I agree with you Thrall.
Game that advertises itself as following:
The moment you start paying attention to every detail in the game, you see, that none of these sentences do apply any more, it's quite the opposite.
Concept of an "open free to roam", "complete player freedom", "find your very own perfect fishing spot" as of games current state means, you can move around in all maps, and do as you wish, choose spots you want to fish from, what bait/lure/setup you want to use, but is falling short on actually being able to catch fish with the "freedom" you're given.
Does looking around Discord, VK, groups etc. for meta baits/lures/spots on a huge map with maybe (if you're lucky) 2 active fishing spots sound something like "free to find your very own perfect fishing spot"?
Does any concept of spot dying out after x amount of fish, and game forcing you to go catch/do something else, or move spots sound like complete freedom to choose my own perfect fishing spot, or what i want to catch?
Does being forced to follow the meta, to be able to catch any fish, due other combinations of lure/baits/setups on most cases will not amount to anything. Does this sound like complete freedom? (Yes, i understand fishes have prefrences, but all fish have "base" type of what they like and what they hunt/eat, not one specific combination in a very specific order)
In the end it's a fishing game, not a water/bird/plane watching simulator. The rate of fish you were able to catch has been going down over the years on all axis of possible fishing styles. With every gowing silver squeezes, how many times have items in store gone more expensive, how much more expensive are they from what they used to be? And ever slower releases of new content, right now it's been over a year since we've been able to have any new content within a game.
If im being honest, i don't really mind that gear is getting more expensive and few silver squeezes here and there, but the biggest part of my annoyance is that i simply cannot go about my day, log into RF4 and enjoy fishing, actually going on the lake or river and actually catch my preferred fish species/families. As the game stands right now, it's barely staying over an uninstall level for me, i do not actively play it, and im only going to open it up to play new map whenever it comes out.
Cheers!