Did fishing mechanics break or were they drastically changed after hotfix update 22.1.1 ?

[BlindStalker]

(I'm pretty darn sure this is a bug, because in the current state of fishing in update 22.1.1 fishing is now way more inconsistent and grinder than before. The old fishing system worked much better prior to the update.) 

 

As a player who has been spending 80% of their time fishing in Plains, 15% time doing bounties and 5% gathering resources (to build more bait ). I feel like something was drastically changed to the fishing mechanics in PoE after hotfix update 22.1.1. I've been fishing for a fair while, so when we had hotfix update 22.1.1 rolled out on Friday evening (Oct. 27^th) and when I went to go fishing on Friday evening, I noticed that something felt off after the hotfix was deployed and after I did some fishing for a number of hours.

 

(Main problems)

I play solo when I go fishing. Here's a list of things that I've noticed that seemed to change

 

• Normally (prior to hotfix 22.1.1) if you played solo, you would get up to 4 fish to spawn whenever you sat down near any body of water (sometimes a 5^th fish might spawn, only happened sometimes, not at all consistently). After hotfix 22.1.1 – this is very inconsistent to get now after the patch update. You might get 4 fishes to spawn on the first time you fish. Every time after that, if you're lucky, you might get only 2 fishes to spawn in one sitting! And no more ! (until you catch those two fishes). I have literally sat at a shore, turned on luminous dye, and just sat and watched the fishes for a good 10 minutes (yes, I wasted up to 5 to 6 dyes to time things). Heck, I was sometimes sitting at geyser pond and was waiting up to 5 minutes for Mortus Lungfish to spawn on Friday evening. That's unheard of for that fishing spot.

• The fishing timer seems to be messed up (see my speculative theory below if you want to know what I think is the “fishing spawn timer”). Fish basically spawn at inconsistent times and whenever you move to another hotspot, it seems the fish spawn timer does not reset anymore? It seems to still keep counting down and will bug out now, not spawning new fish at the new hotspot you moved to.

• The bait, well after the update, will visually last longer, but I can't even tell if it's working anymore. If you throw special bait, it seems to bug out even more? I've now had special bait not even spawn any fish at all. Usually even if you didn't get special fish to spawn with the special bait, at least the regular fish would spawn, but even that doesn't work.

• Did the draw distance/spawn distance/fishing hotspot area get nerfed or changed? Like before patch 22.1.1 hotspots seemed to be a very large area (maybe 60m or more in diameter). But I literally have had fish spawn in a hotspot area and then swim to the very edges of the hotspot area, suddenly stop (like as if they're frozen) and suddenly de-spawn on me. I should know, I had luminous dye on. The worst offender in this situation was the lake. Literally I decided to sit by the edge, turn on the dye and just watch. 2 charc eels literally spawned in, but then de-spawned after they got frozen or after it seemed they “reached the edge of the hotspot area/view distance of the player”. There was even another situation where a charc eel spawned near the bottom of the lake where I was waiting for, and then almost a second after, de-spawned again. Like it seems something about the draw distance depth was changed ? (this occurred as well in the ocean shores). Fish now seem like they can spawn, swim 30m away from you, and de-spawn that way. And if they spawned 30m away from you, well it seems they're now going to de-spawn instantly.

• Minor thing, but luminous dye also sometimes might not align with the fish in the water. I.e. I can see the silhouette of the highlighted fish, and the actual fish just below it. See screenshot this. Actually, update, this is kind of important because other players have reported that this is visually messing with their aim. - i.e.  fish being rendered lower than where it's actual location is and the dye being the only thing to show it's true position in the water. 

• Added: as others have also noticed, fish do not seem to be spawning/or fish are spawning invisibly after they hear bubble sounds/water splashing sounds. Making it difficult to determine if any fish actually spawned or are not rendered but are still taking up a spawn slot. 

