Yeah, pretty much. I mean co-op is absolutely a fine time, and it mixes up the formula in a neat way, but considering the way bosses are designed in Souls games i'd feel like I didn't "really" beat the boss if I have a partner doing a bunch of the work for me. But that's a self-actualization thing, not some lame excuse for me to gloat about how great I am at video-games, so I really don't care if other people want to avoid frustration by doing summons. I just never want a situation where I don't feel like I really had the same experience others had with bosses, because I was just standing around thwacking at a distracted boss, not even having to worry about its attacks because it's focused on another guy.

My one exception to this is i'll occasionally do NPC summons, though I didn't do that in Bloodborne (Is it even possible to try to summon NPCs without also inviting players to join?). There's at least no danger there in having wildly overpowered dudes fighting your battles for you.

@lackingsaint: the bosses in Bloodborne especially seem to become extremely trivial once you get even one other person in there with you. That said when playing NG+ I really wanted someone to help me out with Micolash after the third time he one shot me. Eventually I did it by myself, because I couldn't find anyone, but the game kept looking throughout the boss fight because the moment it ended I instantly got a message that 2 other players are getting pulled into my world. I wasn't planning on taking out the next boss back to back but between the three of us it was a cakewalk. A lot of fun too.

Kind of. I tried it on one boss (Paarl) after being killed 3 times and the summoned dude just hammered him down while I kind of got 2 hits in. It was a free kill basically.

I think summoning should buff the boss considerably, like giving it twice the HP (or even more).

@dussck: It does.

I could never get summoning to work, so I ended up beating all the bosses solo. I really wish I could summon on some of those fights. Probably would of been a much happier experience.

It depends on the boss. Some bosses are legitimately challenging and takes some skill/patience to defeat. Some bosses just have retarded hitboxes and are hard for no good reason other than bad design (I'm looking at you Watchdog of the Old Lords). I don't feel bad at all about summoning for a boss like that.

Not really. It's there to be used. But I do play every game solo all the way through the first time and most other times as well, just because I prefer the solo experience. Haven't gotten stuck enough yet that I didn't think I could manage alone.

Personally? Yes, yes it is. I have never summoned because that would be accepting defeat... and I do not accept defeat.

Got no problem with other people summoning, I don't think that makes them cowards or whatever, that just mean they play the game with a different mindset than I do.