Fishing needs an update, but not of the Regular Kind

Fishing is one skill everyone should pretty much have sorted out in their head. You fish trout and salmon until you can fish lobsters, and then them to 99 (or monkfish if you’re a member and into long-winded quests). It’s incredibly simple, fast experience which boasts as the primary source for raw, uncooked food. However there is one thing I dislike about fishing and that is it’s lack of variety. As with any other skill, you’ll be getting to a certain level and then powertraining on one thing until you’ve maxed out. Why? Because someone has decided that at a certain point in a skill you’ll be given the best exp rate (per hour), even if you can get better items with a higher level. For example, many will choose to train fishing with lobsters or monkfish instead of sharks, even though sharks give more experience (per fish), more money and overall a better item.

This is something which strikes me as odd. Jagex seems to be unwilling to give quest rewards which give too much of a bonus. They’re not going to give a player 100,000 slayer experience are they? Of course not, they’re more likely to give you 8,000 theiving experience or a useless peice of armour like the dwarven helmet. But as far fishing goes, the experience and overall convienience of the skill is fairly generous.

Lobsters and Monkfish are found to be the best fishing experience in the game. Their fishing spots only contain lobsters or monkfish, they’re right near a bank and require a player to click about once every three minutes or so to chase the moving fishing spot. It’s easy, fast and rewarding. That’s not my issue. My issue is quite trivial once I think about it, but I think ti would be nice if fishing was not limited to two kinds of fish to train. It’s boring. The reason I like slayer is because I’m into always killing the same thing and I’m very rarely getting the same drops. With fishing, you’re always getting the same fish and it would be a lot less monotonous if for example, in a cage fishing spot you could get crabs as well as lobsters, maybe while harpooning shark you could get coelacanth too. Trick is, Jagex would do this thinking that the fish would have to give different exp rates and heal differently, they’d require different levels to cook and make the whole skill “harder”. No no no no no. Fishing the same levelled fish should give the same experience. If more items are needed, it should be reflected in the experience it gives. So if for example you could fish Lobsters and Crabs at level 40 fishing using the cage, fishing a Crab would give the same experience as fishing a Lobster. Cooking a Crab would give the same experience as a lobster and believe it or not, eating a Crab would heal just as much health as eating a Lobster.

Of course, this would eat bank space, wouldn’t it? If you’re powertraining fishing you’re going to fish tens of thousands of fish and if you’re getting two or three kinds of fish in a trip, it’ll get annoying to empty them into your bank. Well, why not add an “empty inventory” button while in the bank interface? Easily done, convienient and would certainly go down well with the Slayers.

What about climate in runescape though? I can tell you now, the fish you can get in england are very unlikely tio be the fish you can get in South Africa, so why can you get the same kinds of fish in the wilderness as you can on Karamja? I’d like to see more tropical fish such as Octopus and Squid appear on karamja and heal the same as swordfish and lobster. I’d like to see Killer Whale ( or maybe just the infants :P ) and Hammerhead Shark in the Wilderness, healing the same as Manta Ray and Sea Turtles. Why does fishing have to restrained to such a small number of fish? Why do Jagex appear to be relluctant to put viable alternatives into the game? The answer is, it doesn’t and they shouldn’t. Fishing is currently very linear. Each player will fish lobsters until monkfish, they’ll then fish monkfish until they max out the skill. Players should not be restrained to one path in any game, let alone just RuneScape and just Fishing. Variety is what makes a game fun, and it’s never hard to implement. Variety in RuneScape is at a minimum and needs to be enhanced. We use one kind of armour, one weapon, one kind of food and one method of training. RuneScape needs more variety, not just fishing – but it’s a great way to start.

I’m thinking about having Rainbow Trout for dinner tomorrow,
Anubis

~ by Anubis on April 14, 2008.