I think the concept of pvp is great, I think in practice the community has turned it into a meta gaming pile of garbage and thus it sucks. It's the same as games like DayZ, the concept is fantastic and cool as hell, but after a short while the players end up just turning it into a player versus player meta game fest and it loses all of it's novelty. Which is why I've given up entirely on caring about PVP to the point where I'll just jump off a damn cliff sometimes if I get invaded in a souls game, because I don't care to be trolled by some dick who's speccing for PVP while I'm running around playing fashion souls, using the weapons I think look cool and the gear I think looks cool again dudes wearing the jester helm with havels armor.

So, good, break PVP more please.

@rongalaxy: it doesn't sound broken to me. If you want to PvP you play against people who want to do so. if you don't then you have systems in place to defend yourself other than going offline. Maybe in Bloodborne two they will set up specific areas with reasons to do so like in the Dark Souls games. Until then the game came as advertised and you should have done your research before buying.

@red_piano: Everything about that post makes me sad. Nobody is holding you to some kind of 'meta' unless you want to do regulated duels. Don't use the excuse of fashion for that either. I only play with weapons and armour that I think look good/cool in these games and I play a whole lot of pvp. Other people min/maxing does not deter me from this at all.

@hassun: It's not that I'm being held to meta, it's that other people are going out of their way to build specifically powerful pvp builds, invading me and ruining my day with a build that is solely crafted to be great in pvp while I'm using stuff that is probably less powerful for pve. They use the ultra powerful spells that have a few casts and just decimate me in a single blow or use weapons that have terrible durability but are super useful in PVP like the washing pole used to be, or ye'old lightning spear stun locking which ended up getting the lightning spear and spells nerfed to the point where PVEing with spellcaster only is really difficult.

PVP just ruins these games for me whether it's people being trolly dicks or the devs balancing things for PVP and ruining PVE as a result. This is why I was hoping Bloodborne had no PVP at all.

And all this is ignoring the fact that every one of the Souls games has horrible de-sync so shadow backstabbing and being hit from 20 feet away happens regularly.

@red_piano: Eh, just ignore that. My most played DaS PVP character uses a pike. Not exactly a good weapon at all.

@hassun: I've given it a shot in Dark Souls 2, the most fun I had in PvP was dual wielding Katana. I usually get shit on though, I can see why people like the PVP, it just doesn't suit me well or draw me in at all.

I spent the whole time of my pvp time in ds2 was spent playing the Monarch.

I just ran at people wearing a butterfly costume and punching them in the face. When I got a perry or shild break I didn't execute, I threw a knife into your face and rolled around like a fool.

I am very saddened that I can not do ridiculous things like that in this game. I made friends that I still play with doing this kind of stuff. You can't have that kind of entertainment in an arena in these games.

Just imagine waking thro the foggy woods in ds2, just finished killing a difficult enemy. Then out of nowhere a man in a butterfly costume decks you in the face then runs off into the mist. Wouldn't that just help kill the tension of it all and make you more relaxed going thru there the fist time? But all that's gone now. ..

It's a case of "PVP Might Ruin someone's day" versus "I like the tension of being invaded randomly"

The solution they've chosen is a safe one, it harms the least amount of innocents and with the bell system still allows people to subscribe to PVP. The disadvantage of maybe having to go up against 2 people? Balances the element of surprise, and the chance the invader has a specialised PVP build.

Why choose a system that people have complained about before when you can give people an option to filter that problem out as opposed to forcing it on them? I just don't think it's a defensible position unless people like beating on the unprepared, unwary and inexperienced players.

After seeing the damage players like Potatomarshall can do to games, I really don't think its something worth holding onto.

Invaders being able to chug-a-lug the red juice sure is lame. I had a couple good kills as I got assaulted in the nightmares, but one guy at the end played like garbage but just hooked up a blood vial IV to himself. I just did a beg for life emote and let the fool have his free dreg. Not worth having a slugfest with some rent-a-invader when I have a whole level to tackle. It kind of occurred to me after that incident that the people wanting to opt out of PVP entirely have a pretty good point. Why should I be the tool for another player's amusement?

Having very confident players hop into someone's game with min/maxed stats eager to chop up the poor piglet host is also lame. That's the thing with invaders, they're getting what they want: the chance to murder some fool. But the other player, he's being assaulted by some homicidal spirit from another dimension, probably half-way through a level with no shortcut unlocked. It's not hard to see why the majority of players walked around as spirits or gross corpses in the other games. They didn't want anything to do with this.

