Does Fishing Belong in AQ3D and Why?

AE did get some use out of it, but I would have preferred that they actually improved it. Fishing doesn't really have much to it right now even though AE did make some items craftable with fish. Let's hope it will have more to it when a revamp of it comes out.

 

Think one thing they could have done was create an item called "bait" that would increase the frequency of fishing spots. When other players are around, it's often difficult to fish because spots are being taken, and having more fishing spots would make the experience somewhat better. Or just make it so that players could share the same fishing spot, so players don't get the "Fishing failed" message every time. That itself would have been fine, if they didn't want to entirely revamp fishing.

 

Using bait to fish should be a thing when a new version of fishing comes out. Being able to use same fishing spot without failing to fish would be the bare minimum that they need to do or make them work in a way that you can fish from a fishing spot multiple times before it disappears.

 

It is a bit silly you can't fish at the same spot every time, but I think fishing was designed purposely like that to deter players from using macros and bots. I don't think implementing a feature to deter that problem would even be a big deal anyway, because fishing isn't really something serious in the game compared to a lot of other things... especially when they do things like make a quest daily which in itself is already a deterrence.

 

It probably was a design decision to avoid automation like that, but can AE make fishing more enjoyable while achieving that? If they plan to make trade skills more impactful, then they should improve fishing around that.

 

Well, they have the ability to do a lot of things; they're not limited to ideas. One thing they could do similar to the example of fishing at the same spot is have a random timer, and you have to press a button at a certain time window to catch a fish. It would still be susceptible to botting, but a bit harder to crack; besides, even the current fishing system can be abused, so they're not really going to find a solution to stop people from botting (which hasn't really been a big problem yet). What matters most is that other players can enjoy any minigame, and trying to limit a minigame to prevent botting only reduces the full enjoyment of that minigame, not just for the people with bad intentions, but for everyone. Also limiting something isn't really a solution at all, just an annoyance; and it's just like quests as well: making quests daily to prevent people from botting the quest over and over again isn't a solution.

 

Anything even closely similar to how fishing works is vulnerable to botting. I suppose they have to compensate to make fishing enjoyable.

 

I don't think there's really anything to compensate to making fishing enjoyable other than just focusing more on the fun aspect, especially since fishing isn't about being serious. If enjoying fishing results in it staying vulnerable to actions of the ne'er-do-wells (i.e. people who cheat the system), then so be it. When it comes to balancing fairness vs. fun, fun is what's most important, especially when there's really no competition. So much time and resource is often wasted on making a feature that's fair, but not enough time and resource is utilized on the fun aspect; in AE's other games, like AQWorlds, you often see some quests get updated to be more difficult for both players and botters, and it oftentimes backfires (unintuitively) by punishing the players (that have to now farm harder or longer) than it is to the botters (that still don't have to do anything).

If AE decides to revamp fishing, their priority should definitely be on making it fun. Fishing isn't a competitive part of the game like PvP, so there's really no point in implementing an anti-cheat system that'll largely displease the actual players who prefer something more laid-back and fun.

 

Fun side-activities would be nice and fishing is in a form that wasn't made with fun in mind. AE just leeched it more with that daily and those cosmetics. Fishing is being revamped by Dagger the last time I heard about it.