Let's talk FISH! @devs: sorry but it is an abysmal misery

Yshaar · April 2014

I love the game, I really do...but what led good designers to activate fishing in it's current state?

You cannot browse your inventory while fishing
You cannot do anything basically. NOT EVEN CHATTING!!!
Fishing is all about relaxing and chitchat. This is not possible. Sigh.
It seems to me that fish always bite after a set amount of time, which is really lame and unfun.
I heard even the rare fish achievements seem to be broken.

Problematic in this respect seems to be the engine, which does not allow anything at the same time. Open Inventory and browse the guild store? Nope. Open the character sheet while browsing the guild store? Nope.
...but this is stuff for a new thread.

RubyTigress · April 2014

I've been very disappointed in fishing as well. It is even more random than actual real life fishing...

Booshy · April 2014

The fact that fish in earlier betas actually had a use in crafting and for whatever reason they chose to make it pointless for release makes it even more of a bust.

Foxhunt · April 2014

It's unfortunate, I was really hoping fishing would be great in this game. Only one thing to do - wait for them to do something about it.

Stienbjorn · April 2014

So, as I suspected there is no point to fishing, other then standing around in a virtual world doing nothing?

Mantiss · April 2014

Funky, here I thought I was just missing the recipes that use fish. If no recipes exist for fishing then its pointless to even have fishing in-game.

Sihnfahl · April 2014

None of the catchable fish I've had yet were food / drink ingredients.

They sell nice, though.

Ainsworth · April 2014

Anyone managed to bag the blue rarity fish in Bleakrock to get the achievement? I caught it three times and not once was it actually added to my inventory.

It's worth 150 gold when you sell it as well so I was a little annoyed.....

Tendeep · April 2014

Fishing is very poor, I loved fishing in other MMO's, actually hate it here - FFXIV got it right ;-)

radiostar · April 2014

After casting/reeling in a few times, I suddenly was not able to cast. The screen message was you can't do that while a werewolf, or some such. Why? I wasn't a werewolf!

stanengelbrechtb16_ESO · April 2014

Sadly I have to agree with the comments here. I really enjoy the game but they really slacked off on the fishing. Even the mechanics are hokey. Why not implement something along the lines of the lock picking mechanics so that fishing is actually engaging. Adding some sort of tension mechanism to how your reel in the fish would be nice.
Oh and yes the werewolf issue is odd, I have had it happen as well. Lets hope they get to fixing these issues.

Exordatius · April 2014

While I agree that it's currently somewhat pointless, I would point out that they will likely upgrade and update in in the future to make it more meaningful.

Hypersillyman · April 2014

I hate to mention the hated game, but I always kind of liked the way WoW did fishing. You could fish anywhere, but were only guaranteed to catch anything if you fished in a school, which were easy to spot. The stuff you caught wasn't always useful, but was more often than not. Almost every fish you could catch was in a cooking recipe somewhere, and you could occasionally catch a rare trophy fish or even some treasure.

In ESO, fishing is currently quite useless. You can only fish in fishing holes, the holes are often difficult to spot, and most of the ones I do see are in hostile territory either right next to, or at least within aggro range of an enemy. The fish you catch do nothing, and are not even good for cooking. The rare fish you need for the achievements are extremely difficult to get, usually require multiple fishermen at the same spot, and do nothing else outside of the achievement. Fishing in its current form is a complete waste of time and processing power. I would almost rather they remove it in its entirety, and don't put it back in until they actually have some idea what it's for, what it does, and why it's there.

Just my opinion of course. Enjoy.

PicassoTrigger · April 2014

I don't care that there's no recipes that use the fish, it'd be nice and all but I can leave with trophies to sell to the merchant... but why don't the fish, anything above white level, go into your inventory?

Is it a "one that got away" joke I'm not getting? Do you need to invisibly level the fishing skill to actually catch the fish?

Lalai · April 2014

I don't mind fishing so far overall. I did manage to catch some Crawfish that said they were a food ingredient while in Glenumbra. I've also gotten a few rare fish.

That being said, not being able to chat or do anything while fishing is extremely aggravating. I also don't get why the fish that count towards the achievement don't go into your inventory.

ElChristo · April 2014

I quite like fishing in the game. Only thing that is bothersome is you can't chat or open your inventory and such.
It would be nice if the fish you caught could be cooked or have some kind of use.
But other than that it's fine by me.

