First off, the fishing animations are well done (the physics on the fishing pole look really great except for some weird bending angles depending on the over the shoulder view). Also, it’s really awesome to see so many players now in what used to be nearly abandoned locations in the game world (I’m also certain this will thin out once the initial novelty has worn out and players just catch their 10 fish for the daily Vanguard). That’s the initial positive impression.
Here’s the rest…. Some designers at Bluehole must have some kind of real obsession for excessive time sinks as well as “let’s see how much shit we can fill your inventory up with” since same fish types do not stack. While AFK fishing doesn’t allow for getting the better fish grades (which can only be caught using manual fishing), the annoying part is the time interval involved when auto fishing. It’s effectively a 3 minute cooldown (once you’ve gotten a bite, auto fishing goes into this 3 minute countdown before it actually catches the fish). True, there is a new upgradeable accessory in the new crafting system that makes a small dent but it’s still a relatively large time sink. The base bait stacks only to a maximum of 40 which means that it will take 2 hours of AFK fishing to catch 40 fish at the default times.
Manual fishing is somewhat ok (it takes roughly 35-45 seconds from the time of casting for a fish to bite at which point you play the mini-game to actually catch the fish so roughly less than a minute to catch one fish). Also, some of the better grades of fish have a smaller window for the mini-game which increases the level of difficulty to reel them in. There is again a method to what seems like madness; there is a recipe (artisan level) for a dish that reduces this difficulty by 30%. But this is nothing like the relatively straightforward fishing in MapleStory 2 or even ArcheAge (where at most, you have different grades of fishing rods). I realize there are other games that use variations of this same system (but I’ve obviously never played those games).
Likewise, gathering the new nodes takes much longer now at the highest gathering skill levels. I realize again there are methods in place to increase gathering speed since there are new upgradable tools now for that purpose where time limited (1 day) ones can be purchased or the same tools can be crafted. Crafting also has always had these time sinks built in (which can also be decreased with the Crafters Speed Boost from being a monthly subscriber (Elite in NA and TERA Club in EU).
Maximum Production Points (PP) is now based on the highest grade for each crafting skill on the account (per server) and replenishes at a rate of 15 per 5 minutes online or 15 for 20 minutes offline. The old rate was flat where you could previously replenish 1400 PP in 24 hours. With this new change, you need to spend at least 2 hours online (w/o using PP to hit the same replenishment amount; more if you are actively crafting or gathering). Notice the trend in all of this; it’s a not so subtle hint to keep players in-game for much longer periods (aka metric booster).
The new crafting system does have a positive though; most everything is now at least relevant whether it be crafting those speed increasing gathering tools, crafting the higher bait levels, crafting accessories that help to decrease the fishing wait time and auto-fishing, etc since the stuff you gather is used to craft or upgrade the gathering tools. Fishing and cooking go hand-in-hand because for most recipes, you need fillets at minimum to create the actual dishes (which can also be used as buffs). A daily amount of fish (requested types changes daily) can be sold to fishmongers (at better rates than just NPCing them at regular merchants) or packaged up in crates (which is a longer time sink since it requires a lot more dismantled fish) which fetches much higher prices (but also subject to daily limits). You sink some gold for things like the ingredients but make it up with the higher prices offered by the fishmongers (so it’s an alternative way to create some gold income over just daily Vanguards).
This again is just a first general impression on day 1 of actually trying it where I haven’t had enough time to catch enough fish to dismantle into filets to progress past the crate part of the quest. My point is the notable time sinks in the design. There is definitely a new learning curve I need to go through in terms of how to now level up crafting since my highest is only artisan in Etching whereas there is that steeper road to Mastery which I never did do since it meant sinking time/resources into obsolete stuff for each of the professions (Mastery in each profession can only be achieved on one character since there is still that limit on skill points; which means I need to grind out artisan or at least 4 other characters and then do individual masteries for each such that I can be self-sufficient).
In all fairness, since I’ve made a conscious decision not to grind dungeons in this game since the end game gearing is a ridiculous hamster treadmill requiring lots of enchanting material and gold, I do see this as an alternative way to play and keep me occupied until the level 70 expansion hits the other regions 3-4 months from now.
