Current state of the game?

[wildcarrot]

I think many people right now are not happy with the current play-ability of the game. Of course this does happen from time to time with RF4 when some spots dry up a little. But it feels like recently (several months) have felt particularly bad and it doesn't seem to improve. And I do also notice that the team did go through some rough times in the past year and I am sorry that happened. I just want to say that. I only make this topic because I care about the success of this game and currently I just feel like the gameplay is slowly deteriorating. The content the devs create is really great, but the game feels off on the inside.

I understand RF4 strives to be a more hardcore fishing experience, but let's be real here. The game is not a true simulator, it is a fishing game at it's core. The game needs to be fun to succeed.

Every year more expensive items. Now 120,000 silver for reel, more expensive repairs, faster wear. And what about our income? Just staying the same and even reducing too? It's OK if you don't want to focus this game on earning silver, but that's what you are doing infact when you release expensive items and expensive costs across the board. What about some balance guys? The game was already incredibly difficult. And now a new map with completely new skill tree but no new skill points?

Cheaters seem to be becoming more and more popular.. in a fishing game... Why? Because game became too difficult and crossed a line to the point people will just pay anyone to create something for them to play the game without stress. They just want to come and relax and fish, instead of coming from work, and to login back to work. I despise cheating however I completely understand why they started cheating in this game. I don't really have words for this.. It's just not good. I did notice the admins are taking action on this. That's great and thank you for this. However it does not change the cause of it.

RF4 can reach a much bigger audience if it is not so strict on being a simulator. It does not have to be completely arcade game, but we can improve the play-ability of this game so much more and still maintain the hardcore aspect of it compared to other fishing games. Personally I believe majority of people do not want a hardcore simulator. They want a fun fishing game that is not too arcade and not too simulator. Not so easy, but not torture. A fun balance. Nobody wants to stare at a screen for hours in a daze.

There has been a big deterioration in all other maps other than Norway. Many maps are almost completely dormant. Some maps just entirely dead for long periods of time. Why? Part of me can see a potential in this feature that certain map can go "dormant" and another map can become hot. But not like this. Not with such long gaps between activity. Like this the game becomes stale and everyone will be flocking to only one map. The dormant maps producing unprofitable or juvenile fish. I want to be able to go and fish on multiple different maps with a good bite-rate, healthy size fish and reasonable income. I'm not asking for every fish to be a huge monster, I'm not asking to earn 1000 silver every hour. But the balance is wrong right now.

It's not even possible to find a "hotspot" yourself. There are too many lures, too many baits, too many potential spots and too many combinations of such. Everyone is just copying someone else. Nobody is finding their own active spots. Because it's basically impossible. So now you have the issue nobody is searching for a spot, everybody is copying and if you don't copy you will only earn some peanuts, but the items are so expensive so you must copy. And now less spots are found and it's a vicious cycle.

Does the weather system even affect lures? When one lure is working you would expect to be able to use a similar colour/shape/size or when you catch a big fish species on a small lure and up-size to a bigger lure of the same model line. But it doesn't work like that. It feels like it's just a random number generator and whichever lure is active is active and nothing else.




It's really not easy to describe this current feeling because it's not so simple. But this is the general idea. I do believe the devs and admins are listening to our suggestions but right now all reviews on steam are positive (all mostly new players I did notice) and not many posts on discussion board with concerns. However I know this is far from reality and that most higher lvl/hour players are not happy with the current game. I don't know why they don't speak up because like this, the devs think there is no problem.

Anyway I make this post just as a way that we can politely discuss any and all concerns with the current game. Please try to keep your posts civil.

Please just state a few points of concern that you have and maybe some solutions you have. This way it can be easy for the admins to read and convey. I know my post is a bit of a mess. There is many things I missed, I just wanted to get a post started. I will try to edit it later to make it more readable sorry about that.

[SweetBolin]

I just spent what will be my last 'happy hour' at volkhov, which I already knew to be a dead lake. In one hour I caught 2 burbot, 982g & 120g, and a 404g chub. The juice really isn't worth the squeeze, can't even be bothered to return to the fish market, there's no point. I'll be concentrating on the new & improved Ark now for quite a while. Hey, at least I can catch fish there lol.