Also people complaining about rarity of the achievement fish, you have to use the right bait. I got 2 in 5 mins for the Stonefalls Angler achievement.

Some_Jerk · April 2014

Ocarnia of time had the best fishing game of all

Rantog · April 2014

They borrowed so much from so many games.. this one I'd love to see..

I don't like how fishing - is utterly useless.. can't even cook the things..
- And I don't like how Treasure Maps are solo-only, you just walk up and dig, and Poof, there's your loot.

They should borrow from an older one-- Ultima Online.
Fishing had a rare chance to come up with a map in a bottle..
And the buried treasures had Guardians.

They already have bottles, maps, fishing, dirt piles, shovel-use animation... everything is placed.
All they have to do is add a ~ 0.1% chance of fishing up a map, determine a scale for the map difficulty, and add a spawn mechanism to the dig sites.

gryphon3333preub18_ESO · April 2014

Hypersillyman wrote: »

I hate to mention the hated game, but I always kind of liked the way WoW did fishing. You could fish anywhere, but were only guaranteed to catch anything if you fished in a school, which were easy to spot. The stuff you caught wasn't always useful, but was more often than not. Almost every fish you could catch was in a cooking recipe somewhere, and you could occasionally catch a rare trophy fish or even some treasure.

Actually...that was fishing in WoW after a few years. Early fishing in WoW was about as exciting as fishing is in ESO right now. I think you could use a few in recipes but it was the most inefficient way to level up your cooking skill. Yes, you could fish anywhere but there wasn't much point. It took at least a couple of years before fishing got interesting by adding fishing contests and the fishing pools with cool stuff you could fish out.

sweetfingrandir · April 2014

Hopefully fishing will be addressed, it's still early days yet. After a bit of hard core pve and pvp fishing is a way to relax I game, especially for RP's. It's nice to be able to use the fish you get in recipes or trophies for a house etc.

Arsvita · April 2014

I will just say that so far I just fish ... to fish.

I use up bait that I invariably collect. Having found no recipes, but having noticed they are all trophies (or more bait), just sell them.

As I destroy all the items I have collected for materials this becomes one small flow of cash.

When I learn to brew ... hope to share some at a fishing hole with y'all.

hilelorangutan · April 2014

Arsvita wrote: »

I will just say that so far I just fish ... to fish.

Yep. It's easy enough to collect the bait so when I run across a fishing hole I pop the line in and chill for a bit. As far as the not being able to check inventory and stuff, Vent/Teamspeak really helps with this issue.

Also it's definitely a good source of a little extra income, the rare fish sell better than gear drops to vendors.

ebunts14_ESO · April 2014

I would like to see fishing on the lines as UO. At least you could fish, chat, mess around in your inventory.

Then again I am no fan of using nodes for resources either.

manticoreblack · April 2014

I haven't even tried fishing. Couldn't bring myself to smash those poor butterflies. Most certainly could bring myself to buy bait. I'm not a huge fan of WoW's fishing so don't do that. Give me LoZ:OoT fishing then I'll be without complaint. I'll fish the helm right off that Nord!

lynzriches · April 2014

I was disappointed with this also! I was hoping that the fish you catch had some sort of purpose -- alchemy ingredients, provisioning...I stopped saving my fishing bait because it was just so pointless. Just like cooking was in Skyrim! LOL

mattriddle · April 2014

Fishing was my favorite activity in WoW. I like it in this game, but I'm not sure what to do with my Trophy fish that aren't a part of crafting.

Daknar · April 2014

radiostar wrote: »

After casting/reeling in a few times, I suddenly was not able to cast. The screen message was you can't do that while a werewolf, or some such. Why? I wasn't a werewolf!

April 1st Joke?

LoneWalker · April 2014

Only Fishing I really enjoyed in a game was from Ocarina of Time lol

piratepoet · April 2014

Don't forget about the part where when you finally catch one of those rare fish and loot it.... they don't actually show up in your inventory.

bileth22 · April 2014

I have caught two different rare fish with only a screen shot of the ash shad to show for it.
billyhalemusic.com/JH/rare%20fish%20bug.jpg
They don't go into inventory. Fishing is a grt part of the game but I want proof I caught the rare ones.

Tahoenvy · April 2014

The only game I have played that had fun fishing (and I've played or tested 25 approximately) was Rift. GREAT fishing.