How to make fishing great [the answer is inside this post]

Carbonised

Fishing suggestions and how to make the minigame more interesting and rewarding are regularly cropping up here on the forums.

I wanted to condense my thoughts and suggestions into a coherent post, and hopefully gather some momentum towards making the fishing minigame a bit more interesting.

My source is my own fishing experiences, having gotten the Master Angler a while back, every DLC fishing achievement, and done some fishing here and there simply for more roes, though that is becoming rarer now.

In order to keep a somewhat long post more easily accessible and readable, I will go over each aspect of fishing summing up the current situation, and offering my feedback and suggestions.

Fishing mechanics
Currently, once you have selected bait, you simply put out your line and wait somewhere between 5 and 18 seconds until you pull back your line. Hm. As many others have said as well, the current system isn't really that engaging, and you're more likely to have YouTube, Netflix or something else running on the side while fishing, or talking to someone on the phone while you do it (which I have done a lot). Simply put, the waiting time in between catches is quickly very boring.
I suggest shortening the waiting time, 5-9 seconds between catches seems alright. But the often long waiting times of 15+ seconds seem to last forever. Ideally, you would have something to do in the waiting time, to participate in the minigame. I'm not sure what, maybe some kind of mechanic that mimics real life fishing, where you have to drag your line and bait across the water or the surface of the water, for better chance of catching something good? Some kind of minigame where you actually had to press some buttons or do something instead of just staring at your screen would be preferable, but it is also the area that would require the most development of an entirely new system or mechanic.

Bait
Ok, moving on to something more simple, bait. Currently you have 4 kinds of bait from various sources, 1 for each type of water. Works great I'd say. However, the 4 types of bait you can only catch from fishing - chub, roe, minnow and shad, those don't work at all. Having to wait 18 seconds staring at your screen, only to essentially trade 1 type or bait for another, is extremely unrewarding and makes people not want to participate in fishing. I actually prefer getting a white fish over the caught-bait, because at least the white fish can be skinned for roe, the caught bait is completely useless and disappointing.
I suggest making the caught bait increase your overall chances of catching something good, such as furnishings and achievement fish. You can also include them as ingredients in rare provisioning recipes. Suddenly you like catching these types of bait, instead of dreading it.

Gunny sack
I don't like wet gunny sacks. I think I have gotten a single Kuta from them from all my many, many, many fishing hours. Other than that, it's simply Ta, Hemming or something other completely useless item. Again, this is superfluous. You shouldn't get crafting ingredients from fishing, when you already get them in huge numbers from decon'ing, refining and multiple other sources. I suggest simply getting rid of the wet gunny sacks, once fishing is fleshed out more as a system, you don't need them in there at all.

Achievement/trophy fish, blues/greens
I feel that this works alright. You fish primarily to get the achievement fish, outside the Perfect Roes. However, once you have caught an achievement fish once, any subsequent catch is just superfluous and frankly you'd rather catch a white common fish for Roes once you have gotten all your achievements.
I suggest raising the selling prices of trophy fish to at least 200ish for the greens and 800ish for the blues. Blues are extremely rare, and greens are reasonably rare. This way at least you can sell them for some nice gold, which makes it feel somewhat rewarding catching them for the second time, or the hundreth.
I like the addition of the purple trophy fish in Orsinium, but I feel it's a pity you didn't include a purple trophy fish for Vvardenfell. Having a single purple to chase in larger zones such as Wrothgar and Vvardenfell is a fun thing to do, and I hope you will revisit Morrowind to add one eventually, and for new Chapters as well in the future.

Achievements
You get a single, pink colour from finishing Master Angler, and can buy the tiny fishing boat achievement furniture. You also get the Master angler title. And that's pretty much it, everything else is just achievement points. A few more dyes would have been nice, perhaps one for every larger zone/chapter, as well as many more achievement furnishings. The tiny boat I really dislike. We have so many fishing vessels in this game now, we got some great ones with Morrowind too, but as a Master Angler, one of the most rare achievements and titles, you only get this small, tiny sailboat that's not even worth looking at. I suggest adding a lot more of the smaller boats and vessels to the vendor, so you can at least choose between some different boat types and pick something a bit more impressive. I think everyone would also like being able to hang fish on a plaque on your wall. The purple Crab Crane fish from Wrothgar, for example, and other rare fish. It would be nice if you could actually hang them on a plaque in your home, instead of the current, bland grey non-descript fish we currently have available as furnishings.

