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Fishing Changes
Tiur
Producer
in Town Crier
I'm going to be making some changes to fishing later today... but I feel a little torn about it. Let me tell you WHY it's happening, and what I did about it. See this as a brief chance to sneak in ideas before I go doing something by fiat. Note, this has nothing to do with promised plans for today. I just was reading the thread http://forums.aetolia.com/discussion/2820/econo-me-you-hardly-know-me#latest and kept seeing an issue with fishing arise.
The question/questions I got most often was "Why is the master/artifact rod so terrible" and "does its terribleness even out due to the sheer value of the fish?"
The answer is:
Fishing has bands of fish weights. At excess of a certain number, you need a new rod to even have a chance to hook it. The largest weight class requires the master/artifact rod. Without it, you don't even have a chance to hook those fish.
Problem 1:
Fishing was designed to have that weightclass at 1500 oz. Anything over that requires those two top tier rods.
Fish can have a range of weights. Some wide, some narrow, but the min is 1oz, the max is 65,535 oz.
See the issue? Bring out your Master rod and the world opens from 1- 1499 to 1 - 65,535.
This is not as huge an issue as it seems, as described later... but a few fish added to the system without understanding how it worked led to weird problems.
Problem 2:
Distance was a clamped number, 1-255. 255 is where you started. So if you begin fishing with nothing but LEAD LEAD LEAD LEAD LEAD, distance cannot increase. 255 is as high as it goes! So no matter the fight, you just LEAD until the fish is tired, then reel it in, praying you don't get unlucky rolls and run out of tension.
Problem 3:
The difficulty bands were also installed into the fish fighting formula. After 1500, everything was maxed out. The fish had max stamina, the pole pulled the least, the tension grew fastest, distance increased slowest, etc. But that was it, it was pegged to max. Essentially, at 1501oz you had an 18% chance to catch the fish. At 65,535oz you had an 18% chance to catch the fish. Compounding this, the VALUE of a fish was not capped, or banded. It's linear and you get more money/size no matter what.
Because these were bands, it was even weirder than that. A fish of 1500oz had a catch rate of 82%. A fish of 1501 oz was 18%. VERY stark bands. And some fish are HUGE. But not a lot of them... it meant that value varied wildly.
(All percents based on the method of 'lead until stamina gone, then reel')
Added Issue:
I feel bad. I got asked one question and I found two other huge problems. Frankly they blur the line between bug and oversight.
Answers:
Here's what I've done on my test box.
Reduced fish payout by roughly 70% (don't scream yet)
Increased fish of size > 6,500oz payout by quite a bit. (see, it's okay)
Once distance goes beyond 255, you run out of reel and lose the fish. (seriously, keep it together)
The fish fight starts at distance 122.
Reel's distance pull increased.
Reel's tension modifier decreased.
Removed stamina cap. The world's largest fish goes from stamina 200 to 4,469.
Bands have been removed from everything (except unlocks of weight classes), instead replaced with a smooth difficulty ramp. All things equal, you would find an 18% catch rate on a fish of 6,500 oz. That -would- mean that fish you catch with ease are harder, but bear with me.
New Ability:
FISHING SLACKEN
---------------
Release a little line, giving your fishy foe more distance. However, you also relieve tension on your line.
With that, any fish is theoretically catchable. Even the 4,469 stamina fish. (Worth something like 80k). It would just take like... 15 minutes of REEL/LEAD/SLACKEN.
New Problems:
A binary choice is easy to make, codewise. Trinary? Not so much. This puts fishing outside Rapture's ability to optimize, so we're going to have to test the HELL out of this manually. Personally I just want to load it up and let you guys have at, we'll see if I hit the mark in my testing or not.
Fishing got more complicated and weird, you might not like that. I am listening. There's actually a small wishlist we might get at while I'm at this. Things like fish moving from room to room in their 'area', being able to cast in directions, etc.
Sidenotes... yes, this is a long post:
I can tell that the intention was for fish to range between 1 and 1,500oz, and the 'extra' numbers of 1,501 to 65,535 were 'extra'. There was little difference in their value, the difficulty bar became a flat 18%.. it's pretty clear that we weren't supposed to use 1,501 to 65,535. The issue is that we did use it, and there are fish in those high ranges.. sunfish are RL huge, and this lets you catch them! It's a little weird that they're EXACTLY the same catchable as a salmon, but whatever. So's the kraken! It's a little sad that they're all the same...
