Just thought I’d chime in with a few notes about the current state of fishing, as I expect it’s on AGS’s ‘To-Do’ list for some point over the next few months.
Core Issue: Botting
No surprise here; the biggest thing holding fishing back—and the likely reason AGS hasn’t addressed fishing issues thus far—are the bots. The ongoing, rampant botting of fishing has devalued most aspects of the profession to the point of uselessness. Amazingly, AGS has placed much, if not all, of the burden of bot-policing onto players. Reporting fishing bots via the in-game Report function does nothing (or takes too many months), and calling out specific bots on the forums merely generates promises of escalation, along with hand-washing by the Community team (i.e., "Not our department; nothing we can do about it).
As a result of the botting, rewards have been steadily removed from fishing, or not added at all, as is the case with Fishing Aptitude chests (Tier 3 is still missing, T1 and T2 are by far the most worthless of any profession). I get it—you don’t want to reward the botters. But there are just as many mining bots or lumberjacking bots or whatever as fishing bots. So why maintain Fishing as the least rewarding profession by far?
Profession Usefulness
Fishing is only useful for two things: Town Project boards and top-tier stat food. It has some edge-case uses, such as pearls for luck and alchemy components, but the market for luck gear dried up once people realized how little use luck actually was (basically only good for trying to get trophy mats or furnishing schematics out of stockpiles), and as alchemy components, fishing is out-classed by standard gathering.
Bugs
Fishing Aptitude Tier 3 chests are not in game. When adding them, remember to do a ‘make-good’ and give people a chest for each aptitude level. (Edit: T3 aptitude chests have been added, but with no “make good” for pervious, unrewarded levels earned, and the rewards are shit.)
Fishing Trophies of the same tier do not stack, unlike every other trophy type in the game. This has been shown by data-miners, who have found a “Max Stack” of 1 for Fishing trophies, as opposed to a Max Stack of 3 for all other trophies.
Hotspot fish/hook quantity varies by zone. Broad Hotspots in Brightwood give far fewer hooks than Broad Hotspots in other zones. Secret Hotspots in Restless Shores give far more hooks than Secret Hotspots in other zones.
Suggestions
Have the Gathering Speed Territory Standing card bonus apply a bonus to Fishing—either reel speed or line strength.
Replace specific legendary fish as cooking materials with generic legendary fish filets. Yeah, it screws up some of the named recipes, but currently only about half of the legendary fish have any use at all (aside from use as a generic T5 cooking component) in cooking or furnishing, while the others are just trash, useful only for the 550 XP you get from catching one. There are also dramatic imbalances in the availability of legendary fish for cooking, as they are zone-specific and all zones have a different balance of fishing hotspots. Catching a legendary fish outside of a secret hotspot is…not viable. Alternately, add a mix of Legendary fish to each zone so players have more opportunity to catch specific fish.
Implement a Magnet Fishing system as a means to fish for treasure chests and remove treasure chests from the standard fish tables. Magnet Fishing would use a crafted bait (Lodestone + iron or something) and would pull from a different loot table when equipped. Loot would be Treasure Chests, Fish Sword, Fish Hammer, Anchor, etc. or whatever—but no fish. Likewise, when using standard or no bait, players would catch only fish. This would force botters to choose between loot tables and greatly benefit players who go to Secret Hotspots trying to catch fish but instead catch Treasure Chests 80% of the time (which is just silly).
Non-static Hotspots. Self-explanatory, but yeah, this would be a big change and wouldn’t really be in-line with the rest of the game, so probably not going to happen.
Craftable Legendary fishing poles & gear, fishing craft mods for targeted perks, etc. The current Legendary poles are rewarded by RNG (stupid) at the end of the fishing quest/distance-running chain. Some are ok, some are shit. The mods would be the obvious addition to the currently unrewarding (bordering on insulting) Fishing Aptitude boxes.
Have Starfish salvage to 1-3 Starfish pieces to make them a more useful catch, much as you did with Madtoms.