Furnishings
So, currently you can catch regular grey fish, kelp, sea stars, clams, sandcake and two kinds of (small) corals. This is a great beginning. However, I do think we need more fishing furnishings available as well, perhaps even some zone specific ones. Stonefalls has the awesome Vivec's antlers corals, why not let us be able to catch some pieces of that in the Stonefalls zone, and same for every other zone. Many zones have aquatic plants, or harbor related items, or ship related items and such. Let us be able to catch those in that specific zone. I think the current system was a nice beginning, but it needs to be fleshed out more, with new items continually being added as possible furnishing catches.

Perfect Roe
Judging from the furnishing recipes and master writs, it seems like you are now treating the Perfect Roe as "yet another type of gold mat" for the provisioning skill line, much like gold tempers and Kutas. This is wrong. Mostly because the total server droprate for Roes is much smaller than for gold tempers and kutas. This is reflected in prices as well. Roes in PC/EU sell for 11k, Alloys for 7k, Rosin/Wax at around 4-5k and Kutas around 4k as well.
I suggest either increasing the droprate of Roes somewhat, or decreasing the amount of Roes needed in various recipes. Currently, using Roes in Citrus fillet and Orzorga's Bear Haunch only provides a very small advantage over using the vastly cheaper purple recipes instead. This is bad game design. Also, there are so many provisioning furnishing recipes that call for Roes where it doesn't even make sense. Mammoth cheese, botttled plants, skull goblet, and even the mortar and pestle! You could easily have made these use Frost Mirriam/Bervez juice and various amounts of other ingredients, just like alchemy utilizes various ingredients in their recipes, since there is no gold material to call for.
I feel like Roes should be reserved for the Ambrosia (unique ingredient for a unique effect), perhaps 1-2 provisioning recipes (that have to be unique, not just a little bit more resources than the similar purple one), and perhaps 1-2 furnishing recipes where it also makes sense. Not a mortar and pestle.
Currently we also only have common white fish and golden Perfect Roe as provisioning ingredients from fishing. You could easily add some more, in various rarity tiers from blue to purple.

Skill line and Fishing Rods
My final suggestion is also the one that would require the most work, but perhaps would provide the most investment into fishing as a minigame. I suggest adding an antire new skill line for fishing, like the other crafting skills have theirs. We currently have so many skill points available in the game, that I think there is room for another skillline. It should be only passives, like TG/DB, and the various passives could relate to something like:
- Higher chance of catching trophy fish/furnishings
- Higher chance of getting a Perfect Roe when fileting
- Shorten the waiting time between catches
- If you introduce a minigame when you have thrown your line, a passive to reduce the difficulty of said minigame
- A small chance to get 2 drops instead of 1 when you reel in your line
- A chance to see how many "drops" are left in a hole when you throw your line into it
- Passives related to being able to craft and/or improve your fishing rods
- etc etc

As for fishing rods, I suggest adding them as a new kind of item you equip as a weapon, with a very low damage, like the broom from the Crown Store. You could introduce a tier of 1-5 different fishing rods with different looks. Crafted through your passives in the fishing skill line from various wooden materials we have in the game. They could have X uses before they expire/break down, and you have to craft a new one, or you need to repair the old one at a crafting station.
Using a crafted fishing rod instead of a default one, would again increase your chances at various drops. One could increase your chance for furnishing drops, one for tropy fish, one for white fish. Or one could get better drops in foul water, one better drops in lake water etc. So you had better chances when you used a specific rod in a specific type of water, or you could pull out a specific rod when you wanted to fish for trophy fish, another rod when you wanted to fish for common whites and so on. Having them as consumables with X times of use, or requiring repair after X times of use, would provide a material sink as well, in order to get the benefits from the rods.