Myths were dispelled, things even I believed
No, STR doesn't matter. Skillrank doesn't matter, other than providing new poles. There is no clever formula for when to lead, when to reel. Fishing in the old way suddenly felt lame, so I fixed it!
But it's not necessary. I could just leave it as is and add a mob in Tasur'ke who explains the difficulty bands. This is an option, it's just not how I like to do things. I'll listen to outcry.
In fact, I'm working on a Thing in Aetolia, but send me a tell and I'll give the first couple people a way to log into fAkEtolia to test it out.
The question/questions I got most often was "Why is the master/artifact rod so terrible" and "does its terribleness even out due to the sheer value of the fish?"
The answer is:
Fishing has bands of fish weights. At excess of a certain number, you need a new rod to even have a chance to hook it. The largest weight class requires the master/artifact rod. Without it, you don't even have a chance to hook those fish.
Problem 1:
Fishing was designed to have that weightclass at 1500 oz. Anything over that requires those two top tier rods.
Fish can have a range of weights. Some wide, some narrow, but the min is 1oz, the max is 65,535 oz.
See the issue? Bring out your Master rod and the world opens from 1- 1499 to 1 - 65,535.
This is not as huge an issue as it seems, as described later... but a few fish added to the system without understanding how it worked led to weird problems.
Problem 2:
Distance was a clamped number, 1-255. 255 is where you started. So if you begin fishing with nothing but LEAD LEAD LEAD LEAD LEAD, distance cannot increase. 255 is as high as it goes! So no matter the fight, you just LEAD until the fish is tired, then reel it in, praying you don't get unlucky rolls and run out of tension.
Problem 3:
The difficulty bands were also installed into the fish fighting formula. After 1500, everything was maxed out. The fish had max stamina, the pole pulled the least, the tension grew fastest, distance increased slowest, etc. But that was it, it was pegged to max. Essentially, at 1501oz you had an 18% chance to catch the fish. At 65,535oz you had an 18% chance to catch the fish. Compounding this, the VALUE of a fish was not capped, or banded. It's linear and you get more money/size no matter what.
Because these were bands, it was even weirder than that. A fish of 1500oz had a catch rate of 82%. A fish of 1501 oz was 18%. VERY stark bands. And some fish are HUGE. But not a lot of them... it meant that value varied wildly.
(All percents based on the method of 'lead until stamina gone, then reel')
Added Issue:
I feel bad. I got asked one question and I found two other huge problems. Frankly they blur the line between bug and oversight.
Answers:
Here's what I've done on my test box.
Reduced fish payout by roughly 70% (don't scream yet)
Increased fish of size > 6,500oz payout by quite a bit. (see, it's okay)
Once distance goes beyond 255, you run out of reel and lose the fish. (seriously, keep it together)
The fish fight starts at distance 122.
Reel's distance pull increased.
Reel's tension modifier decreased.
Removed stamina cap. The world's largest fish goes from stamina 200 to 4,469.
Bands have been removed from everything (except unlocks of weight classes), instead replaced with a smooth difficulty ramp. All things equal, you would find an 18% catch rate on a fish of 6,500 oz. That -would- mean that fish you catch with ease are harder, but bear with me.
New Ability:
FISHING SLACKEN
---------------
Release a little line, giving your fishy foe more distance. However, you also relieve tension on your line.
With that, any fish is theoretically catchable. Even the 4,469 stamina fish. (Worth something like 80k). It would just take like... 15 minutes of REEL/LEAD/SLACKEN.
New Problems:
A binary choice is easy to make, codewise. Trinary? Not so much. This puts fishing outside Rapture's ability to optimize, so we're going to have to test the HELL out of this manually. Personally I just want to load it up and let you guys have at, we'll see if I hit the mark in my testing or not.
Fishing got more complicated and weird, you might not like that. I am listening. There's actually a small wishlist we might get at while I'm at this. Things like fish moving from room to room in their 'area', being able to cast in directions, etc.
Sidenotes... yes, this is a long post:
I can tell that the intention was for fish to range between 1 and 1,500oz, and the 'extra' numbers of 1,501 to 65,535 were 'extra'. There was little difference in their value, the difficulty bar became a flat 18%.. it's pretty clear that we weren't supposed to use 1,501 to 65,535. The issue is that we did use it, and there are fish in those high ranges.. sunfish are RL huge, and this lets you catch them! It's a little weird that they're EXACTLY the same catchable as a salmon, but whatever. So's the kraken! It's a little sad that they're all the same...
