A whale of a time..........

[SpectreKP]

I just wanna say that the fishing mini-game is.. dreadful. Everyone I know that plays the game thinks it's the worst mini-game. It's so freaking hard to tell where your line is going to land when the gauge and the water strip don't exactly line up. And THEN there's the Whale.....

To even spawn the whale, you have to catch 3 fish in a row, this spawns the eels, then you have to catch another 3 fish in a row, this spawns the squids.. then you have to catch 7 fish in a row to make the Whale appear. You have to catch 13 fish consecutively without ever missing in order to get a whale to spawn in a mini-game that not only is about timing, but also figuring out where you actually have to time it. I'm not even going to bring up anything further in terms of catching.

Tbh, the fishing mini-game would be significantly better with some form of marker to say where the line will land when you charge up the throwing meter. That's.. literally all the game needs to be as hard as the other mini-games, rather than being the most frustrating. If it makes the game of "timing" too easy, then just slowly make the indicator more transparent the more you cast the line until it eventually disappears completely, but I'd personally just rather keeping the indicator so that the mini-game isn't just a massive spike that isn't fun.

[Zorz]

i got the whale some time already and finished the quest from whale npc.. and i'am not that long in w2.. for me the mining minigame is the hardest ^^

if eels and squids spawn you can try to get both at ones also they are mostly on the map ending, so it's not that hard to get them in my opinion as long you ignore the mines, because the mines doesn't count as long you landed on one kind of the fishes too

[SpectreKP]

I personally don't care about the mines, for the most part, I end up with the squid and eel in that sort of "danger" area where it's very hard to guess where they are.

The chopping mini-game is a reactive one based on timing. The mining mini-game is a reactive one based on timing (spamming that slam is key). The Catching mini-game is flappy bird, which is a reactive management based mini-game where you have a lot of control over the bug to set up where it'll fly through the hoop. The fishing mini-game.... Is one where you estimate where the bobber will land and time it with no visual reference outside of the casting gauge.

As far as I'm aware, the fishing mini-game is the only one that pretends to be like the other mini-games and hides it's difficulty under simplicity. But unlike every other mini-game, you don't have the visual reference for where your "character" is.. and that's the frustrating part about it. Imagine doing the Chopping mini-game without the the indicator that goes side to side, it's sort of like that.. but with a gauge on the side that goes up and down that doesn't perfectly line up with the bar for the mini-game.

[Zorz]

personally i just looked on the "gauge" from time to time, to perfectly land.. i think if you say the gauge is no indicator then i would say you are wrong. and as i said befor, as long you land on a fish, eel, squirt or whale the mines don't count. so you can just ignore that the mines are there as long you can make sure you hit one or more of the fish types.

[76561198419728601]

You might just need more practice, I used to blow at the fish minigame but now getting a whale isn't too difficult (still no trophy but have gotten close). One thing that I've found helps a lot is to try to catch fish that are near either end of the field since these seem to be the easiest to time, don't worry about the value of the fish. Also if multiple fish cross over an area I'll try to aim there since you can miss the target but sometimes still catch a different fish than the one you were aiming for.

[SpectreKP]

Cool, I'm getting advice I already have been putting into practice ever since I started playing Idleon.

People do realize that I wouldn't be mentioning the mini-game if I hadn't been practicing it with every single spare mini-game chance that I get every day right? Heck.. I've been tempted to purchase all the daily mini-game upgrades in the gem shop just to get MORE practice, and with my practice, my limit is about 7-9 casts in a row (and that's not consistent btw) and I've been at it every day.

The fishing mini-game is more frustrating than it needs to be, because you're far more involved with it than you are than any other mini-game due to the sheer amount of practice most people would need to put into it over the others which once you understand how they work.. you really don't need to practice at all. I know exactly how the fishing mini-game works and I'm still practicing, but the "mining" mini-game that apparently most people seem to find harder than the fishing mini-game.. according to this discussion I opened up, I can pretty safely get 20-30 points as long as I -half- pay attention.

The point of this topic wasn't to ask for help, or for people all to say "But I didn't find it hard" or "that I'm good at it now".. but the fact that the mini-game is a weird spike that's higher than it should be, that it's frustrating due to the "in a row" mechanic that no other mini-game up to this point has.. and that it just takes way more time to practice than any other mini-game.. at least up to this point. I mean, even the wiki pretty much says "Good luck" with the fishing mini-game.. I'd say that's saying something. It needs some kind of work around that doesn't really make it too easy, but makes it so that once you understand how the mini-game works.. it shouldn't take a lot of practice to land in the 20 point range consistently. For anyone curious.. I'm pretty sure my best score for fishing is 27, but that's not from consecutive catches.. it's from a 10 minute mini-game session of just being really careful around mines.. and missing a lot.

[yobnomekop]

I have played the fishing minigame daily for months and I have only seen the squid twice and I have never actually caught it. I cant even fathom how many years I would have to play to see a whale let alone catch one. The fishing minigame is definitely the most terrible thing ever invented. Most of the time I run out of minigame attempts just trying to get the 3 points for the guild exp and failing. Every other minigame is super easy to get over 100 points with imo, and I cant even ever get 10 points in fishing. I think it does need to be balanced a little better, at least from my experience.

[Apoc]

I have been trying to get the whale on all my characters for multiples days and I got good/lucky enough to get it on 5 or 6 characters already. I would still say it's one of the worst minigame because, unlike the others, a miss give you a huge penalty while the other games it simply means you don't get +1 score. If a miss in fishing would take only one step back and not back to the beginning I think it would be a good compromise.

[Cthonyxa]

I am actually the worst at the catching mini game (I never played flappy bird and tbh I kind of hate the mechanic) and I only improved the mining one because I downloaded the game it's based on and pretended the bombs were ores. I'm mediocre at the fishing one (I can get squid to appear a fair amount of the time but not consistently and never long enough to spawn a whale). The chopping game is my best score, but I think that's because it's the simplest of all the games.

While I wouldn't go so far as to call the fishing mini game "awful" (I do rather like that it's pretty chill compared to the other ones) and I feel like the whale should be hard to catch (especially since it's tied to a trophy), I do agree that it doesn't feel balanced compared to the other games. Honestly, though, I wouldn't necessarily change the game but rather change how the points work.

The idea should be that if you spend about the same amount of time on the fishing game as you do the other ones, you should come out with about the same points. Granted, because missing doesn't end your run it's impossible to implement that perfectly, but I would say that it should be balanced against a player who can get minor streaks (getting eels and sometimes squids), since I would say that most average players will achieve that with some practice. Adding a point multiplier for streaks (sort of like the kill streaks in the colosseum) would both reward good playing, while also removing some of the punishment factor for those who aren't good enough to consistently get squids and whales. And seeing a high score that's comparable to your high scores in other minigames, I think, would help make the fishing game feel more satisfying to everyone.

Actually, it might also be worth it to have the difficulty ramp up a bit faster if you play well (and/or slower if you're consistently missing). It might be a bit hard to balance, but it could make the game more rewarding to new/mediocre players without punishing good ones.

Anyway, that's just my two cents.