A fishing mechanic minigame when you have dropped your line, and/or a fishing skill line and fishing rod system would be the parts that require the most develoment from the dev team, but then again they would be the ones that make the fishing aspect much more interesting and engaging. The other parts about drops, lures/baits and such would be much more simple to implement.
I do hope someone at ZOS will catch the ball and that we will see a fishing update sometime in the future. I like fishing, and I find it something relaxing to do. However, currently I pretty much only fish to get my DLC achievements when a new DLC comes out, and then find other things to do after that, mostly because fishing is currently a very large time sink, with very little reward. You can do so many other things in the same amount of time that proves to be a better use of your time, in terms of rewards, plus it doesn't feel as mind numbly boring as fishing can do sometimes.
Anyway, that was my input, feel free to leave constructive feedback and maybe your own suggestions that I haven't thought of.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Chris

Ghettokid

Did not read the whole thing, but I have to agree someone with passion to come up with so many ideas. Good job.

Carbonised

Ghettokid wrote: »

Did not read the whole thing, but I have to agree someone with passion to come up with so many ideas. Good job.

Thank you. Yeah it did turn out rather longwinded, but I wanted to go every aspect of fishing, and I placed every aspect in its own paragraph and heading to at least improve readability somewhat =p

But yes, I do feel passionate towards the fishing element of the game, hence why I spent so long getting all the Angler achievements. I just wish it was a bit more engaging and rewarding - hence this post.

DieAlteHexe

Most excellent! Aside from the "mini-game" bit, that would annoy me no end. The rest, oh, if only.

Carbonised

Another thing that I forgot to mention, from the tooltips in the game, it's clear that fishing with other people should increase your chances for trophy fish. Well I hate to say it, but the vast majority of trophy fish I have gotten were from solo fishing.
The fishing holes run dry very fast with 2-3 or more people fishing at them, so it's really not worth it, if you're after the greens and blues.
Ideally, some kind of dynamic spawn would be preferable, where the game determines how many people are fishing, and increases the number of casts appropriately. But if not that, then at least we ned a significant increase in the bonus from fishing in numbers vs solo. Right now it's not worth it at all.

DieAlteHexe

Carbonised wrote: »

Another thing that I forgot to mention, from the tooltips in the game, it's clear that fishing with other people should increase your chances for trophy fish. Well I hate to say it, but the vast majority of trophy fish I have gotten were from solo fishing.
The fishing holes run dry very fast with 2-3 or more people fishing at them, so it's really not worth it, if you're after the greens and blues.
Ideally, some kind of dynamic spawn would be preferable, where the game determines how many people are fishing, and increases the number of casts appropriately. But if not that, then at least we ned a significant increase in the bonus from fishing in numbers vs solo. Right now it's not worth it at all.

My experience as well. I've rarely gotten any of the "good fish" when fishing with others aside from during events. I agree with your suggestions.

Wildberryjack

I agree with everything but the change to Perfect Roe and a Fishing skill line. We have enough to sink skill points into now as it is, especially on our crafting characters. And some of us make most of our gold off of the Perfect Roe, don't screw us over with this please.

The caught bait though, yeah, something def needs to be done there. It's worthless. Why is it even there?

Carbonised

DjinnRa wrote: »

I agree with everything but the change to Perfect Roe and a Fishing skill line. We have enough to sink skill points into now as it is, especially on our crafting characters. And some of us make most of our gold off of the Perfect Roe, don't screw us over with this please.

The caught bait though, yeah, something def needs to be done there. It's worthless. Why is it even there?

It's possible to keep the Roe droprate more or less as it is, but then I suggest removing Roe requirement from most of the provisioning furnishing recipes. It doesn't make sense to have them there anyway.
Probably we should also have some gold foods that don't require Perfect Roe.
Very few people will sacrifice the large gold cost just for 20 more magicka or health, compared to purple foods.

KrishakPanettier

I read the whole post.

I don't recommend changing perfect roe drop rates, leave ultra rare. And, I don't recommend changing any existing recipes.
Everything else seems like great changes to consider -- with dev tweaks here and there.