 

 

 

 

I did a lot of murkray fishing prior to patch 22.1.1, go down to the south east end of the Plains and go to that little inlet with the small island. There's literally 5 fishing hotspots to rotate around there, plus 2 fishing hotspots further down the coast to the east all within reasonable range of each other. Which meant that I could rotate hotspots very quickly once one hotspot ended. I also feel Murkrays spawn a bit more frequently during the night, but that's fairly speculative on my part imo. But the point is, that's the rough area where I did the bulk of my speculative theory testing when I was fishing, prior to hotfix 22.1.1.

 

 

(speculative theory)

This is my (speculative theory) on how the fishing mechanics worked in Plains (prior to hotfix 22.1.1)

 

• Player sits by water and pulls out their fishing spawn, initiate spawning of fish within 5 or 10 seconds after the the player pulled out their fishing spear.

• Spawn up to 4 fish (maybe even a 5^th fish) within the view distance of the player (I never measured the view distance limit, but it seems the draw distance/fishing hotspot range was maybe a rough 60m circular radius or more? It wasn't an uncommon thing for Murkrays to spawn at the very edge of a fishing hotspot for me prior to hotfix 22.1.1 – which seemed to emphasis to me that fishing hotspot spawn areas were very large in diameter). This draw distance/hotspot fishing area seemed to also take in to consideration water depth when spawning fish, I often got Murkrays, Charc eels or Norgs to spawn near the very bottom of the ocean shore or lake (respective).

• Now my theory was this, (prior to hotfix 22.1.1) each individual fish was on their own individual spawn timer – and would respawn a new fish roughly 1 minute (+/- 5 seconds) after that specific fish was caught by the player. So fish #1 (the first one caught by the player) would spawn the earliest on the next fish spawn rotation (followed by however much time it took for the player to catch fish #2 and fish #3 etc – sometimes the 5^th fish would spawn inbetween after all 4 of the initial fishes spawned).

• Now I felt that if you moved away from your original fishing spot. Like if you moved maybe a good 20 or 25 meters away and left that spot for maybe 15 seconds? Then all the fish within your initial area would despawn and it would reset the timer for all fishes back to 0.

• Now what was the actual trick to getting special fish to spawn with special bait ? (i.e. Sharrac, Murkrays, Norgs etc). My theory was that you had to throw the special bait JUST before the spawn rotation of fishes occurred (or have the bait active in the water at least before the fish spawned. Bait prior to hotfix 22.1.1, sometimes had some sort of weird lingering effect as well, and would sometimes seem to work even after it visually disappeared. It was not consistent for me, so I couldn't really determine that though).

• So this is basically what I would try to do in practice (ex: fishing for Murkrays at night, I fished with Ivara)

  • Get to the southeast end of the Plains (I usually started at the hotspot to the west of the small island) Note: there was no way of determining if a fishing hotspot had just started and was still new or was just about to end, so I always gambled with this.

  • As Ivara – set up 4 dashwire ziplines that were specifically over the area of the hotspot. (maybe like 5m of distance between each dashwire. I never measured it and eventually just “eyeballed” things). Ensure that you only have your guns or melee weapon out while doing this so as not to trigger the fish spawn early.

  • Once set up, pull out your fishing spear and quickly throw in the special bait (you should hopefully do this within a span of 2 seconds or less).

  • I usually tried to throw out the bait as far as possible, underneath one of my dashwires, and would jump on my dashwire and just sit and hold right mouse button with fishing spear and wait, while I was above the bait.

  • Since I did this at night, I couldn't see any fish. So I would usually wait 10 to 15 seconds for all 4 fish to spawn (I listened closely for the bubble noises and water splashing noises as an indicator to determine when the 1^st fish had actually spawned).

  • Then I would run back to the shore and jump off my dashwire to turn on Luminos dye. Hopefully all 4 fishes would've spawned by now, if not, I would just wait a few more seconds for the last fish to spawn in.

