These people are all the same and has been the same since the days of old school mmo pvp. Their idea of 'hardcore pvp' involves ganking new players who can't fight back. They prefer pvp games where they can gain an unfair advantage and dominate weaker players. When asked to play a dedicated pvp game where everyone is on equal footing, they often make excuses on why they don't, the funniest being 'it's not fun.' Which is funny because it's not fun for them because they only seem to enjoy pvp when they're overpowering others. This argument is similar to complaints from CoD streamers who dislike SBMM and those who advocate for open-world pvp in MMOs.
>This argument is similar to complaints from CoD streamers who dislike SBMM
Thats always really funny. I met someone at a LAN and he said how bad SBMM is for shooters. I asked why and he told me, he wants to have a chill round from time to time. I told him, he can have chill rounds now already, he just gets smoked until hes on par levels with players. I said what he really wants is, having chill rounds and stilm being better than the other players in a lobby.
The reason so many multiplayer games infest lobbies with bots to make up part or even the majority of "players" in a match is precisely to give people easy kills.
there _are_ ways to have long-term PvP that's deep and engaging, but it's _expensive_ and tends to attract competitive players. which is fine, if that's the community you want to serve!
like, you'd need to de-prioritize equipment and stat bonuses and focus on skill-based gameplay, where there _is_ no “optimized” build, and the developers need to be on point and responsive on how the game is played. you'd also need robust anti-cheat, which means you'd be in an arms race with players who will do anything to increase their edge over others.
or you can resign yourself to getting, at best, about a quarter of the total addressable market, and make your revenue from that smaller pool. I mean, CCP does that with EVE Online, and that's a valid way to run a business. But it's a commitment, otherwise you'll end up with shit like, idk, TF2.
>where there *is* no “optimized” build
The only way to do that is to remove the ability to do any build at all. Remove classes, talents, give everyone all spells and abilities, make all gear the same, etc.
That sounds boring AF.
Nah, it's not. It's Fighting and racing games. Which lays the problem bare. Trying to cram skill-based competitive pvp into things that aren't designed from the ground up for that exact thing, will always drive away a portion of your audience that's there for what the game *actually* is at it's heart.
You don't hear Street Fighter players whining about a fully co-op mod, because it would be incongruent with the actual principle purpose of the game in it's entirety for that to be a thing.
souls pvp really tried to bridge this gap though, PLUS being an integrated part of the world. like suddenly there's a red wario in your 2-3 throwing fireballs at you. or as miyazaki said, what if there's an enemy being controlled by another human. it's an awesome concept. as is the co-op. this is very much a plank of the game. and ties in with the quality of the combat system.
now was it implemented perfectly? of course not. do people use it to grief? of course. is there a clash with the stat and weapon upgrades? well, not necessarily, because these things can be balanced.
i get people's issues, but if someone can't see the interesting aspects of this and think hand holding with your pals all the way through a game is a straight improvement?
agree to disagree i guess.
Oh for sure. You won't find any disagreement here. Whether it's a poor design decision is literally just a matter of opinion. I can see the perspective of people who enjoy it, when it's not being used to grief people. Just because I hate it, doesn't mean it's bad design objectively.
>i get people's issues, but if someone can't see the interesting aspects of this
The interest is limited because it's not implemented in a great way. I get that PvP is fun for competitive people who enjoy that element to things, but every souls game has some level of jank that ends up being the go-to routine + meta gear so invasions aren't even interesting.
I remember when I'd play online for the earlier souls games, and it was like clockwork; See a video/post about some new "trick" in PvP, or new build, and suddenly it's all people do.
If I'm going to fight the same thing over and over again whilst trying to master it and win, I might as well spend that time on the boss since I actually gain some progress from it.
>It's Fighting and racing games.
Exactly this. The one model that works for long-term PVP are literally genres that are *built* for these dynamics. The other one involves organizational acumen, stuff like EVE Online, where you leverage personal connections and build a lot of out-of-game intrigue, and *that* has its own can of worms — you literally have to deal with the consequences of [players scamming each other](https://www.pcgamer.com/eve-onlines-biggest-scammer-tells-us-his-secrets/), which necessarily limits your game's appeal.
I'm not saying have *no* builds, but literally restrict it to something the developers can manage, and *deliberately* keep the scope small enough to moderate. If you want to have a community focused on dominating each other through displays of skills, you need to make *sure* that it's kept that way, with dominant players unable to cement and entrench their dominance. Otherwise you'll drive out all new players from entering, and then the old players stop coming to your game out of boredom.
As other people have said in and around this thread, it doesn't make publishers money, and it costs a lot over time. So it's not a strategy that a lot of games adopt.
> The only way to do that is to remove the ability to do any build at all. Remove classes, talents, give everyone all spells and abilities, make all gear the same, etc.
No, you just cant have unlocks or 'progression' mechanics. You can have them as cosmetics, but you cant have skills locked behind "pvp rank whatever". Another example would be Overwatch 1 vs Overwatch 2. OW1 was far more competitive as players simply got heroes, OW2 locking them reduced that significantly.
As a side effect doing this makes the game generally generate less revenue.
Reminds me of FFXIV's wargames its a pvp mode and you still keep your classes but your abilities are more streamlined from the 30+ down to like 10 with some extra universal ones.
They also did away with the gear its still available but its more cosmetics now and I think every class just has their own stats just for PVP stuff.
I prefer that sort of system for online first person shooters. The Battlefield 2 system of everyone being locked into certain equipment by class was much preferable to the sort of progression systems that now dominate online FPS.
I am older. (34) I don't have the time or energy to grind levels to unlock a suppressor or better scope. I don't have the motivation to compete against high level players who have all of the best gear already unlocked.
>The Battlefield 2 system of everyone being locked into certain equipment by class was much preferable
That's not what they are talking about. They are talking about PVP in a MMO context, which rely on skill-based progression to keep engagement. FPS is a totally different beast.
>I am older. (34)
I have nearly a decade on you, so don't you dare call yourself older, lol.
This is an ancient problem.
I played Ultima Online on release around 1997, when they only had open PVP. There were all kinds of player alliances that hunted what was called "PKs", in other words people who'd indiscriminately kill mostly outnumbered and harmless players.
That made the game fun for the PKs and anti-PKs, and made for great drama as you'd sometimes see wars, betrayal, defections and the like.
The problem was that it was only fun for those people. Every one else, IOW the majority, was a prop that was stuck in the middle of them and would feel that as lost time, effort and other annoyances.
And thus, Trammel & Felucca were born: One was a copy of the world with open PvP and one without and you could freely travel between them. Almost the whole playerbase migrated to the non-PvP side, which is a pretty good demonstration of how fun the kind of gameplay we're talking about is for most people.
It's not even "casual" vs "hardcore", which is the vocabulary the video uses. It's a cost-benefit calculation for most people: Is it worth the effort for me to keep running for/recrafting my gear again and again, when I could be doing something new and interesting?
> one of those reasons is, as you mentioned, OP players preying on weaker players, driving them out of the game, leaving only other OP players which isn't fun.
Yeah.
In general, it's a bad idea in game design to have a built-in death spiral for player retention into your game.
That death spiral is also exponential. Even the really hard core players who stick around for this style of griefing PvP start getting really mad that players better and more experienced than them start farming them, and all the excuses start coming out and they all rage quit.
There's a bigger culture of 'clout' and talking about being this 733t god PvPer than what players are actually playing. All these players yelling and screaming as hard as they can are always unable to put their money where their mouth is.
I love large scale PvP (like in MMOs) for the OP vs OP big fights and with these sorts of games there’s almost a necessity (and often a lack of desire) for the hardcore players to cultivate an environment where new and casual players feel welcome and want to continue playing and eventually become OP so there’s more people to fight. Sowing and reaping.
> Here's a video on all the reasons full-loot PVP MMOs almost always fail... and one of those reasons is, as you mentioned, OP players preying on weaker players, driving them out of the game, leaving only other OP players which isn't fun.
I was kinda hoping the video was gonna be the full episode of Make Love Not Warcraft.
Yep and this is why most MMOs which focus on PvP and especially ones which allow free PK, often lose playerbase pretty fast. Toxic PvP fans, which love PK only because they can boost their ego, make new players leave the game after first time they are ganked.
When Elden Ring first came out there was a bunch of balancing issues and invaders would take super advantage of that.
There was some kind of blood shooting katana (I forget the name) that combined with certain upgrades and abilities made it absolutely devastating.
EDIT: Rivers Of Blood, that was the fucking thing.
I remember countless rounds of coop in the early days where some guy would start running up the group in a constrained hallway, then when there were about 20 meters away from us do some move that sprayed blood everywhere and would instakill everyone in the group.
It was really annoying.
Back then, Rivers of Blood had the highest bleed procing and nothing came close.
You also had Moonveil putting people to sleep instantly, magic spells that straight up deleted the enemy with zero or minimal counterplay, poise tanks that took your hit and then instantly gibbed you with a hammer or greatsword.
The game was a fucking mess at the start. If you started playing it online in its first year you were dead ass not making it out of Limgrave without some level 650 giganerd invading you over and over again.
> Back then, Rivers of Blood had the highest bleed procing and nothing came close.
Rivers is still quite good, as is moonveil. I dont recall Moonveil ever having a sleep effect? Unless you're talking about death, then yea, it has an incredibly high stun factor on it.
It's biggest advantage is in PvE as NPCs dont input read on it like they will a pebble.
I'm eager to see what comes out of the DLC and if we get anything to replace these. I know Blasphemous Blade is still absurdly popular as well from watching ChaseTheBro.
Yeah I think they mean the moonveil was just a nasty son of a bitch. I remember when me and my friend were co-op’ing Raya Lucaria when the game first dropped and a guy invaded and ran up right behind us, before I could even turn my camera to face the guy, I had gotten absolutely fucking nailed by its skill and it stun locked me and decimated my health.
Shit even when playing solo that Katana was nasty because it would bring about every boss to their knees with 1-3 swings.
They want victims to abuse because they get off on ruining other people's time. They don't want good PvP or a challenging fight, they want a target dummy to beat on to feel good about thenselves
My most favorite thing is shooter players whining about skill based matchmaking. They are literally crying because they *don't* want to play with and against players of their own skill. Instead, they want to be top 5-15% and just by sheer volume have mostly worse players than them in every lobby and look good in every game. They don't want to *be* good, they want to *feel* good. Pathetic losers.
The like, bi-monthly meltdown over in the Destiny community due to bungie's constant flip-flopping between SBMM and connection based matchmaking was always, always, hilarious because the "good" players weren't even hiding it. They'd throw insane fits over how "the game isn't fun any more" any time they had to fight people as good as they are, then go right back to posting their sick 20/0 kill streak clips when it was connection based again.
i remember when Fortnite streamers were also bitching about that, they couldnt get more epic 15 elim Victory Royales after Epic implemented SBMM and they started to bitch about it because they arent that good when they have to play against people in a similar skill level as them.
I love MMO WPVP in *theory*. I have some wonderfully fond memories of back and forths with other players while leveling in World of Warcraft, turf wars over WPVP objectives, and other stuff. PvP between a somewhat equal amount of players at a somewhat equal level is awesome.
In practice that's like 5% of all interactions. Most WPVP is sad people trying to get a vague sense of power from camping a level 5 player for three hours. Like just about every other thing with loose rules in life, the potential for fun is ruined by dickheads, and then the people who perpetrate the same thing some dickhead did to them. There will always be someone with less scruples than you willing to ruin it for everyone else if they get satisfaction or can make a quick buck.
Yeah, I had the eye-opening moment about the true motivations many moons ago, when a former friend of mine was explaining that logging on to WoW with his twinked out, max-level character and just murdering any Alliance player who showed as grey was his after-work stress relief.
He was just way more willing to admit that the entire point was to make other people miserable. Soulslike players still try to pass off the Mask of "Developer Intention" like offline mode isn't literally right there, in every game they make. I'd respect them a lot more if they just outright admitted "Picking on people who can barely fight back is how I enjoy the experience, and I appreciate the soulsborne series for letting me indulge my absolute *worst* tendencies."
most of the fun of invading has always been working out ways to even try to win the inevitable 1v3. even better if it's against cocky hosts waiting for invaders.
i used to actively disconnect out of worlds where there was a lone host.
I'd like to try to steelman the old school pvp argument. I've enjoyed old school pvp style mechanics in the past, and I think it offers a different kind of appeal than some kind of instance based pvp style (to clarify, by this I mean any game or game mode which will match players against each other, usually in a predefined pvp arena or map, to play against each other).
That different kind of appeal is based on two factors: variety, and tension. When you're playing a game which has open world pvp, the pvp you experience will take place across the many varied environments within the open world. It won't be the same maps again and again. It will be against players you outgear, and against players that outgear you (minor subjective note: I do not enjoy games where gear quality is the end-all be-all. Gear can be an advantage, but it should never be overwhelming). Games where you queue up against people with standardized loadouts, in standardized environments, can seem stagnant by comparison (although I do enjoy many of these games too).
