DST has among the best fishing games in an indie, however it's almost literally not worth doing more than once.

[chirsg]

Terraria: Wait, react, click.

Pokemon, the game made by a billion dollar empire: wait, react, click.

Black desert online: AFK while your machine's graphics card gets hot enough to cook an egg.

Fable: Agreed upon bad minigame

Skyrim: Jump in water, click on fish

 

Each of the game studios that made these games are so filled with staff and developers that they'll make your ears output hot steam and somehow, in function, dst has a more engaging and believable fishing minigame. It's actually great.

But the reward is so downright terrible, you won't do it more than once, and a character who will not be named was introduced with a method to farm up hundreds of fish at no recurring cost or effort.

 

What sets apart the aforementioned games from dst are the rewards they give. Pokemon gives you a chance to catch a pokemon which is the absolute core of it's gameplay, bdo gives you precious money to buy swords to mindlessly grind for 15 hours straight to jump from level 61 to 61.5,  Fable was necessary for a main quest, and skyrim had fish to use in alchemy in order to become a demigod.

 

Dst has no such reward. I won't tell the dev team how to improve it, but all I wanted to say that it's an actual fun minigame, but unfortunately, and I reiterate again, there's no reason to do it once you've done it once.

[SSneaky]

it also doesn't help that throwing a trawler on the shore closest to the base with seeds or monster meat is a more effective way to get fish.

[GenomeSquirrel]

DST gives too poor feedback to be considered good, as designed people will fail for unexplained reasons and reasons unrelated to actual fishing. I consider this the opposite of engaging.

[-Kiyo-]

Super agree with you chrisg. DST is the only game I've played where I can organically find the fish swimming in the ocean, cast my line and fish it.
You can even pick up the fish, send it back to the ocean and fish it again. They are real entities in the world even if the shoals spawn and despawn. Close enough.

Most of the other games make me click on the surface and an invisible fish comes into being. Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley

They tried to add extrinsic reward to fishing with Pearl, Malbatross and the summer and ice fish. Even when you think about all that, it still comes up short.
 

[ChintzyGnat]

Honestly a fish weapon like the terraria drops would be cool. Post rift type of fish that spawns and shoots lunar energy for alot of damage. The cost is it being a fish so it spoils quick.

Wurt just gets a new toy too 

[SSneaky]

31 minutes ago, ChintzyGnat said:

Honestly a fish weapon like the terraria drops would be cool. Post rift type of fish that spawns and shoots lunar energy for alot of damage. The cost is it being a fish so it spoils quick.

Wurt just gets a new toy too 

Perhaps you could feed it bait items to restore its spoilage time, sort of like the eye mask's and shield of terror's with feeding those to restore durability.

[Wonz]

Kinda same with farming.  You can find enough food to sustain yourself on your way to other business. 

Both need some rewards and seems nothing drags people's effort in like speed/weapons/armor. 

[GenomeSquirrel]

51 minutes ago, -Kiyo- said:

 

Most of the other games make me click on the surface and an invisible fish comes into being. Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley
 

Living near a river, the fish are effectively invisible in real life. I’ve only seen trackable fish in shallow creeks

[Mike23Ua]

Eh I think Red Dead Online and even Erudien Chronicles Rising fishing is better.

I feel like DSTs Fishing is a little… how do I put this lightly, too simplistic?

I mean: I like the feel of having this realistic like creature struggling for its life trying to fight back and flee away from you trying to reel it in.

And DST could’ve made that wayyyyyy more fun by giving us actual animations of moving our character about visibly seeing the fishing Rod bend as we try to prevent it for snapping (Aka trying to release line-tension between you and the fish)

It’s not as boring as some of the other games you mentioned, sure… but it could’ve been a teeny tiny tad bit more engaging. In my opinion.

And that’s just the fishing part, don’t even get me started on the REWARDS from doing it.

Here’s a tip for Klei- If I can pull up so many crumpled packages out tiny oasis puddle, Why am I not pulling this type of stuff up while ocean fishing?

[ButterStuffed]

45 minutes ago, Wonz said:

Kinda same with farming.  You can find enough food to sustain yourself on your way to other business.

Thing is, with farming you can easily set it up and forget about it. Reaping the rewards a couple days later.

Fishing is a lot more involved. You need to devote your complete attention to ensure you catch the fish and even then you can still fail spectacularly.

2 hours ago, chirsg said:

But the reward is so downright terrible, you won't do it more than once, and a character who will not be named was introduced with a method to farm up hundreds of fish at no recurring cost or effort.

Sea of Thieves has a similar issue. Very involved fishing mini game followed by an almost meaningless reward. (Or I just don’t know what you’re supposed to do with fish besides eat it or sell it for virtually nothing)

[Frosty_Mentos]

The fishing in the game is very fun and interesting but it becomes as to "why am I doing this when I can just become wicker/max and abuse their powers for this", then again usually comes to resources and food to just rely on those characters.

But for fun factor I feel like reward should stand higher too for when you fish. One thing Klei did with the fish is actually giving us a use for selling them for bootleg getaways, Pearl's trades became a lot more worth but I think they still require heavy fish?

Fishing is growing in value but in the end it'll likely still end up with wicker books eventually anyway. There's a lot of work put into fishing rod mechanics that I kinda wanna see there being something to what we'd wanna try fishing for.

My suggestion: Let a fishing rod occasionally when fishing for nothing catch some sea debri. Some junk we could pick up at random in the ocean. It's usually a great reason why anyone would fish at all. Getting bullkelp stalks, feathers, maybe rarely get a key to unlock shell chests to be able to actually use them as chests. There is a way they implemented and it's with the sea debri - but it's TOO RARE to appear to be impactful or need to be there at all. I don't know what's the point of sea debri but it fails by being too rare to give us anything.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

Fishing is supposed to be fun and engaging? Since when?

