I think I played DS1 hollow like 99% of the time, because it's not even like DeS/DS2/DS3 where you get more health when human/kindled. I guess if you think you're going to summon help for a boss in DS1 you have to go human at the bonfire since you can't just pop effigy/ember at the boss fog like you can in the other games.
Yeah, I was trying to summon a phantom.
And then you get invaded cause I don't fucking know why but From Software thinks just fucking you over for no reason is hilarious.
Risk/reward
Get a phantom to help bypass this boss but you may get ruined on the way
The fact that the risk is "get ruined" is kinda the whole point. Invasions are just a giant fuck you to the player. Especially when you are going through a section that is tough to you. (like when you'd need help the most)
I mean, they're an integral part of the game. If you want to summon another player for help in a single player game, it seems fair that someone else could show up to try and kill you (1v2, no less).
I mean, they're an integral part of the game. If you want to summon another player for help in a single player game, it seems fair that someone else could show up to try and kill you (1v2, no less).
Nah, it's 1v1 cause you get ganked on the way to the summon sign which was dropped outside the boss gate you hadn't gotten to yet. In DS1 usually by someone with equipment about 10x better then yours.
DS1 was played hollow every single second you could get away with it and then you'd pop a humanity and rush the boss and hope the game didn't fuck you over because being human was basically playing russian roulette. Random chance the game would just decide to kill you for no reason.
I know every time this discussion comes up it's a rehash of the same argument, with one side saying play offline if you don't want to be invaded, and the other side saying "But I should be able to summon phantoms while also having invasions not happen."
It's just not how the game is designed. For me being invaded is fun. Though I do like the DeS/DS2/DS3 method of being able to pop your consumable right at the boss fog without risking being invaded up to that point.
Really, Bloodborne had the best implementation IMO, even though that game has bad PvP. You would only be invaded if there was a bell ringing woman alive in the area or if you rang the bell to opt in. So if you chose to summon help you had to find and kill the bell ringing woman that you spawned before an invader came in.
In terms of DS3, invaders are at a HUGE disadvantage. Health disadvantage, the host probably has 2 phantoms with them, host can pop a seed to make it so you can't even use the enemies as a shield in the fight. They're only just now fixing DS3 to be a little more favorable to invaders, which was wildly needed.
Yeah, Dark Souls 1 does not have any of the "twink prevention" measures they've used in later games. So yeah, that definitely can and will happen in DS1. Especially since the only people still invading in that game are the type of people to still be playing and invading on DS1 years after release.
If you're playing on PC, a good number of the people invading you will be cheating too.
I just don't see why people get so annoyed about it. It's Dark Souls. What's one more death?
Sometimes it's the death that costs you a ton of souls, though thankfully none of that shit in DS1 most of the time.
More so imo it's that when you die to the monsters, it at least usually felt somewhat fair. You fucked up, you didn't remember that enemy was there, you didn't play against his move-set properly, you got swarmed, whatever, you died. Dying to an invader (in DS1 at least) was basically almost always getting randomly jumped by someone out of nowhere who would do 50% of your health in one hit and then backstab you while standing in front of you and 10 feet away. Best thing to do usually was sprint back towards the bonfire and then wait for you to be able to play the game again.
DS1 you could avoid that shit 90% of the time because there were basically no downsides to being hollowed for the majority of your playthrough, hence the start of this whole conversation.
In DS1 with lagstabs and the ridiculous poise, I can see invasions feeling unfair. In the later games though, nope. Dying to an invader in DS3 requires getting outplayed in some seriously huge ways.
I only got invaded once through both DS3 DLCs, in the Ashes area. I was pretty near to a bonfire when I saw it was happening, so I just ran back near the bonfire and waited on them. Then I waved and drank all my estus charges. They drank theirs in response, and we fought. I ended up winning, but if I hadn't, I wouldn't care.
The reality is most invaders will fight you 1 on 1 no estus if you're willing to do it. They're ready to win or lose and get on to the next invasion.
Dark Souls 3 PVP is horrendous, maybe the worst in the series. I can't envision a more boring PvP system. The fact that the players had to establish an honour code to make fights less than interminable is just a demonstration of that. Plus it looks ridiculous with players roll spamming everywhere.