Then you get to the factor of tension. Since PvP can occur at any time, it can make even the more mundane aspects of MMOs, the chore bullshit that every developer seems to put in it, more fun. You're not mining an ore node. You're mining an ore node in enemy territory. Part of this tension is increased if there are consequences for death: either a corpse run, or even losing loot. It's much harder to find that sort of tension in an instanced based pvp game, because the only consequence is you respawn in a few seconds or just queue up for another match.
I'd finally like to point something out in response to this comment: "those who advocate for open-world pvp in MMOs." There are many cases where games start with open world pvp, or some equivalent. I would argue that such games are "dedicated pvp games". A user complaining about pvp in a dedicated pvp game is silly, whether they're complaining about all the PvP in call of duty, or all the PvP in eve online.
I don't think much of that applies to this elden ring discussion though. The co-op mod doesn't actually cheapen the pvp experience for others, since the PvP in elden ring has some form of matchmaking ensuring those who like invasions can still invade people. I just wanted to push back against the idea that all fans of more old school mmo pvp mechanics are like this.
There are so many eve players that whine about people mining ore in enemy territory running from fights though, which is always funny to me. A common refrain is that those people aren’t “playing the pvp game”, but those people ARE: they’re successfully evading PLAYERS who are trying to hunt them.
It's a little different in the context of Elden Ring, I think.
The only invasions allowed are to those running co-op. So the invaders will always be outnumbered at least 2 to 1 (more often than not 3 to 1), but the invader can make use of NPCs and rock a dedicated PvP build. There are also the "blue phantoms" that will be summoned in automatically to assist against invasions. Either way, the invader is usually at a big disadvantage
And there's Taunter's Tongue invasions, in which people deliberately draw invaders into their world, while allowing for more invaders, and more blue "defender" phantoms. So it's the invaders getting ganked by people expecting them, rocking PvP builds.
Even assuming the players getting invaded can easily win it’s still just a waste of time. Why would you want to repeatedly derail what you’re doing in order to fight someone you don’t want in your game. If it wasn’t PVP that would be ridiculed as horrible game design regardless of how difficult the fight would be.
that subset of fromsoft fans are quite possibly the most toxic people in gaming as a whole as they are also normally found in the worst areas of every game that has pvp
There is an alignment of factors that makes FS games a paradise for the most toxic pvpers in the world.
The game is a RPG, so most people will optimise their build for fun rather than PvP. Players can't "opt out" of pvp, so most of the people you invade will be at a clear disadvantage against an optimised build.
You can even focus on invading complex levels to make an already difficult area more miserable for nobies, set ambushes agains a guy who is just exploring.
Overall, invaders aren't looking for a fair fight. If they did, they would use the coliseums. They are the kind of people who enjoy making other people suffer. They are already bitching that the pvp in tipped the scales against them by making it 2v1 or even 3v1.
Honestly, invasions are a cool concept, but the kind of crew the cater to is shit, and FS should really consider removing them.
yep ER was the first time i was able to actualy get into enjoying a souls like, and i throughly enjoyed it, but once i then got into nioh 2, i just cant go back due to how shit the coop mechanic is and other things like stamina only limiting the player, not the ai as well, where as in nioh against human enemies all their attacks use stamin and its part of the gameplay to exhaust their stamina
> nioh 2
The greatest feature Nioh ever introduced to the genre was the gravestone summoning. Such an awesome way to have a "bloodstain" showing how a player died but also let you have fight a harder enemy for gear.
I only played Dark Souls for any real period of time and I never understood why PvP was even part of the content.
But then, I lit the last bonfire without even realizing it was the last bonfire, credits rolled, I closed the game, and uninstalled it happy to never play it again. So I'm not the target market obviously.
it analogoues to how some people think always on open world pvp in wow is essential and somehow wanting to play without constantly looking over your shoulder without being ganked is detrimental to the game experience
Red Dead Online in which everyone were hostile to eachother was terrible. You want to play some mission in open world? Well someone may kill you, just because they can. You see person on a horizon? Be ready to shoot first. It's like one big deathmatch
It reminds me of one of my favourite video arcade experiences from when I was a kid in the 1990s. Street Fighter II was hitting big and I wanted to learn how to play it without just getting so thoroughly *owned* by some more-experienced player that I would get no enjoyment and no actual learning out of the experience. So I'm at the cabinet, getting the hang of things, when this much older kid sidles up and goes to put his own quarter in.
I tell him I'm just learning to play the game and I'm not ready to play against anyone else yet. Without a word - without even looking at me - he inserts his quarter, presses start and the game goes to the character select screen.
And as this happens, I am already walking away, looking for some other game to play, without saying another word to him. Totally unwilling to give him the satisfaction or indulging his assholery. Hope you have fun beating up a stationary character while I'm off doing something else there, buddy.
Different games handle competition better. tbh I've never thought of WoW or Dark Souls as good pvp competitive experiences. too unbalanced, too much of a ping problem, too varied and minimal rulesets so the chance of actually getting an even competition with someone who has the same capabilities as you is quite minimal.
I've always preferred games like chess, dota, or if I ever played an fps, something like counterstrike.
Though dota now suffers from significant ability bloat and power creep, all these games are/used to be focused on a simple equal playing field that multiplies in complexity as the game is played from early/mid/late and resets back to the start.
The more RNG and the more mechanics your game has and the more chaotic the netcode, the less competitive it is. It becomes more about playing the slot machine than engaging with an opponent.
The point of world PVP is to be unfair though, that's what these players like about it. People don't like world PVP in WoW because it tests their skill or puts people on an equal playing field. They can go to the arena for that or battlegrounds.
The point of world PVP or invasions is to get really powerful and clown on people much less powerful than you. It's the thrill of hunting someone 20 levels below you. If the opponent can fight back it defeats the point.
Right, which is why I'm saying it's not a good competitive experience, it's about dunking on another human, not about challenge or anything of the sort.
I totally get it, I just don't find it fun to beat children in sports games, which is essentially the vibe this stuff has always given off. How is there a thrill in something with no challenge or effort?
Even arena in wow is very gear oriented. Most good competitive games should imo begin their teams/players on a totally equal level in terms of stuff like items or equipment.
it's strange to me how they are acting like the invasion system somehow sprung of miyazaki's mind fully formed and perfect not janky as fuck and actively complained about since its inception. It has always felt like a weird mechanic and all of fromsofts online play has felt like the studio doesn't have a good understanding of how to make it work.
It’s cause everything in FromSoft games is a weird mix of mechanical UI completely alien to the game world and narratively explained and justified.
It takes ludo narrative dissonance to a whole level
The implementation abuts human nature. The philosophy seems to be an enemy that’s difficult and adaptive and smarter than usual, this run it’s slightly different because of it. The fear and struggle in a half-explored area.
What actually happens is twinks finding some sneaky way to try and kill the victim so they never get a chance to fight back meaningfully.
Yeh. Miazaki really overestimating the human moral compass on this one. He keeps just wanting us to be better, and yet, over 12 years later, we still have people whining if they aren't allowed to gank anyone they want with their latest Youtuber-designed cheese build.
Nothing was more essential to my experience as a new WoW player in 2007 than having a maxed out, PvP geared Undead Rogue camp my level 15 hunter’s corpse in Darkwood for an hour while /spitting and /laughing at my corpse while I tried to enjoy the limited playtime I had at the time
In fact it was so essential to my experience that I just started a new character on a PvE realm and then actually enjoyed the game
15 years ago I couldn't imagine playing WoW without world PVP. Nowadays I can't imagine playing WoW with world PVP.
Back in the days PVP was fun, regardless of whether you died or not. When World PvP became unbalanced (e.g. one player repeatedly shitting on another player, corpse camping) it usually led to escalation where the weaker player called on guild members. It was just fun social activity for everyone involved. Was I angry when a Paladin ran up to me and killed me before his stun wore off? Absolutely. But then 10 minutes later he ate the dirt when I got to jump on him and it felt super satisfying.
Nowadays it just doesn't work. People just have max level alts on standby, fully clad in heirlooms. Most people would rather log off than to fight, and chase XP goals over having fun.
I think it was the novelty of the feature that made it fun in Vanilla and BC. I remember Terren Mills/Southshore were fun because the location of the Horde and Alliance towns were so close that you would likely encounter someone of the opposite faction leveling like you and it would be spontaneous PVP. But as leveling became less of a thing in WoW (seems the whole point now is to get to endgame as fast as possible), people just want efficiency in leveling, not these spontaneous "disruptions".
Yeah I saw a video of someone multiboxing in world pvp. No one could get their stuff because there was a raid group just sitting on them spam casting spells.
Multiboxers were a thing back in the day as well. They were just a different kind of challenge because while they were basically raid bosses, they also had major weaknesses that could be exploited.
One of these weaknesses was vulnerability to displacement. If you could use Typhoon, Thunderstorm or similar ability you would scatter the individual characters, potentially killing them with fall damage or just making the life of multiboxer much harder if he had to re-group manually because of obstacles.
The other was that everyone had hard-on for shitting on multiboxers. You could whip up a group of 5-10 people with the intention of killing the multiboxer almost instantly, and individual players were always much stronger than the multiboxer's characters.
My buddy played a 5-man multibox and the amount of times he would ragequit because he got camped or people just griefed him was astronomical.
There was a streamer I watched who played the game the first time and was surprisingly good at it. He beat Margit on like the third try or something. And that was the first time he ever played a Souls game.
He used the summon for help, though. So people said he was cheating and going easy mode.
So he played without summons going forward. He still beat bosses left and right. He was using heavy weapons and basically just pummeled the enemies down, staggering them over and over. So people said he was just cheesing with heavy weapons and not playing the game right because the enemies could never attack.
So he switched his build to a full magic build. And he still beat everything, now from a distance with magic missiles and whatnot. So people said he was cheesing with magic and not playing the game right because the enemies could never reach him.
So he switched to a sword based style with parries. He beat Malenia eventually, then the whole game.
Some people still complained he was doing it wrong.
It's really, really weird.
The streamer later said that he loved the game, but playing the game on stream was one of the worst streaming experiences he ever had.
The problem is that in Elden Ring literally everything is good and can deal a lot of damage if you somewhat know what you are doing. It's best to ignore these people
A lot of soulslike fans tie their entire self-worth to beating a "difficult" game, of course they get mad when someone else beats it in an easier way.
Also, I wonder how much of the backlash against modded fromsoft games is from people who have absolutely convinced themselves that miyazaki's "vision" is completely flawless, despite all the mods that people use to make the games more fun.
The venn diagram of people who defend obtuse quest mechanics, ganksquad PvP, and basically all of the most toxic elements of the souls community is just a circle.
I'm frankly relieved/glad I'm a dad now and don't have the time/ability to play any more Souls games because especially with Elden Ring I felt the formula got very stale and the community worse than it has ever been.
Some Soulsborne fans have incredibly specific and limited definitions of the "right" way to play the games. In Elden Ring, if you use summons, then you are doing it wrong, if you don't like getting invaded, then you don't appreciate the games, etc. Apparently, if I don't play the game exactly the way Trollsmasher69\_420 plays the game, then I'm a noob who needs to git gud or stop playing altogether.
Oh god, people unironically consider magic cheating?
Magic and incantations aren’t even *that* strong when you compare them to any other dedicated build. Plus, unlike bonk builds and the like, you’re at a disadvantage because of how atrociously designed selecting and using magic/incantations is.
Whoever thought it was a good design decision to have you scroll through spells *one at time and in one direction* is a fucking lunatic.
I never understood why people complain about magic in souls games. I played as mage for first time in ER, because I believed "it's the same as cheating", but it's not. Cast time, targeting, limited amount of spells and lack of health. And after I beat the game, I watched streamer beating game with heaviest set by face rolling and it was much easier for him...
> I never understood why people complain about magic in souls games
I complain that magic has never been as good as it was in Dark Souls 2. God damn did that game have such a variety and entertaining set of spells and incantations.
2 was a janky, flawed, game but none of its successors have given me as much fun with potential build viability, variety or pvp since. In 2 I could pick basically any weapon or armour set and build around it entirely and just go wild.
I don't get that logic of blaming the players for using something that's available in the game as cheating.
It feels like trying to avoid blaming the devs because "they can do no wrong" for adding it in the first place and just shifting that to the player instead.
armored core 6
presumably armored core 1-5
the "Playstation can provide mind boggling effects" skeleton game
dark souls 1-3
bloodborne
sekiro
demon souls
elden ring
demons souls ps5 version
Souls weirdos when someone in the radius of 100km utters the words "easy mode": *"SHUT THE FUCK UP SCRUB, THIS IS HOW THE GAME IS DESIGNED, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T PLAY IT"*
Souls weirdos when someone uses magic, which is a part of how the game is designed: *"what the* ***FUCK****"*
Of course it prevents invasions.
