I love fishing, be it IRL or in games.
The tranquility of waiting for the fish to bite the bait, and the thrill of actually getting a huge random catch is amazing.
Some games don’t really put that much effort into fishing:
“Press ‘X’ to start, and press ‘X’ again to retrieve the catch right after the fish bites.” -Trove
(Yet i love that game, it has the best sandbox experience without falling into p2w.)
The game on which i had the most fun while fishing.
In Lineage 2 you had four skills required for fishing: Reel, Pump, Fishing Expertice, and well, Fishing (throwing the rod/pole).
After getting a bite, you press the Fishing skill, and the game starts.
You had to keep and eye on the movements of the fish, using the right skill at the right time. By succeeding at this, “the fish’s health” would decrease, and while failing you would “heal the fish”.
(It’s not actually health, but I can’t find the right words in english.)
Little extra challenge
Sometimes, the game would mix up the things, meaning that you’d have to pump instead of reel and vice versa.
All this in a time limit of 60 seconds (or so, i don’t remember that well), after that the fish would escape.
Rewards
After fully decreasing the “HP of the fish”, you had a chance to capture certain type of fish with a certain size, a treasure box, or spawn a sea monster, which had pretty unique drops (high tier fishing poles, bait, or crafting materials.)
Every week there was this automatic tournament on which the biggest fishes would earn the fisher some money for their feats.
The reasons to fish weren’t only having some fun or making a little bit of profit.
The fishes could be used to get materials, needed to craft vanity items like hats, masks, and even some dyes and potions.
Also, the crafting materials could be exchanged to the fishing NPC for tickets called Proof of Catching a Fish, with enough tickets you could increase the limit of your inventory/warehouse/trade/selling/buying slots.
Stuff the game didn’t tell you
- After fishing a long time at the same spot, the fishes would start to eat the bait without even giving you a chance to catch them, making you lose the money you invested on the baits.
To solve this, you had to go find a different spot.
- Fishing at night required special illuminated bait, and it had different rewards.
- You could fish nearly on any body of water, anywhere.
I’m not saying that Lineage 2 had the best fishing experience, it was just well elaborated, and i loved it.
(BTW, i just checked, the game changed a lot on the last 7 years, lol)
…
TL;DR
So yeah, fishing in that game was kind of great, it had some difficulty on it, a bit of a learning curve, and quite a nice range of rewards:
- Vanity items (hats, masks, dyes) for the lolz.
- Potions to ease the grind.
- Different kinds of inventory expansions for the endgame people who always wanted to max out their efficiency by having different kind of situational items at reach.
ACTUAL TL;DR
Fishing.