I love the idea of invasions, and I've had some great invasions in other games, but the grand idea of the thing has always been utterly spoiled by lag. It's just too severe for a game where timing and spacing are so important, and lag is far too common. I was very rarely embered in DS3 as a result.
But that's the thing isn't it, the invader loses nothing and may be given an in-game incentive to do so whereas the invaded may be trying to recover souls, progress further or summon help for a boss fight. One is a willing participant while another in unwilling.*
*Naturally the gank squads in 3 are the exception but in some ways I see it as karma for two games of invader favoring invasions.
Thankfully there has pretty much always been ways to get around all this nonsense but I finally learned my lesson and just played offline for most of DLC2.
People don't mind losing to computers as much as they mind losing to other people.
Ego.
Invaders choose, go out of their way even, to hinder other players. It has a taste of "I am here specifically to spoil your fun". Whether this ruins or improves the dish depends on the individual, but if someone should send it back, you don't refuse them.
If you think DS3 PvP is the worst, you didn't live through DS1 poise and lagstabs. There is no comparison. DS3 PvP is bad, I agree, spamming roll and R1s. It's no surprise that most of the people who used to be dedicated souls PvPers are just playing For Honor now.
If you were lagging out in every DS3 fight though, you just have bad internet.
No souls game has ever really had really good PvP. DS2 did it the best, but even that game would always have a FotM that was broken and had to be patched. The fun of the PvP is purely just in the thrill of invasions. The people who really forced it with fight clubs and all that were trying to make it something it was never going to be good at doing.
For a while in Dark Souls 2 I had a phase where I didn't mind invasions. This was when I was playing my caster character who always had a spare slot for chameleon on. Whenever the invasion message came up i'd find a good nook out of the way, turn into a box, then sit and wait. The more time of theirs i'm wasting the better, because that means they aren't out ruining other people's fun instead.
If you think DS3 PvP is the worst, you didn't live through DS1 poise and lagstabs. There is no comparison. DS3 PvP is bad, I agree, spamming roll and R1s. It's no surprise that most of the people who used to be dedicated souls PvPers are just playing For Honor now.
If you were lagging out in every DS3 fight though, you just have bad internet.
No souls game has ever really had really good PvP. DS2 did it the best, but even that game would always have a FotM that was broken and had to be patched. The fun of the PvP is purely just in the thrill of invasions. The people who really forced it with fight clubs and all that were trying to make it something it was never going to be good at doing.
Dragon covenant has always been the only real way I have engaged the PVP in Dark Souls in any real way. Duels that both players have agreed to are the best part.
And yes, I did live through DS1 and the horrendous lag. I STILL would consider it better than DS3 in that at least the lag disasters often meant the fight was over before the heat death of the universe (yes, often to a bullshit backstab-from-the-front, but I'd much rather die and leave my dragon sign again with an iteration time of thirty seconds than spend five minutes flailing R1s at each other in futility).
As for invasions, generally speaking... my reaction has depended on the game. In DS1 I would only put in the barest of efforts when I was invaded, because honestly if you're invading in DS1 75% chance is that you're way more twinked out than I am, so let me just find a place that is easy to reach so my souls are easily recoverable before you murder me. In DS2 I'd stand and fight, and some of my coolest fights have been from there. In DS3 I either do the DS1 thing or I straight up jump off a cliff. That way the invader gets his prize (I do know how shitty farming covenants can be), I don't have to sit through this shit, and we can both move on with our lives.
You can't be invaded within a certain amount of time after another invasion, right?
If you know where to go and human up you can motor your ass to the boss without getting invaded, if an invader kills you? I thought that was how it worked in DS1
My DS3 being invaded experience is usually getting invaded, then jumped while I'm in the middle of fighting an NPC. I remember the two or three good invasions where the other guy actually came over, watched me finish my fight and heal up, and THEN we both tried to kill each other like civilized gentlemen, but those were uncommon.
I did enjoy the way of blue covenant or whichever it was that would pull me into the world of a host who was being invaded, though. I got 35 of the proofs of concord kept before I even knew they were hard to get.