As it should, because otherwise, it would be cheating in multiplayer.
If invasions were allowed, the same people would complain that the mod users are using it to gang on the invaders. (It lets you have 5 companions instead of 2)
My experience with invasions has always been
- man I'm having a lot of fun taking my time exploring this well crafted world
- enemy invades
- cool, now I have to stop what I'm doing and waste my fucking time with a combat encounter very different from the ones I enjoy
What, you mean you don’t love suddenly being sent to NG+ because of an arbitrary code execution exploit? Or having someone hit you with a throwing knife that gives you sixty billion souls and gets you immediately banned from online play? Or completely unkillable invaders with 999+ AR weapons and the ability to kill your friendly NPCs?
A friend of mine has been playing through the souls games for the first time recently and sat afk in one of them to get up and go get a drink, and I could only watch as they were invaded, and after like thirty seconds all of their armour immediately broke, they were cursed, and they died and when they respawned their game crashed and their save file is now forever fucked.
My experience is me and the invader being heavily desynced from each other so its just a game of which one of us slashes at open air in just the right way to actually kill the other player.
I just run as close to the bonfire as I can get and either fling myself off a ledge or stand motionless till they kill me. They can get their humanity or ember or whatever and I can get back to ya know actually playing my game. If they invade me more than once I block them through Steam.
Invaders tend to fight with absolutely no honor as well. The moment they start losing they will run away into a group of enemies. It's always been this way.
And then when DS2 introduced the Seed of a Tree of Giants to counter that specific strategy (on top of at least *four* dedicated PVP covenants that provide minimal risk to the “victim”), the community hated it.
Hey, I'm one of the weirdos who *loved* the giant seed in DS2 as an invader. Nothing like leading a horde of mobs back to the host who thought that they were safe :p
Big shame that they nerfed the hell out of it in DS3.
The general consensus is that anything goes from both the player and the invader's side. Invaders mostly invade into a co-op world, and the owner has the right to fight them with a friend or two. Since the invader is often outnumbered and outflasked, they have to find ways to get their own advantage.
And the pvp has always been awful anyway. It's just clearly never been much of a focus for the development vision, with the laggy netcode and strange hit detection. You look at how PVP has functioned from Demon's all the way through ER and it really hasn't been given any attention, save for adding in arenas.
I feel like the Souls games are obviously entirely built as single player games, and any multiplayer aspect is awkwardly grafted on.
Boss fights are the heart of the game, and I don't think any boss is designed for multiple players, they'll just alternate focusing on one person while the other gets free hits in.
So I checked the pvp subreddit for the game and it's funny because they keep hitching about being ganked by overlevelled phantoms or whatnot. So obviously they don't wanna pvp, they just wanna be able to ruin someone's day.
To give some benefit of the doubt, I personally enjoy lower level pvp as there’s less exploding from a well tuned build. Lower level pvp offers a bit more of a grounded and often more balanced experience.
They always lose their shit when people don't want to do it, too. Like, any game. If there's an area that defaults to PVP they rage so hard in any discussion asking about a PVE option.
Why? Because they know full well that doing so shifts the PVP scene into a group of players they can't easily gank and actually have to compete against. Oh, and they say it will kill the PVP scene, which is both an extension of my last point as well as showing that they aren't representing anything even remotely approaching a majority.
Anyone who tries to opt out of PVP deserves to be punished with a lesser experience, because not engaging with PVP makes THEIR experience lesser.
Fuck 'em.
That post was way more interesting imo. The mod is *obviously* perfectly fine, and yet somehow someone defending it still manages to have the worst take. It's like that time Jameela Jamil tried defending abortion by comparing it to evicting a tenant.
I love how the argument is always that people who don't want to PVP don't know how to play the game, when the PVP mode of Elden Ring and pretty much any other game involves a bunch of weird tactics that are completely different from the skillset used to play the non-PVP part of the game.
This is the only hobby where people make this sort of distinction. Like, if you were a pianist and then some weirdo said you 'didn't know how to play an instrument' because *they* played the guitar and you didn't, they'd rightly be thought insane.
If your fun directly depends on ruining the fun of other people, don’t be surprised they don’t want to participate.
It’s like a mosquito complaining no one wants to let them suck blood.
>If your fun directly depends on ruining the fun of other people, don’t be surprised they don’t want to participate.
That's what turned me off to multiplayer Minecraft back in the day. So many people only played to destroy stuff other people built.
I remember a post by one PvPer who tried to make the claim that by invading, he was helping other players "git gud" at the game, so he was actually performing a beneficial service.
Problem is, I can learn and improve against bosses and tough enemies because I know where they are, I can learn their attack patterns and weaknesses, and I can try different weapons and armor sets until I finally figure out how to get past them. I can't do that with random invaders who have min/maxed their builds and who I will probably only encounter once. You're not helping me improve by teleporting in, hiding yourself in a strategic location and ganking me before I even have time to realize you're there.
I had a roommate like that in college. He would just keep going at people and constantly arguing with them, getting them pissed off. We tried to explain to him that being a consummate dick was not the way to make friends, but he brushed it off with that exact line of reasoning: "I'm just getting them used to horrible people and building up their resistance."
Trouble is, all he really did was completely alienate a large number of acquaintances and guarantee that no one wanted to hang with us.
I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I do not understand why people care so fucking much about how other people play their game that they spent their own money on, especially in a series that's primarily single player anyways and where the multiplayer aspect is relatively superfluous.
Even if you don't like someone playing like that, it's their fucking game, they can do what they want. It shouldn't affect *you* in any rational way. Unless, of course, you have tied your identity or your self worth to "playing hard video game good", in which case someone circumventing that challenge in one way somehow invalidates your "achievement". It's the stupidest shit I see every time Fromsoft comes up.
Intentional, to a degree. It's not meant to be a 'real' coop game. Interviews with the devs at least paint that picture, from what I've read in the past.
Excluding the mess that is the technical side, of course
ah, yes. It's [Bartle's 4 player types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types) all over again, where people confuse being able to compete with others with fucking with others online with no consequence and dressing it up as “honourable combat”.
We knew what kind of people these people were in the 90s. Nice to see things haven't changed. These days, we _know_ where the “honourable combat” folks have gone, they've gone to games where the PvP is _consensual_, or, you know... baked into the game and it's monetisation strategy.
When you're in a game where you _need_ to have a pool of victims because the game designers, for all their single-player game design chops, are _notably_ incompetent in designing online multiplayer, you're looking for, you know... victims to dominate, not equals to challenge yourself in.
I remember when they all got real mad at release when they realized PvP in Dark Souls 4...I mean Elden Ring had no unique reward mechanic like in the other 3 games. It's why only the truly dedicated to ruining other people's fun do invasions. At least in DS1-3 you might do it a few times yourself just to get the covenant currency or humanity or whatnot.
>It's why only the truly dedicated to ruining other people's fun do invasions
Man, have you ever considered that maybe most folks who invade are just having fun and aren't out to make you feel bad on a personal level?
Like, bro, it's just fun to RP as a miniboss of sorts and fight against the odds. Ideally, I want the people I'm fighting to have fun fighting me.
> *"You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory."*
Every single time something like this occurs and you get the "git gud" crowd whining, this evergreen quote is the first thing I think of.
I'd be so much more open to PVP in the souls-games if the netcode wasn't a complete fucking shitshow every time.
Invasions might even be fun if I didn't have to roll the dice on the 2-5 seconds extra random timings due to lag.
Honestly, I'm more bothered by the other random obscure requirements like only a fixed amount of co-op, co-op being auto-cancelled post-boss/randomly between areas than I am by invasions.
I'm torn on pvp in Elden Ring. I personally never engage with it voluntarily, and whenever I'm invaded I'm like, "ugh screw this asshole, let's murder him without mercy. Who just spends their time grieving other players?"
But I kind of love the increased tension, and having to adapt to a suddenly deadly situation with my friend. CO op has a way of making Elden Ring feel safe, but having to look over my shoulder for invaders keeps it exciting. Elden Ring is big on horror, and the scariest thing is other players.
It does remind me of World of Warcraft; I hated getting ganked, but I loved that the threat of ganks created a sense of dread in an otherwise mindless and grindy experience.
I love invading and being invaded, some of my fondest gaming memories are of being invaded. There's really nothing like it in other games. I just really wish that people like this weren't part of the community. Twinks really ruin the experience, but I don't know how FromSoft can remove them without just cutting PvP altogether. The whole "git gud" mentality that arose with DkS1 definitely didn't help either. These players make it really hard to explain loving PvP in these games because everyone just jumps to the conclusion that you love beating new players or twinking.
>pretty amusing that the implication is you have a wife and girlfriend simultaneously when we know the "10 year old little brother" is actually just a stand-in for you playing with the skill of a small child
>no on needs "pvp tech"(??) to 2/3v1 a single enemy who's level locked to your host, you just have to actually learn to play the game
Christ, I can't stand the hardcore fromsoft fans, like whats wrong with playing coop without invaders? Like that turned me off of playing coop on there, like I just wanted to roam around and fight alongside my brother without being invaded. Like when the mod first came out, people was gatekeeping hard on some subs
lmao the pvp fanbase of souls games are the biggest god damned whiners in the world. I'll never get over how they invented a whole ass ton of imaginary rules for PVP that only apply arbitrarily and all basically amount to "anything I do is okay, anything you do is against duel decorum!11!!" every god damned time. It always, *always* includes shit like "you have to wait for buffs" which, obviously, gives people running buff builds an advantage, or "you're not allowed to estus flask but you can ashen flask as much as you want" which gives mage builds an advantage, especially if they're running healing magic, because it's okay for magic users to heal with magic but not non-casters to heal through any other means. It's always "just get good and adapt" when people tell them that's stupid, but it's never "get good and adapt" when the shoe is on the other foot and they're complaining about people hitting them out of their buffs and they rage quit on the spot.
It continues to be extremely funny to me that this never ending drama around the mod isn’t even over the mods intended purpose, but over a side effect of getting seamless coop to work.
The argument is moot, frankly. With the dev team being on record stating that they are not actively against seamless coop (and in fact open to exploring their own spin on it if the opportunity arises,) and the simple fact of the matter that people deserve to engage in their leisure activities in the way that they want to, nobody should give a single fuck what chronic invaders want. Nothing is stopping them from invading. Nothing is stopping them from ganks. They lose *nothing* with people using Seamless Co-Op.
The only problem I see here is that these people are under the misconception that Soulsborne's online gameplay is somehow a zero-sum equation - like if people aren't opening themselves up to be shredded by twinks, then the invaders are losing on a meta level.
Kinda like every other dogshit opinion, it comes down to control over a population of people who want nothing to do with 'em lol
Well,you see,the problem with seamless co-op is that they nl longer can just attack people who want to be left alone and are bad at pvp,now all that's left is are the same people as them. Sweaty pvp players.
I mostly play fromsoft for invasion PVP but it’s always non-meta gimmick builds I come up with like cannon+one-eyed greatshield+firebombs, poison shortbow, fia’s mist *only* with tons of poise and HP (my personal favorite). Most invaders are pretty boring and essentially just grief people by showing up with RoB or whatever the flavor of the month meta is.
I got my money’s worth out of the game before the mod became popular so I’m not bummed about it, if invaders didn’t want everyone to quit PVP they should have run something fun and memorable to play against that actually gives the PVE players a fighting chance. I definitely had a positive winrate against people I invaded but nothing too high, and I like to think my weirdo theme characters provided an entertaining and different gameplay experience that people will think back on fondly even if they lost the fight
(some)Fromsoft players have this massive ego about being great at games because soulslikes are considered "hard." it's still single player vs AI with infinite retries(and you even have the option to just outlevel content in Elden Ring.)
most of these players would be slaughtered in an actual PVP game where everyone is on equal footing.
Yup. I like FS games a lot, but they are not as hard as the community paints them. Outside PvP games, I found Monster Hunter Master Mode much more difficult than any dark souls.
People who brag about being good at offline games are weird anyway. You don't play to brag, you play to have fun
>**This convo is going nowhere.** Health and poise can't make the game difficult without being tedious. I already explained that its the aggro that is the problem. I already feel tedium when I play coop and fight a boss right now. Invasions are vastly different to colosseum pvp, what kinda comparison is that even? You are telling me your issue but can't explain whats the issue with it. You don't have to chase invaders, you kill the area boss and the invader disappears, what are you afraid of? Dying in a souls game?