  • Now came the critical part, I would always attempt to try and catch all 4 fish currently spawned within a timespan of 10 seconds or less. The reason I tried to do this was because I wanted the next 4 fish to spawn within synchronized timing of each other. If you ended up wasting precious seconds to catch a stray fish you missed, this would really de-synchronize the spawn timers in general.

  • (Also, aiming with the fishing spear while out on Ivara's dashwire would often bug it out so the way I reset it was to simply get off the dashwire and throw the spear in the opposite direction of the fish to get it to reset).

  • Now if you ideally caught all 4 of the initially spawned fishes within 10 seconds, then you would just simply wait for the spawn timer to activate again. I would just go back to the shore, open up gear wheel to see how much time was left on luminous dye – since luminous dye works as an excellent countdown timer.

  • I would wait roughly 1 minute (though I feel sometimes 55 seconds was better) before I threw in another special bait to the hotspot (assuming that the hotspot was still active).

  • And then I would just wait for all 4 fishes to spawn. And basically repeat this cycle until this hotspot ended and moved onto the next hotspot (I believe that whenever you moved to another hotspot, it would reset all the fish spawn timers back to 0, so I just needed to get set up to get started back up again).

  • Now special bait did not guarantee that a special fish would spawn (in my opinion). However, with the approach that I made, I found that my chances for catching special fish significantly improved. I considered this method successful if at least 1 out of the 4 fishes that spawned was at least a special fish. That was the RNG part, whether any special fish would spawn (I have gotten lucky with all 4 fishes spawn as being special fish).

• I only bothered to mention this because prior to patch 22.1.1 the warframe community on a whole, only had really vague ideas of how the fishing mechanics worked prior to the patch.

• After patch 22.1.1 I have gotten none of this to work properly as I had prior to the hotfix.

 

(TL/DR)

 

• as of patch 22.1.1 – the new fishing mechanics seem broken and fish do not spawn consistently like they used to.  They may not spawn at all sometimes for a good length of time as well, compared to previously. It used to spawn 4 fish at a time, now it may spawn only 2 fish at a time (if you're lucky). 

• Cannot determine if special bait (even with it having a longer timer now) actually works. Yes it visually lasts longer, but it's also hard to determine if it actually works anymore at all as special fish sometimes may not spawn at all. (it worked better on the old system basically).

• Fish are de-spawning from the draw distance of the player's position (hotspots may also have been reduced in diameter size?). The worst example is when I sat by the lake, turned on the luminous dye and watched 2 charc eels spawn and de-spawn right before my eyes. Other worst situations was when I missed a fish, the fish swam away, BUT it stopped (like it was frozen) and then de-spawned after a few seconds. Fish can swim to the edge of the max draw distance of the player and despawn really easily now (this seems to also occur to fish that spawn very low in depth). 

• Luminous dye sometimes might not perfectly align with the fish in the water (see screenshot attached). Actually, update, this is kind of important because other players have reported that this is visually messing with their aim. - i.e.  fish being rendered lower than where it's actual location is and the dye being the only thing to show it's true position in the water. 

 

(the main question)

• DE, please can you check if some things were either broken or drastically changed with the fishing mechanics after patch 22.1.1 ? Because the whole fishing mechanic now feels a lot more broken than before with fish not consistently spawning at all and bait, possibly not even working as intended.

• Were some settings changed when you guys were adjusting the parameters of how the fishing bait was changed ? I swear I can't be the only Tenno who noticed this while they went fishing over the last 24 hours. Considering that fishing is a core progression element in Plains, can someone at least take a look at the code to see if something seems a bit fishy with the new mechanics post update 22.1.1? (I'm sorry I couldn't resist the pun after all the typing).

 

Edited October 29, 2017 by BlindStalker

[Irbis_Takada]

Up

Get the same problems. But in update description there was no word about such changes. What is going on?
I. Just. Want. To fish!
 

[FierceRadiance]

Several recent threads about this - it appears to be broken. I'm sure they'll fix it soon.

