The Current Setup for PVP is Bad

So yeah, online stuff is a little different than the souls games, and I'm not sure I like it. Coop in the souls games sucked because you couldn't easily pair up with friends; so they solve that problem in bloodborne with the online password system, but made PvP into something that is impossible to enjoy.

The current setup is that if you want to fight someone, you ring a bell and the game will match you up. This sounds fine, but From Software really limited the amount of possibilities for who you can match up with. There are currently 3 groups: People who ring the PvP bell, people who are cooping, or people who are in certain areas of the game with a bell maiden present.

The problem with the first group is there's never going to be a lot of people who are down to PvP, its never going to happen. This leads into the problem with group 2. Theres more of a chance of people cooping vs people who want to PvP, so that means when you do want to PvP, you'll probably get matched with 2 or more people cooping, and they will crush you. The problem with group 3 is there aren't many areas in the game like this, and once the bell maiden is killed you are no longer under threat of invasion.

Comparing this to dark souls, where any player who is human can be invaded, makes PvP in bloodborne seem like an afterthought. Maybe people didn't like being invaded, but I always thought the concept was cool. It fed into the risk/reward loop of the gameplay, and added a real sense of tension to the game world.

So how could they fix this? They'd have to change a lot of stuff, so much so that its unlikely they'll do anything about it in the base game. Its possible that they'll add a PvP arena in dlc, but by then even less people will care about PvP. Its a glaring issue in an, otherwise, stellar game.

I didn't even mention the fact that frame rate dips when you are with another player. Its really unfortunate and I hope it can be addressed in an update (or maybe its just my crappy internet? Haven't had trouble with other games)

It seems to me that From has removed the scenario of PVP gankers invading and destroying solo PVE players throughout the game. That can still happen, but only in designated Bell Maiden zones where the danger of invasion is specifically thematic. I think this change to multiplayer is less "an afterthought" than a deliberate design decision by From.

All three PVP scenarios sound pretty reasonable to me. In past Souls games, when PVP players are matched against PVE players in a 1 on 1, the PVP player has a much higher win rate due to their PVP experience and having a character optimized for PVP, not to mention the PVPer being on the same side as all the regular mobs that the PVEer is already fighting. In Bloodborne that scenario seems to be relatively uncommon. PVP players are now more likely to find a challenging match up instead of a newbie to stomp.

Yeah, I don't dig it at all. I've only been invaded once during my playthrough and that was indeed in the Bell Maiden sections of the game, who I left purposefully alive. And that fight took foreeeeeeeeeeeeever. 20+ Blood vials? Great for PvE, but for PvP? Really? It took like 20 minutes before I said: fuck this, I'm just not using a vial anymore and then a couple minutes after I lost. It is no fun whatsoever. I suspect people are going to try and create builds that one-shot people because the Blood Vial health regeneration is just insanely dragging it out.

Least fun I had with PvP in a Souls game yet. They should disable Blood Vials for PvP invader and restrict it to one or two for the host. Something like, the maiden's bell weakening your vials or whatever justification.

@zevvion: you can parry blood viles. Just a tip

@rongalaxy: The answer is that people didn't like being invaded. Dark Souls 2 had that whole sparring area that sort of solved the issue for both those that wanted to PVP with other humans and those that just wanted to play the game in peace. Also as you mentioned the framerate gets so abysmal with another player that PVP at this point seems impossible to enjoy. When I was helping people with some bosses they would quite literally teleport around at times. Also the way co-op works I always feel guilty when I get summoned into someones game and then die in some stupid way shortly after because I know my own blunder has just cost the guy one insight. This really is a Treyarch/Infinity Ward situation where some things were really ironed out in Dark Souls 2 and for whatever reason they just chose not to make use of those solutions.

I know this, but it is impossible to time. In co-op and PvP both, the game doesn't respond to what is happening on my screen, but what is happening overall. I can't see what is truly happening. All I have is my screen, and latency differs from each session to the next. When I parry at the usual window (including mobs I do it all the time with in co-op), I miss the parry window.