My DS3 being invaded experience is usually getting invaded, then jumped while I'm in the middle of fighting an NPC. I remember the two or three good invasions where the other guy actually came over, watched me finish my fight and heal up, and THEN we both tried to kill each other like civilized gentlemen, but those were uncommon.
I did enjoy the way of blue covenant or whichever it was that would pull me into the world of a host who was being invaded, though. I got 35 of the proofs of concord kept before I even knew they were hard to get.
I did like their idea there with that Covenant, even if it never seemed to quite work right. But the idea of attacking and defending covenants full of people who want to actually PvP duking it out was really solid imo.
I was never really invaded in DS1 so I don't have much of an opinion but the complete lack of equipment balancing makes me go O.O
But I got invaded in DS2 semi-often and it's vastly better because you can actually hit what you see. DS3 invasions would be so much better if it had functioning netcode.
You know, the boss fights that annoy me the most aren't the reliably hard ones.
It's the ones that are inconsistently difficult.
By which I mean, man, fuck Crystal Sage. The fact that I usually blow past him with zero effort only makes those times he acts as a roadblock for a character all the more infuriating.
Crystal sage sucks as a boss, but I've never died to it. It's just a nuisance. Reminds me of some of the demons souls style of boss design where it's just a gimmick without any real difficulty. Similar to deacons.
Did twenty more low level invasions in Undead Settlement before I finally said "fuck it" and went and leveled up to Road of Sacrifices level range. For giggles, I jotted down the overall details of the fights.
I won six in total. About half of those were against groups of total newbies, but the other half had at least one phantom either with a ton of playtime or was a high-SL character password summoned in.
Five (FIVE!) of them were against obvious cheaters running with max stats, and one of them was using the final DLC boss' weapon with an infinite FP cheat on. I still almost beat that one, even doing 20 damage a hit. It was to the point where I could tell the cheaters I was going against, because they were the only ones running solo.
Random observations:
Pyromancy is not great at this level unless you have a sage ring. I do not yet, so life is awful. When Great Combustion hits, though, it hits hard.
The Gnaw miracle (the basic one, not the one from Irithyll) travels fast. Shockingly fast, almost undodgeable fast. I got blindsided by one and had a nearly maxed-out bleed meter from that alone.
To nobody's surprise, the Ringed City DLC weapons are brutally overpowered, even at low SLs where you can barely equip them. You just don't have the toolset at SL15-20 to deal with some of those weapon arts.
The plain ol' Mace is just as good in invasions as it is in duels. The poise while 2h is considerable, and lets you make a lot of excellent trades against a shocking amount of stuff.
I don't know who thought that recent patch was supposed to be this huge buff to invaders, but it seems to have done the opposite. EVERYONE runs Way of Blue now, and every single invasion is a race against the clock to take out the host before his phantoms get you. If you don't, you're swarmed by a host, his phantom(s), and two Blue Sentinels/Blades. Of those twenty invasions, thirteen of them were four-on-ones in the host's favor within two minutes. That is insane, and the only time I ever ran into that prior to this patch was when I'd invade into a dedicated gank squad. The only small blessing is that it's harder for hosts to resummon their phantoms when they die, but that's cold comfort when you're facing down a four-man gank squad every time you use an orb.
Here's hoping that Road of Sacrifices proves to be better, as it's always been a good place for me to invade into as a red or purple. If not, I might hang up my orb and stop doing invasions entirely. It's always been an uphill battle for invaders in DS3 when you're up against anyone that isn't an absolute novice, but it's been ridiculous lately.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I don't mind the invasion mechanic at all as long as its balanced.
Though If people can just walk straight down to Undead Burg with endgame gear and just shit all over new players..fuck me, thats rough.
I have to say, even though it's happened to me, especially since it's happened to me, I get a lot of laughs out of it. It's part of the learning curve.
And hey! In DS3 the Ringed City, my very first time through the zone I got invaded. I chugged my Estus, they did the same, we had a good old fight, I won, and still made it to the next bonfire!
I wouldn't have had the same experience had it not been possible to be invaded. And if I get annoyed or are exploring, the "penalties" for being unembered/unhumantied are less than they have ever been.