[Frosty_Mentos]

17 minutes ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Fishing is supposed to be fun and engaging? Since when?

supposed to be kinda relaxing chill and feeling rewarding

[Echsrick]

just like all the other fishing mini games in what ever other game that is nothing about survival or farming or like that were you would think fishing would make sense to do...not worth it...oh alsol skyrim added actual fishing, it is however the "wait, react, click." pretty much

[Milordo]

I can't resist the urge to agree. It's something I always tell to my community time to time and try to push it, so everybody can notice it.

Now, for the problems, it's really simple. It boils downs to three simple factors: 
1) The Ocean. No really. It's the Ocean. It belongs to a system of which I could perfectly describe it as "the results of the new marketing in videogames". Creating a new entire level, every months, without a coherent line of thoughts or plans to where evolve the gameplay of Don't Starve, let alone the content itself, it's what made the ocean fishing the way it is now. It was bound to happen and it's one of the very very veryyyy small portions of the ocean that is remotelllly tollerable. Bordeline mediocre.
This discussion can go all and all, but to keep it short. Klei managed the development of the ocean awfully, damaging in the process the mechanic of the fishing too.  

2) Payoff. There is a clear imbalance between workout and payoff. The game teaches you with all the different farming and "farming" methods like berries, spiders, beefaloes, pigs, the magnificent farms, ecc...
All systems that rewards you for your effort in studying the game and his survival aspects. 
Fishing doesn't. Too slow, too risky to fail (fishes run away, sharks, narvals, monkeys, ecc..), too RNG based on how creatures and resources spawn in the ocean. It's like rabbits, with the difference that atleast with how nerfed and niched (also "noob" we could say) it is, it can sustain you and your team. Because yes! Don't Starve Together it's a multiplayer game!
And for some goddamm reason, Klei forgot it at all in the Ocean development. The food in the Ocean can't sustain a full 6 team of players. I know. Trust me. It wasn't great at all as an experience.   

3) Too repetitive. The "combat system" (because in the end it's based on reflex and timing, like kiting) of the fishing as it is right now it's too monotous with the usual "wait, reel, wait" or "wait, reel, wait, reel" with stronger fish. I know, I know about the slippery tricks you can do with the fishing to avoid entirely the mechanic (which I'm not too fond about it) but apart from that it would be very appreciated to have different patterns for different fishes.

That's all. Apart maybe some balancing to the recipes of baits, this is all the fishing needs to have fixed.

Edited March 19 by Milordo

[chirsg]

5 hours ago, SSneaky said:

Perhaps you could feed it bait items to restore its spoilage time, sort of like the eye mask's and shield of terror's with feeding those to restore durability.

I'd just leave it in the tin fishin bin. It's a good idea in concept so far. Having freshness refresh like an ocean fish does. Have it be a larger version of an ocean fish that's twice as hard to catch as a lion fish. 

4 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Fishing is supposed to be fun and engaging? Since when?

It is fun. It's just the exchange for your time is simply not worth doing. You get so much more done doing other things. 

[arubaro]

I really wish klei revisits fishing because is really fun, best fishing mechanic i ever seen in a videogame 

[Evelo]

The reward for fishing is the fish.
Also Stardew has a pretty okay fishing system. Worse than DST imo but a lot better than the typical wait and click.

[SSneaky]

52 minutes ago, chirsg said:

I'd just leave it in the tin fishin bin. It's a good idea in concept so far. Having freshness refresh like an ocean fish does. Have it be a larger version of an ocean fish that's twice as hard to catch as a lion fish. 

And Make It Immune To Ocean Trawlers. that way you cannot just use a trawler instead.

[mykenception]

in terms of fishing, Dredge has a lot of minigame setups to simulate fishing, tho it is more focused on the minigame than the act of fishing entirely

[ButterStuffed]

18 hours ago, Milordo said:

it would be very appreciated to have different patterns for different fishes.

IIRC some (if not all) fish do have different struggle patterns. Hard to tell, since the process can be monotonous, like you said previously.

[Gi-Go]

It's very hard for me to figure out what the devs were thinking when making RoT. Why is everything so useless? 

I could understand not being able to come up with a practical use for a fish, but come on you made fishes that affect temperature, how can you screw it up??? By making them worthless for 17 out of 18 characters (and even the last one is questionable) apperanetly. 

 

[DegenerateFurry]

I still think fishing would be much better if we got 2-3 pieces of fish per fish depending on weight, with the smallest fish dropping only 1 piece, the ones Pearl would accept dropping 3, and 2 being the default.

[Mike23Ua]

A rather simple suggestion would be to make pig king so that he asks the player for a specific type of food (hey look we have NPCs with their own chat text now lol!)

Players can mass farm gold nuggets by just constantly feeding him the same thing over and over again, but what if this pig was more like Warly with a picky diet?

he might actually want a fish every now and then instead of the same slop you been feeding him.

This put it into 4 simple categories- Small Meats, Large Meats, Pond Fish, Ocean Fish. 

Let him request from those 4 Categories what type of Meats he wants.

This makes Ocean fishing actually rewarding in that it gives the player gold, AND it makes Pig King a more in-depth, engaging NPC beyond just being a gold dispenser to the player.

[Dragonboooorn]

15 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

This put it into 4 simple categories- Small Meats, Large Meats, Pond Fish, Ocean Fish. 

You forgot the most important categorie - pig skin