Streamlining isn't an issue here and no one is calling for it. I'm pretty sure everyone who is concerned is a Dark Souls alumn, so I'm not sure what you're arguing. I like challenge. But I don't find going through caves in Pokemon fun because I run into a zubat or golbat every 5 steps. I don't find random battles in certain JRPGs fun because I run into battles every 5 steps. And I sure as shit wouldn't find Dark Souls 1/Demon's Souls fun if I was getting invaded every 5 steps.

People like the Souls games because they are hard, but fair. You can't just say "I'm going to make the hardest game ever and everyone is going to eat it up because it's 'challenging.'" You have to balance it. At this point, we don't know how this hollow invasion thing is going to be balanced, so I'm not going to complain too much. But I disagree with you in thinking that unregulated invasion traffic is all positive.

@minipato: I never said this game was streamlined I said game development in general these days streamlines shit. Also, great we have differing opinions on what we want out of our games and what we find fun that's what opinions and personal tastes are for.

Whilst reading through this thread, I agree that for the time being it appears that the odds are stacked in the red phantom's favour, but remember, they could still have features yet to be announced that are absolutely brutal towards invaders. Imagine if a red phantom's punishment for losing an invasion was to permanently lose all the souls they had currently on their being, or maybe their health gets kicked back a percentage that they only regain by invading and beating someone. If FromSoft wanna ramp up the heat, they need to do so on all fronts so the game still remains somewhat balanced/fair.

Sounds like their going a little too extreme for my liking. Might have to pass on this. Oh well.

If you don't want to be invaded play offline, simple as that. If you're doing a blind first run through the game not at launch then that will almost certainly be what you want to do given the enormous disadvantage you'd be at; at launch it probably won't matter and stupid invaders/stupid blue phantoms will no doubt be humorous to watch fail.

excuse me for not wanting to unplug my internet for a game?

I don't like dark souls because it's hard, I like it because it's fair. This isn't really fair.

Since everyone can be invaded at all times in Dark Souls 2 the chance of being invaded should be a lot less than when you're human in Dark Souls.

I'm surprised at the amount of people flipping out over this, but I suppose it wouldn't be the Internet without knee-jerk reactions.

I will say they'll need to do a better job balancing how the equipment system functions with invading though. If they can make it so invasions are fair then I'm fine with not being able to avoid them entirely.

As long they put a wall in it hat you only can be invaded by people with either the same progress or the "level" it should be fine.

Why should someone be forced out of all of the other online parts that make a Souls game interesting and unique just because they picked it up during the Winter sale or something? That's poor logic and it only serves those who are day one buyers. What about people that pick it up a week later? Two weeks later? Two months later? You're willing to fuck these people out of a richer experience?

You shouldn't have to turn your internet off to enjoy a game properly.

Also I want to point out that if everyone can be invaded at all times then the number of invasions you would receive randomly should be significantly less, since there will be way less people invading than those who can be invaded.

Yeah, I'm not super hot (SUPER.HOT.) on that invasion thing either. I have never won an invasion. But I feel like I played better most of the time, backstabbing and hitting the other guy more. The way PvP dickheads spec is insane and super specific and they use these characters just for the purpose of griefing others. I never had a problem with any of the bosses in Dark Souls, even on my eighth run. Smough and Ornstein can suck it. I don't think I'll ever beat an invader.

And playing offline is a shitty solution because of all the things I'll miss out on, like summoning other players for help, or reading helpful messages.

That being said, there's no way I'll not play Dark Souls 2. If this is the way From wants to take it then more power to them.

I guess I'll be playing this game offline. I was invaded three times in Demon's Souls, after which I staid in soul form for the rest of the game (and for all of Dark Souls). It wasn't even fun the one time I won -- everything was laggy as shit so there wasn't really any sense of accomplishment (did I win because I was a better player or because the lag meant it all came down to luck?) -- and it sure as hell wasn't fun when some guy ran in with some late-game weapon that broke my guard and took off all my health with a single hit. If I want a one-on-one multiplayer action challenge I'll play a fucking fighting game, where every system and mechanic is designed solely for that kind of face-off, and where the difference between two players is always one of skill rather than stats or equipment.

I'm not really thrilled about this always-on invasions thing, but fuck it! YOLO! Bring on the assholes and griefers and we'll see if I can still finish the game.