Myths were dispelled, things even I believed
No, STR doesn't matter. Skillrank doesn't matter, other than providing new poles. There is no clever formula for when to lead, when to reel. Fishing in the old way suddenly felt lame, so I fixed it!But it's not necessary. I could just leave it as is and add a mob in Tasur'ke who explains the difficulty bands. This is an option, it's just not how I like to do things. I'll listen to outcry.
In fact, I'm working on a Thing in Aetolia, but send me a tell and I'll give the first couple people a way to log into fAkEtolia to test it out.
5
Comments
Too bad I'm not trans fishing
Teeny fishies have much lower stamina now, so they feel tiny.
Lots of changes to the spread of weights and difficulties. Currently big fish are really hard to catch, but I'm working on it.
Reel-Reel is about 30% more effective than 2xreel was before.
Slacken-Slacken is about 30% more effective than 2xslacken.
Lead-Slacken-Reel should always come out in your favor, but not enough to deal with the fish fighting back, so it's more of a holding pattern.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
The artifact pole acts like a Master pole. It also has something like a 10-15% lower gain of tension from reeling. It will likely get upgraded.
Could you implement something where while you're fishing you could get struck by lightning (or something related to weather), pulled under the water/ice and drown, get attacked by a shark or a group of large piranhas or some other random group of mobs? This would add in a little humor to it all too, really.
edit:
(Research): Ellenia says, "When you have a fishing disappointment you have a chance of getting
tangled in your line and drowning or hanging yourself."
or something similarly silly. And make them all like, grannies.
Me in response to the suggested flavor:
IMO make it sinister Gulleyes enforcers trying to keep the market competitive and their profits up, and that's far more setting-appropriate - still room for black comedy without making it completely absurd.
'You have been slain by the garrote of the old salty sea dog (insert Gulleye name).'
Hi.
BUT
Massdrop?
Massdrops... meh. I have not been excited by the responses to much of it. Am open to thoughts.
Some more gold ones might be nice, to clear some of that out of the game, or some smaller lower start, even for skull tokens...since we cant get those any other way aside from buying with real money.
Hi.
What is the theme of the Massdrop?
Why not get some lvl 1 powers and throw them onto fun items. Humorous stuff like +1dex on an ankle weight, Enhancement on a pair of unisex underwear, Soulbind on a handmirror, enemy or ally expand on a friendship bracelet, etc. I could probably go on down the whole list.
Have some builders crank out simple 3-4 line descriptions for the items. Have the massdrops vary from discount to bonus item like a certificate of customization for the Enhancement undies. Since you can't just use the certificates + credits, it'd cost 100cr out of pocket to turn undies to another item. So the bonus win would just be for a customization of your new special underwear!
Also, there are now three-hit combos. Like, reel-reel-reel will either give you the normal reel-reel bonus, or a lazy fish will get its butt kicked and get yanked even closer. But a particularly aggressive fish will have less of an effect. Lead lead lead works great on lazy fish, and aggressive fish. Slack-slacken-slacken is great against fast fish. And there is a fish personality where the only real way to beat it is reel-lead-slacken.
But you don't get to see much more than a general guess at how bad or good something is doing. You have to figure out from the numbers, and try to vary it up to see what happens.
Also, a general comment: Sticking to non-master rod has had its gold nerfed as a whole. Using the master/artifact rod has had its gold increased. A lot.
For the next few hours:
66.228.55.16, port 6001. It works like normal Aetolia, just a bit of an older snapshot. GIMMIE_FISHING if you don't have it transed\want an artipole. TESTFISHSPAWN if you want to refill the fishing hole you're at with fishies. TESTCLEARHOLE_SMALL will murder all the small fish in the hole so you only have to deal with the jerks.
TEST SERVER NOTE:
This is not Aetolia. It is not moderated, protected, or real. At any point in time, I'll just kick you off, turn it off, murder everyone, break it, stop paying attention and have it just quit working, or whatever. I make no guarantees as to its state or status, or even what the experience is. Please please please just log on and fish a little, maybe do something silly, but don't interact or do rude things or make me regret turning it on
One thing I'm not quite understanding is how the amount of gold is determined when you turn in a bucket to hob. I didn't notice much difference in gold as I ranked up or as I changed rods until I got to the master gulleye's rod. It took forever to get my bucket even half full with it so having the attention span of a squirrel I gave up and went and turned my bucket in. I was quite shocked to find that I received more gold for the few fish I had caught with my master's rod than I have ever received from turning in buckets of fish I caught with lesser rods. So, I guess my question is.. is the gold determined by the rod used to catch the fish alone? Or are there other factors involved?