Great Sea Ray achievement - broken, unfair and frustrating

Gameplay Achievements
1

“Catchin’ Some Rays” is an achievement that basically was broken by a stealth hotfix drastically reducing the drop rate.

I started working on my fishing achievements and in looking at the achievement for “Catchin’ Some Rays” came to find out that for the first few months of BFA, the Great Sea Ray had a higher drop rate (something like 1/200 is my guess from the comments people had around that time). It was enough that the price of them on the Auction House had become something around 15k.

Apparently some developer at Blizzard didn’t intend for the drop rate to be that high, but the market was already quite full of the items, so they over-compensated with a horrendous hotfix nerfing the drop rate from something like 1 every 200 catches to something along the lines of 1 every 10,000 catches. Comments on wowhead around the time of the hotfix had people wondering if the mount had simply been taken out of the game.

Of course, the achievement for it can’t be obtained by buying one on the AH. Unlike most mount achievements in the game, you don’t get this one for LEARNING the mount, you get it for CATCHING the mount from fishing.

Now the vast, vast majority of people with this achievement will have gotten it with relative ease - and this will certainly be the case for the long-term future. Meanwhile, if someone tries to get it in the present, it will require an insane level of RNG luck to obtain (sure, there’s going to still be that random guy here and there who gets it quickly as with any RNG drop, but on average you can expect to be pursuing this for thousands upon thousands of casts and still not get it).

The fact that the vast majority of people with this achievement will have gotten it under far easier conditions in the past than anyone attempting this today makes Blizzard seem really neglectful to create that dichotomy. I doubt the thought even crossed their mind once when they changed the drop rate for the mount that there was an achievement tied to the mount, and that the achievement couldn’t be earned by learning the mount. It was probably purely about their desire to forcefully undo market saturation.

I’m sure some will say, “your fault for not getting it when it was easy,” but fault doesn’t exist there for players who didn’t act early. No one should be expected to keep a careful eye on every achievement category to try and guess what will and won’t be radically changed via a stealth hotfix to be nearly unobtainable, something especially ridiculous in the first few months of an expansion when you’ve got new things everywhere in the game.

This should really be fixed in one of two possible ways:

  1. Up the drop rate to something a lot more reasonable.
  2. Change the achievement criteria to require only learning the mount, not fishing it - the way pet and mount achievements tend to work in other areas of content. Very low odds tied to an achievement or drop can be relatively reasonable when they are crowd-sourced over the playerbase as a whole. As it is, anyone seeking this achievement has ZERO reason to actually purchase the mount from the auction house.
14 Likes
2

I agree. Still cannot catch this damn mount…

3

fished up the mount and the achievement just fine after the hotfix, took a bit longer than I’m used to from rare fishables so a slight dropchance increase wouldnt hurt but making the achievement buyable is the dumbest suggestion ever

4

Only took 8611 (all after the ‘fix’) in the Bay to catch mine recently.

5

I managed to catch mine just a day or two ago. Lost track of how many alts I’ve leveled up to 175 fishing in that time. I don’t think I was near 8611 attempts, though… ugh.

It’s really annoying that Bliz couldn’t release the game with the proper drop rates for this stuff. Makes me feel like I need to do research before the next expansion drops (which is the absolute exact opposite of what I’d prefer to do - just experience the new content with wide eyes) just to make sure I don’t get left in the dust by all the week 1 farming.

6

You complain about this achievement? (I admit sucked to obtain a couple of months ago) but not the other achieve that CANNOT be obtained anymore such as the 2700 3v3 Rating when no team in WOW History has obtained this since the ratings were re-worked around 2017 or so?

I think Blizzard in general needs to not make the achievements impossible to obtain. An achievement is that, an achievement. It should not be so painful of a grind that people want (and do) quit trying to obtain. Because the reality is Achievement Hunters are now legitimate force in player community, and we get shafted more than any other group despite being ones who often find and report so many of bugs.

7

That sounds really unreasonable to me too and worthy of a complaint. But keep in mind I posted this thread back in January. It was in (justified) reaction to a hotfix that had just been done drastically changing the situation for an achievement that had been live for months and was much easier to obtain before the hotfix.

In general I think hotfixes like that are poorly thought out and shouldn’t be done. But I agree that the PvP rating achievements are also not well thought out and take terrible account of how the lower participation in Arenas and RBG’s today drastically changes the nature of those achievements from the days when they were originally implemented. I think that area of achievements probably needs some serious re-working (and also have opinions, regarding rated PvP participation, about larger changes needed overall to how rated PvP rewards are handled and how Rated BG’s are handled in their entirety). But those are topics for other threads.

I’d agree with this. I get the feeling Blizzard doesn’t have one person on the upper design team that can be described as an “achievement hunter.” Like, I don’t think they have anyone at all on staff that they run their ideas by and go, “Hey, you do achievements a lot, if we put this in, what do you think that would actually entail for you?” Again, this is an old thread, but it was a good example of something like that - just a thoughtless hotfix that showed complete lack of care over how it impacted the achievement associated with the item.

8

At least allow us to obtain the achievement by buying the mount. Started after the hotfix/nerf and I am over 12k casts without any luck.

9

A lot of fishing achievements and mounts are super RNG. Just keep fishing for it.

Making fishing achievements buyable defeats the purpose.

1 Like
10

We have to put everything into context. Don’t think it’s fair for players to obtain that achievement after the huge nerf in drop rate. There is a post on wowhead with a player not getting that mount/achievement after 50,000 casts. I am sure you know how much time and effort that takes comparing to players that got theirs before the nerf.

11

Why does anyone still believe that the dev’s and their management have anything other then contempt for the player base? Who at Blizzard thinks that fishing for 80 hours is fun? The WoW killer turned out to be Blizzard.

12

Ridiculous that still no words on this achievement. Spent at least 40 hours on this so far, and no luck.

1 Like
13

Works on my machine.

14

Has anyone fished up this mount lately? Over 75k casts, and still no luck. Wonder what the new drop rate is for this fish after they stealth nerfed it.

15

Got my Ray after about 76k casts, completely unfun to do.

1 Like