One thing Dark Souls 2 did very well was PvP. The different PvP covenants and PvP areas were incredibly fun. Setting up traps in the Rat King Covenant areas was some of my favorite time in that game.

Eh... I still think the Rat King Covenant was not that well realized, though the idea was good. I don't see anyone in those area's anymore. It's actually one of the few parts of that game's PvP that appears dead.

This. Unless you're a griefer who is out to stomp people who don't really understand PvP all day then this change is better for everyone. Choosing to do co-op meaning you are open to invasions means there is still a risk reward.

Unless your blunder also killed the guy you were with it cost him nothing. The bell keeps ringing until you die so someone else can just join anyway.

I can see why that might be the case. It really relies on people wandering in unprepared. In the first few weeks of the games release it was awesome. Only thing I didn't like was that after a while your friendly enemies would start to de-spawn. The upside to it was you could use a Bonfire Ascetic and everything respawns even harder.

I enjoy being able to see messages without having to worry about invasions (except in areas where the game makes it obvious it's trying to match you with invaders). I ended up with bad karma or whatever after killing all the NPC's before NG+ in DS2, and spent the next 10 hours getting invaded every other step. At some point I just turned online off every time I wanted to play.

Just because it's less likely you're going to be invaded by a skilled player who will wreck you mercilessly, doesn't mean that the system has improved by default. It has gotten much, much worse for people who actually enjoy the online capabilities of these types of games. In Dark Souls II, you had two different types of arena combat. One where you could fight whenever you wanted that had loss-win consequences, one where you had no consequence on losing but were only able to participate if you engaged in co-op. You had the possibility of being invaded during regular play, which is impossible here. You can call them griefers but I had a lot of fun when I was invaded. You also had the possibility of summoning a PvP guy to kick the ass of the invader, which was a ton of fun too. And then there were multiple types of arena combat. Which is about the only real PvP Bloodborne has really. Unless you are lucky, you're just not going to win a 2-1 fight which is what happens 99% of the time you invade someone.

Dark Souls II had a great intertwine between solo and online play. I understand if you wouldn't like it, but I did. And that's just gone here. If you want to engage with that stuff you need to actively seek it out, which is a huge step back. I liked that it happened while I was playing. It made the game more dynamic and less predictable. More tense too. Bloodborne just feels like a safe play, left out one area in the game.

I'm pretty stoked about it myself.

I think the PvP should be done better in these games.

They introduce considerably more Bellmaidens in NG +, to the point where invasions occurs even more than in previous games, at least from my experience. Additionally, there's this thing called the "Short Root Chalice", which opens up the ability to quick-search for PvP anywhere in the world if you're dead set on partaking in that aspect of the game. I agree that the general lack of invasions in the first run-through of the game is a bit of a disappointment, but they more than make up for that later on.

As for the combat itself, it is fucking superb. Duels have never been this fun in the entire run of the series, and I've done plenty. It's fast, it's vicious, it really rewards messing with your opponent's expectations and varying up your attacks. Learning how to parry the heals and continuously pressuring your opponent is key, however. 2v1 scenarios requires the invading faction to use the mobs to his advantage. You can easily kill a player just by shooting them with your ranged weapon, mini-stunning them while an enemy is about to hit them as the mobs do so much damn damage in this game. Add a Molotov or two, and you have yourself a real advantage, despite being outnumbered by human players.

@do_the_manta_ray: I just find it impossible to parry. The window occurs way before you actually see someone healing on your screen. If I fire when I see them heal, I'm too late, because they are already done healing on their screen. It just turns to an extremely dull and tedious fight that drags on forever. I'm building an arcane build now that should be able to one shot people. We'll see how that goes.

I am very happy with the changes. Being able to play online and not worry about griefers was the best decision From has made for PVP.

Yea, I figured this would happen the more I thought about it. I think the way it is set up currently is great for people who don't like PVP, but the omission of an item or option that allows two PVPers to connect is pretty lame. Seems weird of From to do this kind of thing, but maybe they really don't think PVP is as big a draw as it was in past Souls (which I kinda agree with, less weapons and a health regen system will probably turn a lot of PVPers off).