Stania

I have seen little boats that are better looking than the current achievement boat, and they have different styles depending of the location. I've seen a dunmer, an altmer and a breton one, we could have got them after completing the fishing achievements on each alliance.

Here's the altmer one:

Reedx

Get inside your car and drive to the nearest lake bring your fishing set and start you minigame

Princess_Ciri

I didn't read this post but @MyNameIsElias must be summoned because this is a fishing post

Elias already has plans for an intensive hardcore pvp minigame for fishing. And some other stuff he is keeping secret so nobody copies him ofc.

Jhalin

I think a mini game is kinda pointless, since well...it's already really fast paced compared to real-life fishing. I like being able to do things while I'm fishing. I find it relaxing.

A skill line in the World tab would make sense, add a chance for double drops, increase chances for Perfect Roe, faster catch times, insights similar to Votan's Fisherman addon (in the same vein as lighting up resource nodes)

I'm rarely after the rare drops though, especially after finishing a zone. If they sold for more like you suggested then maybe I'd feel less bad about them, but I'm more than fine with the rate I get them right now.

Carbonised

Jhalin wrote: »

I think a mini game is kinda pointless, since well...it's already really fast paced compared to real-life fishing. I like being able to do things while I'm fishing. I find it relaxing.

I wouldn't exactly call it "fast paced". In fact, the long waiting time with nothing happening is pretty much reason number 1 that some people never fish, and that I don't really fish either after getting the achievements.

Most people who fish a lot will tell you that they are engaged in something else on the side, TV, series, phone or whatever. I don't really consider it great game design, when you pretty much have to be otherwise occupied to be able to stand doing something repetitive that involves excessive waiting, i.e. just staring at your screen.

I wouldn't mind if it was tied to passives in a skill line, so you actively had to invest in order to shorten the waiting time, but unless you have some way to mitigate the long waiting, fishing will remain something you do while watching Netflix or whatever, which is a pity.

Carbonised

Stania wrote: »

I have seen little boats that are better looking than the current achievement boat, and they have different styles depending of the location.

There's also some nice Dunmer themed smaller vessels, especially around Vvardenfell.

Pretty much anything would have been preferable to the current one. Master Angler is one of the hardest and rarest titles and achievements to get, and then you get some shoddy ramshackle tiny canoe that looks absolutely horrible.

I don't even want to buy one for my home with harbour/water access, due to how uninteresting and uninspired it looks.

Jhalin

I guess it's just a personal preference to want to have lots of engagement with fishing. The fact that I can do other things is what makes me enjoy it. If I had to put all my attention into it then I would probably stop fishing, for the most part.

DieAlteHexe

Carbonised wrote: »

Stania wrote: »

I have seen little boats that are better looking than the current achievement boat, and they have different styles depending of the location.

There's also some nice Dunmer themed smaller vessels, especially around Vvardenfell.

Pretty much anything would have been preferable to the current one. Master Angler is one of the hardest and rarest titles and achievements to get, and then you get some shoddy ramshackle tiny canoe that looks absolutely horrible.

I don't even want to buy one for my home with harbour/water access, due to how uninteresting and uninspired it looks.

And, for me, the dye is a letdown as well. Never did like pink. Then again, who knows what it'll look like in use. One of my pet peeves, dyes in this game.

Carbonised

Jhalin wrote: »

I guess it's just a personal preference to want to have lots of engagement with fishing. The fact that I can do other things is what makes me enjoy it. If I had to put all my attention into it then I would probably stop fishing, for the most part.

Perhaps not all your attention, but I think some middle ground is possible. At least having passives to cut the waiting time will be a great improvement. You can still do something on the side, since you only have to press E when required, but at least it won't be nearly 20 seconds between having to press that E.

Carbonised

DieAlteHexe wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Stania wrote: »

I have seen little boats that are better looking than the current achievement boat, and they have different styles depending of the location.

There's also some nice Dunmer themed smaller vessels, especially around Vvardenfell.