[tim_fsm]

The issue here is that the devs have to work within a triangle. It's the Fun-Grind-Monetize triangle. A game should be grindy as a F2P, but still be fun, whilst providing a way for others to pay to take a bit of the grind away so the game can be monetized.

From what I've seen and heard is that in both categories (F2P and Paid) it's now just more grindy than fun. That can be fixed with some balancing. Regarding the empty/dead lakes/rivers. Yeah, I've experienced it as well. Which makes zero sense, and doesn't help putting the fun into the game.

Bear lake has once again been completely dormant for a long time. You unlock a new map, and its truly a coinflip whether you'll even be able to play it or not. Of course, I can just sit an entire day at the Ruffe spot at Belaya River again, but how is that fun? You unlock new things, you want to try new things. Until you find out that the new things are just a waste of silver, and should even be left alone if one wants to progress fast (both in experience and silver). That just defeats having a metric ton of options in your game, if 60+% of them simply aren't worth doing/visiting.

As said at the top, most of this can be fixed with a bit of (re)-balancing. There still isn't anything close to RF4 on the market, and I hope these devs look at the player count each day and realize they have gold in their hands. It doesn't even need rigorous changes either right now, but players need to feel at least a bit rewarded whilst playing for 3k hours (some of you!) instead of feeling punished for playing 'end-game' content (sea fishing and having every setup wear out ridiculously fast).

[Spooled by a Bleak]

wonder why it always happens that when a new map is released, the previous map goes to hell. this happened with tung at yama release, with yama when archi was rleased and then with archi when sea was released. going to other maps than sea is basically useless, specially yama has been joke. Levo mentioned that high level players should have fun. You really think it's fun to grind for gear having to camp the same map 24/7 because all other maps don't give enough silver? Do you think that with 230k fish, 120 stars and most top tier gear in your inventory you care about buying another reel or rod? You wanna catch nice fish, have a nice experience catching fish and you wanna have this experience on all maps you've unlocked during the progress of the grind. I think there's some major problem in this game in the understanding on what dev's think is enjoyable for the big part of the playerbase. And that's definitely not dead maps and slow biterates. If the economy is an issue and dev's are worrying about not making enough money, there are plenty of possibilities to balance this to their favour even without negatively affecting the fun and experience of playing this game. Increase bite rate / reduce fish prices, add merchandize items for gold only, like other games do too.. different skins for the character, different skins for the boats.. can't be too hard to add some items which people could buy for gold only to personalize their character and items, I sure you'd make more money like this than trying to sell reels for 500$.. keep gold prices realistic and more people would spend money first place.. for 500$ you get top notch reels in real life, that's definitely not balanced.

[aaronau0315]

agree

[SweetBolin]

Well I've spent 7 days now refusing to play, and waste my time & money. I have thoroughly enjoyed 1000+hrs of gametime, but it's so obvious that the biterate has been severely nerfed. Whether or not that works for the RF4 developer who knows. All I know is that, as stated previously, the juice really isn't worth the squeeze. My opinions and spend on gold coins clearly aren't important enough. So I won't be pursuing this any further.

[Quagmijer]

Nothing, absolutely nothing will change here!!! There will continue to be offers for complete idiots who pay these prices, and the rest will continue to fail!

Improvements have been announced for years, but what has been implemented????

make up your own mind

Anyway, I'm done with the mess here

[[ROG]Andeddu]

The recent steam review rating is "Mixed" and I remember clearly it was "Positive" a few months ago. I think this might be the time to do some major economy changes in the game, and I don't mean increasing fish prices, I mean decreasing the price of microtransactions by a lot, really. I play and pay in a lot of games, and it just baffles me that endgame items costs so much here. 50-60 dollar for endgame microtransactions is hardcap for 99% of the games I play.
I really feel RF4 will see much more profit if it significantly drops its ingame item pricing. Personally its not the grind that kills my will to play this game, its the thought that I can't buy my way out of the grind.
End of the day, they wont change it cause they fear it wont work idk? and according to steam charts, playerbase on steam is increasing, and they have servers to run in a free to play game. But again, its a small niche of players who play this genre. Hope the developers will keep players happy in the future.