@zevvion: I suppose it might just be a latency issue, but I've been in plenty of PvP fights so far, and haven't run into that problem you're describing yet. Don't get me wrong, people try to heal on me all the time, I'm just either constantly hitting them with the faster version of my trick-weapon, generously doling out pistol rounds or parrying the buggers, so it's never become a problem for me.

I'd recommend that you try to stick real close to an enemy when their health starts to get close to the half-way point. Really hound them so that their only option to heal is to roll away and then do so. That way, you can easily shoot them as they roll away, which will result in an automatic parry for you more often than not as it'll interrupt the healing animation. I'd also just recommend shooting every once in a while in general, keep them off balance. People tend to find it hard to focus on the offense when they're panicking about their health, so simply pressuring people has been extremely effective for me. You want to use your dodges to attack as much as to evade.

@claybrez: Look up an item called the "Short Root Chalice", it is exactly what you're looking for and more.

Yeah that sounds great but in all the matchs I've been in the latency has been so bad it was really a terrible experience. That kind of stuff was manageable in Dark souls 2 where the dodge was way less generous and the game was much slower but here I just hit the attack, it makes the slashing through flesh sound, blood sprays but my opponent doesn't lose health because he dodged on the server side but not on my screen.

@pyrodactyl: Yeah, that's a real shame. Not a lot you can do about those kind of issues except hope you get lucky with the match-up. I haven't run into that problem yet. If you haven't done so, I'd recommend setting your network settings to only allow for local match-ups rather than world-wide. That should help some with the latency.

Explains why I haven't been invaded in 30 hours of playing.

@bollard: Agreed, fuck the griefers. Would like to see something done about the latency though. The increased speed of this games combat really magnifies latency related issues when duelling.

DS2 solved this PVP problem by giving you the seed of giants(so they don't rely on mobs for kills) and the police mechanic(where getting invaded gets you police players to come help). These were much better solutions than removing such a cool element of the game.

I hate that the changed it from the DS 2 mechanics to this. I did a lot of invading (no griefing shit) and got invaded a lot in return, which was just and fun.

Also there never were as many griefers around as people are saying, at least I encountered very few myself. That was a really negligible component to an otherwise really great system. I just hope DS3 or whatever comes next will go that way again.

Compared to my experiences with Dark Souls and Dark Souls II, I'll say that I was perfectly fine with only being invaded once in the entire game (during one of those bell maiden segments).

For people that enjoy the online aspect of messages and ghosts but have no interest in PVP I agree that is good, but it's a shame they stripped out the really well thought out stuff that was implemented in Dark Souls 2 for those that wanted to fight others.

I personally never liked the PVP in these games that much because even at it's best latency was kinda iffy. The only time I remember the latency not really being an issue was surprisingly Demon's Souls where people met up at 4-1 and dueled all day. It was kind of neat that there were no covenants, and the system was sort of basic compared to the incredibly convoluted stuff they keep coming up with, and yet the community just naturally formed this battle arena where everyone bowed and if more than 1 person got summoned they waited their turn while the two others guys duked it out. That might have been the purest PVP was as it seems it just got a lot more dickish in the later games.

Maybe Miyazaki was too stubborn or proud to use systems from a game he wasn't directly involved with. Maybe as I said it's a Treyarch/Infinity Ward situation, but they found a pretty good solution for both people back then and yet decided to go back and come up with something entirely too complicated that doesn't serve either group very well. It's a shame since it's the first time in ages that you won't see two people with shields making circles for ages until one of them loses their nerve and finally attacks.

@humanity: I kinda feel like they should add a designated PvP arena for people that really want to PvP. The Dark Souls DLC had something like that, and I remember it being okay.

It sucks for the PVP crowd, but I'm personally not too fussed with the changes. PVP for these games has always been at the bottom of the list for why I've found them so captivating, and even when I actually started digging into PVP a lot more with Dark Souls II, I can't say I came away wanting more; too many damn magic/hex users, and the latency certainly didn't help things, either. But even at its most enjoyable these games have never appealed to me especially greatly from the PVP side of things. It was certainly novel during Demon's Souls, but at this point the allure and mystery has certainly worn off for this type of PVP.

