Ok, so I really like the fishing feature introduced in the anniversary update. It's without a doubt, one of my favorite part of the game. I love the feeling a sailing around catching fishes. But there is one or two issues that I need to adress.
First things first, the most part of fishing is on point. I don't have any problems with the splahtails, islehoppers, ancientscales, plentyfins, wildsplashes, battlegills and stormfish. I also think that selling 50 times each regular fishes and 10 times each legendary fishes is a good number in order to become a legendary hunter. I also have to warn you that my native language is french, so I may do some grammar mistakes. That being said let's get to the major issues.
The Baits :
There is a huge problem with baits. At first they were very rare and it was very tedious to fish because you only found them in barrels. But Rare fixed that and let you dig the ground to get baits. It's a wonderful idea. Each baits are on speficic parts of the island. Leeches near the sea, Grubs in the sand, and Earthworms in the ground. But the problem is that it's very difficult to have earthworms. 7 out of 10 times, if you dig in a patch of grass, you will get grubs because the game considers that you dug sand. Even I you dug in the middle of a big patch of grass. It's very frustrating, because I don't think that it was intended.
The Blackcloud Wrecker:
This fish is very weird. All of the other fish in sea of thieves have no conditions (Splashtails), or one conditions that you need to respect in order to catch them (Wildsplashes in the Wilds for example). But this little guy have two conditions. You need to fish near a Shipwreck and under the storm. It's very confusing, because it's the only one that needs 2 conditions for its spawning, and apart from its name you don't have any clues on how to fish it. In English it's more obvious but in french it's called "Naufrageur des cieux funestes" roughly "Wrecker of the sinister skies" which is more ambiguous. In order to fix it you can either delete the storm condition for this particular fish, or give clearer informations to the player, because If you have to go to the wiki to understand how to catch a fish then I think that there is a problem. Why not let the hunters of the seaposts tell you that this fish is special ? There is already a small box of text that gives tips on fishing, but right now it's completely useless. Which leads to my next point.
The Hunters on the Seaposts :
The Hunter on the seaposts are completely useless. They're only usefull when you have to sell fishes and when you want to buy the pieces of the Killer Whales set. The other factions give you quests, but they don't. I understand that it's difficult to create a type of quest for the Hunter's Call, but I think that it's still possible to create some kinds of fetch quests where the hunters ask you to find peculiar types of fishes in exchange for more gols and reputation.
The Devilfishes :
The devilfishes are fished in the devil's roar. Why are they sold for the same price as the Plentyfins ? Devilfishes have to be sold for more gold, like the ashen chests, and the ashen skulls, because it's more difficult to get them. Maybe not as much as the wreckers and the battlegills, but definitly more than the plentyfins, the wildsplashes and the ancientscales.
The storm :
It's very difficult to know where the storm is going when you want to fish stormfishes. I think that it would be a good idea to make some kind of visual cue to let the player know where the storm is heading. Not an obvious one, but maybe something that's hard to tell, something discreet.
Hunter's call gears :
Finally, I have a problem with the Hunter's Call rewards. Apart from the Killer Whale set there is no reward for the Hunter's Call, no cosmetics in the shops, and no doubloons for the commendations. I mean, I think that it's kind of weird that completing the Legendary hunter of the Sea of thieves commendation doesn't give you any doubloons. It just gives you a title which is pretty cool, but considering that it may be one of the most tedious commendation of the game, not having any other rewards is very disappointing. It could be cool if you could unlock a peculiar set of cosmetic with the "Master hunter" commendation or the "Legendary Hunter" commendation.
Well that concludes my feedback. Keep in mind that I really love fishing even though I have my problems with it. I think that it's the most fun part of the game. If I have any other thoughts I will post them as comments in this entry.
