Am I alone in thinking that the fishing update was two steps forward and one step back?

I should preface this by saying that I really love the gradual polish that gets applied to little parts of the game, like fishing. It really feels like every patch we get closer and closer to what this game can be. Unfortunately I think that while fishing has been improved the increase in types of bait has made most of these new fish types inaccessible.

The new fish varieties and behaviors are fantastic. The jumping and schooling make them feel more like animals instead of random resources just sitting in the water. The new types of fish give a lot more life to the ocean, which I think is the biome most in need of new content. All that is great, but the addition of new baits. I think that much like any lvl 5 tuna I’ve tried to catch they went overboard with the baits.

There are nine types of bait in the game. That’s outlandish. Many of these baits need to be made with high tier creature trophies and give access to what was previously a pretty easy food source. Because many of these baits are so niche I think in the long run eventually all that means is that players will almost never actually catch frost cave or swamp fish. What I think would have been better is if they simply implemented a three tier fishing bait system. Generic fish use regular ol’ fishing bait, open ocean fish use heavy bait, and fancy shmancy fish use some kind of magic bait bought from trader late game. I know that in real like there’s no such thing as a universal fishing bait, but it seems a little much to ask players to keep track of a half inventory worth of bait.

I hate to complain about this, because I think what they did with the fishing update was great, but I think they got a bit carried away.