The drop rates are just too bad to keep the players motivated (mp offers havent changed too much the last 2 months because of this).
All really good items we have to buy from fg earned in D II it seems (I dont buy for cash ofc).
Really played a lot and never found a top item. Lag sucks killing rods and exp / proficiencies, in higher levels proficiencies take too long to get,
we don't want to spend a fee for items we are not sure to sell in the time they stay on the mp in advance, etc.

I wrote Paul about some balance improvement ideas and didnt even get a simple answer.

Effect : No one buys for decent prices atm, eveybody tries to sell mid stuff (exclusive items like a 220 % ice for 14 k ... lol ?), no one really spends fg,
motivation is going down in lack of success in any way ... thats how a game starts decreasing.

e.g.:
- 2 sudden deaths for 3 x ep's suddenly approaching in solo gaming = - 30 % ice proficiency @ level 6. Takes 5 hours (if you dont die) - just imbalanced, killing fun.
- fishing with a 47 dura rod @ lvl 7 proficiency = 80 % of the tries must be cancelled for the snag counter is too high. Getting + 0.2 prof each successful reel. " " " same as above.

Just change some gaming stats, damned !!!

Honestly... I and a few others play Hardcore and solo quite a bit... I started with nothing on both cores
and found it doable... maybe... you should work on building your character to withstand those things... like add vita &/or use +life items,
I did when you could well in town and solo'd by Arena, which to tell you the truth, was in effect harder... well... welling was definately harder.

As for fishing etc... have you turned down your graphics to low? this will reduce some lag issues. also... what is your fishing Rank?
Are you fishing above your status?...

This is my SC toon... alot more profs lost on this baby... that is for sure:

http://forums.d2jsp.org/user.php?c=3&i=234344&p=274084

izDemonBash
Level 1 Barbarian
Core: Original
Life: 120 / 120
Mana: 202 / 202
Experience: 686,428
Strength: 60
Dexterity: 25
Intelligence: 15
Vitality: 60
Stat Points: 0
Kills: 2,228,244
Deaths: 109

My kills to deaths ratio is okay... 22 sword prof / 18 staff prof and others... but I am not as good as some pple here.

EDIT: Last time I played that toon: Mar 29 2011 02:52am

This post was edited by izParagonzi on May 26 2012 01:38am

Atm I fish with a 69 Dura Elm rod, quite expensive one for me since I dont buy fg for real money.
Still I have to cancel 75 % of my fishing attempts (lvl 7 as minimum to get + proficiency %) to make sure that this ~35 fg rod wont break.
50 % of the fish I get are sardines I cant use to skill up cooking.
---> 12,5 % each attempt is useful to me, takes about 1 minute I guess to get 0,05 proficiency.

That's an annoying imbalance to my mind because you have to invest a lot of time for a little success and a lot of anger losing rods in between what still happens even when you fish very carefully.
I have spent about 300 fg last two months I think only for rods and own only 2 of them still for the reasons above.
So where goes the fun aspect in relation to the frustration ...

(and don't ask me about losing rods in lag with 4 snags in a row)

Use tier 2 rods, work better for me at least...100% fishing attempts succeed...and almost all the fishes i try to cook get the 100%.

You can cancel the cooking process at mid bar, those still gives a decent amount of prof.

And getting half inv of fishes (the other half is full with fishes/rod) may take like 1-2 min for almost 1% prof...still a nice speed, nothing to complain about, at least by now.

Well fishing is really for e-peen, not for doing something in the game. I mean, what do you need fish for? Other than to say look I caught a fish this big. As far as I know, there isn't a quest that you cannot go to town and shrine during. So picking up a few shrinables during a climb is much more efficient than spending hours and hours fishing and cooking. So honestly...why fish other than for bragging rights? That being the case, it should be hard and frustrating.

Ah well, those big fish may help when 3 eps pop at lvl 6x...when you do a solo climb shrines run out eventually so those give a little help

I just fish so I can fill my guildies vault with crap sardines and they get mad about it (this is when i don't have t1 items)..

But yeah there are other skills much more usefull (say glyphing) but those take a lot of time to rank up, they pay off in the long term though.

sad but true, but it would still be faster to just hop on another char and solo to 3-5 and pick up the shrines and transfer them if you run out.

Playing Ladder Slasher:15

its not looking good for ls, if you ask me :/


wish there was like 50-100 online all the time but there isn't

.... definitely not true or you have a pine rod 90 life (how much life has your pine rod ?).
I fished with a pine +49 life rod on lvl 7 short time ago and this is far from 100 % success.
A snag can take about 40 % life from such a rod and 2 or 3 snags in the wrong situation break the rod as it happened now.

Pine rods with high life are rare and expensive (never seen one higher than 50 %), it took me some weeks to find that 49 life one for a decent price (I dont discuss 50 fg+ for an item that can be lost so easily).

This is just imbalanced, sry.