Here's my take on the whole event. I know, probably nobody really cares, but I still feel like in case someone reads it, I should put it out.
First of all, this is a nice idea! I like the idea of events like this running for a while making you do something. I can imagine a lot of stuff and getting a reward for it is always nice. It makes you play the game. BUT... there is a small problem with it...
I understand ruby splashtails being a sort of meme and that the developers wanted to reward players for catching the worst fish in the game that has the most spawn rate. However, 180 is a loooooot. Just some simple maths. You are supposed to catch 180 ruby splash tails. Let's say that the whole fishing bussiness (the fish appearing, and subsequent catching of the fish and taking it into your inventory) takes about ... 2 minutes? Probably more, but let's be generous. This means that excluding the bonus time required for you to put your fish away, because you have only 5 inventory spaces, and assuming you catch nothing but normal ruby splashtails all the time, it will take you around 6 hours of continous gameplay to catch the required numbers. That's of course if it is solo... if you are lucky to play it in a party focused solely on fishing, the time can be of course cut up to 1,5 hours, which might seem reasonable (I personally would play in a party of 3, so 2 hours give or take), but again, this only accounts for you fishing the normal red splashtails all the time. Trophy splash tail would probably take around 4 minutes to catch, give or take, and if you want to be efficient, you would take the last 60 splashtails only trophy ones to hit two birds with one stone. Trophy splash tails don't come that often... so you would have to hunt them, which could pretty much require around 10 minutes to catch one trophy red splash tail. I know the numbers are arbitrary, but catching this solo, it would take you 10 continous hours to catch only red trophy splash tails.
It is of course true that you can say, screw dubloons, I just want the figurehead, (or say, for dubloons, I am catching only pondies) which is perfectly possible... and dare I say, reasonable. But the obviously intended and the most time economic is for you to catch 120 red splash tails the first week and 60 trophy ones the next to get all the rewards.
Generally speaking, again, this sounds like a fine idea for the event... And at first I was like... okay... that's a really cool event... until I realised the figurehead is literally only for a red splashtail... nothing else... and let's be honest... the fishing gets boring really fast... it's not a bad mechanic, just a bad mechanic to binge.
This event requires you to catch the most worthless fish in the game and ignore the rest, because, time-wise, it is not worth it. It gives very very little experience and very little gold. If you are high level in the company (let's say in 40+) you won't get anything towards your progress, since, chances are, that you already finished the commendation for handing in the ruby splash tails (even if you didn't, the XP for that is not great either, but it would at least feel like doing some sort of progress). Even if you cook it, which requires cca double the time, the XP and gold are trash for this fish. PLUS, the fact that you are to catch only red splash tails also mean, that you can catch it only half the time in the game (When the night comes, the red splash tails are rare, which doubles the time needed).
I know that there comes an argument... "But... you don't have to do it in one day... you can distribute it over the course of 14 days, which makes it more bareable"... that is true, of course... but not everyone can sacrifice a part of the day for worthless fishing. So inevitably, you end up having to finish this in a short span of time, especially since you feel like ticking off both goals at once.
Let's show this on me... PL, Athena 10, 49 in Hunter's call... I play this game with 2 friends and we were really excited by the event, since we finished a lot of things already, so anytime something that makes us play the game comes, we are quite excited and usually finish it. Well... we finished the first part... over the course of 2 exhausting days we caught 120 fish (we took all splashtails at first, except for trophy ones, since we read the instructions wrong and thought that for the figurehead you can hand in any splash tail you want) ... It really took us 2 whole days to finish it, because we got always bored so fast of fishing that we also did some side stuff along the way, like handing in the rage chests during the double gold day... And everytime I made myself fish, I was bored out of my mind after just chatching 4 of them... It felt more like a punshiment than a game...
You can say that one or two players can fish, while the other moves the ship to some other adventure and do this sort of multi-tasking... well... you never realise how fast you can travel over the Sea of Thevies than when you do some mandatory fishing on the way... you are lucky to get two fish caught before you reach your destination... And of course, half the time, you can't even see what you are catching, because of the waves, distance and other reasons... Sometimes, your fishing gets interrupted by megalodon, skeletal ship, or an obstacle that breaks the fish free after you sunk so much time into catching it... Fishing takes too long and requires too much attention for you to just pass the time by it, especially now that you can find skeleton captains and other creatures just roaming the islands you pass...
This event was a fine idea, just really poorly executed... It would be fine, if for the figuredhead you needed any type of splashtail (even if the required ammount was way bigger)... But generally... forcing people into collecting the most worthless thing in the game, which requires a fair ammount of effort, and passing on some different fish that would give you a bigger reward, is just a terrible malpractice...
Imagine you would have this event again, but this time it was about digging up Castaway chests... nothing else would count towards your goal... only if your quest gave you castway chests... (yes there would be an easy sidegoal like handing in x ammounts of chests, but the grandprize would be hand in 180 Castaway chests)... by a certain point, the time spent on digging out anything else would be a waste of time... because it doesn't contribute to your goal and the sidegoals are already finished... And let's say that if you played normally, digging up everything and passing your side goals, you would get only like 25 castaway chests, so to get the final prize, you now have to literally only dig 155 castaways and ignore the rest... Wouldn't that feel like a punshiment just as this thing does?
For future reference, I would suggest that the "grandprize" would be focused on something more general... let's say... get 100k gold from selling fish... Hand in 300 fish... Or something similar... making your players hate fishing or making them say to themselves "well... screw that figurehead, since the hours I need to spend fishing, I can spend riding around, earning more than 200k gold for the ever growing hunger of Duke for money that dumps so much money requirements every patch, and that is much better" is just not a thing that should come out of similar events... When I look at the game and think to myself... hm... do I want a figurehead that I will probably never use (like 90 others I already own) or do I want to have fun / earn some much needed money for the next patches... the choice is clear... And players should never ask themselves such a question...
Just please... next time... also think about the gaming experience... be it for new players who have literally hundreds of hours worth of stuff to do over never-ending fishing of one type of worthless fish... or the players who reached end game and even 180 ruby splashtails gives them very little reward for a lot of effort that could be put elsewhere for much more.
I am sorry, if my text is not coherent at some places... English is not my first language
TLDR: Idea of an event like this is fine, but the goals are stupid. Making players collect one type of worthless fish 180 times and ignore the rest (49 other types or 98, if you count also trophy ones), instead of making them just enjoy fishing, is a terrible malpractice and goes against logic. Next events should have more general goals, especially for the grandprize, like get X ammount of gold for fishing, or hand in X ammount of fish.
EDIT: ... Yeah... I just spent an hour writting this instead of fishing... It was way more fun... WAY MORE FUN ... and now... I will go read... because it is way more fun than fishing 180 ruby splashtails