Pretty much anything would have been preferable to the current one. Master Angler is one of the hardest and rarest titles and achievements to get, and then you get some shoddy ramshackle tiny canoe that looks absolutely horrible.

I don't even want to buy one for my home with harbour/water access, due to how uninteresting and uninspired it looks.

And, for me, the dye is a letdown as well. Never did like pink. Then again, who knows what it'll look like in use. One of my pet peeves, dyes in this game.

I would think the choice of dye is back from when ZOS was scared to death that the first thing people would do was to colour their entire outfit pink and run around in pigtails. That was the reason for more than 2 years that we didn't get access to weapon dyes too, that dreaded pink sword comment.

So they locked the really pink dye behind a super hard achievement, to only have it accessible by someone who invests a huge time in something as boring as fishing, and thus must be a boring and sensible person who would never colour themselves all pink.

Fast forward to 2018, and we get all the pink weapons we like, sparkling ponies too. I guess having a modest and realistic visual aesthetics isn't as important to ZOS anymore, oh well.

In any case, yes, I haven't ever used that pink dye either, and I don't think I ever will. However, I don't really see what colour would be more appropriate. Perhaps something more sea green or turquoise? The dyes do follow a pattern where they are connected to their achievement, and as such, "Slaughterfish Pink" makes sense, but I agree, I would rather see a colour like sea green as dye reward. At least it would have more use.

Also, introducing a dye for every large zone DLC/Chapter fishing achievement could introduce some more colours than just pink, for instance that sea green, kelp dark green, turqoise, deep sea blue etc.

Sea Green:

Adernath

Another option would be to make a possible future Ship for housing tied to the master angler achievement.

DieAlteHexe

Carbonised wrote: »

DieAlteHexe wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Stania wrote: »

I have seen little boats that are better looking than the current achievement boat, and they have different styles depending of the location.

There's also some nice Dunmer themed smaller vessels, especially around Vvardenfell.

Pretty much anything would have been preferable to the current one. Master Angler is one of the hardest and rarest titles and achievements to get, and then you get some shoddy ramshackle tiny canoe that looks absolutely horrible.

I don't even want to buy one for my home with harbour/water access, due to how uninteresting and uninspired it looks.

And, for me, the dye is a letdown as well. Never did like pink. Then again, who knows what it'll look like in use. One of my pet peeves, dyes in this game.

I would think the choice of dye is back from when ZOS was scared to death that the first thing people would do was to colour their entire outfit pink and run around in pigtails. That was the reason for more than 2 years that we didn't get access to weapon dyes too, that dreaded pink sword comment.

So they locked the really pink dye behind a super hard achievement, to only have it accessible by someone who invests a huge time in something as boring as fishing, and thus must be a boring and sensible person who would never colour themselves all pink.

Fat forward to 2018, and we get all the pink weapons we like, sparkling ponies too. I guess having a modest and realistic visual aesthetics isn't as important to ZOS anymore, oh well.

In any case, yes, I haven't ever used that pink dye either, and I don't think I ever will. However, I don't really see what colour would be more appropriate. Perhaps something more sea green or turquoise? The dyes do follow a pattern where they are connected to their achievement, and as such, "Slaughterfish Pink" makes sense, but I agree, I would rather see a colour like sea green as dye reward. At least it would have more use.

Also, introducing a dye for every large zone DLC/Chapter fishing achievement could introduce some more colours than just pink, for instance that sea green, kelp dark green, turqoise, deep sea blue etc.

Sea Green:

Ah! Thank you for that, I wasn't aware.

I do agree that a sea green or turquoise would be vastly preferable to...pink. There are already a lot of blue, most of which I'm not crazy about and greys, can't recall if they have a nice teal. Anything but...pink.

Oh well, that's of little matter I guess. I'm not doing this for the dye after all.

