Hop? Just a vertical twitch, basically! It shouldn't require reeling in slack each hop to repeat because the bait drops back down. Successive hops do create enough slack that the angler must reel in or hop higher to continue the pattern. To compensate without reeling, most anglers just do a 15 degree jerk upwards. Then a 20 degree jerk, then 25, etc, until the slack is too great and they are forced reel some in. You could have the game programmed that success hops do this so that it feels natural to how it works in real life. Reset the upward angle of the hop back to the beginning angle after the player reels in and you have a perfect simulation of hopping. Why it matters to a real life angler or fishing enthusiast. There are a lot of techniques that can't be done realistically in this game because there isn't a hop. Texas rigging, jigs, wacky rigs, drop shot, shaky heads, Ned rigs, even some techniques like lipless crankbait, spoon and blade bait jigging. The world of weights, soft plastics, and hooks is a huge part of bass fishing. The hard plastics, cranks, buzzes and spinners are actually just a fraction of bass fishing. Why it matters to for the bottom line. I have a degree relating to games, worked on a couple too! I know in this day and age, something like this has to have a payoff to justify the hours. You could definitely increase your sales to bass fishers. You could definitely sell DLC lure packs. Your existing sponsors like googan have extensive soft plastic libraries that could fit into the game. You could also pick up sponsors that specifically deal with terminal tackles. You can't do that if there are no techniques dependent upon jigs, worm weights, mushroom heads(ned rigs), swivel weights, dropshot weights, or weedless hooks and widegap hooks. You could have owner mosquito hooks for drop shot. Big bite baits for shaky heads. Gamakatsu hooks for Texas rigs. Strike king and Booyah for skirted jigs. More baits to unlock. Weights to unlock. Hooks to unlock. More time people stay playing, higher likelihood they'll buy a new lake to keep it interesting. How would it fit into the existing control scheme? It could be added as an alternative to twitch just like you have alternative casting styles. After the cast has gone out, the "change casting style" button could do double duty as a "Change motion" button to swap between twitch and hop. The "Change casting style" button isn't active or used for anything after the cast is out, after all. ( I think the other stick is used for the trolling motor? In any case, it can take up the empty stick. Or the X button since players aren't going to try to drive the boat with line out. ) How would the bass react? Dead action soft plastics would trigger strikes on being hopped. These are your creature baits like your existing sponser's Googan bandito bug. All the kinds resembling crawfish would get reaction strikes. High action baits, ones that are long, flexible, and flutter a great deal, those get hit on the fall of a hop. They would be your lunker logs. Your Senkos and yum dingers. Your various finesse worms. What existing systems would it improve? Water column versatility, as the simulation already has fish at different depths and behavior profiles based on depths. The sinking and falling of the baits would become more critical in this fishing style, rather than line retrieval rate. It would give more of a point to pitching and flipping casting styles already implemented. Currently there isn't a bass fishing lure in the game that you can land on some lillypads and just toy with in order to get an eventual bite. How would tackle expand? Either the soft plastic would come with a predetermined hook and weight as noted in the description. Alternatively, to give terminal tackle sponsors more exposure AND to give the players a deeper simulation, choosing a soft plastic bait could then open up "Hook and weight" options. In the case of dropshots, "Set line clip" could be repurposed for how much distance there is between the top of the soft plastic and the weight beneath it. Or this could be set in the tackle screen. Behind the scenes, reward matching the right soft plastic with the right sort of hooks and weights. Finesse applications need light soft plastics. Heavy soft plastics need heavy weights and jigs. A Texas rig in shallow water needs a light weight. Dirty water? Big profiles and chartreuse or big profiles and dark color dead baits. Clear water? Natural colors, lots of movement instead of dead movement soft plastics. Etc. All these techniques would play into rod action as well. A finesse rod would be medium fast or moderate action for average size baits, and most likely a spinning reel. Ned rigs would be Medium light with moderate or slow action. Going up to baitcasters, casting jigs, weighted texas rigs, those would be medium heavy with a fast action, extra fast if they're football head jigs. So there would be room to give bonus to the bite simulation if the right rod action and spine was matched to the plastic, weight and presentation style, too! What if more research is needed? I strongly recommend tacticalbassin on youtube. These gentlemen film the soft plastics underwater. They extensively cover the way each rig behaviors with each type of plastic, and make recommendations on weights to use and colors to use in various conditions. Even better, they show strike footage. This would let you build your simulations on if a particular retrieve would trigger a strike on a pause, or in the middle of movement. Their footage is absolutely beautiful and they're very respectful of the fish, returning them to the water, not keeping them out of the water too long, and not being rough with throwing them back. I offer myself up as resource as well. I'll happy review videos for specific footage if requested or provide answers, as I know that the Dovetail team isn't geographically in the best place for getting a ton of time bass fishing and that it's a pretty big trip for you folks to come down to lake Travis!
I would also say there's room for high tackle point cost items and beginner tackle point items. Regular lead that are cheap, then tungsten weight for the high end within the game. The tungsten being smaller and having less wind resistance, and water resistance, would cast further and also sink faster than the same weight in lead.
