The Current State of Fishing – Currently in World of Warcraft (WoW), fishing is a rather long and laborious journey to maximum skill. One positions oneself near a body of water and clicks the fishing button and if the body of water contains fish, the game generates a random location for your bobber based on character facing and you wait for the bobber to activate before clicking to see what you have caught. Fishing pools generate casting complications due to the randomness of the cast location generator which normally results in several recasts to successfully position your bobber regardless of your fishing skill.
Goal of the New Model – The main goal of this new model for fishing was to introduce a more involved process for fishing that is not cumbersome to the player, speeds up the fishing process, and does not ask for an undue amount of coding changes in the game, nor change the goals the developers have set forth for the profession. It also provides a tangible reward to those players who invest the time in obtaining a high fishing skill.
Givens – The Developers of WoW’s fishing profession have set several design goals for the profession that this proposal does not seek in any way to change, that; 1) All players regardless of fishing skill should be able to successfully fish from a pool as long as they meet the basic needs of the fishing profession (have a fishing pole and have at least skill level 1) and 2) Fishing skill does not determine your ability to cast in any area, merely your success rate at getting a fish rather than some other object.
Proposed Changes – The current single press fishing model would be replaced with an aim and cast double press model. Once the player positioned their character near a body of water they would press an Aim button (Icon to be determined by developers). This would bring up a targeting circle much like those used in casting targeted ground based effects in the spell casting system, the size of the target circle to be determined by developers. The player then places the circle where they like and a translucent circle would be placed on the water showing where the player has aimed. From that point on, unless the player moves or clicks again on the Aim button, all player casts will the targeted at their aim point.
Next, the player would press the Cast button (icon to be determined by developers). The game would then utilize the current randomizer to determine the landing point of the bobber modified by the following; 1) the current location of the aim circle, and 2) the current skill of the player in relation to the skill needed to successfully fish in the given area. The randomizer is basically determining if the bobber will successfully land within the aiming circle. A base minimum chance to land within the aim circle regardless of skill or result of the randomizer will have to be set by developers. One of the goals is that this system does not in any way penalize lower skilled players from fishing in pools, but does reward higher skilled players fishing pools with having to preform fewer casts to land their bobber in the pool which logically follows since they have more skill in the profession.
Finally, the profession should award higher skilled players with a tangible benefit in the form of a higher catch rate. When players reach certain plateau’s determined by developers, the game should use a mechanic similar to Alchemy in which a single cast would result in a multiple fish catch. This should scale with skill level up to a maximum determined by developers, with pools to be excluded (or amount lowered) at developer discretion.
Thank you for your consideration of this proposal.
Yes. I tried to come up with a system that can hopefully resuse some slightly modified coding mechanics already in the game to provide some tangible benefit to having a high fishing score. The ability to aim is one of the first things a fisher learns and if you have attended a fishing show is one of the competitions vendors put on where you cast and try to land your lure in a floating circle.
I also wanted players with higher level fishing to be rewarded with more fish per cast randomly.
Actually, the fact that it is as tedious as it is is the entire reason why my fishing isn't even close to maxed. I just don't have the patience to cast repeatedly to land in a pool once, and then not even get anything from it, and then repeat this process for hours. I can't believe it used to be even more tedious than it is now, lol.
Honestly the current model encourages botting because it's just too damn tedious. I haven't succumbed to the will of The Bot yet, but it's sure been tempting sometimes.
Could add a chance for a bonus skill-up as part of the double catch mechanic. It would be a nice bonus. Maybe have the bonus skill-up as a reward if you are under the current skill cap, and then bonus fish when you are at the cap.
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