Bleh I lost 6 humanity yesterday stubbornly trying to summon aid for Knight Artorias (first time in the DLC areas). I kept getting invaded as I got to the fog gate, and there were no summon signs. There was one guy I kept summoning and he'd leave immediately. I summoned this dude 3 times, and finally gave up. My problem with every invasion was getting backstabbed. Invaders don't lock on anymore. They just sort of charge you, roll, and backstab. There seems to be nothing I can do about it, I even try to roll forward past them and they apparently cancel out of the roll and backstab. So cheap. How do I learn this?
Yeah, that and ravioli step is something they need to patch / fix in the next version. I've never bothered trying to learn it, and I still hold my own in PVP. The trick to not getting backstabbed is not getting too close, not committing to a chain of attacks, and not doing *anything* that's slow.
You know, this thread makes me want Jamie Madigan to write an article on the psychology of avoiding PvP.
I mean, I just don't understand the pathological need to be avoid being killed by a player in a game where you die with such regularity that it's like clockwork. What makes it so different? I mean, almost all experiences with a new boss is the same; not knowing what's going on, getting reamed, dying repeatedly. Hell, there are bosses I used to think were unfair and strangely punishing and nowadays I steamroll them like no one's business. Also, I'm curious where anti-pvp sentiment stands on gravelording. Does it still count as non-consensual PVP when extra tough enemies spawn in your game? Or is that okay? If so, why?
I'm curious about this too, since gravelording is the only way another player can harass you that you don't opt into, but tough monsters coming into your game isn't actually you fighting another player.
As I have said before the way PvP in this game is handled is terrible. I haven't won a single fight and frequently don't even damage the invader. This despite the fact I soloed every boss in the game outside of NPC phantom help in one case where it wasn't even needed (moonlight butterfly). I don't mind multiplayer in general but I like to choose when I do it and not by some stupid system of going human or not. I don't really care about losing souls or even humanity I just hate dying when I have no chance. In games where I choose to play multiplayer (NHL and CoD for example) I have a chance because aside from some leveling curve I am equipped to go up against anyone. I do well because I am good and play a lot. This PvP system is like one of you playing NHL 13 single player and having me suddenly take over the other team because you decided to play an NHL team rather than an AHL team. It would go exactly like PvP has for me so far.
As I think has been explained multiple times now, you do have a choice about PvP. Going human is the equivalent of ticking the box on a menu in a more humdrum game that says 'let me at some of dat PvP' except Dark Souls being a more interesting character to get to know integrates that checkbox neatly and seamlessly into the game. It seems they integrated it so well that people are still insisting that they never ticked it. Not only is it integrated it also provides some proper risk reward trade-offs and thematic trappings. You say that you managed to solo all the bosses in the game (bar one) so you have pretty much proven that there really is no need to get involved in PvP if you don't want to. Well I dispute that there is any major difference between a Dark Souls invasion and a CoD one in terms of whether one has 'a chance'. It's definitely possible to beat invaders without top of the line gear and without being any kind of PvP obsessive as I have proven by beating several (though not the majority of them) myself. Much as it would be nice to think of myself as some kind of Dark Souls ninja the rest of my experience in the game rather belies that conclusion. So you do have a chance you just haven't, for whatever reason, managed to convert it into a win.
I understand it fine, I just don't like it and disagree with the philosophy. :) Yes, I've been saying that as well. Most of my complaints stem from the brokenness. Yes, I understand that to purists sudden unavoidable death is a low price to pay for getting more estus or access to summons but that is a level of zen/masochism I just don't feel the need for. I'm an explorer type. Every death in DS is progress except for PvP which locks you in an area, unable to do anything until your conflict resolves. It turns my exploration game into a locked arena. And it just rankles someone's getting *their* checkboxes for jollies ticked at the expense of my progress. :D
Where are you seeing this problem? All of the commonly complained-about invasion hotspots that come to mind right now are laid out such that the fog wall basically comes up behind the bonfire and you still have a lot of forward progress available. For instance, if you unhollow at the Solaire bonfire in Anor Londo and get invaded, you can go all the way to the boss without dealing with the invader, if you last that long. And when you challenge a boss the invader gets kicked out. I think you might be assuming a level of childish malice on the part of all invaders that is probably not the case for very many of them at least the ones that a) aren't hacking and b) aren't griefing new players in the Burg/Parish.