It would take a greater mind than me to figure out the compromise. I may have caught a glimpse at one while invading people in the Nightmare Frontier. My healthbar actually appeared to shrink when I went into another player's game. I was level 80 at the time and pretty powerful, but found myself deflated when placed in another world. Not a bad idea, to scale players down to a area-appropriate version of themselves, upgrade descaling and all.

What I find bit silly about the pvp (have had 3 pvp encounters so far in the game) is the fact that the mobs seems to react only to your character. If the invader walks close to them they dont seem to aggro on him or her but on the player that is being invaded.

Also having 20 vials can make those pvp encounters really long and protracted. I kinda think that there should be a rule of regulating use of vials in pvp to only 1 or 2 potions per encounter. Otherwise people can just potentially roll away and heal and get back to the fight.

I honestly believe that the problem people have with invasions is not that there is another enemy to fight, but that there are major latency issues.

Say that it was an npc phantom, randomly generated within set parameters for that level but was set to only appear randomly. Would anybody have a problem with that? Most likely no.

But the online has been faced with lag, bad hitboxes, bad matching and outright cheaters importing characters. If those problems got fixed then I think a lot of argument against the pvp would vanish.

And please lets Never go back to soul memory. So what if somebody with max equipment can invade the low level players, all that led to was people going back to protect them the same way. The community adapted admirably to it.

And lastly, yes invasion is a core concept of the game. Just the same way coop is.

I never was a huge fan of PvP in Souls personally, but the threat of being invaded was a huge part of the game. It often happened at the worst possible moment, it was brutal, and that just added another dimension to the game "like it" or not. I never actively looked for PvP in Dark Souls, but being invaded resulted in some of the memorable events I've ever had gaming; once I fought my way down to the bottom of Blighttown, eating poison damage, had no estus flasks and saw a bonfire. Got invaded, and the bastard just watched from up high as I slowly ate it, losing a ton of progress. Another time I was invaded in that giant underground city (forget the name) while I was on a long, narrow ledge. The invader stared me down for a solid minute, and I didn't want to go on and take damage from the enemies that were surely ahead. After the staredown we both charged each other. I immediately dropkicked him and he fell off the ledge into the lava pit below. It was amazing.

Bloodborne PvP sucks. I was invaded three times my entire playthrough. The first time I just murdered the guy the same way I played the entire game; spamming dodge and getting him caught in a stagger until he was dead. The second time was during that part with the Frenzy cloud or whatever that was; I had to hide behind a rock as the invader could freely go where he pleased because apparently he wasn't being affected by Frenzy, which was bullshit. And finally I got a "fair" fight, where we both just threw some mist at each other and rolled around like idiots in a boring battle of attrition. On one hand it sucks they toned down the threat of being invaded anytime, anywhere in the game. On the other the PvP in this iteration is pretty boring, so whatever.

DS2 was by far the worse when it came to pvp, perhaps everyone might not prefer the setup for bloodborne, but I can tell you from the get go it works far better when you are pvping- the general connection and feel of it is better than its been in any game, and the hitboxes are among the best I've seen.

If you WANT to pvp, it hasn't seemed hard to get into it, for me at least...haven't had any issue with it whatsoever, nor have any of my friends. It's a change, sure, but Bloodborne similarities aside, is not simply a sequel to Dark Souls or Demon Souls, so it doesn't need to be the same.

Honestly, what bugs me more with pvp than the new matching system is the lack of build variety.

Before there were so many options, but there's so fue options everything becomes predictable rather quickly.

I'm not really enjoying it. Like people have said everyone is just melee and there aren't enough weapons in this game for variety. They also made a really bizarre choice with the magic system so I don't think anyone ever uses it. This leads to a pretty everyone using the same play style which is pretty boring. More than that though, parries just are not working for me. I shoot someone and they do the "I just got parried" animation, but they get out of it before I even get out of my shooting animation. Maybe its a latency thing on my end, but considering the last few games were just all lagstabs in pvp most of the time I'm not so sure.

DSII was by far the best. By miles and miles. If only because the connection was best. Also, most diverse PvP system with the reworked covenants, and most diverse in builds and options. If you want PvP, you're going to Scholar of the First Sin. After playing it a lot, I think the only longevity Bloodborne has are the Chalice Dungeons.