I haven't really been messing with the coop functions very much at that for some reason. I kinda wish they still had covenants or something similar in here, specifically a Sun covenant equivalent that rewards Jolly Cooperation.

@mooseymcman: Yah Dark Souls 2 had exactly that among other PVP based covenants.

Sounds great, keep the PVPers with the PVPers and kick their ass any other way (by disadavantage of coop).*approved*

People who enjoy PvP shouldn't have to be pushed off to the side. I want PvP intertwined in my game, not having to go to an arena to engage with it on purpose. I'm not opposed to them finding a way so people who want to play solo exclusively can do that, but in Bloodborne that is achieved completely at the cost of someone like me who enjoys the added dynamic in my singleplayer experience.

An arena wouldn't be pushing you off to the side though, it would just pair you with like minded people. The mechanics are the same really: you either go to an arena and wait to get matched with someone or you go to a specific area and wait to get matched with someone. In both instances you aren't playing the game and organically phasing into a PVP scenario since you have to actively engage in it. The difference is that in one case the person is expecting you and in the other they're not, and might in fact be in the middle of a tough area after they just ran out of heals and are on their last leg looking for vials - which doesn't seem like a very fun or fulfilling fight.

The only thing people are really missing out on with the PVP not being intertwined into the game like it used to be is ganking. If you want to ambush others or catch them off guard as they're making their way through a level then yah thats a bummer. If you just want to fight someone else then the arena is a much better idea. Either way they removed the whole dead/undead portion of the game so I can only imagine they didn't really want a heavy emphasis on PVP in Bloodborne - not in the classic Souls sense we know anyway.

@humanity: I'm not sure if I wrote it wrong or if you misunderstood me, but I'm saying I do not want arena PvP. I want it to be intertwined in my singleplayer experience. I want to move through an area and suddenly someone invades me whom I haven't been expecting. It makes the game much more dynamic, tense and fun for me. If I have to go to an arena, that's just dumb. I disliked arena PvP in all of the Souls games so far. I'm not playing PvP because I choose to, I'm playing it because it happens. That's what I want. And that's not in here. Not really anyway.

Some of my favorite DS moments are related to invasions. I remember being on low health, about to die because I aggro'd too many enemies, and suddenly I was summoned as a vengeful spirit to defeat an invader. I had a great number of souls on the line if I died, so I had to find that invader and kill him so I'd get my health back in my game, so I could survive and reclaim my souls. It was tense as hell, and a ton of fun. None of that is possible here. It just feels stripped down for someone like me who enjoyed that part of the game.

@zevvion: This person gets it.

One of the most awesome aspects of Souls games is when you're playing through the level and suddenly the invasion warning appears on screen. Your blood starts pumping faster, hairs on the back of your neck raise up. Will you reign victorious or get sent back to the previous bonfire? It's on!

The more they section off single- and multiplayer the worse it becomes. The arenas in both DaS and DSII were terrible. The best multiplayer interaction is neatly interwoven with the single player. There should be good incentives (both mechanical and story/lore-wise) for players to invade other players just as there are incentives to play co-op. Dark Souls made an important step in that direction by introducing the covenant system but sadly it was not expanded upon in DSII. DSII did introduce an interesting idea to get more players to participate by not limiting invasions to living players but the end result wasn't completely effective either.

I feel that griefing and low level/high gear invasions are massively overreported. When you hear some people talk about it (usually with little actual experience) you'd think it happens every 5 seconds or something. It doesn't. Even in the game with the most broken PVP of all, DeS. It seems to have come to a point where people call being killed by other players in any way shape or form that is not safe little duel areas "griefing".

Now I have not played Bloodborne and probably won't be playing it any time soon. But from what I've heard there should be some awesome reasons for people to invade each other. Blood curses, people turning into bloodthirsty monsters, other people hunting those monsters, etc. It would be a shame if they didn't take advantage of this.

