After-chat on The Little Derby and future fishing events
I wanted to write up a follow up to Fishcord's Little Derby event and chat about what I think went well, what didn’t, and how it’ll be addressed in the future derby events. I’ll also talk about what I’d like to do with regards to derby-like events in the future.
I’m going to address some of the feedback I’ve received, not all - but fret not fishers. I will be taking all feedback into account for future events.
So, grab a stool and get comfy.
Of the three derby’s I’ve hosted so far, I felt that The Little Derby was the smoothest and probably best idea yet for a gimmick. Based on the feedback that players gave, you all mostly felt the same well as well! Which is great!
When I design a derby, I always try and think of not just something fun for the community, but also try and build the derby around some educational idea; “what do I want the players to learn and do better with fishing?” This year was learning about fish size and how to work without some core skills (Patience), last year was how to manage suboptimal strats with ‘bad’ bait for example. That did not go unnoticed based on feedback as well, many players said that this derby helped them get better with fishing, or even shake some rust off. Which is (also) great!
All that said, there was some things that could be better. A big one was around the scoring system. This year, I made a fixed tier threshold; if you got over X amount of points, you earned that rank. I distributed the points based on a percentile of the total possible points.
Bronze was… just enough to make you work a little to get rank, a mere 75 pts (or about 5-8 caught fish).
Many noted that the jump between bronze and silver was very large, and that the thresholds for the higher tiers were demotivating because they could not possible get them with whatever schedule they had. There was also notes about how the score thresholds weren’t clearly communicated. That’s very evident to me now and I apologize! I will be making notes to make that easier in the future.
A few people also gave the feedback on limiting personal scoring to the same size restrictions as the community log as well. I did originally consider doing this, but put the idea aside because logistically it would have been very difficult to track. When I create derby’s I run under the assumption that I might have to manage everything, so I defaulted to what was a little easier to manage, without necessarily detracting from the main theme of the derby itself.
Finally, a lot players mentioned that communication about the derby even existing was not as clear as they thought it could be. This year, I did do a formal announcement of the derby dates ahead of time, but that lead to the issue of people not knowing what the derby was and so not paying as much attention to it. Because I kept the derby ‘gimmick’ a secret until day of, there wasn’t much of a draw into it and so I think a lot of people missed or skipped over the derby.
I agree that needs to change, so in order to address that (and to hold myself accountable to this idea I’ve been wanting to do for like 3 years now)… let’s talk about the 2026 Derby, nick-named “Charted.”
Image from Sleepyshiba's world map website.
Now, don’t get too excited - what I’m about to say may (and is likely to) change.
The gimmick for the 2026 derby will introduce revolves around the regions of FFXIV. The world map will be divided into different regions and each big fish catchable during the derby in that region will be listed and required to be caught.
On a player level, players will be required to list some number of regions (won’t be all of them) that they are “locked” to. Their personal score will then be calculated based on the region(s) they picked. This means personal scoring is based on a much smaller pool of fish. No need to catch 250+ big fish in 10 days, the pool will be much smaller.
On the community level, all available big fish will still need to be caught as part of the community log. HOWEVER, to encourage everyone to catch the fish and not just focus on specific regions, the community log will now act as a percentage point multiplier. At the end of the derby, everyone’s final points will be multiplied by the percent completion of the community fishing log. For example, if only 50% of the community log is completed, then players will only get half their score. If the community log is 85% complete, then the players will only get 85% of whatever they earned.
Scores and thresholds will be balanced around the number of fish in each region. They’ll be much lower and approachable, as the higher tiers will not require as many fish. You will be given the regions, the score thresholds, and how you’ll pick your regions ahead time. You’ll have time to review, understand, and plan what it is you can achieve.
Charted will definitely be more ‘gamey’ than previous derby events, but will still retain the core community aspect that drives them. I hope that with this approach more players can feel like they can contribute, and have a chance at personal scoring ranks even with shorter time periods to play.
Again, this may all change! - and I hope it does! By being a bit more open with these derby ideas you can share your thoughts and input so the Derby becomes something that more people both inside and out of the Fishcord will want to participate in and enjoy. You can also chat with me on socials or on discord about it!
I hope to write more of these in the future on different events and plans for events in the future. For now, please look forward to smaller and shorter fishing events in the coming year.
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