Fishies...We likes them...

Got around to trying out one of the features of LOTRO's Book 13: Fishing!

Not a Profession in the sense of intensive crafting moneysink, but a Hobby, done for the fun of it.

I love LOTRO's relaxed no-pressure atmosphere. Some people will no doubt treat it as an achievement grind to complete the bar anyway, but at least it isn't a community imperative that one feels impelled to grind away at fishing.

And even if you wanted to...you couldn't. Har! Because the devs implemented a 10 point proficiency cap per day.

I suppose the hardcore achievers will set their alarm clocks and fish furiously at the stroke of midnight, but it won't take long (10-15 mins) to hit the cap, and force them to wait until the next 24 hours have passed.

Me, I am content to treat it the way it was designed. Log in, and just spend a little time every day fishing for fun, gaining the proficiency skillup in the process.

It's not uber-innovative, LOTRO fishing. It's not like the super-secret out-of-combat skills system or something of that ilk. It pretty much follows the same system Japanese Harvest Moon (and probably other) games have used since the beginning of time.

First, one obtains and equips a fishing rod. One proceeds to approach a watery location, in which one hopes there are creatures of the piscine variety contained therein. (Preferably special collector types of seafood.) And one clicks a button to throw the fishing line into the water.

At this point, various games diverge. The most simplistic kinds of fishing automate the rest of the job. Pokemon comes to mind. You either catch or don't catch something, based on random luck, and it animates to show you the result.

WoW complicates matters by making you watch for the movement of the bob to rise and fall, and then move the mouse to click on the random location on the screen to successfully catch something. I found this an amusing innovation at first, but shortly, it got to become rather annoying. Fishing is supposed to be relaxing and meditative, not a minigame of hunt and peck the oddly positioned bob. (How am I throwing this line so unpredictably anyway?)

One other thing that turned me off from WoW fishing. Too predictable increases of the fishing skill. Seemed like every one cast = one fishing point raised. Whee. Not. Perhaps this changes if I got to a higher level, but I don't know, I think I got bored between 20-40 points.

LOTRO sticks to the tried and true Nintendo formula. You also watch for an animation change: the bob sinking below the surface, possibly a big splash as it gets tugged by the fish, and the line straining, then all you do is click the same button again to pull your catch out. Subtle difference perhaps, but I find the animation clearer to focus on, than a single red spot dipping and falling.

By allowing use of the same button, it lets me turn off all the UI, and just keep one finger poised on the keyboard, and sit and fall into a meditative enjoy-the-scenery frame of mind, while spotting any movement of the line. Harvest Moon games do this too (though there's not much scenery to speak of in a DS game.)

LOTRO also shamelessly uses the unpredictable reward formula of a slot machine. You know the standard MMO thing. The first few times you do something, you get the skill increases fast. Then they taper off and get a bit more unpredictable, and you end up repeating the same action more times to get the same increase.

It works, in small doses. And I like that they "encouraged" players on purpose to keep it a small dose, with a skill cap design.

(For rampant uncontrolled dose of this, see WoW's bodyparts quests at higher levels. Or at least, that's what I assumed after seeing Patrick endlessly fighting the same mobs in a small area on his laptop, and finding out he needed some drops from them. Do the number of parts required increase as you get higher up in levels? Or do they always keep to a reasonable number like 10?)

Hobby-wise, if you catch certain types of 'rare' fish, you get to turn them into trophies to decorate your house with. I am most amused by the lowbie success ones. I caught myself a Giant Goldfish, a 2-pound salmon, and a Magnificent Minnow. Can't wait to actually buy myself a house so that I can display 'em. :P *snicker* (Here's a look at the goldfish from Kill Ten Rats)

Apparently, there are fish that can be used in recipes, some special bait to buy and better rods to be crafted, along with special fish in various locations. All very par for the course. Still, I'm enjoying the process of discovery, rather than spoiling it all with a wiki.

Signing off, LOTRO - feeding my immersion-seeking inner Explorer...

P.S. Forgot to add. The best implementation of fishing I've played so far, comes from the Lost in Blue Nintendo DS series, which is a survival game on a desert island. First you craft your own fishing rod with various materials that you picked up. Standard recipe design. Rod can be bamboo (better) or wooden twigs. Hook can be made of bone (better) or stone. String is from a tree vine. Pick worm bait up from the ground.

Then you do the standard walk to water, button press to throw, see animation change, button press to pull out...

And it segues into a minigame where you use the arrow keys to reel the fish in. Stronger, more valuable fish tend to veer from side to side, so you end up pushing the right and left buttons to compensate more, while trying to draw it back. The wussier fish come without a fight, so you can just press the backward key and reel it right in.

What I loved is that you could predict just from the feel whether you got a good catch.