I completely understand why they were changed. I don’t want them reverted, but would it be possible to remove the decay timer on caught (shell)fish? If not, at least extend them like thrall pots and feed boxes so that we can actually go do something besides standing next to them in order to harvest our fish.
As it is now, I’d rather go fishing than, well, go fishing. Seriously, if they stay like this, you might as well remove them from the game completely and just make us craft a fishing pole and a net and go harvest fish by hand. At least then it’d be interactive.
Short decay timers made sense when shell/fish traps were passive generation. Now it is interactive, which means I must catch bait, bait traps, then ferry the product to processing before it expires.
Aside from increasing the grind and boredom factor, this has no positive impact on the game.
I’m not asking the traps reflect real life where trapped creatures live without issue. Like the OP, I am requesting they have a decay rate akin to the Thrall Pot or Animal Pen.
I’m all for fishing rods. Traps are clutter and another thing to micromanage. Fishing would be an actual active part of gameplay, and offer some chill downtime activity. That being said, it would yield less fish overall so making fish more valuable would be a good balance.