[KillJoy]

ROGAndeddu a écrit :

The recent steam review rating is "Mixed" and I remember clearly it was "Positive" a few months ago. I think this might be the time to do some major economy changes in the game, and I don't mean increasing fish prices, I mean decreasing the price of microtransactions by a lot, really. I play and pay in a lot of games, and it just baffles me that endgame items costs so much here. 50-60 dollar for endgame microtransactions is hardcap for 99% of the games I play.
I really feel RF4 will see much more profit if it significantly drops its ingame item pricing. Personally its not the grind that kills my will to play this game, its the thought that I can't buy my way out of the grind.
End of the day, they wont change it cause they fear it wont work idk? and according to steam charts, playerbase on steam is increasing, and they have servers to run in a free to play game. But again, its a small niche of players who play this genre. Hope the developers will keep players happy in the future. :shinealight:

Increasing fish pricing would help though. I am not a fan of micro transactions in any game, and if I do play a game that has them I always set an average limit of $15/month maximum.

With this game, due to premium by itself costing $15/month unless you purchase multiple months at a time, that would leave $0 on my monthly budget for the actual micro transactions.

That's why I play free, because it's above my monthly budget and you almost need premium + micro transactions to be able to truly enjoy this game.

If the premium would unlock higher fish prices, and that in turn would unlock higher equipment levels for silver, it would be a lot better.
But the way it currently is, the developers simply want too much because they want premium + micro transactions. They are obviously not happy with just $15/month...

[Quagmijer]

KillJoy a écrit :

ROGAndeddu a écrit :

They are obviously not happy with just $15/month...

It's quite simple: for every fish you catch, you should take 10 cents (since only 98% of the bait goes to perch that weighs no more than 200g, so that should be a good deal for these rip-offs

[RainKarl]

I miss those good times that I could get a lot of fishes at 70 100 (volkhov river)
oh, that was 2018
so what happened in these years? haha

[DJBroake]

Levo a écrit :

Hello
This high-end gear is not a must-have for all players; it is possible to use less expensive gear to fish for all fish species in the game.
Levo

This is incorrect and you know it, Id love to see you pull a tr bulga in on a hsv and fortuna or a tr sword or tr halibut on more "standard gear", then tell us it's ok. SMH. Out of touch.

[KillJoy]

DJBroake a écrit :

Levo a écrit :

Hello
This high-end gear is not a must-have for all players; it is possible to use less expensive gear to fish for all fish species in the game.
Levo

This is incorrect and you know it, Id love to see you pull a tr bulga in on a hsv and fortuna or a tr sword or tr halibut on more "standard gear", then tell us it's ok. SMH. Out of touch.

It's interesting. I always see the trophy's on the official discord, and the record catch announcements in the game's chat window.

Sometimes you see like 175 and even 300+ KG fish. I always wondered what gear they used to reel those in. There's no way that is done with less expensive gear. Venga 10,000 seems to be a common reel used.

Here's a video of a 548.989 Kg Greenland shark. Like what gear did he use? I am not even aware of a line that could hold that kind of weight. It almost seems like an impossibility to me, but yet here it is: https://youtu.be/VEMUE4-2b4U

[DJBroake]

KillJoy a écrit :

DJBroake a écrit :

This is incorrect and you know it, Id love to see you pull a tr bulga in on a hsv and fortuna or a tr sword or tr halibut on more "standard gear", then tell us it's ok. SMH. Out of touch.

It's interesting. I always see the trophy's on the official discord, and the record catch announcements in the game's chat window.

Sometimes you see like 175 and even 300+ KG fish. I always wondered what gear they used to reel those in. There's no way that is done with less expensive gear. Venga 10,000 seems to be a common reel used.

Here's a video of a 548.989 Kg Greenland shark. Like what gear did he use? I am not even aware of a line that could hold that kind of weight. It almost seems like an impossibility to me, but yet here it is: https://youtu.be/VEMUE4-2b4U

Looks like 200kg line, borealica reel 90,000 silver reel and the 30k rod that can hold the 200kg + setup, all very much needed setups or get spooled, take the gear wear and lose the fish, even a 150kg halibut will take 1h30mins on a venga 32k reel and that wont cover time or cost. -_-

[KillJoy]

ah, an average setup. I was always looking forward to the Sea map, but the more I read about it the less I look forward to it.

[Sup_DiM0N]

KillJoy a écrit :

ah, an average setup. I was always looking forward to the Sea map, but the more I read about it the less I look forward to it.

KillJoy how far did you get on the other game there are some saltwater maps where you can fish like tuna and stuff....