There are currently a few things that can make fishing frustrating and annoying. Some of the issues I believe should be easy to fix. I have listed them in order of most annoying to least annoying IMO, tho the first one is a much bigger annoyance than the others.
Indistinguishable haptic feedback on meta headsets
The difference in haptic feedback from reeling in the line and a fish biting is so miniscule that I at least don’t notice it at all. In contrast, when playing on index there is a very clear difference and you can easily feel when a fish bites.
This is annoying because it means you have to be constantly looking at the bobber or constantly yanking the fishing rod. This is made more annoying by some other issues I’ll get to further down.
Best fix IMO would be to just remove the vibration while reeling in and only have vibration when a fish bites, this would also help the battery life of the controllers…
Water too bright
During daytime the water in the rainforest is so bright that you cannot see your bobber or line. This is made worse by the haptic issue, since you can’t see your bobber and can’t feel when a fish bites you have no way of knowing when a fish bites. To combat this you end up having to constantly yank your fishing pole.
Water in the wastelands I’d say is also a little too bright, makes it hard to see the line, but you can see the bobber at least.
Desynced catch
Sometimes when you reel a fish all the way in to shore it will desync and the bobber is stuck at the shore. This is easily fixed by un-equipping and re-equipping your fishing rod, or swapping it with another. You still get the fish once you refresh your inventory, and it’s not really a problem for experienced fishers. It can however be very confusing and frustrating for new fishers.
You also don’t get the “you caught a x lbs fish” message or the catch animation.
Invisible line
Sometimes when you throw your bobber out, the line past the end of your pole will disappear when the bobber hits the water. When this happens, the bobber doesn’t play an animation when a fish bites, combined with not being able to feel it either and you have no idea when you get a bite. I believe it’s a desync issue so probably not easy to fix, but if the haptic feedback is fixed then it’s not really an issue anymore.
Fishing line gradient
When you’re reeling in a fish and the fishing line turns red, it’s not the whole fishing line turning red. It’s a gradient of red at the base to white at the other end of the fishing line. This is not something you usually see at all, except when the line turns invisible, when that happens you only have a line on your pole, making it very short so you can easily see the gradient. In that instance it can be harder to tell how close the line is to breaking.
My guess for the source of the problem is that the fishing line is made using unity’s built in line renderer, which takes a gradient as the color. Then only one of the two gradient colors is changed to reflect how broken the line is.(this is very minor, but I thought I’d include it anyway since fixing it should be easy)
QoL suggestion
Allow the player to make a throw immediately after catching a fish. Players already achieve this by swapping their fishing rod as soon as they catch a fish(which the devs have said is OK), but constantly swapping your fishing rod brings with it some bugs and makes the fishing experience less relaxed.
Having it so you can cancel the catch animation by just throwing again instead of swapping your rod would be a very welcome QoL change.