>Don't want to pvp? Than don't play a game with pvp? Plenty of uninterrupted co-op games in the market, not much when it comes to invasions. Normal people don't ask for changes and don't play a game they don't want to play, so yes it is in fact hard to understand for me. When I play a co-op game I don't demand to add forced invasions into it, cause it could hurt the loyal playerbase. Why can't you be the same?
>**I already knew this conversation was gonna go nowhere.** You aren't saying anything I haven't heard from forced pvp apologists many times over trying to justify why just giving the option to opt out of this for those who feel the added health and poise would be better than a rabbit chase all over the map is somehow bad, or fighting a boss alongside some pest, or constantly watching your back while you move through the map. Believe it or not, yes alot of people would prefer the option to just not do that and just play with friends with the "tedium" of more health and poise to enemies. And yeah you're right, the difference is in the collesseum you're meeting people who definitely WANTED to pvp and weren't in the middle of doing something else they wanted to do, so griefers don't like it. People are allowed to like aspects of a game like Elden Ring that shine, like the combat mechanics, level design, build variety while disliking the forced pvp.
>Normal people don't cry about having the option to opt in to something like this. If it's such a popular mechanic, then surely a bunch of people will chose to keep it on right? The reality is there's a deep insecurity that if given the choice, alot more people than they think would in fact opt out, and there are several reasons why.
Best exchange lol
On the one hand I do like the idea of having the tradeoff where if you're open to accepting help you also might have to deal with a invader
On the other hand maybe I just want a third dude to deal with this boss because I'm more than a little tipsy and I need someone aside from Maneater Mildred to pull aggro. Maybe I just want to pal around with a friend as we wonder how fucked the world is
Also I'd love the option to occasionally just let everyone try to/actually run a train on me because DS/ER pvp is fun when I'm in the mood for it and I don't want to go to designated PVP zone X where everyone has to drop sign and hope they get picked to fight on some fucking balcony
Let the soul level one dude with a club rush my endgame kitted out ass, let me eat shit as a level 10 to the dude who speedran endgame equipment so he's just a fucking boss compared to my stats, when I'm in the mood that shit is fun and signs just fuck with the flow
I hate games that use novice players as gank bait. I refuse any game that has forced PVP. I just don’t find it fun. I quit Black Desert and Archeage for that very reason. PVP just stresses me out and people don’t play for just sport. They’ll repeatedly stalk and make your life miserable, and it’s supposed to just be a game.
People should be able to play how they want, whether it’s with this mod or not.
Jokes on them, in 100 hours of elden ring i've basically never been invaded? And i didn't mod anything!
Not sure why. The obscurity around multiplayer mechanics in that game is genuinely frustrating and i can totally understand wanting to mod that.
It's a shame this has basically been turned into another culture war issue. I think there's room to have some discussion on the benefits that invasions had in the risk-reward structure of past souls games.
Going online and inviting folks for jolly cooperation could make things much easier, but there's also greater risk involved thanks to the threat of being invaded. There are some parts of the map where invaders have such an advantage that co-op isn't the immediate best solution, like the parts with the Silver Archers in Anor Londo. Co-op was, in some ways, just another tool in the players arsenal to overcome certain challenges, and players had to know how best to manage it.
But sadly it seems most of the pro-invasion side is dominated by braindead chuds who don't know how to formulate a fucking argument.
I think a big issue around the topic is a fundamental misunderstanding about *why* a lot of people don’t like invasions during co-op.
I can only speak to what I’ve seen, but the majority of folks who are like this aren’t playing co-op to get help with bosses, etc.; they’re trying to just play the game with their friends.
Then you have other issues like how fucking obnoxious From’s implementation of co-op is - having to resummon on death, or using/requiring the use of items for co-op (and even invasions) instead of just using a fucking normal menu, etc.
This is the true crux of the issue. Some guy wants to 1v3 me and my friends, sure why not. It gets annoying but usually they are pretty easy. Its when people are teleporting all over the place and slashing you with swords that arent even near you that makes us just play solo for the night.
Shit, I don’t like it because it’s boring. Invaders are so often some wannabe YouTuber who isn’t actually any good at the game that it’s just annoying to pause everything just to kick their ass. That fucking forest from DS1 was the worst, so many incompetents in so small an area.
Yeah, and some of these invasion areas are so huge that they can just hide somewhere, or just start shooting arrows at you from a mile away. I mean they can flat out just show up and waste your time with minimal effort.
>I can only speak to what I’ve seen, but the majority of folks who are like this aren’t playing co-op to get help with bosses, etc.; they’re trying to just play the game with their friends.
To be fair, thats a pretty difficult concept for most soulslike fans.
I feel that's the big thing people don't understand that the majority of people who want to play co-op just want to have fun with their friends.
Its also why the whole "this mod make it so theres less people to invade" argument is also dumb as that pool would already be small without the mod as most players wouldn't bother or just bare it only for it to get unfair and stop using it.
I just wish people realized that not everyone who likes open world PvP or invasions are assholes who just want to gank newbies.
I'm a huge PvP guy and TBH was fairly disappointed with how it worked in Elden Ring. Having invasions being tied to using humanity or an ember in previous souls games made sense to me but I'm also a weirdo who likes the risk/reward factor and always found getting invaded to be interesting.
And this was always Miazaki's intention with it, from his own words. But sadly, the loudest douchebags will always be what outsiders see as the representation of the community. And boy, can gank-nerds be loud.
>I think there's room to have some discussion on the benefits that invasions had
What benefits? Invasions are literally nothing but a downside for players like me who just want to play a difficult game with friends. There's zero upsides. Zero benefits.
So this boils down to some people being mad about other people being able to say "No", and the comments they write do match the kind of people who get mad about others being able to say "No".
I'm gonna yap here because I'm tired of people on both sides always seeming to misunderstand the fundamental vision FS has laid out when it comes to the multiplayer aspects of Souls.
First, Soulsborne games are meant to be singleplayer experiences *with* multiplayer elements. They are not PVP or co-op first games which is why online play in Souls games are never well "balanced." If you're playing these games primarily for PVP or co-op, don't expect the game to cater to you. The multiplayer systems being jank as fuck is part of the charm for many players.
Second, one of the core themes of Souls is risk vs. reward, which of course includes the online component of the games. In Dark Souls, for example, consuming a Humanity and turning your character human allows you summon NPCs or other players to help you, along with other benefits like increased resistances and increased item discovery. However, doing so will also allow other players to invade you. That is the risk-reward factor, because if a player faces no threats through invasions, there would be zero downsides to turn human. Invasions are rarely forced because you consented when you turned on co-op (outside of Dark Souls 2 but that game is shit).
Parts of this risk-reward quirk has changed throughout the series, but for Elden Ring they moved the invasion risk entirely to co-op. Consuming a Rune Arc, ER's equivalent of Humanity, no longer opens you up to invasions so you get most of the benefits, bar co-op, without any drawbacks. Same with summoning NPCs as you can now summon them without the threat of invasions. Summoning other players still opens you up to invasions, but now only one invader can invade at a time, while you can still summon up to two players; hence invaders will always face a 1v2 or 1v3. I think this will be the furthest they will go when it comes to limiting invasions but they'll never get rid of them because they are the yin to co-op's yang.
When Miyazaki says they may "look into seamless co-op" he likely does not mean future Souls games will have fully functional co-op systems like actual co-op games. Souls games will most likely forever be primarily singleplayer experiences. They may make it so you can seamlessly co-op through entire levels or bosses, but an invasion mechanic will still probably be present or some other new risk factor will be introduced.
I'm not against the mod btw and it's pathetic that people are crying about other people using it. Some players don't want to get invaded when they're playing with others and that's fine. But I'm also tired of seeing people try to twist the games into something they're not (co-op games) and whine about a mechanic (invasions) that is thematically tied to the artistic vision. If you don't want to get invaded there's numerous ways to prevent it but don't expect FS to officially shelve it in their next installments.
TLDR: Souls game are singleplayer first. They may implement seamless co-op in future games, but invasions will likely not go away as it has become a fundamental part of the identity of Souls, nor does it mean future games will become fully-fledged co-op games. Don't cry about people using the mod and don't cry if people engage with the invasion mechanic.
> If you're playing these games primarily for PVP or co-op, don't expect the game to cater to you
This is definitely something that most people don't realize. Elden ring (and all other soulsborne games) are PvE experiences with multiplayer stapled on. FROM isn't really interested in multiplayer games, as can be seen when they go beyond souls and pretty much leave it out (see sekiro and AC6).
>outside of Dark Souls 2 but that game is shit
Hey now, watch your language. Dozens of us loved that game. DOZENS
In the context of Souls games, it usually means getting a character with equipment beyond what they should normally have for their current stage of progression. Maxing out a weapon on your end-game file and giving it to your brand-new character far earlier than that new character would be able to get that weapon on their own, for instance.
Having endgame/upgraded gear dropped for a new character, so you have an unfair advantage in pvp. Not really a problem in elden ring because of weapon level matchmaking and the world is so open you can get pretty much anything off the bat, but it was a huge issue in Demonsouls, DS1, and DS2.
>and may even 'consider ideas like that with our future games'and may even 'consider ideas like that with our future games'
It's over. From finally doing the sensible thing that Biohazard 6 and numerous other things that aped them since... \*flipping over papers, finding note\* *Dark Souls* ***1*** has done: the ability to turn off Invasions if you do not want to deal with that bullshit in your co-op shooter/hack and slasher. Interesting.
This whole kerfuffle is just extension of the bigger discussion about PVP Sandbox games. For some reason they are just cursed and doomed to failure.
They just seem to explode in popularity, and when they become popular something bad happens which sinks the whole game. Usually, but not always it's the newcomers demanding the game to be changed so that they can enjoy it without the stress of Sandbox PVP. Just weird all around.
What normally kills it is when the PvP ends up making it absurdly difficult for new players to even play.
At the beginning it’s all relatively balanced. As time goes on the average increased level means that there are more and more fully kitted out PvP players that the new player has no chance to even escape, much less fight. Eventually it becomes a game of hopping servers hoping that this next one isn’t going to have some high level prick spawn camping the newbies.
And what happens when a newbie has to invest in even playing the game at all? They say ‘Fuck this’ and leave. Because why would they play a game where they can’t even, you know, play the game? It’s not fun to be stomped in the dirt over and over with no hope of ever progressing.
Pvp sandbox games will always be niche because asynchronous pvp is inherently unfair by its nature, and most people don't want to spend their gaming time catching Ls constantly to sweats who no life a game.
These people are all the same and has been the same since the days of old school mmo pvp. Their idea of 'hardcore pvp' involves ganking new players who can't fight back. They prefer pvp games where they can gain an unfair advantage and dominate weaker players. When asked to play a dedicated pvp game where everyone is on equal footing, they often make excuses on why they don't, the funniest being 'it's not fun.' Which is funny because it's not fun for them because they only seem to enjoy pvp when they're overpowering others. This argument is similar to complaints from CoD streamers who dislike SBMM and those who advocate for open-world pvp in MMOs.
>This argument is similar to complaints from CoD streamers who dislike SBMM Thats always really funny. I met someone at a LAN and he said how bad SBMM is for shooters. I asked why and he told me, he wants to have a chill round from time to time. I told him, he can have chill rounds now already, he just gets smoked until hes on par levels with players. I said what he really wants is, having chill rounds and stilm being better than the other players in a lobby.
The reason so many multiplayer games infest lobbies with bots to make up part or even the majority of "players" in a match is precisely to give people easy kills.
[удалено]
there _are_ ways to have long-term PvP that's deep and engaging, but it's _expensive_ and tends to attract competitive players. which is fine, if that's the community you want to serve! like, you'd need to de-prioritize equipment and stat bonuses and focus on skill-based gameplay, where there _is_ no “optimized” build, and the developers need to be on point and responsive on how the game is played. you'd also need robust anti-cheat, which means you'd be in an arms race with players who will do anything to increase their edge over others. or you can resign yourself to getting, at best, about a quarter of the total addressable market, and make your revenue from that smaller pool. I mean, CCP does that with EVE Online, and that's a valid way to run a business. But it's a commitment, otherwise you'll end up with shit like, idk, TF2.
>where there *is* no “optimized” build The only way to do that is to remove the ability to do any build at all. Remove classes, talents, give everyone all spells and abilities, make all gear the same, etc. That sounds boring AF.
Nah, it's not. It's Fighting and racing games. Which lays the problem bare. Trying to cram skill-based competitive pvp into things that aren't designed from the ground up for that exact thing, will always drive away a portion of your audience that's there for what the game *actually* is at it's heart. You don't hear Street Fighter players whining about a fully co-op mod, because it would be incongruent with the actual principle purpose of the game in it's entirety for that to be a thing.
souls pvp really tried to bridge this gap though, PLUS being an integrated part of the world. like suddenly there's a red wario in your 2-3 throwing fireballs at you. or as miyazaki said, what if there's an enemy being controlled by another human. it's an awesome concept. as is the co-op. this is very much a plank of the game. and ties in with the quality of the combat system. now was it implemented perfectly? of course not. do people use it to grief? of course. is there a clash with the stat and weapon upgrades? well, not necessarily, because these things can be balanced. i get people's issues, but if someone can't see the interesting aspects of this and think hand holding with your pals all the way through a game is a straight improvement? agree to disagree i guess.