Crystal sage sucks as a boss, but I've never died to it. It's just a nuisance. Reminds me of some of the demons souls style of boss design where it's just a gimmick without any real difficulty. Similar to deacons.
Yeah, I don't get it. Sometimes I beat it effortlessly. Other times, I can spend five or six pulls on it.
Keeping in mind that I feel confident at this point fighting every other boss in the game barring Abyss Watchers in three or fewer. (I haven't done DLC2 yet, though).
Other stupid things more likely to kill me than hard bosses: Any situation with 2+ dogs, barehanded Grues, spear LKs if I don't have an easy guard break.
Crystal sage sucks as a boss, but I've never died to it. It's just a nuisance. Reminds me of some of the demons souls style of boss design where it's just a gimmick without any real difficulty. Similar to deacons.
Yeah, I don't get it. Sometimes I beat it effortlessly. Other times, I can spend five or six pulls on it.
Keeping in mind that I feel confident at this point fighting every other boss in the game barring Abyss Watchers in three or fewer. (I haven't done DLC2 yet, though).
Other stupid things more likely to kill me than hard bosses: Any situation with 2+ dogs, barehanded Grues, spear LKs if I don't have an easy guard break.
The Crystal Sage can deal a tremendous amount of damage with some of his spells (though most aren't bad). Combine this with all the other shit he may have tossed out recently and it's very easy to cascade into a death combo. It's similar design to Micolash in Bloodborne where the fight is pretty easy but there's a chance they can blow you the fuck up and it's somewhat RNG based.
I still remember when an ultra high powered player invaded me during the Undead Burg in DS1. I think he had the Kalameet Greatsword and some really high level magic/pyromancy. I was like, level 20 or something and really into (and still am) the whole "NEVER GIVE UP SKELETON!" attitude. So, at that one blind intersection you have to unlock? The part where you have to go down that flight of stairs to reach Apprentice Griggs and the Capra demon? I did a 90 degree juke at the stair case. He didn't track, and went sprinting off the staircase and to his just death.
Yes Mr. Host, hit me with that /pointdown when I die as an invader, after going through three Blue Sentinels and all of your estus before finally going down to you and Blue Sentinels #4 and 5.
I think I came out ahead in that exchange.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Nearing the end of my "complete" run. I'm kind of surprised at how fast I tore through the latter half, to be honest. One-shotting Nameless King is not something I thought would happen when my first playthrough I must have attempted him 50+ times.
Also why is Hawkwood crestfallen? He's without a doubt the most bad ass m-fer I think I've ever summoned in a Souls game. His dick is so huge I think you can see it from space.
Guys why do I struggle so much with Abyss Watchers. I feel like my victory is completely out of my hands every time. Maybe my rolls work this time and I steamroll, maybe my rolls get caught by the flames and I die with barely any damage on the boss 6 pulls in a row.
Is it like Kalameet or Manus, where it feels like bullshit but there's some minor thing I could be doing that completely changes the difficulty and predictability?
Posts
The fact that the risk is "get ruined" is kinda the whole point. Invasions are just a giant fuck you to the player. Especially when you are going through a section that is tough to you. (like when you'd need help the most)
Not really no. Invasions are WAY too punishing.
I mean, they're an integral part of the game. If you want to summon another player for help in a single player game, it seems fair that someone else could show up to try and kill you (1v2, no less).
Nah, it's 1v1 cause you get ganked on the way to the summon sign which was dropped outside the boss gate you hadn't gotten to yet. In DS1 usually by someone with equipment about 10x better then yours.
DS1 was played hollow every single second you could get away with it and then you'd pop a humanity and rush the boss and hope the game didn't fuck you over because being human was basically playing russian roulette. Random chance the game would just decide to kill you for no reason.
It's just not how the game is designed. For me being invaded is fun. Though I do like the DeS/DS2/DS3 method of being able to pop your consumable right at the boss fog without risking being invaded up to that point.
Really, Bloodborne had the best implementation IMO, even though that game has bad PvP. You would only be invaded if there was a bell ringing woman alive in the area or if you rang the bell to opt in. So if you chose to summon help you had to find and kill the bell ringing woman that you spawned before an invader came in.