Have Sculpin salvages include T3/4 fish fillets instead of just Sculpin Scales. Sculpin Scales are a T3 alchemy ingredient that gets little to no use. Catching these fish—which are quite prevalent at Secret Hotspots—is discouraging. (Personally, I recast if I see a Sculpin on the line. They’re not worth the time to reel in).
Employed new measures to reduce effectiveness of fishing bots
For what it’s worth, I observed no visible changes to fishing on PTR. The T1 aptitude chest was also still dogshit (13 gloworm bait and one useless crafting mod). Will continue fishing to see if T3 aptitude chests have been added.
Love this, getting 200 fishing was a severe let down, it is the only skill you cannot buy your way through and has the worst time vs rewards of any skill. I also did not know the trophies did not stack, this is annoying since i spent 3k to get the Basics.
It’s sad when you start losing the players that are just chillin, relaxing on their off time, doing some fishing or whatever other mindless grinding. I’ve given feedback. I enjoy the fishing, but every time that chest doesn’t drop, it feels bad man. Get your fundamentals right AGS. The text and highlighting of some fish aren’t even correct. There aren’t enough recipes for fish, considering there are so many different. Gettin t3 alchemy ingredients from a t4 fish is stupid too. I’m having a hard time turning the game on these days. You have till the end of the month to make things ,that concern me, right.
The fishing mini-game mechanics are bad. Whoever designed that has never fished in real life. But I like the legendary fish and chests full of gems and metals.
Having a rare (t4) fish like sculpin, paddlefish, and frogfish salvage into an uncommon reagent is absurd. How the hell is a frogfish tail supposed to be more commonly occurring than the fish it’s salvaged from? Not to mention that the frogfish tail and paddlefish gills are, for all intents and purposes, the same item as catfish whiskers – which are not only from a fish more frequently available, but salvaged at an equal or higher rate than those from the rare fish. Paddlefish can at least provide fish roe, but sculpin and frogfish are the only rare fish that don’t provide a chance for either a tier 4 or tier 5 item (which every tier 4 fish really ought to do).
Also, why is there no tier 5 protective reagent available from fishing? We’ve got tier 5 medicinal (poison sacs from stingrays), magical (dragon fish jaw), and offensive (piranha teeth) – all from rare fish – but nothing for protective, meaning the ONLY tier 5 protective reagents (for making infused blight/corruption tincture and infused ward potions) are the Earthshell Tail and Spinefish Fins – which are also required for making Topaz Gypsum Attunement Potoins. Upgrading one (or more) of these underwhelming rare fish catches to provide such a material would not only put them on par with other rare fish, it would also provide some relief to the arcana trade, so that infused ward potions were worthwhile, instead of everyone having to “get by” on powerful instead.
Another simple way to boost fishing viability would be to upgrade the tier for each of the fish filets, particularly so that there was a tier 5 ingredient for making hearty meals that didn’t strictly come out of a provisions chest (other than legendary fish).
Lastly, would be nice if every legendary fish could be converted (either by crafting or salvaging) into a furniture item to hang on the wall (like the veranus mandje). They are LEGENDARY fish, why not let those of us catching them to show them off a bit? This would be especially nice for the legendaries that are currently useless (i.e. Egede Serpe, Horned-Tooth Mandje, Mandje Mandje, Blue-winged Serpe, Aquanaja, and Glowing Guardfish – I mean, really, 6 of the possible 14 legendary fish have no realistic purpose)
Was going to make my own post, but this one covers almost all my observations and complaints. Things I would add:
Include a fishing buff for 300 Focus: 10% Cooldown for in reset is pretty much worthless after the latest Azoth changes and would be a nice bump.
Aptitude Chests: Already mentioned above, but it’s really heartbreaking to open one of those chests and see bait.
Treasure Chests: I like the idea of having a special bait that gets treasure chests so they’re removed from the loot table. Another suggestion is to change the Treasure Chest loot table. The drop rate for quality gems is terrible and at this point I’m sitting on over 500 chests hoping they’ll eventually get rebalanced.
Legendary Dishes: There should be a CON food fish dish. One way this could be done is create a CON dish that used any Legendary fish. This would also bring some value to the Legendary fish that currently have zero use in the game.