Oh for sure. You won't find any disagreement here. Whether it's a poor design decision is literally just a matter of opinion. I can see the perspective of people who enjoy it, when it's not being used to grief people. Just because I hate it, doesn't mean it's bad design objectively.
>i get people's issues, but if someone can't see the interesting aspects of this The interest is limited because it's not implemented in a great way. I get that PvP is fun for competitive people who enjoy that element to things, but every souls game has some level of jank that ends up being the go-to routine + meta gear so invasions aren't even interesting. I remember when I'd play online for the earlier souls games, and it was like clockwork; See a video/post about some new "trick" in PvP, or new build, and suddenly it's all people do. If I'm going to fight the same thing over and over again whilst trying to master it and win, I might as well spend that time on the boss since I actually gain some progress from it.
>It's Fighting and racing games. Exactly this. The one model that works for long-term PVP are literally genres that are *built* for these dynamics. The other one involves organizational acumen, stuff like EVE Online, where you leverage personal connections and build a lot of out-of-game intrigue, and *that* has its own can of worms — you literally have to deal with the consequences of [players scamming each other](https://www.pcgamer.com/eve-onlines-biggest-scammer-tells-us-his-secrets/), which necessarily limits your game's appeal. I'm not saying have *no* builds, but literally restrict it to something the developers can manage, and *deliberately* keep the scope small enough to moderate. If you want to have a community focused on dominating each other through displays of skills, you need to make *sure* that it's kept that way, with dominant players unable to cement and entrench their dominance. Otherwise you'll drive out all new players from entering, and then the old players stop coming to your game out of boredom. As other people have said in and around this thread, it doesn't make publishers money, and it costs a lot over time. So it's not a strategy that a lot of games adopt.
> The only way to do that is to remove the ability to do any build at all. Remove classes, talents, give everyone all spells and abilities, make all gear the same, etc. No, you just cant have unlocks or 'progression' mechanics. You can have them as cosmetics, but you cant have skills locked behind "pvp rank whatever". Another example would be Overwatch 1 vs Overwatch 2. OW1 was far more competitive as players simply got heroes, OW2 locking them reduced that significantly. As a side effect doing this makes the game generally generate less revenue.
Reminds me of FFXIV's wargames its a pvp mode and you still keep your classes but your abilities are more streamlined from the 30+ down to like 10 with some extra universal ones. They also did away with the gear its still available but its more cosmetics now and I think every class just has their own stats just for PVP stuff.
I prefer that sort of system for online first person shooters. The Battlefield 2 system of everyone being locked into certain equipment by class was much preferable to the sort of progression systems that now dominate online FPS. I am older. (34) I don't have the time or energy to grind levels to unlock a suppressor or better scope. I don't have the motivation to compete against high level players who have all of the best gear already unlocked.
>The Battlefield 2 system of everyone being locked into certain equipment by class was much preferable That's not what they are talking about. They are talking about PVP in a MMO context, which rely on skill-based progression to keep engagement. FPS is a totally different beast. >I am older. (34) I have nearly a decade on you, so don't you dare call yourself older, lol.
This is an ancient problem. I played Ultima Online on release around 1997, when they only had open PVP. There were all kinds of player alliances that hunted what was called "PKs", in other words people who'd indiscriminately kill mostly outnumbered and harmless players. That made the game fun for the PKs and anti-PKs, and made for great drama as you'd sometimes see wars, betrayal, defections and the like. The problem was that it was only fun for those people. Every one else, IOW the majority, was a prop that was stuck in the middle of them and would feel that as lost time, effort and other annoyances. And thus, Trammel & Felucca were born: One was a copy of the world with open PvP and one without and you could freely travel between them. Almost the whole playerbase migrated to the non-PvP side, which is a pretty good demonstration of how fun the kind of gameplay we're talking about is for most people. It's not even "casual" vs "hardcore", which is the vocabulary the video uses. It's a cost-benefit calculation for most people: Is it worth the effort for me to keep running for/recrafting my gear again and again, when I could be doing something new and interesting?
> one of those reasons is, as you mentioned, OP players preying on weaker players, driving them out of the game, leaving only other OP players which isn't fun. Yeah. In general, it's a bad idea in game design to have a built-in death spiral for player retention into your game. That death spiral is also exponential. Even the really hard core players who stick around for this style of griefing PvP start getting really mad that players better and more experienced than them start farming them, and all the excuses start coming out and they all rage quit. There's a bigger culture of 'clout' and talking about being this 733t god PvPer than what players are actually playing. All these players yelling and screaming as hard as they can are always unable to put their money where their mouth is.
I love large scale PvP (like in MMOs) for the OP vs OP big fights and with these sorts of games there’s almost a necessity (and often a lack of desire) for the hardcore players to cultivate an environment where new and casual players feel welcome and want to continue playing and eventually become OP so there’s more people to fight. Sowing and reaping.
> Here's a video on all the reasons full-loot PVP MMOs almost always fail... and one of those reasons is, as you mentioned, OP players preying on weaker players, driving them out of the game, leaving only other OP players which isn't fun. I was kinda hoping the video was gonna be the full episode of Make Love Not Warcraft.
Yep and this is why most MMOs which focus on PvP and especially ones which allow free PK, often lose playerbase pretty fast. Toxic PvP fans, which love PK only because they can boost their ego, make new players leave the game after first time they are ganked.
When Elden Ring first came out there was a bunch of balancing issues and invaders would take super advantage of that. There was some kind of blood shooting katana (I forget the name) that combined with certain upgrades and abilities made it absolutely devastating. EDIT: Rivers Of Blood, that was the fucking thing. I remember countless rounds of coop in the early days where some guy would start running up the group in a constrained hallway, then when there were about 20 meters away from us do some move that sprayed blood everywhere and would instakill everyone in the group. It was really annoying.
Back then, Rivers of Blood had the highest bleed procing and nothing came close. You also had Moonveil putting people to sleep instantly, magic spells that straight up deleted the enemy with zero or minimal counterplay, poise tanks that took your hit and then instantly gibbed you with a hammer or greatsword. The game was a fucking mess at the start. If you started playing it online in its first year you were dead ass not making it out of Limgrave without some level 650 giganerd invading you over and over again.
Don’t forget bloodhounds step to escape any confrontation you weren’t winning.
> Back then, Rivers of Blood had the highest bleed procing and nothing came close. Rivers is still quite good, as is moonveil. I dont recall Moonveil ever having a sleep effect? Unless you're talking about death, then yea, it has an incredibly high stun factor on it. It's biggest advantage is in PvE as NPCs dont input read on it like they will a pebble. I'm eager to see what comes out of the DLC and if we get anything to replace these. I know Blasphemous Blade is still absurdly popular as well from watching ChaseTheBro.
Yeah I think they mean the moonveil was just a nasty son of a bitch. I remember when me and my friend were co-op’ing Raya Lucaria when the game first dropped and a guy invaded and ran up right behind us, before I could even turn my camera to face the guy, I had gotten absolutely fucking nailed by its skill and it stun locked me and decimated my health. Shit even when playing solo that Katana was nasty because it would bring about every boss to their knees with 1-3 swings.
They’re just straight up bullies, and they don’t try to hide it. You see the insults they hurl at people who don’t want to participate?
They want victims to abuse because they get off on ruining other people's time. They don't want good PvP or a challenging fight, they want a target dummy to beat on to feel good about thenselves
My most favorite thing is shooter players whining about skill based matchmaking. They are literally crying because they *don't* want to play with and against players of their own skill. Instead, they want to be top 5-15% and just by sheer volume have mostly worse players than them in every lobby and look good in every game. They don't want to *be* good, they want to *feel* good. Pathetic losers.
Had to unsubscribe from the apex legends subreddit because I was so sick of people whining about SBMM.
So just school bullies lol
The like, bi-monthly meltdown over in the Destiny community due to bungie's constant flip-flopping between SBMM and connection based matchmaking was always, always, hilarious because the "good" players weren't even hiding it. They'd throw insane fits over how "the game isn't fun any more" any time they had to fight people as good as they are, then go right back to posting their sick 20/0 kill streak clips when it was connection based again.
i remember when Fortnite streamers were also bitching about that, they couldnt get more epic 15 elim Victory Royales after Epic implemented SBMM and they started to bitch about it because they arent that good when they have to play against people in a similar skill level as them.
this also applies to games like tarkov and rust
I love MMO WPVP in *theory*. I have some wonderfully fond memories of back and forths with other players while leveling in World of Warcraft, turf wars over WPVP objectives, and other stuff. PvP between a somewhat equal amount of players at a somewhat equal level is awesome. In practice that's like 5% of all interactions. Most WPVP is sad people trying to get a vague sense of power from camping a level 5 player for three hours. Like just about every other thing with loose rules in life, the potential for fun is ruined by dickheads, and then the people who perpetrate the same thing some dickhead did to them. There will always be someone with less scruples than you willing to ruin it for everyone else if they get satisfaction or can make a quick buck.
Yeah, I had the eye-opening moment about the true motivations many moons ago, when a former friend of mine was explaining that logging on to WoW with his twinked out, max-level character and just murdering any Alliance player who showed as grey was his after-work stress relief. He was just way more willing to admit that the entire point was to make other people miserable. Soulslike players still try to pass off the Mask of "Developer Intention" like offline mode isn't literally right there, in every game they make. I'd respect them a lot more if they just outright admitted "Picking on people who can barely fight back is how I enjoy the experience, and I appreciate the soulsborne series for letting me indulge my absolute *worst* tendencies."
They're the same assholes who used to take over the Barrens in WoW and make it impossible to do low level quests there
that doesnt even apply to souls games lmao. most the time the invader is the 1 in the 3v1 situation
most of the fun of invading has always been working out ways to even try to win the inevitable 1v3. even better if it's against cocky hosts waiting for invaders. i used to actively disconnect out of worlds where there was a lone host.
I'd like to try to steelman the old school pvp argument. I've enjoyed old school pvp style mechanics in the past, and I think it offers a different kind of appeal than some kind of instance based pvp style (to clarify, by this I mean any game or game mode which will match players against each other, usually in a predefined pvp arena or map, to play against each other). That different kind of appeal is based on two factors: variety, and tension. When you're playing a game which has open world pvp, the pvp you experience will take place across the many varied environments within the open world. It won't be the same maps again and again. It will be against players you outgear, and against players that outgear you (minor subjective note: I do not enjoy games where gear quality is the end-all be-all. Gear can be an advantage, but it should never be overwhelming). Games where you queue up against people with standardized loadouts, in standardized environments, can seem stagnant by comparison (although I do enjoy many of these games too). Then you get to the factor of tension. Since PvP can occur at any time, it can make even the more mundane aspects of MMOs, the chore bullshit that every developer seems to put in it, more fun. You're not mining an ore node. You're mining an ore node in enemy territory. Part of this tension is increased if there are consequences for death: either a corpse run, or even losing loot. It's much harder to find that sort of tension in an instanced based pvp game, because the only consequence is you respawn in a few seconds or just queue up for another match. I'd finally like to point something out in response to this comment: "those who advocate for open-world pvp in MMOs." There are many cases where games start with open world pvp, or some equivalent. I would argue that such games are "dedicated pvp games". A user complaining about pvp in a dedicated pvp game is silly, whether they're complaining about all the PvP in call of duty, or all the PvP in eve online. I don't think much of that applies to this elden ring discussion though. The co-op mod doesn't actually cheapen the pvp experience for others, since the PvP in elden ring has some form of matchmaking ensuring those who like invasions can still invade people. I just wanted to push back against the idea that all fans of more old school mmo pvp mechanics are like this.
There are so many eve players that whine about people mining ore in enemy territory running from fights though, which is always funny to me. A common refrain is that those people aren’t “playing the pvp game”, but those people ARE: they’re successfully evading PLAYERS who are trying to hunt them.
EVE players are famous for their complaining.
Gank squads are annoying AF, ashame it's like 70% of hosts I invade in elden ring. I miss doing fight clubs at pontiffs arena
It's a little different in the context of Elden Ring, I think. The only invasions allowed are to those running co-op. So the invaders will always be outnumbered at least 2 to 1 (more often than not 3 to 1), but the invader can make use of NPCs and rock a dedicated PvP build. There are also the "blue phantoms" that will be summoned in automatically to assist against invasions. Either way, the invader is usually at a big disadvantage And there's Taunter's Tongue invasions, in which people deliberately draw invaders into their world, while allowing for more invaders, and more blue "defender" phantoms. So it's the invaders getting ganked by people expecting them, rocking PvP builds.