Well, then here are your choices. You can assume advocates for PvP here are lying to you, you can assume we are all inherently better at games, or you can infer that like most things in DS you're simply misunderstanding the tactical situation. The best way to correct situation number three is to make an invasion-oriented character; none of mine apart from my level 120 dueling characters have gear that I wouldn't use normally in PvE, and I tend to avoid faith and magic and really only use pyro because it's essentially free to have as an emergency switch in case of multiple opponents or AI enemies getting in the mix.You don't understand the limits an invader faces until you've played one a good bit, and that opens the door to exploiting those limits yourself. The point is that DS isn't going to auto-level the field for you, because the number one variable is recognizing what you are up against and acting accordingly. Where the core skills of a gamer come in is at the end of that decision tree, where you've opted to engage in x place after switching y items out in your inventory because you've placed them at the top or bottom of your inventory lists for easy access. Not because they're strange dirty tricks but because it's always good to have a plan b if they are ready for plan a, and then go 2h in mid combo because you have just a bit of stamina left and it might as well be a good hit. Those kinds of instinctive moves take time to learn in asymmetrical games. Learning PvP will make you a better tactical PvE player. Demons' correctly understood this and integrated PvE into a boss fight as the core mechanic. You can beat Dark Souls without getting into PvP, and you can even get comfortable in PvE without it. But you're not actually good at it until you can tell the difference between PvP losses, wins, and everything in between.
Hmm, good point. I'm probably thinking of the parish. When you enter the courtyard from Andre, the fog wall is immediately behind you - the invader is usually hanging out by the boss door. Yes, this. These are the sort of people I'm trying to "fix" by getting rid of backstabbing and parrying in PvP, and arguing for some sort of gear-based ranking, as this is where I encounter most PvP. And since it IS where I encounter most PvP, I assume that is the majority of PvPers.* *yes of course this is anecdotal. I'm sure y'alls PvP experiences are cookies and rainbows. This feels better integrated to me. I don't think it fog walls you, and you can invade them to make it stop. At least there are options other than "die" or "die". Anyway, give me another 100 hours. I'm still working on accepting the existence of bosses, come on.
In CoD I am playing multiplayer and that is it. I am not figuring out what will work well on the AI then suddenly having to figure out what works well against 100 different combinations of gear. In multiplayer I am trying to kill people and they are trying to kill me and there is no ambiguity about the situation.
There is no ambiguity about multiplayer in Dark Souls; are you still confused about what it's safe to assume invaders are there to do? Dark Souls PvE is worlds better than CoD's, but it's still just an intermediate phase in terms of tactical development of the combat of the game. You don't memorize gear loadouts but broad strokes of what to look for that matters to you, you learn ways to probe without dying, to use offense overwhelmingly so it might not matter at all what they brought, to use defense in a manner that gives you a way out if it doesn't work, and so on. In fact, PvE gives you much of this, but the problem is that many people assume that a PvE problem surpassed is the same as one that you understand well. In some ways, being a veteran of more conventional action games works against you because you assume the cap to what you can do is much lower than it is.
You're the best at making masturbatory excuses for the worst parts of the game. Charles is easily #2, but you're firmly #1 in the amount of bullshit design decisions you'll try to justify from conquering arbitrary bullshit over your 100s of hours of play. You talk like a god damn WoW raider, and I'm not even sure you realize it. Jamie was right, Alt+F4 so that LK and Charles can go "WAHHH HAHAHAHA NOOBY CAREBEAR L2P" while you re-load and continue playing the game without being bothered by autistic mouthbreathers who know ever nook and cranny of it.
I explicitly recommended alt-f4ing and everything else that prevents people from dealing with PvP if they don't want to, although obviously I prefer people give it a chance before they decide to write it off. In fact, I thought LL's was a perfectly reasonable question. What I'm explaining is why the system works for people who are interested in what it has to offer, and why it's built the way it is, and why it's primarily a conceptual gap rather than a mechanical problem that some people find it insurmountable. It's not the game that's broken, it's just a game that isn't the way you want it to be. Beyond that, as usual, go fuck yourself.
But there you go: that's not a closed off arena, it's almost the whole level. And if he's hanging out by the fog door he's terrible and you can step directly past him and go through that door. Well... why are you spending so much time human in Undead Parish? There's definitely griefing that goes on there but it shouldn't really be a problem for you.
So because you once got invaded by a douche the mechanic is utterly and completely broken? Because I got invaded once by a friendly and respectful player and I also killed that player, and thus by your reasoning the mechanic is perfectly implemented. In light of how fucking ridiculous your other criticisms of this game have been, it's no surprise to see you banging the "INVASIONS ARE BULLSHIT HERPITY DERP" drum.