Bbsample197

add a sort of a minigame similar to SAO ABRIDGE's crafting, believe me hospitals will be packed full of eso players after that patch

MyNameIsElias

I've got 14 master anglers, if Zos would add atleast one of these suggestions into the game, i'd make the activity 100% more enjoyable then it currently is, thank you for making this post, it's super well made and i hope Zos will see it

Carbonised

MyNameIsElias wrote: »

I've got 14 master anglers, if Zos would add atleast one of these suggestions into the game, i'd make the activity 100% more enjoyable then it currently is, thank you for making this post, it's super well made and i hope Zos will see it

Thank you, that's high praise coming from the most famous Angler I can think of

Let's hope there is sufficiently momentum behind some of these ideas, that we can finally get the fishing activity fleshed out a bit more.

RobbieRocket

Great post. I have thought about this (and various other sensible improvements to the game (such as "how to train your mount in an interactive way").

I also think the logic you have highlighted surrounding the Perfect Roe recipes is important but I cannot see those kind of imbalances (purple food/drink is only just behind an extremely hard-to-produce legendary food/drink requiring Perfect Roe) every being organised and balanced.

The Skill Line was a massive miss by ZOS. It would have been so easy to fix and your suggestions to the passives are in the "ball-park" of what they would have done if this had been in the game. An alternative to a whole new Skill Line would at least have been a passive in Provisioning ( I would have had 3, 1 for fishing, 1 for trapping/hunting* and 1 for gathering/farming* - all of which could level 4 times and simply increase the chance of rare, the node CP passive halfing the duration).

* The trapping/hunting would effect slaying animals in overland as well as surveys and the gathering/farming would effect barrels and crates (I guess - why can't you farm in this game!?).

Agrivar

All in all, this is a great post and I really like your suggestions... but I have one minor nit to pick.

You get a single, pink colour from finishing Master Angler, and can buy the tiny fishing boat achievement furniture. You also get the Master angler title. And that's pretty much it, everything else is just achievement points. A few more dyes would have been nice, perhaps one for every larger zone/chapter...

Might I draw your attention to UESP's Fishing Achievement page?

Relevant parts for the lazy:

• Dominion Fisherman -> Dominion Fisher Yellow
• Covenant Fisherman -> Covenant Fisher Blue
• Pact Fisherman -> Pact Fisher Red
• Craglorn Angler -> Yokudan Cod Tan
• Cyrodiil Angler -> Nibenay Trout Green

Five additional colors unlocked for completing factions and large zones.

notyuu

fishing skill-line: yes
fishing mini-game: no

Carbonised

Agrivar wrote: »

All in all, this is a great post and I really like your suggestions... but I have one minor nit to pick.

You get a single, pink colour from finishing Master Angler, and can buy the tiny fishing boat achievement furniture. You also get the Master angler title. And that's pretty much it, everything else is just achievement points. A few more dyes would have been nice, perhaps one for every larger zone/chapter...

Might I draw your attention to UESP's Fishing Achievement page?

Relevant parts for the lazy:

• Dominion Fisherman -> Dominion Fisher Yellow
• Covenant Fisherman -> Covenant Fisher Blue
• Pact Fisherman -> Pact Fisher Red
• Craglorn Angler -> Yokudan Cod Tan
• Cyrodiil Angler -> Nibenay Trout Green

Five additional colors unlocked for completing factions and large zones.

That's correct, I should have mentioned that. It's unclear from my post, but I was hinting more at the DLC and Chapter fishing achievements. They could use a dye too.

Wildberryjack

Right now I just want the caught bait to do something. Give a greater chance at catching rares, make it take less time to get a bite, give a greater chance at Perfect Roe, anything. I fish for the Roe and it pisses me off to see that worthless, pointless caught bait hauled in. That's one less fish I can clean for a shot at Roe. Ugh.

LadyLethalla

Some great suggestions here.
However, I would not want to have to craft fishing rods. That's 4 inventory slots I need to have a probably only slightly better chance of catching something "rare" in each different type of water. In the same vein, I wouldn't want to have to go repair the damn things every time they broke. That would just be annoying, say somewhere like the Gold Coast holes that are miles from a wayshrine. Okay, I get that you could then just use the "white" fishing rod, but that then nullifies the need to even craft rods in the first place... I probably wouldn't even bother.

- my 2 cents - from someone who did MA solo.