FFXIV: The Great Fishing Debate!

What we don’t want is to have fishing become stressful. It is supposed to be a relaxing thing. Pressing extra buttons for actions is going to create that stress.

-Naoki Yoshida

The above quote has caused an uproar on The Lodestone, Final Fantasy XIV’s official forums. Everyone is questioning how fishing will be changed. So far, in Phase 3 of the Beta, the Fishing class has been unavailable for play. Nobody knows what to expect, and several people are really upset about the news.

A fish eye view.

Lets look at this from an objective angle though. Yoshida already mentioned how they would handle the botting issue in the interview. Fish will be less than worthless if you can’t craft with them yourself. From what he said in the interview, it sounds like fishing will be more for catching The Big One instead of catching fish to make money. He also alluded to getting things other than fish from fishing, like treasure maps. So far it all sounds like a plus to me.

Failed fishing system.

I personally didn’t like the fishing concept from Square Enix’s first MMO, Final Fantasy XI’s. You had to deplete the fish’s energy bar by holding the correct directional button at the appropriate time. Then once the fish’s energy was depleted, you had to push a button to real it in. Even if you successfully wore the fish down all the way, there was still a chance that the rod would break, or the fish would make off with your bait/lure. It was a really stressful system. This is the kind of thing that Yoshida is trying to avoid with FFXIV’s new fishing system.

So why are people mad?

From what I’ve gathered the people upset are the hardcore fishers, the ones who did nothing but fish. They’re upset that now their fish aren’t worth anything, so they have no Gil coming in. Some others are also upset because they liked the fishing system in 1.0. I mean, 1.0’s fishing system wasn’t so bad, but the logging (wood harvesting) system had been updated to a one buttoned skill event, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the ARR fishing system will be something along those lines. I wouldn’t mind this in the least.

My advice.

If you really love fishing that much, go fish for real. Fishing isn’t the main system in the game, so there is no need to spend hours on end fishing. Just take a deep breath and wait and see what bites. Maybe it will be a big haul, or maybe it will be the one that got away. Either way, we won’t know until we actually see the system. In the mean time, take a look at the image below and smile!