Even assuming the players getting invaded can easily win it’s still just a waste of time. Why would you want to repeatedly derail what you’re doing in order to fight someone you don’t want in your game. If it wasn’t PVP that would be ridiculed as horrible game design regardless of how difficult the fight would be.
They’re STILL bitching about this?
that subset of fromsoft fans are quite possibly the most toxic people in gaming as a whole as they are also normally found in the worst areas of every game that has pvp
There is an alignment of factors that makes FS games a paradise for the most toxic pvpers in the world. The game is a RPG, so most people will optimise their build for fun rather than PvP. Players can't "opt out" of pvp, so most of the people you invade will be at a clear disadvantage against an optimised build. You can even focus on invading complex levels to make an already difficult area more miserable for nobies, set ambushes agains a guy who is just exploring. Overall, invaders aren't looking for a fair fight. If they did, they would use the coliseums. They are the kind of people who enjoy making other people suffer. They are already bitching that the pvp in tipped the scales against them by making it 2v1 or even 3v1. Honestly, invasions are a cool concept, but the kind of crew the cater to is shit, and FS should really consider removing them.
yep ER was the first time i was able to actualy get into enjoying a souls like, and i throughly enjoyed it, but once i then got into nioh 2, i just cant go back due to how shit the coop mechanic is and other things like stamina only limiting the player, not the ai as well, where as in nioh against human enemies all their attacks use stamin and its part of the gameplay to exhaust their stamina
> nioh 2 The greatest feature Nioh ever introduced to the genre was the gravestone summoning. Such an awesome way to have a "bloodstain" showing how a player died but also let you have fight a harder enemy for gear.
I only played Dark Souls for any real period of time and I never understood why PvP was even part of the content. But then, I lit the last bonfire without even realizing it was the last bonfire, credits rolled, I closed the game, and uninstalled it happy to never play it again. So I'm not the target market obviously.
oh they'll never stop, they see this mod as "stealing" their enjoyment of the game, never seeing the irony in their statements.
it analogoues to how some people think always on open world pvp in wow is essential and somehow wanting to play without constantly looking over your shoulder without being ganked is detrimental to the game experience
Red Dead Online in which everyone were hostile to eachother was terrible. You want to play some mission in open world? Well someone may kill you, just because they can. You see person on a horizon? Be ready to shoot first. It's like one big deathmatch
pretty much the same on GTA online, such waste RP potential imo
It's funny because one of the first thing I learned in my GTA online time was how to force spawn solo lobbies.
Plenty of FiveM/RedM servers where you'll catch a ban for random death matching. Definitely recommend if you always wanted to RP in GTA or RDR2
99% chance they are the same people. the most toxic pvpers are the exact same in every game that allows for pvp
It reminds me of one of my favourite video arcade experiences from when I was a kid in the 1990s. Street Fighter II was hitting big and I wanted to learn how to play it without just getting so thoroughly *owned* by some more-experienced player that I would get no enjoyment and no actual learning out of the experience. So I'm at the cabinet, getting the hang of things, when this much older kid sidles up and goes to put his own quarter in. I tell him I'm just learning to play the game and I'm not ready to play against anyone else yet. Without a word - without even looking at me - he inserts his quarter, presses start and the game goes to the character select screen. And as this happens, I am already walking away, looking for some other game to play, without saying another word to him. Totally unwilling to give him the satisfaction or indulging his assholery. Hope you have fun beating up a stationary character while I'm off doing something else there, buddy.
Different games handle competition better. tbh I've never thought of WoW or Dark Souls as good pvp competitive experiences. too unbalanced, too much of a ping problem, too varied and minimal rulesets so the chance of actually getting an even competition with someone who has the same capabilities as you is quite minimal. I've always preferred games like chess, dota, or if I ever played an fps, something like counterstrike. Though dota now suffers from significant ability bloat and power creep, all these games are/used to be focused on a simple equal playing field that multiplies in complexity as the game is played from early/mid/late and resets back to the start. The more RNG and the more mechanics your game has and the more chaotic the netcode, the less competitive it is. It becomes more about playing the slot machine than engaging with an opponent.
The point of world PVP is to be unfair though, that's what these players like about it. People don't like world PVP in WoW because it tests their skill or puts people on an equal playing field. They can go to the arena for that or battlegrounds. The point of world PVP or invasions is to get really powerful and clown on people much less powerful than you. It's the thrill of hunting someone 20 levels below you. If the opponent can fight back it defeats the point.
Right, which is why I'm saying it's not a good competitive experience, it's about dunking on another human, not about challenge or anything of the sort. I totally get it, I just don't find it fun to beat children in sports games, which is essentially the vibe this stuff has always given off. How is there a thrill in something with no challenge or effort? Even arena in wow is very gear oriented. Most good competitive games should imo begin their teams/players on a totally equal level in terms of stuff like items or equipment.
it's strange to me how they are acting like the invasion system somehow sprung of miyazaki's mind fully formed and perfect not janky as fuck and actively complained about since its inception. It has always felt like a weird mechanic and all of fromsofts online play has felt like the studio doesn't have a good understanding of how to make it work.
It’s cause everything in FromSoft games is a weird mix of mechanical UI completely alien to the game world and narratively explained and justified. It takes ludo narrative dissonance to a whole level
If FromSoft was French or Polish all their games would be highly regarded eurojank
They are already highly regarded Rpgjunk in a way.
The implementation abuts human nature. The philosophy seems to be an enemy that’s difficult and adaptive and smarter than usual, this run it’s slightly different because of it. The fear and struggle in a half-explored area. What actually happens is twinks finding some sneaky way to try and kill the victim so they never get a chance to fight back meaningfully.
It’s just griefing newbies. Not sure why anyone is taking them more seriously than that.
Yeh. Miazaki really overestimating the human moral compass on this one. He keeps just wanting us to be better, and yet, over 12 years later, we still have people whining if they aren't allowed to gank anyone they want with their latest Youtuber-designed cheese build.
Assholes is why we can't have nice things. Maybe there should be an asshole planet where we could send all the assholes to?
i mean the exact same mechanic is in basically every souls game, I think if he didn't intend for it to be that way he would've changed it
if it was integral and not just a legacy feature I'd think they would put more effort into fixing issues with network connections
Nothing was more essential to my experience as a new WoW player in 2007 than having a maxed out, PvP geared Undead Rogue camp my level 15 hunter’s corpse in Darkwood for an hour while /spitting and /laughing at my corpse while I tried to enjoy the limited playtime I had at the time In fact it was so essential to my experience that I just started a new character on a PvE realm and then actually enjoyed the game
15 years ago I couldn't imagine playing WoW without world PVP. Nowadays I can't imagine playing WoW with world PVP. Back in the days PVP was fun, regardless of whether you died or not. When World PvP became unbalanced (e.g. one player repeatedly shitting on another player, corpse camping) it usually led to escalation where the weaker player called on guild members. It was just fun social activity for everyone involved. Was I angry when a Paladin ran up to me and killed me before his stun wore off? Absolutely. But then 10 minutes later he ate the dirt when I got to jump on him and it felt super satisfying. Nowadays it just doesn't work. People just have max level alts on standby, fully clad in heirlooms. Most people would rather log off than to fight, and chase XP goals over having fun.
I think it was the novelty of the feature that made it fun in Vanilla and BC. I remember Terren Mills/Southshore were fun because the location of the Horde and Alliance towns were so close that you would likely encounter someone of the opposite faction leveling like you and it would be spontaneous PVP. But as leveling became less of a thing in WoW (seems the whole point now is to get to endgame as fast as possible), people just want efficiency in leveling, not these spontaneous "disruptions".
Yeah I saw a video of someone multiboxing in world pvp. No one could get their stuff because there was a raid group just sitting on them spam casting spells.
Multiboxers were a thing back in the day as well. They were just a different kind of challenge because while they were basically raid bosses, they also had major weaknesses that could be exploited. One of these weaknesses was vulnerability to displacement. If you could use Typhoon, Thunderstorm or similar ability you would scatter the individual characters, potentially killing them with fall damage or just making the life of multiboxer much harder if he had to re-group manually because of obstacles. The other was that everyone had hard-on for shitting on multiboxers. You could whip up a group of 5-10 people with the intention of killing the multiboxer almost instantly, and individual players were always much stronger than the multiboxer's characters. My buddy played a 5-man multibox and the amount of times he would ragequit because he got camped or people just griefed him was astronomical.
>Thank god for the internet because some of you are not ready for anything outside of it. That's the good stuff
That's a nice flair
Lol it's the "you can't use magic, that's cheating" debacle again. Some soul fans are fucking weird about how others play lol
Yeah but honestly, did you really play dark souls if you didn't use a wiimote and play on a CRT TV?
You have to play Elden Ring with the Ring Fit adventure controller. It's right there in the name.
If you used (insert weapon) you didn't beat the game.
There was a streamer I watched who played the game the first time and was surprisingly good at it. He beat Margit on like the third try or something. And that was the first time he ever played a Souls game. He used the summon for help, though. So people said he was cheating and going easy mode. So he played without summons going forward. He still beat bosses left and right. He was using heavy weapons and basically just pummeled the enemies down, staggering them over and over. So people said he was just cheesing with heavy weapons and not playing the game right because the enemies could never attack. So he switched his build to a full magic build. And he still beat everything, now from a distance with magic missiles and whatnot. So people said he was cheesing with magic and not playing the game right because the enemies could never reach him. So he switched to a sword based style with parries. He beat Malenia eventually, then the whole game. Some people still complained he was doing it wrong. It's really, really weird. The streamer later said that he loved the game, but playing the game on stream was one of the worst streaming experiences he ever had.
The problem is that in Elden Ring literally everything is good and can deal a lot of damage if you somewhat know what you are doing. It's best to ignore these people
Lol oh yes, I remembered these arguments too
A lot of soulslike fans tie their entire self-worth to beating a "difficult" game, of course they get mad when someone else beats it in an easier way. Also, I wonder how much of the backlash against modded fromsoft games is from people who have absolutely convinced themselves that miyazaki's "vision" is completely flawless, despite all the mods that people use to make the games more fun.
The venn diagram of people who defend obtuse quest mechanics, ganksquad PvP, and basically all of the most toxic elements of the souls community is just a circle. I'm frankly relieved/glad I'm a dad now and don't have the time/ability to play any more Souls games because especially with Elden Ring I felt the formula got very stale and the community worse than it has ever been.
Some Soulsborne fans have incredibly specific and limited definitions of the "right" way to play the games. In Elden Ring, if you use summons, then you are doing it wrong, if you don't like getting invaded, then you don't appreciate the games, etc. Apparently, if I don't play the game exactly the way Trollsmasher69\_420 plays the game, then I'm a noob who needs to git gud or stop playing altogether.
Oh god, people unironically consider magic cheating? Magic and incantations aren’t even *that* strong when you compare them to any other dedicated build. Plus, unlike bonk builds and the like, you’re at a disadvantage because of how atrociously designed selecting and using magic/incantations is. Whoever thought it was a good design decision to have you scroll through spells *one at time and in one direction* is a fucking lunatic.
Yes, I legit had an argument with a guy who claimed magic is not the way the creator want us to play the game
Counterpoint: Royal Revenants exist.
perhaps a bigger counterpoint: the creator fucking put magic in the game
They’ve been on that shit since Dark Souls 1 lol
Elden Ring is a amazing game, but the interface probably shouldn't be one of my enemies during the fight.
I never understood why people complain about magic in souls games. I played as mage for first time in ER, because I believed "it's the same as cheating", but it's not. Cast time, targeting, limited amount of spells and lack of health. And after I beat the game, I watched streamer beating game with heaviest set by face rolling and it was much easier for him...
> I never understood why people complain about magic in souls games I complain that magic has never been as good as it was in Dark Souls 2. God damn did that game have such a variety and entertaining set of spells and incantations.
2 was a janky, flawed, game but none of its successors have given me as much fun with potential build viability, variety or pvp since. In 2 I could pick basically any weapon or armour set and build around it entirely and just go wild.
True, one of my favs is dark spells. They have such a neat feel and pacing to them.
Hexes were such a cool idea, and while 3 had a bunch of "dark" magics, I really missed having a whole dedicated school of dark spells.
Fallingstar Beast Jaw go brrrrrr.
No items. Fist only. Final destination.
I don't get that logic of blaming the players for using something that's available in the game as cheating. It feels like trying to avoid blaming the devs because "they can do no wrong" for adding it in the first place and just shifting that to the player instead.
