Hi BDO team,

Firstly I would like to say great work on the fishing update. I really like the addition of all the new species. It has been a lot of fun seeing the hype around fising and trying to figure out locations and even having the pleasure of catching a few of the rare fish myself :) 

I have spent a fair bit of time fishing lately and have some feedback and improvement suggestions that I think will increase to the joy of fishing for all adventurers on Black Desert. I have been playing the game for many years and have a good feel for animations etc so believe this feedback could be helpful :)

Firstly I would like to talk about active fishing:

I really think there is great potential for active fishing in the game if there are some minor tweeks to the current setup to increase active engagement without impacting AFK silver per hour. My suggestions are aimed at increasing active fishing joy without impacting AFK fishing income as I do feel fishing lacks incentive to play as its more rewarding to AFK fish at the moment.

Based on the above I have the following suggestions aimed at active fishing:

Firstly I think that bite times could be shortened a little bit across the board for areas that are above 30 seconds on average. When I fish these areas actively the fish time is just a little too long sometimes which makes it a bit boring compared to areas that have average fish times of around 23 seconds. Average fish bite times could be reduced by 2-3 seconds across the board to increase engagement without it feeling to boring. This would result in better active engagement without impacting AFK income too much as it would be a reduction in AFK fish time of 3/100 which would be minimal. 

Secondly the fishing animations are still legacy animations which feel a little clunky and dated. I think the casting and catching animations could be reduced by 0.5 seconds each to have a more natural feel to it. Right now the intial catching animation is really good (when you first hit space after a bite) but then there is a clunky bit after the minigame is completed before you can cast again and the cast animation after completing the mini game and taking the fish is a bit clunky. I think 0.5 seconds removed from the mini game completed animation and 0.5 seconds removed from the initial cast animation would increase the fishing feel significantly without impacting economics too much on both active and AFK fishing.  (this 1 second could form part of the bite time reduction above too, i.e reduce animation speed by 1 second and bite time by 1-2 seconds for a total of 2-3 seconds reduced).

Spending energy to fish: The current design for energy consumption to actively fish needs some attention. Currently the additional time spend to cast the rod to consume the 10 energy (takes about 4 seconds) does not result in significant additional fish caught. The mechanic is a little counter productive in the sense that it increases fishing time which reduces fishing effeciency indirectly (which also makes it feel very very clunky imo) without really increasing the chance to catch fish being a relatively small chance to catch an additional fish. There needs to be a higher reward for spending energy to fish. Some ideas for a rework would be:

Remove the additional cast time to consume energy all together as it feels way too clunky to spend the energy. This process should be 0.5-1 second max. Ideally the reworked fishing setup would have the 10 energy spent and rod casted in 0.5 seconds faster than the current active fishing animation (if the above 0.5 second changes are made on both animations and the rod charge up time is set to 0.5 or 1 second). Increase the probability for catching an additional fish to 100% if the energy is consumed rather than having a relatively small chance. This will add a meaningful reward to actually spending energy to fish and boost active engagement without impacting AFK economics.

Special paste bait (really excited about this one): A guild member and avid fisher Fiyorin had a good idea to introduce special paste bait for active fishing. I gave the idea some thought and came up with the following recommendations as I think this would be an amazing way to increase active engagement and add a nice touch to active fishers across the BDO world:

I really think there is a lot of scope to add harder to get paste bait in the game. Paste bait with varrying qualities and duration could be added with durations varying between 1h and 10h. 1h baits could make it possible to fish for an hour just like we are currently grinding for an hour in PVE.

Paste bait qualities:

Increase chance to catch prize fish.

Reduced bite times by 1-5 seconds (bait would attract fish faster)

Reduced autofish time (for longer duration baits)

Reduced durability consumption

Increased fishing XP

Increased fishing mastery 

Paste bait ways to obtain:

Weekly quests, hotspot fishing repeatable quests similar to the current tripple float quests, prize for weekly fishing competitions, rare fishing drop, reward for discarded glass bottle.

A really cool way to add special paste bait would be to add live bait (similar to real fishing) where you add a live bait rare drop to the fishing table and active fishers could then apply the live bait to get a rare stronger fishing buff (like chance for prize, 50% fishing xp, etc) Live bait could expire within 5 minutes of catching it to make it active fishing focussed. (This could be the fishing equivalent of getting a PVE mob spawn event while grinding).

Fishing floats: please rework the math to make the chance to catch red fish not be reduced if floats are used. The chance to catch red fish should be fixed at the chance displayed and not be reduced by adding other equipment that impacts rare and big drop tables.

Potential for adding a manos float that increases the effectiveness of the tripple float adding to the chance to catch additional fish or reduces bite time or autofish time reduction.

Hope this feedback can add to the joy of fishing in black desert.

Thanks for all the hard work. Still my favourite game after all the years :)

Yes please!

Active fishing needed a revamp for years.

I really like the idea of different types of baits.

Bite time on hotspots should also be MUCH shorter.

How is it faster to fish most fishing zones than fishing in an actual hotspot where tons of fish are literally

visible.

I also fully agree with the shorter animations and 100% for +1 fish. Would love to see this happen.