishing is a pretty character-bound activity. With this change I could at least poke at my achievement casually, wherever/whoever I am playing.

Agreed.  The problem is that in absence of a dedicated fisherman, you have to 'load up' to go fishing... it's definitely a time-consuming inconvenience...

[Resident.7421]

3 hours ago, Garrison Storm.3046 said:

I don't get this... if you're not concerned about the reward, you can do this already?  You don't need to use the clunky skiff...

Well yes. Can and do. Not very often, tho. Making progress in the achievement adds a chase factor that makes the minigame more enjoyable, and doing casual open water shore fishing doesn't give a ghost of that. I guess I wish those factors weren't so diametrically opposed, and I could make a little progress- get a rare catch on the fly once in a while- without having to go fully loaded, full stacks, chasing nodes.

When you think about it there's a lot of factors at work here. High fishing stacks, correct bait, correct node, correct time of day, (all with a clunky skiff.) Gotta get all that right to make any progress in the achievements.

[Garrison Storm.3046]

6 hours ago, Resident.7421 said:

Well yes. Can and do. Not very often, tho. Making progress in the achievement adds a chase factor that makes the minigame more enjoyable, and doing casual open water shore fishing doesn't give a ghost of that. I guess I wish those factors weren't so diametrically opposed, and I could make a little progress- get a rare catch on the fly once in a while- without having to go fully loaded, full stacks, chasing nodes.

When you think about it there's a lot of factors at work here. High fishing stacks, correct bait, correct node, correct time of day, (all with a clunky skiff.) Gotta get all that right to make any progress in the achievements.

Ok, I understand.  You're not wrong; there were many design choices to be made and overall some it seems to be overly complicated.  That said, I still enjoy fishing.  Though you're right about the casual open water... at this point it's only done when I notice that they're the only fish left to complete a map... seems like a missed opportunity, design-wise.  Relaxing and chill doesn't have to predictable and underwhelming...

[Jianyu.7065]

On 8/3/2023 at 12:27 AM, Kozumi.5816 said:

I have fished for thousands of hours in FFXI(11, not 14).

I fished for hundreds of hours in WOW.

This games fishing is terrible, stressful, not relaxing, and boring.

This person definitely has the authority to tell us why we should hate GW2 fishing. At one time I actually had no issues with GW2 fishing and made a lot of gold. Now that I've seen a post from someone who has so much MMO fishing experience and they hate GW2 fishing, I have been convinced that I should also hate it.

[Gravitron.7982]

On 7/25/2023 at 6:08 AM, 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. 

Yeah I definitely get it, and think you're right on this. I know ESO also requires you to find "fishing holes", but they are spread out everywhere in ESO, and there is no mini game built into fishing...you just pick your bait, cast your line and wait for a tug, then pull your line in....no fighting with the fish or anything. 

So essentially you just chill at one spot, cast your line, pull it in, cast your line, pull it in, and you can activate this with a single keybind which only requires a single hand. Definitely more relaxing then GW2's solution. 

[TheNurgle.4825]

Fixing fishing is not complicated, but I am afraid that it is dead feature so no resources would be used on it.

In general fixes like:

1. fishing stacks not being bound to skiff, just make it char based buff which last 1-2 hours and refresh when you catch fish
2. more fishing spots or cluster them together so you can have fishing spots
3. remove day/night/dusk/dawn req. from fishing, that was worst decision ever
4. rework bait/lure system so what you caught is dependent more on lure/baits, of course adjust prices for lure/baits
5. add fishing power tooltip to maps so I know what fishing power should I have before I start fish

[azorean.1850]

so its just like in real life?

[Zekent.3652]

Fishing-only infusion or riot.

[Cuks.8241]

Lot's of problem with fishing. 2 of my biggest are the silly fishing stacks. That mechanic is just stressful. Especially in areas where you need to build those stacks to get to green. Building stacks on yellow fish is just no fun at all and something I completely gave up on even before I did all the achievs.

And second that it's basically a character bound activity. Fishing should be made completely account wide which means all the baits and lures, fishing poles, should be stored somewhere accessible from any character at any time. Even better would be that caught fish were stored there also. Because right now you need a dedicated character for fishing and it takes a lot of bag space (especially if you are saving all the rare fish for vendor). So if you're travelling through the world and just want to fish on a whim, you can't because you're probably not on your fishing character. So fishing becomes a planned activity which in my case  rarely (or lately never) takes precedence over other activities.

[solzuul.6294]

5 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

[]...So fishing becomes a planned activity which in my case  rarely (or lately never) takes precedence over other activities.

To add to this, game systems will kitten all over your planning. You build up your fishing stacks, line them up with the right time of the day/night cycle, only to have the map close before you can truly utilize your stacks. Truly marvelous. 

edit: i suppose the new zephryte fishing food is a solution to this problem 😅

Edited August 7, 2023 by solzuul.6294