This is VERY early days so of course it’s just a short feedback/suggestion post which will not cover every aspect of everything since we haven’t seen it all yet. But I think at this point I’ve seen enough of it to be able to comment on a few things. This though, will be mostly as it relates to the crafting economy of the whole thing as opposed to the gameplay; I actually haven’t had time to try fishing yet myself as I have been to busy with restocking Entropia’s very first Fishing shop (opened within 1 hour of servers being back online after release).
So here we go, first lets do Fishing:
There is a HUGE interest in Deep-Sea fishing. Tons of customers are constantly asking me if I have any Deep-Sea fishing gear. So I am really hoping that Deep-Sea fishing will live up to player’s expectations. If you (MA) didn’t make it special or exciting, please consider upgrading the experience/gameplay of it or risk players being disappointed.
It is not clear what fishing gear can be used for Deep-Sea fishing or not, forcing people to have to buy items, only to discover that they cannot add it to a Deep-Sea fishing rod. Please consider making this clearer for people somehow.
As it is, loot tables / drop rates for DNA Fragments ABCD seem to be unchanged for the last 10 years. It doesn’t really match the current reality and needs of the playerbase and therefore will quickly become self-defeating if not addressed. Spool Reels could easily go to over 800% within another week and at some point, people will just stop fishing altogether (probably). So this is something that should be monitored closely.
And on the topic of DNA Fragments ABCD, as this is the true bottleneck of gardening, I think it would be really fitting to perhaps make these a permanent Summer Mayhem loot table item. Summer is a great time for Fishing and Gardening ??
Blueprint books for Fishing BPs, please!
And Cooking:
Recipe Books, please!
I see that the crafting UI is being used here with some very small tweaks. There is an issue with being able to see what new Recipes (blueprints) have dropped during long sessions in this UI as it currently exists. Yes, if you are doing a small run of say less then 700, it’s possible to scroll through the entire run and check each of the BP icons for name. But as the runs become longer, this then is no longer feasible. I challenge anyone at MindArk to do a 3000 click run and then try to compile the list of all the BPs obtained during that run. I think you will understand my point that this can be very difficult to do with this UI. It used to be so simple; just click the button “Statistics”, and there’s the list of BPs obtained. It’s really not so simple anymore.
I saw the item description for the first cooking stove made that says it may have the feature added later of being able to allow other players to use it in your estate. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want that feature!!! I’m so pumped!! Can MA confirm this will be added?
Conclusion:
I think this is a really awesome Update, fully fleshed-out and quite extensive; lots to discover still. All systems working pretty well, people are participating, new BPs getting found, there is quite a bit of excitement for this new content. Some stuff, like Spool Reels, is getting a bit expensive. Otherwise, there’s a couple items as mentionned above where some improvements could be made.
Cheers!
Legends
PS: Please put your feedback for MindArk about Fishing and Cooking below ???
I have given my thoughts in the Fishing & Cooking Thread but can put them here aswell.
First of all, overall im impressed with lot of the new content, and to some extent it may work, but I have great concerns because as it seems, the whole cooking system is built on 1 endproduct ingredient - FISHES. We dont fully know yet BUT there are 100 fishes, which logically means, all the buffs are created JUST by fishing.
Fishing minigames ARE interesting. Overall I like addition of semi-active gameplay, but in the end, its not super-fun for longer periods of time. Its ok to do for a while, but since the whole cooking system is built on fishes, I dont think there will be enough supply of resources for this system to work. I cant see many people just fishing all days OR if some do, it will only be for a certain type of buff and at least 50-70% of the buffs will just not be used as it will not be worth any time.
What my suggestion was, having 3 seperate different recipe types for different buffs:
Animal Meat (Gathered from hunting)
Transgen Fruit / Vegetables (Gathered from plots, or also use regular)
Fish Meat
(Add a certain enmatter to each recipe to involve miners).
This way you have divided the acquiring of materials into different proffesions, making it more balanced out. Relying just on mini-games is imho gonna be a failure. Fishes could have been used for the more interesting buffs to make it worthwhile, but there should have been “easier” recipes also.
What Im proposing above would work. Just fishes - wont (longterm).
I hope Im wrong, but Im pretty sure im not.
EDIT: Examples - VERY ROUGH Examples of Recipes which would imho work better over time:
Good feedback from 2 great crafters. If MA adds milestone awards and a Fisherman’s Throphy Book where we can gloat on our catch, and perhaps adds an aquarium for estates, we’re in for even more fun!