In terms of DS3, invaders are at a HUGE disadvantage. Health disadvantage, the host probably has 2 phantoms with them, host can pop a seed to make it so you can't even use the enemies as a shield in the fight. They're only just now fixing DS3 to be a little more favorable to invaders, which was wildly needed.
Ego.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Though If people can just walk straight down to Undead Burg with endgame gear and just shit all over new players..fuck me, thats rough.
If you're playing on PC, a good number of the people invading you will be cheating too.
Sometimes it's the death that costs you a ton of souls, though thankfully none of that shit in DS1 most of the time.
More so imo it's that when you die to the monsters, it at least usually felt somewhat fair. You fucked up, you didn't remember that enemy was there, you didn't play against his move-set properly, you got swarmed, whatever, you died. Dying to an invader (in DS1 at least) was basically almost always getting randomly jumped by someone out of nowhere who would do 50% of your health in one hit and then backstab you while standing in front of you and 10 feet away. Best thing to do usually was sprint back towards the bonfire and then wait for you to be able to play the game again.
DS1 you could avoid that shit 90% of the time because there were basically no downsides to being hollowed for the majority of your playthrough, hence the start of this whole conversation.
I only got invaded once through both DS3 DLCs, in the Ashes area. I was pretty near to a bonfire when I saw it was happening, so I just ran back near the bonfire and waited on them. Then I waved and drank all my estus charges. They drank theirs in response, and we fought. I ended up winning, but if I hadn't, I wouldn't care.
The reality is most invaders will fight you 1 on 1 no estus if you're willing to do it. They're ready to win or lose and get on to the next invasion.
I love the idea of invasions, and I've had some great invasions in other games, but the grand idea of the thing has always been utterly spoiled by lag. It's just too severe for a game where timing and spacing are so important, and lag is far too common. I was very rarely embered in DS3 as a result.
*Naturally the gank squads in 3 are the exception but in some ways I see it as karma for two games of invader favoring invasions.
Thankfully there has pretty much always been ways to get around all this nonsense but I finally learned my lesson and just played offline for most of DLC2.
If you were lagging out in every DS3 fight though, you just have bad internet.
No souls game has ever really had really good PvP. DS2 did it the best, but even that game would always have a FotM that was broken and had to be patched. The fun of the PvP is purely just in the thrill of invasions. The people who really forced it with fight clubs and all that were trying to make it something it was never going to be good at doing.
I play Dork Souls like I play Advance Wars.
Dragon covenant has always been the only real way I have engaged the PVP in Dark Souls in any real way. Duels that both players have agreed to are the best part.
And yes, I did live through DS1 and the horrendous lag. I STILL would consider it better than DS3 in that at least the lag disasters often meant the fight was over before the heat death of the universe (yes, often to a bullshit backstab-from-the-front, but I'd much rather die and leave my dragon sign again with an iteration time of thirty seconds than spend five minutes flailing R1s at each other in futility).
As for invasions, generally speaking... my reaction has depended on the game. In DS1 I would only put in the barest of efforts when I was invaded, because honestly if you're invading in DS1 75% chance is that you're way more twinked out than I am, so let me just find a place that is easy to reach so my souls are easily recoverable before you murder me. In DS2 I'd stand and fight, and some of my coolest fights have been from there. In DS3 I either do the DS1 thing or I straight up jump off a cliff. That way the invader gets his prize (I do know how shitty farming covenants can be), I don't have to sit through this shit, and we can both move on with our lives.
If you know where to go and human up you can motor your ass to the boss without getting invaded, if an invader kills you? I thought that was how it worked in DS1
I did enjoy the way of blue covenant or whichever it was that would pull me into the world of a host who was being invaded, though. I got 35 of the proofs of concord kept before I even knew they were hard to get.
I did like their idea there with that Covenant, even if it never seemed to quite work right. But the idea of attacking and defending covenants full of people who want to actually PvP duking it out was really solid imo.
But I got invaded in DS2 semi-often and it's vastly better because you can actually hit what you see. DS3 invasions would be so much better if it had functioning netcode.
It's the ones that are inconsistently difficult.
By which I mean, man, fuck Crystal Sage. The fact that I usually blow past him with zero effort only makes those times he acts as a roadblock for a character all the more infuriating.