Why do you call him a douche? I thought that invader was just playing the game the way it was meant to be played? What makes him a douche and you not a douche?
I decided to shorten your "autistic mouthbreathers who know every nook and cranny of [the game]" to "douche."
See, I think this is the fundamental difference and why I'll have to almost always agree to disagree with you. You call it PvE, whereas to me that's the actual game. The PvP is something that's tacked-on and in my way. I realize that to you PvP-oriented folks the implementation is brilliant, seamless, in-world and in-theme but as primarily a single-player of most games (PvP is just not that interesting to me as a game-hopper; I don't have the time to keep up the skills when there's so many other games out there) I just find it hard to adopt that viewpoint. It doesn't help that I originally had this on the 360 without Gold, so the game kinda established itself as a single player only one for me. He can one-shot me as I go up the ladder. I just seem to be making a lot of new characters lately and staying human in an effort to wring some sense out of PvP. It's probably some kind of subconscious masochism.
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. You're complaining that you're getting invaded too much... when you're standing around deliberately waiting for invasions? Which you hate? Like the doctor says in that old joke, stop doing that.
No no, just running through on my way to wherever. It's just that I have/had a lot of lowbies, who happened to be there recently; it's a bit of an early hub what with Andre right there, easily accessible from Firelink. And that's where most of my invasions occur so they kinda make an impression.
Oh man, no. I do think the conceptual conceit that going human opens your world up to phantoms -- friendly or otherwise -- is great, but the actual implementation has some definite shortcomings. On the technical side alone there are major issues with latency and P2P connections, and the way invasion connections seem to time out or just crap out. Design-wise, I think the way you have to basically camp out and wait in a confined area to either invade or be invaded is a pretty significant shortcoming, and that applies to co-op summoning as well (Forest Hunter and Dark Anor Londo invasions kind of get around this with the rings, but then you're confined to a single area as an invasion target, and I've never had the DAL ring work at all). The convenants, while a great idea, are kind of a mess, with only four of them being worth the effort. Really, there's a lot to criticize in the multiplayer implementation, but when it works it's a blast.
I think it's completely fair to criticize the technical side of it, and I've said many of the things you've brought up here myself. In fact, I think most people supporting the design of the game are critical about the implementation. What you're seeing here are largely 3 separate streams of criticism: what you're bringing up, the shell-shocked new player still unsure about the fundamentals (and with good reason), and veteran players who disagree at a core level about merging multiplayer with the core game so that they can't opt out of PvP while still using coop which then gets translated into all sorts of arguments about the proper "flags" for PvP. I don't think there's much profit in treating these streams of criticism as broad for/against camps, because they all demand different responses. It's not constructive to try to explain things to group 3 past a certain point, whereas group 1 sometimes has technical details that can make it better and group 2 probably has a high upper limit of potential suggestions to improve the experience.
By all means, alt-F4, so I can lap up your delicious tears when you corrupt your savegame and/or lose hours of progress going to a backup.
It could. But even if it doesn't, it's probably longer to wait for steam to recognize the game has exited, relaunch, and load a save, than it is to just go find the dude and give it a shot.
I got invaded again! I was tooling around in the Catacombs for the first time and some guy who looked like a dandy came in with something lightningish and stabbed me repeatedly until I was dead. Again, I had no idea what he was using, and this time my attacks didn't seem to be doing much good. So I picked myself up and grabbed those souls back and continued on my merry way. Not nearly as rage inducing as the goddamn motherfucking asshole shitfucking bonewheels.
Haha yeah, Anyone who's qq'ing over invasions clearly hasn't gone down into the tunnels in the Painted World.
A highlight of my STR build was to go down there and flatten each and every one of those assholes with a Large Club +14. Fog Ring is the secret to a successful flattening.
Like anything Dark Souls taking those guys on varies on your build. They have been everywhere from tough sons of bitches to easy. Hell, taking the greatsheild of Artoris to them I could stand there until they gave up and whack 'em.
Speaking of invasions, it's true, if I could turn off PVP I would have and never turned it on. The PVP field would be a barren wasteland. Outside of a few failed attempts at getting a fog ring I have never invaded anyone. But I don't rage quit at PVP anymore. I'll take the fight an see how I do. It's probably 75/25 at this point. Mostly what I get annoyed at these days is the shitty net code. Having the bonfire go out and fog gates go up with nothing happening is pretty annoying. Esp. when it goes off a few times in a row. One time I took to suicide to move on in my game.