[Gr1mjaw]

yeah, fish spawns seems nerfed/broken right now.

[Duduminador]

It was the one activity (or only) outside of hacking and slashing that I truly enjoyed.
There is a note on the fixes of this update that says "fixed fishes pilling up on large water bodies" (or something like that), sounds like a stealthnerf desguised as a fix to me.

I keep getting the same common fishes, piling up resources I don't need, or mediocre points on stand. As it is now, it's straight forward a waste of precious time and resources. I have farmed the resources for over 40 Norg baits and right now... it doesn't even feel worth the time spent fishing anymore.

Plains are fun and all, I was excited about maxing out Ostron Stand, build more advanced AMPs, custom guns and arcanes etc... but everything you get to build on Cetus soon or later will require the stuff you get from gutting rare fishes. I want to hope it's a bug, but If that's what it's going to be like from now on... I'm honestly not gonna bother with grinding at the plains at all.

[niete]

Ye new fishing mechanics sucks. Bait lasts longer but doesnt do anything, instead of getting more fish you waste more time waiting for it to disappear to throw in another bait. The older system works fine since i use 1 luminous dye per 1 bait and got all these murks

[steelblueskies]

given the amount of fishing you do seems to be about double what i have done at least, if not more.. have you observed visible fish not being given the luminous dye glow while others in range are, or invisible fish(sound effects for spawning and splashing noise, but no dye glow or hard to see fish present) until you either unequip and reequip a spear, or turn/walk off and back?

 

i got the hotfix notification while on the plains actively fishing, went back into town sold some stock for parts and rep and logged to pull the update, then back in. it was exhibiting the outside what dye highlights or spear can hit spawning if any spawns at all at first, then the above noted item became apparent as well, and i haven't heard much report on this side of it. 

[Vecasra]

I came here to see if there is anyone else has the same issue, and I found it.

Thanks for the post, I hope DE will see and fix it...

[Akimbo]

Gives everyone a resource booster.

Nerfs spawnrate.

[low1991]

7 minutes ago, Akimbo said:

Gives everyone a resource booster.

Nerfs spawnrate.

& add in other common fish in rare fish spawn table.

[Primed_Noob]

Fishing has almost become a waste of time. Like a lot of things in the game lately.

[TheOneAndOnlyMesaMain]

I've seen some poop too. Most of your problems happend to me too. But:
-The biggest problem was the invisible fish, i heard its voice, and it was realy close, but no fish, whit/whitout dye.
-They become frozen after spawn. sometimes i can catch them sometimes not. It mostly happened whit Goopolas an Traloks.
-Twilight Bait become unuseable. 
 

[SolarDwagon]

Norg's seem to not exist now, also the bug with bait missing the water seems to be back

[RevoDinAlt]

18 hours ago, Duduminador said:

There is a note on the fixes of this update that says "fixed fishes pilling up on large water bodies" (or something like that), sounds like a stealthnerf desguised as a fix to me.

This. They nerfed fishing, called it a "bug fix" and if they decide the "fix" their nerf will claim it was a bug.  DE is consistently moving in a direction to instill more grind into the game. I asked myself this question when I run into stuff like this in the game. "Will this increase the grind and possibly make DE more money?" If the answer is "yes" then DE has gone in whatever direction on purpose. Either that, or they have no QA and rely solely on us. So, they are either incompetent or trying to make money. 

 

GG DE. Look forward to fishing (I know, writing those words) all week long since I don't have hours and hours to just fish and you screw it up on Friday. Thanks. 

[row49382]

7 hours ago, SolarDwagon said:

Norg's seem to not exist now, also the bug with bait missing the water seems to be back

I've noticed this too. There should probably be a refund system where if the bait doesn't hit the water, it is added back to the gear wheel. Nothing more frustrating than farming the fish for murkray bait to catch murkray to build norg bait to toss norg bait and not having it activate.