@zevvion: Sure for someone that enjoys the act of being invaded I completely understand that. I thought you enjoyed the act of invading others, in which case all the stuff I wrote applied to that concept. I agree that the balance of human/soul with it's risk/reward system was a real unique selling point for the franchise that they seem to have been slowly moving away from for whatever reason.

@humanity: It's been getting a lot of backlash from people who do not enjoy the aspect of 'assholes coming into their game'. I don't think they were slowly moving away from it though, I think they were just trying to address it with DSII. The Blue Sentinels are clearly a way to have invaders be able to invade under the motto of vengeance, while people who do not enjoy that part of the game, suddenly get to enjoy it because someone who does enjoy that, is being called to their aid to battle the 'asshole' out of their game. It is an absolutely brilliant concept... in theory. It didn't work that well in practice. The Blue Sentinel often got there way late and the host needed to be part of the Way of Blue and wear its ring, which had a poor 3% health increase. They just weren't tempted to do that just for the occasional invader, which also meant people started abandoning Blue Sentinels (or at least wearing the ring that did nothing else besides being able to be summoned as a spirit of vengeance) because there were only summoned like once every 30 hours.

That said, I had hoped they would build on that concept to make it work well. I just think the concept of invasion is and should be part of these games, whether you like it or not. But, they might come up with something to make it almost a non-issue for those that do not enjoy it. I'm all for that, just not by way of eliminating it completely almost.

The threat of invasion has been a core concept of the Souls series. Don't like being invaded? Too bad. That's the entire point. Invasions aren't for neck beard duelists who bow to each other before fighting, they're for entering someones game and trying to ruin their day. Once you strip that concept away then what's the point? Why not just have one area per covenant where people can fight each other and remove invasions completely? What they've done here is simply imbalance the entire thing in order to dissuade people from doing it although I think the invader deals extra damage to any summoned phantoms. Still though, the 20 health vials just turns the entire thing into a waste of time. Dodging around and healing isn't fun at all. AT ALL. Besides, I'd rather just PvP in Dark Souls 2 and have them fix these fucking awful load times.

@zevvion: I like the idea of the mechanic in theory but most of the time found it to be a nuisance in actuality. Especially when as @shotgunlincoln mentions above, people approached the concept with the intent to ruin someones day or gank them. I have a regular job and other stuff that limit my playtime during the week so getting invaded in the middle of some important run would be a real bother in the past when I only have about 2 hours a day to play the game. A lot of people who did not want to deal with it would also just disconnect their internet or quit, which sucked for people who just wanted to fight. Thats why the human/soul form was good because I could play in Soul Form in peace and get that small rush of excitement when I would decide to go human for a boss fight or something.

As long as invaders just wanted to kill you that was alright. It's the players using acid cloud or scrapping spear equivelants to wreck your gear that were primarily the reason why a lot of people became hesitant to face their invaders. Most of the time if I had an item to banish intruders I'd use it, like fuck you I don't have time for this. If I didn't have any item I'd face my invader just to try something new, but then the lag would usually make me wish I didn't.

This is a load of shit. It's like saying clunky movement is core to the Monster Hunter series. Sure, you have a subjective argument, but that doesn't make it feel any less shit for the people who absolutely hate it. 'Too Bad' is an entirely impotent and pointless dismissal that doesn't address an actual problem that a huge portion of the audience has had with the game since the outset.

The Bell method is actually an incredibly thoughtful system that allows people who like or don't mind being invaded options as well as people who really dislike it the chance to get messages, see deaths and participate in co-op (with an added risk of course). If you want to have the chance of being invaded, just ring the Sinister Bell any time you enter a new area. It costs you literally nothing except a button press. The Bell of Awakening is for all intents and purposes functionally identical to having Humanity in Dark Souls 1, risks and all.

I agree that the removal of PvP arenas seems like an incredible lack of foresight, though.

@crembaw: The thing is, your argument is written from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't always want to engage with PvP. The Bell system is great for that, yeah. But for someone like me, who wants to be invaded without actively needing to search it out, it just sucks. I'm not saying 'if you don't like being invaded, too bad', but at the same time, this is only a solution for the people who disliked invasions. But it creates a new problem for people who actually liked it to be a constant part of the game.