I won six in total. About half of those were against groups of total newbies, but the other half had at least one phantom either with a ton of playtime or was a high-SL character password summoned in.
Five (FIVE!) of them were against obvious cheaters running with max stats, and one of them was using the final DLC boss' weapon with an infinite FP cheat on. I still almost beat that one, even doing 20 damage a hit. It was to the point where I could tell the cheaters I was going against, because they were the only ones running solo.
Random observations:
Pyromancy is not great at this level unless you have a sage ring. I do not yet, so life is awful. When Great Combustion hits, though, it hits hard.
The Gnaw miracle (the basic one, not the one from Irithyll) travels fast. Shockingly fast, almost undodgeable fast. I got blindsided by one and had a nearly maxed-out bleed meter from that alone.
To nobody's surprise, the Ringed City DLC weapons are brutally overpowered, even at low SLs where you can barely equip them. You just don't have the toolset at SL15-20 to deal with some of those weapon arts.
R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1R1
The plain ol' Mace is just as good in invasions as it is in duels. The poise while 2h is considerable, and lets you make a lot of excellent trades against a shocking amount of stuff.
I don't know who thought that recent patch was supposed to be this huge buff to invaders, but it seems to have done the opposite. EVERYONE runs Way of Blue now, and every single invasion is a race against the clock to take out the host before his phantoms get you. If you don't, you're swarmed by a host, his phantom(s), and two Blue Sentinels/Blades. Of those twenty invasions, thirteen of them were four-on-ones in the host's favor within two minutes. That is insane, and the only time I ever ran into that prior to this patch was when I'd invade into a dedicated gank squad. The only small blessing is that it's harder for hosts to resummon their phantoms when they die, but that's cold comfort when you're facing down a four-man gank squad every time you use an orb.
Here's hoping that Road of Sacrifices proves to be better, as it's always been a good place for me to invade into as a red or purple. If not, I might hang up my orb and stop doing invasions entirely. It's always been an uphill battle for invaders in DS3 when you're up against anyone that isn't an absolute novice, but it's been ridiculous lately.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I have to say, even though it's happened to me, especially since it's happened to me, I get a lot of laughs out of it. It's part of the learning curve.
And hey! In DS3 the Ringed City, my very first time through the zone I got invaded. I chugged my Estus, they did the same, we had a good old fight, I won, and still made it to the next bonfire!
I wouldn't have had the same experience had it not been possible to be invaded. And if I get annoyed or are exploring, the "penalties" for being unembered/unhumantied are less than they have ever been.
Yeah, I don't get it. Sometimes I beat it effortlessly. Other times, I can spend five or six pulls on it.
Keeping in mind that I feel confident at this point fighting every other boss in the game barring Abyss Watchers in three or fewer. (I haven't done DLC2 yet, though).
Other stupid things more likely to kill me than hard bosses: Any situation with 2+ dogs, barehanded Grues, spear LKs if I don't have an easy guard break.
The Crystal Sage can deal a tremendous amount of damage with some of his spells (though most aren't bad). Combine this with all the other shit he may have tossed out recently and it's very easy to cascade into a death combo. It's similar design to Micolash in Bloodborne where the fight is pretty easy but there's a chance they can blow you the fuck up and it's somewhat RNG based.
DARK SPIRIT DESTROYED.
Moments like that make DS for me.
I just beat finished that area if you want some help going through it.
Smouldering Lake is boring but it is also completely optional. It doesn't even have any Slabs.
I think I came out ahead in that exchange.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Also why is Hawkwood crestfallen? He's without a doubt the most bad ass m-fer I think I've ever summoned in a Souls game. His dick is so huge I think you can see it from space.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
For a not serious answer.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/c69a7bdce02898417a7c1aa01479a6c0/tumblr_of1wqgdTww1t93ta1o1_1280.png
http://68.media.tumblr.com/1e4ad01918859765b75b32d6d1087f38/tumblr_of1wqgdTww1t93ta1o2_1280.png
Is it like Kalameet or Manus, where it feels like bullshit but there's some minor thing I could be doing that completely changes the difficulty and predictability?