[Atmosquake]

4-5 murkray bait (15 mins or so) : 1 murkray. I don't know if the bait spots are visually desync'd from actual bait spot or if they inadvertently nerfed them?

[minibboy35]

i cant confirm but in my recent fishing I had had bait become completely useless when i unequipped my fishing rod due to vomulyst shooting me. When i go back and start fishing again my bait doesn't seem to be spawning any more special fish. only commons like goopallas

[Takaani]

Can confirm all these observations and add one more. The animations for the goopolla and murkray seemed to have broken as well. They don't undulate and 'swim' like they used to but remain stretched out straight. Strangely enough the sharracs still swim normally.

[Primed_Noob]

I refuse to farm PoE like DE wants. Virtually no fish because of nerf. Good! Then I won't fish. 

I log in after work and leave again. It's no skin off my nose.

[hammerheathen]

Yeah, honestly took a few days off and then came back to fish. Couldn't stomach it. Just not enjoyable, I fished because I liked it. Now... meh

 

[Jukantos]

I also have noticed a gigantic drop in fish spawning rate. Geyser Island (or @#&$ Rock as i now call it thanks to Potato) now seems to spawn 1-2 lungfish once every 40+++ seconds. Im standing there like an idiot waiting for fish to spawn. Yesterday i used a Luminous Dye and during the full two minutes, i had three spawns occur, 2x 1 fish and 1x 2 fish, one of them being medium size.

 

Until this is reverted, Fishing for standing is quite literally ruined. I'm not sure why the one relatively consistent way of gaining standing would take such a curb stomp without it being announced in the patch notes, but if this is not a bug it's almost a repetition of the credit acquisition rate nerfs from specters of the rail. If we hear nothing about this over the next 3-4 weeks, i guess we'll know. I REALLY hope it is NOT that

Edit: Because if it is, this is yet another Viver Situation where those who fished ubermassive piles of fish to trade in for all the necessary standing before the nerf will have a SIGNIFICANT advantage over the others. And that's me talking paying 200 plat a month for a permanent resource booster, my friends are suffering way worse than me for this

 

Edit Nr2: I just tried to throw a Murkray Bait out and it straight up fell through the map and disappeared. Didn't impact on the water surface whatsoever. LOL.

Also, apparently, if you fall into the water while holding a spear you now get locked into fishing mode? As in even after you swap to your weapons you still have your fishing gear wheel and you cant cast any abilities. That's nice for a fishing volt xD

Edited October 30, 2017 by Jukantos

[Novakillernr1]

I really liked fishing, it was really relaxing and you did something for your progress. Now its just staring into water wasting bait and luminous dye. 

[krc473]

I have been playing around, I can find only one place to reliably fish. Geyser lake seems to be working fine for me. Over around 15 minutes I caught 50 Mortus Fish, and around 15 Cuthols. No resource boosters were used. And this does not account for the fish I missed (there were a few).

This is vastly different to ocean and lake fishing. Which arcross the same period I was lucky to get 20 fish total.

 

So, my suggestion to people wanting to fish: Geyser lake with Cuthol/Twilight baits.

[Husla]

I'm having trouble with ocean fishing aswell, not even the common fishes spawn as frequently as they did

[Primed_Noob]

29 minutes ago, krc473 said:

I have been playing around, I can find only one place to reliably fish. Geyser lake seems to be working fine for me. Over around 15 minutes I caught 50 Mortus Fish, and around 15 Cuthols. No resource boosters were used. And this does not account for the fish I missed (there were a few).

This is vastly different to ocean and lake fishing. Which arcross the same period I was lucky to get 20 fish total.

 

So, my suggestion to people wanting to fish: Geyser lake with Cuthol/Twilight baits.

Geyser lake is one of my fav fishing spots for Mortus & Cuthols. I use baits for both. It's a waste of time for me. 2 nights and I got like 4 cuthols (with boosters) & 12 Mortus.