It's like playing an RPG (Skyrim, Mass Effect) and having to go to a different hub world if you want to engage with side content, while the main quest is the only thing available to you until you specifically say otherwise. I'm having trouble in this thread correctly putting into words what I mean, but some ways to phrase it may be that it just isn't cohesive this way. It's not interwoven, it's mostly separated.

The coop is busted too.

I'm quite glad pvp has been put more towards the wayside. I'm having enough trouble with some of these brutes, don't need some one stabbing me in the ass while I climb a ladder.

I find the various invasion mechanics in the Souls series super interesting- in concept. In practice, I don't actually enjoy it at all. As much as I love the combat in this series (Dark Souls 1 ranks among my top 5 games of all time), I detest fighting actual humans in these games. I find that despite my 30 mg connection, latency makes dueling pretty much unplayable. It's no fun to have your sword pass through a foe, dealing no damage, then suddenly they lag behind you and backstab you.

I think the new systems are pretty neat, but it's too bad that they can't seem to find a way to make everyone happy.

I don't know, that actually sounds pretty perfect to me.

If you're invading somebody who wants to fight, you'll get a fair fight.

If you're invading somebody who does not necessarily want to fight, you're at a disadvantage.

I agree with the OP that PvP is severely lacking in this game. Also, where the fuck are the covenants? I am reading this correctly that there are only 3 covenants in the entire game and that they are all just warring PvP factions? Man, the deeper I get into this game, the more turned off I am by the complete and utter lack of replayabilty-- build diversity, covenants, PvP are all massively important to keeping people interested in this series once they have completed a playthrough, and all have all taken huge steps back in this game. There's no way I'm bothering with a platinum trophy at this point. I might not even do a second playthrough.

@spoonman671: You were already at a disadvantage if you were invading someone who didn't want to fight, because invaders can't use healing items. Forcing people who invade to play 3v1 is not fun for anyone.

Look, I recognize that it sucked getting invaded if you had just gotten past an annoying part of a level, and that's why people rarely invaded in the Shrine of Amana. I would typically try no to be a huge dick about those things and if someone was right next to a bonfire when I approached, I would let them light it. Also, once I got my Ring of Exalted and I was OPed as fuck, I would often drop a twinkling titanite before things popped off. Bottom line, inconvenient invasions happened to everyone, but invasions were a fundamental aspect of Dark Souls. The entire point of these games are that they are cruel and unforgiving, and it isn't consistent with that to nerf invasions so much.

Souls pvp was a weird thing for me. I started out hating it and blaming it for halting my progression. However, by my second playthrough of Darksouls I loved it. Couldn't wait to invade/be invaded. I think it's a shame the opportunity isn't there, but I don't think it's as much of a loss in this game as it would be if this was Demon or Dark Souls since Bloodborne wants to be its own thing.

I feel like Demon's Souls and the first Dark Souls balanced the invasion mechanic pretty well. If you didn't want to be invaded you can just stay in soul/undead form. There are some disadvantages to it, but you would be guaranteed zero invasions. It's part of the tradeoffs to the way it works. Dark Souls 2 was weird in that you can be invaded anytime, and they tried to balance that with the covenants that allow you to summon guardians; but it didn't work too well and I was rarely invaded due to the large pool of players.

I really like the invasion mechanics in these games. It's unique and there are no other games that give you the feeling of being chased in a prey vs predator setup as well as these game. I get that there are people that don't play the games for that, so that's why Demon's Souls and the first Dark Soul gave you the option to never be invaded.

I don't really care much about the dueling aspects of the game, because the games aren't really well balanced for that sort of stuff. That, and the way hit detection works online is less than optimal.That said, I don't think I've ever tried invading another player's game for anything besides sanctioned dueling areas.

The way you are describing Bloodborn's system doesn't make it seem so bad though. As long as PvP isn't relegated to arena combat, I'm fine with it.