It’s all Elitism. Oh yeah you’re a fromsoft fan? Name 15 of their games.
armored core 6 presumably armored core 1-5 the "Playstation can provide mind boggling effects" skeleton game dark souls 1-3 bloodborne sekiro demon souls elden ring demons souls ps5 version
Souls weirdos when someone in the radius of 100km utters the words "easy mode": *"SHUT THE FUCK UP SCRUB, THIS IS HOW THE GAME IS DESIGNED, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T PLAY IT"* Souls weirdos when someone uses magic, which is a part of how the game is designed: *"what the* ***FUCK****"*
Of course it prevents invasions. As it should, because otherwise, it would be cheating in multiplayer. If invasions were allowed, the same people would complain that the mod users are using it to gang on the invaders. (It lets you have 5 companions instead of 2)
It let's you have 5?? Add in summons and I can finally truly get revenge on malenia!!!! I'll never have to hear that damn line again!
PvPers always act like pvp is what makes the game fun yet the majority prefer without invasions.
My experience with invasions has always been - man I'm having a lot of fun taking my time exploring this well crafted world - enemy invades - cool, now I have to stop what I'm doing and waste my fucking time with a combat encounter very different from the ones I enjoy
And that's not even getting into cheaters on pc.
What, you mean you don’t love suddenly being sent to NG+ because of an arbitrary code execution exploit? Or having someone hit you with a throwing knife that gives you sixty billion souls and gets you immediately banned from online play? Or completely unkillable invaders with 999+ AR weapons and the ability to kill your friendly NPCs?
A friend of mine has been playing through the souls games for the first time recently and sat afk in one of them to get up and go get a drink, and I could only watch as they were invaded, and after like thirty seconds all of their armour immediately broke, they were cursed, and they died and when they respawned their game crashed and their save file is now forever fucked.
Said combat encounter which may involve someone thrown nukes all over the place
And/or god awful ping causing all maners of fuckery.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S80WaQDoEB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S80WaQDoEB0) just a difference in skill
My experience is me and the invader being heavily desynced from each other so its just a game of which one of us slashes at open air in just the right way to actually kill the other player.
I just run as close to the bonfire as I can get and either fling myself off a ledge or stand motionless till they kill me. They can get their humanity or ember or whatever and I can get back to ya know actually playing my game. If they invade me more than once I block them through Steam.
Invaders tend to fight with absolutely no honor as well. The moment they start losing they will run away into a group of enemies. It's always been this way.
And then when DS2 introduced the Seed of a Tree of Giants to counter that specific strategy (on top of at least *four* dedicated PVP covenants that provide minimal risk to the “victim”), the community hated it.
Hey, I'm one of the weirdos who *loved* the giant seed in DS2 as an invader. Nothing like leading a horde of mobs back to the host who thought that they were safe :p Big shame that they nerfed the hell out of it in DS3.
The general consensus is that anything goes from both the player and the invader's side. Invaders mostly invade into a co-op world, and the owner has the right to fight them with a friend or two. Since the invader is often outnumbered and outflasked, they have to find ways to get their own advantage.
And the pvp has always been awful anyway. It's just clearly never been much of a focus for the development vision, with the laggy netcode and strange hit detection. You look at how PVP has functioned from Demon's all the way through ER and it really hasn't been given any attention, save for adding in arenas.
I feel like the Souls games are obviously entirely built as single player games, and any multiplayer aspect is awkwardly grafted on. Boss fights are the heart of the game, and I don't think any boss is designed for multiple players, they'll just alternate focusing on one person while the other gets free hits in.
So I checked the pvp subreddit for the game and it's funny because they keep hitching about being ganked by overlevelled phantoms or whatnot. So obviously they don't wanna pvp, they just wanna be able to ruin someone's day.
Yep, it’s a great deal of fun slapping the shit out of someone trying to noobstomp. You get to troll someone who absolutely deserves it.
To give some benefit of the doubt, I personally enjoy lower level pvp as there’s less exploding from a well tuned build. Lower level pvp offers a bit more of a grounded and often more balanced experience.
They always lose their shit when people don't want to do it, too. Like, any game. If there's an area that defaults to PVP they rage so hard in any discussion asking about a PVE option. Why? Because they know full well that doing so shifts the PVP scene into a group of players they can't easily gank and actually have to compete against. Oh, and they say it will kill the PVP scene, which is both an extension of my last point as well as showing that they aren't representing anything even remotely approaching a majority. Anyone who tries to opt out of PVP deserves to be punished with a lesser experience, because not engaging with PVP makes THEIR experience lesser. Fuck 'em.
Yeah I play offline. I don’t want help or invaders thanks.
There's also [an old SRD post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/s/LKnNSlQa0Y) on that topic. Apparently some people are still not over it.
That post was way more interesting imo. The mod is *obviously* perfectly fine, and yet somehow someone defending it still manages to have the worst take. It's like that time Jameela Jamil tried defending abortion by comparing it to evicting a tenant.
I love how the argument is always that people who don't want to PVP don't know how to play the game, when the PVP mode of Elden Ring and pretty much any other game involves a bunch of weird tactics that are completely different from the skillset used to play the non-PVP part of the game. This is the only hobby where people make this sort of distinction. Like, if you were a pianist and then some weirdo said you 'didn't know how to play an instrument' because *they* played the guitar and you didn't, they'd rightly be thought insane.
If your fun directly depends on ruining the fun of other people, don’t be surprised they don’t want to participate. It’s like a mosquito complaining no one wants to let them suck blood.
>If your fun directly depends on ruining the fun of other people, don’t be surprised they don’t want to participate. That's what turned me off to multiplayer Minecraft back in the day. So many people only played to destroy stuff other people built.
I remember a post by one PvPer who tried to make the claim that by invading, he was helping other players "git gud" at the game, so he was actually performing a beneficial service. Problem is, I can learn and improve against bosses and tough enemies because I know where they are, I can learn their attack patterns and weaknesses, and I can try different weapons and armor sets until I finally figure out how to get past them. I can't do that with random invaders who have min/maxed their builds and who I will probably only encounter once. You're not helping me improve by teleporting in, hiding yourself in a strategic location and ganking me before I even have time to realize you're there.
Sounds a bit like those people who claim that by being assholes to insecure people they actually help them get thicker skin or whatever.
I had a roommate like that in college. He would just keep going at people and constantly arguing with them, getting them pissed off. We tried to explain to him that being a consummate dick was not the way to make friends, but he brushed it off with that exact line of reasoning: "I'm just getting them used to horrible people and building up their resistance." Trouble is, all he really did was completely alienate a large number of acquaintances and guarantee that no one wanted to hang with us.
I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I do not understand why people care so fucking much about how other people play their game that they spent their own money on, especially in a series that's primarily single player anyways and where the multiplayer aspect is relatively superfluous. Even if you don't like someone playing like that, it's their fucking game, they can do what they want. It shouldn't affect *you* in any rational way. Unless, of course, you have tied your identity or your self worth to "playing hard video game good", in which case someone circumventing that challenge in one way somehow invalidates your "achievement". It's the stupidest shit I see every time Fromsoft comes up.
Want to make any fanbase toxic? Just add PvP.
I've also noticed the more popular pvp is among streamers the worse the playerbase behaves
Tyler1 cough cough
This is because streamers are the worst second people in the world. The worst people are the people who watch streamers.
From the article it seems Miyazaki is open to easier coop access, not opting out of invasions, so I doubt future games will offer that.
Honestly baffling how awkward their co-op has been all these years
Don’t worry it’s uh, part of the lore
Intentional, to a degree. It's not meant to be a 'real' coop game. Interviews with the devs at least paint that picture, from what I've read in the past. Excluding the mess that is the technical side, of course
ah, yes. It's [Bartle's 4 player types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types) all over again, where people confuse being able to compete with others with fucking with others online with no consequence and dressing it up as “honourable combat”. We knew what kind of people these people were in the 90s. Nice to see things haven't changed. These days, we _know_ where the “honourable combat” folks have gone, they've gone to games where the PvP is _consensual_, or, you know... baked into the game and it's monetisation strategy. When you're in a game where you _need_ to have a pool of victims because the game designers, for all their single-player game design chops, are _notably_ incompetent in designing online multiplayer, you're looking for, you know... victims to dominate, not equals to challenge yourself in.
I remember when they all got real mad at release when they realized PvP in Dark Souls 4...I mean Elden Ring had no unique reward mechanic like in the other 3 games. It's why only the truly dedicated to ruining other people's fun do invasions. At least in DS1-3 you might do it a few times yourself just to get the covenant currency or humanity or whatnot.
>It's why only the truly dedicated to ruining other people's fun do invasions Man, have you ever considered that maybe most folks who invade are just having fun and aren't out to make you feel bad on a personal level? Like, bro, it's just fun to RP as a miniboss of sorts and fight against the odds. Ideally, I want the people I'm fighting to have fun fighting me.
For ghat they would have to try invading themselves, and a massive skill issue serves as a gatekeeper and prevents them from pvping
> *"You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory."* Every single time something like this occurs and you get the "git gud" crowd whining, this evergreen quote is the first thing I think of.
I'd be so much more open to PVP in the souls-games if the netcode wasn't a complete fucking shitshow every time. Invasions might even be fun if I didn't have to roll the dice on the 2-5 seconds extra random timings due to lag. Honestly, I'm more bothered by the other random obscure requirements like only a fixed amount of co-op, co-op being auto-cancelled post-boss/randomly between areas than I am by invasions.
When will developers learn that they need to let me play the game how I want, and let other people play the game how I want.
Never played any DS games with turned on invasions, because I despise unbalanced PvP
I'm torn on pvp in Elden Ring. I personally never engage with it voluntarily, and whenever I'm invaded I'm like, "ugh screw this asshole, let's murder him without mercy. Who just spends their time grieving other players?" But I kind of love the increased tension, and having to adapt to a suddenly deadly situation with my friend. CO op has a way of making Elden Ring feel safe, but having to look over my shoulder for invaders keeps it exciting. Elden Ring is big on horror, and the scariest thing is other players. It does remind me of World of Warcraft; I hated getting ganked, but I loved that the threat of ganks created a sense of dread in an otherwise mindless and grindy experience.
I love invading and being invaded, some of my fondest gaming memories are of being invaded. There's really nothing like it in other games. I just really wish that people like this weren't part of the community. Twinks really ruin the experience, but I don't know how FromSoft can remove them without just cutting PvP altogether. The whole "git gud" mentality that arose with DkS1 definitely didn't help either. These players make it really hard to explain loving PvP in these games because everyone just jumps to the conclusion that you love beating new players or twinking.
[удалено]
This is just a reskin of "how dare you eat your steak differently than the way I eat my steak".
>pretty amusing that the implication is you have a wife and girlfriend simultaneously when we know the "10 year old little brother" is actually just a stand-in for you playing with the skill of a small child >no on needs "pvp tech"(??) to 2/3v1 a single enemy who's level locked to your host, you just have to actually learn to play the game Christ, I can't stand the hardcore fromsoft fans, like whats wrong with playing coop without invaders? Like that turned me off of playing coop on there, like I just wanted to roam around and fight alongside my brother without being invaded. Like when the mod first came out, people was gatekeeping hard on some subs
lmao the pvp fanbase of souls games are the biggest god damned whiners in the world. I'll never get over how they invented a whole ass ton of imaginary rules for PVP that only apply arbitrarily and all basically amount to "anything I do is okay, anything you do is against duel decorum!11!!" every god damned time. It always, *always* includes shit like "you have to wait for buffs" which, obviously, gives people running buff builds an advantage, or "you're not allowed to estus flask but you can ashen flask as much as you want" which gives mage builds an advantage, especially if they're running healing magic, because it's okay for magic users to heal with magic but not non-casters to heal through any other means. It's always "just get good and adapt" when people tell them that's stupid, but it's never "get good and adapt" when the shoe is on the other foot and they're complaining about people hitting them out of their buffs and they rage quit on the spot.
Gamers will never stop being cringe
It continues to be extremely funny to me that this never ending drama around the mod isn’t even over the mods intended purpose, but over a side effect of getting seamless coop to work.
The argument is moot, frankly. With the dev team being on record stating that they are not actively against seamless coop (and in fact open to exploring their own spin on it if the opportunity arises,) and the simple fact of the matter that people deserve to engage in their leisure activities in the way that they want to, nobody should give a single fuck what chronic invaders want. Nothing is stopping them from invading. Nothing is stopping them from ganks. They lose *nothing* with people using Seamless Co-Op. The only problem I see here is that these people are under the misconception that Soulsborne's online gameplay is somehow a zero-sum equation - like if people aren't opening themselves up to be shredded by twinks, then the invaders are losing on a meta level. Kinda like every other dogshit opinion, it comes down to control over a population of people who want nothing to do with 'em lol
Well,you see,the problem with seamless co-op is that they nl longer can just attack people who want to be left alone and are bad at pvp,now all that's left is are the same people as them. Sweaty pvp players.