Next up should be Magnetic fishing, for robot and colonist scraps and lost gems.
Initial thoughts are that when basic profession functionality (spool cell) requires high volume free-to-play activity or the requirement of needing a garden (???) and the subsequent supply of DNA fragments (???) … is that it’s either poorly balanced or an obvious attempt to subsidize free-to-play players with the expectation that people are just okay with that.
Baitfishing for 5 hours being the prerequisite to get in a casual day of fishing WITH THE CHEAPEST ROD is a bit absurd. This time exchange will still exist even when the discovery crowd is done inflating the prices of spool and you will be left with dissatisfied f2p players that have issues selling baitfish and justifiably agitated paying players also.
The activity itself is fine; though I do have concern about the UI placement and minigame patterns being identical in placement, pattern, and color.. which makes for some very simple botting prospects. Please ban fish bots.
Suggestions:
Baitfish should at a minimum exchange 1 fish: to 10 pec of ammo. This still consumes 30 minutes of f2p activity for a casual day of fishing.
The spool cell blueprint should have used more common material than garden fruit - make a different form of spool cell for deep-sea fishing and have that produced by the transgen fruit BP instead. Incentivize specialized boats and deep-sea fishing for high spenders.
The blueprints for lower-level fishing gear (say gen 1-3, maybe 4) being at the drop rate they are should either be unlimited or have drastically higher drop rates. The supply chain required for the lower tier of rods that come from limited blueprints is too extensive/expensive.
Variety in the minigame process/UI to assist with bot detection.
When MA released the Gorgon it used to cost an absurd amount of sweat to trigger the wave event. It was eventually (a week or two later) “re-calibrated” to cost about 10% the initial amount of sweat. So I’m thinking this will be adjusted eventually as well if/when MA thinks it should be.
Is there fun, is there balance, is there profit? (NB: I put balance in the middle :p)
So far, it’s certainly not fun. If I want to do the equivalent of pottering around on low concentration and turnover, then I do harvesting. If I want to one-shot mobs, then I at least want to be moving a bit (although some instances don’t require it now, but we’re not forced there). However, the loss of autoloot for an hour for 50 pecs is a bummer! So far fishing for me has been a mix of concentration AND boredom - how the eff, MA?
Profit: For former sweaters the gains are currently higher with getting bait, ok. The rest seems built on that spool mu (from bait mu), and might be marginally profitable, but we need to wait for things to settle down and for more of the system to become available.
It may actually be other areas that become profitable compared to now - see balance …
Balance: as always, things need to settle down, but my feeling is things don’t look good for a large number of buffs. Already the DNA problem is clear for gardeners (although I don’t know the results - and there is the other route to spools).
Harvesting may see a good boost, and some various mining mats, even basics such as lyst. Crafting may also benefit for some chains, as well as a boost for nutrio bar mus.
I read (I think), all gear can be attached to all rods, but whether it makes sense or not is the question. Some combos might be too weak for the strength of deep sea fish, but we shall see. I don’t even know what the mini-game is for the deep sea yet. Anyone?
I think it may be a bug as the deep sea is a mounted tool and not an equitable tool. Similar to the mounted repair tool or the mounted mining lasers. This may have put the other attachments into some kind of backend server system incompatibility. Similar issues occurred with attachments on the attached mining lasers before a workaround was done in the backend.
Question about the long-term purpose of Deep Fishing
Hi everyone,
I have a genuine question, especially for those of you who have invested in Deep Fishing.
By the time you buy a boat, fuel it, purchase a Deep Ocean Rod, lure, reel, line, blank, spool cells, and start paying decay, you’re easily looking at an investment of around 150–200 PED or more just to get started.
My question is:
What is the long-term gameplay loop?
From what I’ve seen, there are daily missions that only require around 10 fish. So what happens after that?
Do you simply sell the rest to other players?
Is there enough demand from cooks and crafters to keep large quantities moving?
Are there repeatable missions or other systems that consume hundreds of fish?
Or do players eventually end up with stockpiles and no meaningful use for them?
I’m not criticizing the system—I genuinely want to understand it before investing. If I’m going to spend 150–200+ PED to get into Deep Fishing, I’d like to know what experienced players do with the hundreds or thousands of fish they catch over time.
I’d appreciate hearing from players who have been doing Deep Fishing for a while. Thanks!
There is lots of valuable fish needed in cooking to catch in deep ocean. Rest can be refined to fish oil. Havent done it myself though so someone doing it telling better would be appreciated
