"Fish will not be valuable"

[Ryanti]

I think this conversation bears a glance back to a good friend of mine. A friend I like to call history.

 

(If you read that sentence in the voice of Ron Swanson, I assure you it is hilarious.)

 

Final Fantasy XI had a whole plethora of game mechanics in place to ensure that you spent as much time as possible doing things you didn't enjoy. One of these mechanics was fishing. Fishing was screamingly tedious, requiring absolutely no input other than the basic fishing command over and over. It also, however, had a very low overhead cost to get started and produced several valuable fish over time. And since gil in that game was almost impossible to make...

 

You get the idea. Fishing was something you had to do if you wanted to be rockin' those Leaping Boots and thus ever be welcomed into parties as a Dragoon, and if you didn't feel like sitting around for two weeks at a stretch doing so, tough luck. This is fish town, baby, and we're playing FFXI, not your dumbed-down casual themepark that lets you spend more time doing things that you actually bought the game for in the first place.

 

When people ask what killed that style of gaming, I think it's most accurate to say that it committed suicide. But anyway.

 

There are still recipes that use fish, certainly, and based on the game's track record to this point I am sure that fishing will have mechanics to exploit. I think Yoshida's message is not "don't bother fishing" so much as "you aren't going to be forced to fish if you don't want to." Fish are not valuable rarities that are necessary for all advancement; they're fish. You cook some of them and that's it.

 

I spent a whole entire school week fishing moat carp in XI to get a Haubergeon early for the SAM class. An entire week. From 3:30 PM to 11:00 PM. EVERY DAY.

 

I never even leveled high enough to wear it. :dazed:

 

NEVER AGAIN.