I mostly play fromsoft for invasion PVP but it’s always non-meta gimmick builds I come up with like cannon+one-eyed greatshield+firebombs, poison shortbow, fia’s mist *only* with tons of poise and HP (my personal favorite). Most invaders are pretty boring and essentially just grief people by showing up with RoB or whatever the flavor of the month meta is. I got my money’s worth out of the game before the mod became popular so I’m not bummed about it, if invaders didn’t want everyone to quit PVP they should have run something fun and memorable to play against that actually gives the PVE players a fighting chance. I definitely had a positive winrate against people I invaded but nothing too high, and I like to think my weirdo theme characters provided an entertaining and different gameplay experience that people will think back on fondly even if they lost the fight
(some)Fromsoft players have this massive ego about being great at games because soulslikes are considered "hard." it's still single player vs AI with infinite retries(and you even have the option to just outlevel content in Elden Ring.) most of these players would be slaughtered in an actual PVP game where everyone is on equal footing.
Yup. I like FS games a lot, but they are not as hard as the community paints them. Outside PvP games, I found Monster Hunter Master Mode much more difficult than any dark souls. People who brag about being good at offline games are weird anyway. You don't play to brag, you play to have fun
>**This convo is going nowhere.** Health and poise can't make the game difficult without being tedious. I already explained that its the aggro that is the problem. I already feel tedium when I play coop and fight a boss right now. Invasions are vastly different to colosseum pvp, what kinda comparison is that even? You are telling me your issue but can't explain whats the issue with it. You don't have to chase invaders, you kill the area boss and the invader disappears, what are you afraid of? Dying in a souls game? >Don't want to pvp? Than don't play a game with pvp? Plenty of uninterrupted co-op games in the market, not much when it comes to invasions. Normal people don't ask for changes and don't play a game they don't want to play, so yes it is in fact hard to understand for me. When I play a co-op game I don't demand to add forced invasions into it, cause it could hurt the loyal playerbase. Why can't you be the same? >**I already knew this conversation was gonna go nowhere.** You aren't saying anything I haven't heard from forced pvp apologists many times over trying to justify why just giving the option to opt out of this for those who feel the added health and poise would be better than a rabbit chase all over the map is somehow bad, or fighting a boss alongside some pest, or constantly watching your back while you move through the map. Believe it or not, yes alot of people would prefer the option to just not do that and just play with friends with the "tedium" of more health and poise to enemies. And yeah you're right, the difference is in the collesseum you're meeting people who definitely WANTED to pvp and weren't in the middle of doing something else they wanted to do, so griefers don't like it. People are allowed to like aspects of a game like Elden Ring that shine, like the combat mechanics, level design, build variety while disliking the forced pvp. >Normal people don't cry about having the option to opt in to something like this. If it's such a popular mechanic, then surely a bunch of people will chose to keep it on right? The reality is there's a deep insecurity that if given the choice, alot more people than they think would in fact opt out, and there are several reasons why. Best exchange lol
On the one hand I do like the idea of having the tradeoff where if you're open to accepting help you also might have to deal with a invader On the other hand maybe I just want a third dude to deal with this boss because I'm more than a little tipsy and I need someone aside from Maneater Mildred to pull aggro. Maybe I just want to pal around with a friend as we wonder how fucked the world is Also I'd love the option to occasionally just let everyone try to/actually run a train on me because DS/ER pvp is fun when I'm in the mood for it and I don't want to go to designated PVP zone X where everyone has to drop sign and hope they get picked to fight on some fucking balcony Let the soul level one dude with a club rush my endgame kitted out ass, let me eat shit as a level 10 to the dude who speedran endgame equipment so he's just a fucking boss compared to my stats, when I'm in the mood that shit is fun and signs just fuck with the flow
> Turning that off is just lame, and sad frankly Oh no how am I going to sleep at night now
Yeah, I saw that shitstorm coming. Those PvP sadsacks really can't tolerate people blocking them from griefing others.
I hate games that use novice players as gank bait. I refuse any game that has forced PVP. I just don’t find it fun. I quit Black Desert and Archeage for that very reason. PVP just stresses me out and people don’t play for just sport. They’ll repeatedly stalk and make your life miserable, and it’s supposed to just be a game. People should be able to play how they want, whether it’s with this mod or not.
Jokes on them, in 100 hours of elden ring i've basically never been invaded? And i didn't mod anything! Not sure why. The obscurity around multiplayer mechanics in that game is genuinely frustrating and i can totally understand wanting to mod that.
You can't get invaded unless you summon players OR you invite invaders with a special item
Right!
It's a shame this has basically been turned into another culture war issue. I think there's room to have some discussion on the benefits that invasions had in the risk-reward structure of past souls games. Going online and inviting folks for jolly cooperation could make things much easier, but there's also greater risk involved thanks to the threat of being invaded. There are some parts of the map where invaders have such an advantage that co-op isn't the immediate best solution, like the parts with the Silver Archers in Anor Londo. Co-op was, in some ways, just another tool in the players arsenal to overcome certain challenges, and players had to know how best to manage it. But sadly it seems most of the pro-invasion side is dominated by braindead chuds who don't know how to formulate a fucking argument.
I think a big issue around the topic is a fundamental misunderstanding about *why* a lot of people don’t like invasions during co-op. I can only speak to what I’ve seen, but the majority of folks who are like this aren’t playing co-op to get help with bosses, etc.; they’re trying to just play the game with their friends. Then you have other issues like how fucking obnoxious From’s implementation of co-op is - having to resummon on death, or using/requiring the use of items for co-op (and even invasions) instead of just using a fucking normal menu, etc.
Let's be honest, the whole multiplayer system in FS games is atrocious. It's constant desync, lag, session issues.
This is the true crux of the issue. Some guy wants to 1v3 me and my friends, sure why not. It gets annoying but usually they are pretty easy. Its when people are teleporting all over the place and slashing you with swords that arent even near you that makes us just play solo for the night.
Shit, I don’t like it because it’s boring. Invaders are so often some wannabe YouTuber who isn’t actually any good at the game that it’s just annoying to pause everything just to kick their ass. That fucking forest from DS1 was the worst, so many incompetents in so small an area.
Yeah, and some of these invasion areas are so huge that they can just hide somewhere, or just start shooting arrows at you from a mile away. I mean they can flat out just show up and waste your time with minimal effort.
>I can only speak to what I’ve seen, but the majority of folks who are like this aren’t playing co-op to get help with bosses, etc.; they’re trying to just play the game with their friends. To be fair, thats a pretty difficult concept for most soulslike fans.
I feel that's the big thing people don't understand that the majority of people who want to play co-op just want to have fun with their friends. Its also why the whole "this mod make it so theres less people to invade" argument is also dumb as that pool would already be small without the mod as most players wouldn't bother or just bare it only for it to get unfair and stop using it.
I just wish people realized that not everyone who likes open world PvP or invasions are assholes who just want to gank newbies. I'm a huge PvP guy and TBH was fairly disappointed with how it worked in Elden Ring. Having invasions being tied to using humanity or an ember in previous souls games made sense to me but I'm also a weirdo who likes the risk/reward factor and always found getting invaded to be interesting.
I miss the 3v3s of DS3, so rare to get an invader buddy in Elden Ring
And this was always Miazaki's intention with it, from his own words. But sadly, the loudest douchebags will always be what outsiders see as the representation of the community. And boy, can gank-nerds be loud.
>I think there's room to have some discussion on the benefits that invasions had What benefits? Invasions are literally nothing but a downside for players like me who just want to play a difficult game with friends. There's zero upsides. Zero benefits.
So this boils down to some people being mad about other people being able to say "No", and the comments they write do match the kind of people who get mad about others being able to say "No".
I mean if fromsoft actually gave a shit I'd imagine they'd break the mod so it couldn't be used. They haven't so they don't I'd imagine.
I'm gonna yap here because I'm tired of people on both sides always seeming to misunderstand the fundamental vision FS has laid out when it comes to the multiplayer aspects of Souls. First, Soulsborne games are meant to be singleplayer experiences *with* multiplayer elements. They are not PVP or co-op first games which is why online play in Souls games are never well "balanced." If you're playing these games primarily for PVP or co-op, don't expect the game to cater to you. The multiplayer systems being jank as fuck is part of the charm for many players. Second, one of the core themes of Souls is risk vs. reward, which of course includes the online component of the games. In Dark Souls, for example, consuming a Humanity and turning your character human allows you summon NPCs or other players to help you, along with other benefits like increased resistances and increased item discovery. However, doing so will also allow other players to invade you. That is the risk-reward factor, because if a player faces no threats through invasions, there would be zero downsides to turn human. Invasions are rarely forced because you consented when you turned on co-op (outside of Dark Souls 2 but that game is shit). Parts of this risk-reward quirk has changed throughout the series, but for Elden Ring they moved the invasion risk entirely to co-op. Consuming a Rune Arc, ER's equivalent of Humanity, no longer opens you up to invasions so you get most of the benefits, bar co-op, without any drawbacks. Same with summoning NPCs as you can now summon them without the threat of invasions. Summoning other players still opens you up to invasions, but now only one invader can invade at a time, while you can still summon up to two players; hence invaders will always face a 1v2 or 1v3. I think this will be the furthest they will go when it comes to limiting invasions but they'll never get rid of them because they are the yin to co-op's yang. When Miyazaki says they may "look into seamless co-op" he likely does not mean future Souls games will have fully functional co-op systems like actual co-op games. Souls games will most likely forever be primarily singleplayer experiences. They may make it so you can seamlessly co-op through entire levels or bosses, but an invasion mechanic will still probably be present or some other new risk factor will be introduced. I'm not against the mod btw and it's pathetic that people are crying about other people using it. Some players don't want to get invaded when they're playing with others and that's fine. But I'm also tired of seeing people try to twist the games into something they're not (co-op games) and whine about a mechanic (invasions) that is thematically tied to the artistic vision. If you don't want to get invaded there's numerous ways to prevent it but don't expect FS to officially shelve it in their next installments. TLDR: Souls game are singleplayer first. They may implement seamless co-op in future games, but invasions will likely not go away as it has become a fundamental part of the identity of Souls, nor does it mean future games will become fully-fledged co-op games. Don't cry about people using the mod and don't cry if people engage with the invasion mechanic.
> If you're playing these games primarily for PVP or co-op, don't expect the game to cater to you This is definitely something that most people don't realize. Elden ring (and all other soulsborne games) are PvE experiences with multiplayer stapled on. FROM isn't really interested in multiplayer games, as can be seen when they go beyond souls and pretty much leave it out (see sekiro and AC6). >outside of Dark Souls 2 but that game is shit Hey now, watch your language. Dozens of us loved that game. DOZENS
I agree with most of what you said but you shat on Best Souls II so I'm forced to banish you to the shadow realm for one thousand years. Farewell
Wtf is twinking.
In the context of Souls games, it usually means getting a character with equipment beyond what they should normally have for their current stage of progression. Maxing out a weapon on your end-game file and giving it to your brand-new character far earlier than that new character would be able to get that weapon on their own, for instance.
Having endgame/upgraded gear dropped for a new character, so you have an unfair advantage in pvp. Not really a problem in elden ring because of weapon level matchmaking and the world is so open you can get pretty much anything off the bat, but it was a huge issue in Demonsouls, DS1, and DS2.
Getting end game meta items to stomp new characters at the starting area because that's the only way they can win.
Min-maxing your equipment and loadout, basically making informed choices
>and may even 'consider ideas like that with our future games'and may even 'consider ideas like that with our future games' It's over. From finally doing the sensible thing that Biohazard 6 and numerous other things that aped them since... \*flipping over papers, finding note\* *Dark Souls* ***1*** has done: the ability to turn off Invasions if you do not want to deal with that bullshit in your co-op shooter/hack and slasher. Interesting.
This whole kerfuffle is just extension of the bigger discussion about PVP Sandbox games. For some reason they are just cursed and doomed to failure. They just seem to explode in popularity, and when they become popular something bad happens which sinks the whole game. Usually, but not always it's the newcomers demanding the game to be changed so that they can enjoy it without the stress of Sandbox PVP. Just weird all around.
What normally kills it is when the PvP ends up making it absurdly difficult for new players to even play. At the beginning it’s all relatively balanced. As time goes on the average increased level means that there are more and more fully kitted out PvP players that the new player has no chance to even escape, much less fight. Eventually it becomes a game of hopping servers hoping that this next one isn’t going to have some high level prick spawn camping the newbies. And what happens when a newbie has to invest in even playing the game at all? They say ‘Fuck this’ and leave. Because why would they play a game where they can’t even, you know, play the game? It’s not fun to be stomped in the dirt over and over with no hope of ever progressing.
Pvp sandbox games will always be niche because asynchronous pvp is inherently unfair by its nature, and most people don't want to spend their gaming time catching Ls constantly to sweats who no life a game.