Well the pool of people who can be invaded will presumably still be limited to people in areas where they haven't yet killed the boss, so it won't quite be "everyone". Sure, those areas will probably be the more populated ones, because everyone must eventually push to progress, but there'll also be a subset of the online players grinding or farming already cleared areas (or staying in them while looking for Co-op/PvP).

OMG penalty for death and invasions at all times. Seems a little harsh.

Everyone is really that worried about the invasions? I played through the vast majority of Demon's Souls in human form and only ended up invaded... 3 times? Once I got murdered with a katana, the next time I killed a dude with a flaming sword, and the third the invader fell off a ledge when we saw each other. Even if going hollow won't stop invasions now, I think that assuming it'll be an every 5 minutes sort of thing is a little preemptive.

That's a valid point, but with these other changes I don't think we can take anything for granted.

Besides, we still don't know all the details about how invading phantoms works. It's very possible that they are on a time limit as well, which would probably put the advantage more in the player's court, especially when you consider that new covenant that can summon a white phantom whenever you're invaded. Something else people seem to not realize is that if you can get invaded at any time it almost certainly means you can also summon white phantoms whenever, which even with the time limit is a huge boon. Even one other player drastically affects the difficulty of the game.

I really hope the scaling stuff EpicNameBro was talking about turns out to be true. I'll trade always getting invaded for no more SL1 Lightning Zweihander +5 invasions if it means that I'll be fighing people that are mostly on par with me equipment-wise. The equipment gaps is what always killed PvP for me (that and the Wolf Ring having more poise than some full sets of armor).

I'm fine with all changes except the invasions allowed for hollows bit. That's shitty. It's already a detriment to stay in hollow form that you're taking 10% health decreases each time you die, I don't understand why allowing invasions into the games of players who are likely already having a hard time of it against the regular enemies is a good idea? So far all I'm seeing in defense of this idea is "suck it up noob" and "it's more exciting". I dunno, to preserve the excitement factor for those who want that, maybe just make it a menu toggle in the form of those who want to be open to invasion at all times can be and those who don't want it can opt out. The Souls games are already very tough on first playthrough going blind, it just seems to me this punishes the weakest players for no reason.

Oh, might as well also mention you can avoid an invasion by just quitting out to main menu and reloading. The game does save anywhere when you quit to menu, so you just respawn exactly where you were when you left sans the invader.

Correct. Health decreases by 10% each time you die in hollow form to a minimum of 50%. These health penalties go away when you turn human again. It's the same as Demon's Souls only the health decrease is incremental as opposed to the one shot immediate 50% loss.

can't wait for an all new round of dudebr0s using this to measure their hardcore game peen

(only *slightly* kidding...)

The only problem I have with hollow invasions is that they're going to make it harder (or possibly impossible if the invader's a cheater) to retrieve bloodstains.

Can be invaded in hollow form? 2hardcore4me lol. I think i'll play my first playthrough with net. Respect for not going easy mode on us though.

I really don't think it's going to be invasions every five minutes. I can't imagine they would mess it up so badly. There's still SO MUCH information that has been unreleased to us, and so much of the game left to be finished. I think everything is gonna be okay!

Shouldn't that say easier? Also all these changes are fucked, and they've made it literally no fun to try and play with a friend. Meh.

For anyone who is afraid of invasions, I'm pretty sure Hello Kitty Online is still available. That might be a better game for you.

Yeah, no, if there's no offline mode I'll just block it with the firewall. I enjoy the solitude in these games and being invaded by a level 700 xXBurningCumBurger420Xx every 2 minutes breaks the immersion completely.

Seriously, for a console that "I'm done with" I sure seem to have a lot of games to buy for it.

Maybe I'll have my PC Dark Souls experience going smooth enough* by the time this comes out to go PC but few games make me less patient that Souls.

(*still having minor consistency issues with my DS3 and motioninjoy)

The constant threat of invasion is fine with me, since they also nerfed backstabs.

Invasions kinda lost their luster for me in Dark Souls. In the beginning, it was a huge rush to see you were invaded and super thrilling to try to find the person and take them out. But after so many guys lagging through my attack and backstabbing me, it became more of nuisance than anything. Now, more often than not, it's a dance between two people who strafe each other until the person with the better connection scores a backstab.

Assuming all that stuff is fixed and us non-PVP oriented players stand a chance against invaders, I say bring on more invasions.

We still don't know all the covenants yet so i bet there is an invasion less one. Maybe a "I walk alone" covenant that blocks invasions and summoning. I could see that being a good trade off. Or maybe a dueling covenant that stops random invasions and you are summoned to a pvp arena every level or every so often. They seemed to have balances to back stabs and parry so i don't see them leaving out a way to balance invasions if they are going to make it happen all the time.

Since I started playing the PC version I've received far fewer backstabs. In about 1 out of 5 fights, if that many. Maybe because they're trying to be fair. I can usually roll out of the way in time or move in the opposite direction when they do try it.

I wish they weren't "fair" so often, though. I rarely have any PvPE fights anymore.

@demoskinos: You really don't know how full of crap you are do you? The "level matching" has always been so loose for anything other than blue phantoms it was laughable. I know of cases in Dark Souls where a friend who was soul level 30 got invaded by a dude who was soul level 200 something. Do you have any concept of how much you have to outplay a guy to win when he has a 150+ soul level advantage on you? Let's just say that in the seven times the dude invaded my buddy lost all but once... and the one loss was because he goaded the dude into rolling near a cliff and he fell. Not to mention the "de leveled" pvp'ers with +10 lightning weapons that one hit killed you. This is before we even consider the bugs... like the stun lock of dual katanas in Demon's Souls it took months for people to find a break for, the bow backstabbing that may still be in game, all of the retardedly op combinations that make an invader basically unkillable while being able to one - two shot you? This is before you even factor latency into the equation, nothing like getting backstabbed by a dude who is 20 feet away on your screen amiright?

The only thing these changes do is communicate loud and clear that unless you want your game to be a gankfest you need to play offline or join a covenant that makes you un invadeable. Both solutions that frankly... suck. Oh well, the game lost any chance it had of being an actual competitive pvp game with the changes they made in dark souls anyway, may as well screw it up even harder in 2?

Why aren't they fixing what was wrong in the first game before they introduce more half-ass'ed changes.

Always being invaded?, that is basically saying bye bye to the entire universe and mythology created in the first games.

Give me Demon's Souls II any day. But this?

I won't be spending my time on this.

I'm pretty late to the conversation, but invasions aren't suppose to be fair in Dark Souls. It's always assumed that the people invading are skilled in PVP and will probably kill you. The host gets the advantage of using Estus and summoning buddies to take on the invader in order to level the playing field.

I remember my first invasion happened in the depths and I got killed by someone using Homing Soulmass. I had no idea what it was at the time so I didn't know blocking was going to save me. I died plenty of times to invaders during my first playthrough because I didn't know how to counter all the spells and weapons in the game. Nothing is going to save you from invaders when you first start because you simply wont know how to PVP. End game gear isn't really going to matter. They will kill you with or without it.

500 hours later and I look forward to invasions when I'm starting a new character. I can pretty much get my end game gear in the first few areas because I use a light character with an uchigatana and pyromancy. They basically don't have a chance.

I should add that I invade the forest so I'm used to 2v1 and 3v1 fights with people that can one shot or two shot me. I understand that I'm not the average case for being invaded.

I have grieved many players in the 360 version of Dark Souls recently. Level 1 dickwraithing with a +5 lightning reinforced club and +5 ascended pyromancy glove is too much fun. Great combustion usually 1 shots those players. Good spots to grief are undeadburg, parish, and lower undeadburg. It generates a lot of hatemail too.

I Alt + F4 or enter the boss area before they get the satisfaction. If they're invincible or as good as.

I'd like to add that beating the game at a low level is not a simple task. What makes you think you'd be able to kill the person if they could potentially go through the game at lv 10 or something?

I ran into people that used the glitch (it's been patched out) to give their low level characters all the good items and it was obvious the moment I started to fight them at a low level. It very easy to tell if a person knows how to fight or not during my 1v2 fights. Theoretically there should be no way that a single person can beat 2 or 3 people in a PVP fight because they simply need to arrange themselves to always have people behind you. The amazing thing is that the best players are not interested in ganking. They're interested in beating the gankers. Once the phantoms falls their hosts are good as dead. Some of them have the potential to one shot people. With my dex/pyro build I don't have the ability to one shot anyone, but I still get my kills.