So there ya go, if you had any doubts that FromSoft would stop being the Satan worshiping sadists that they already are, stuff like this gets announced. Pretty much the big points are as follows:

• White phantoms now have a limited time tether to the host's world. How long this is and if there are any variables are as yet unknown, but what this basically means is ganking will be harder to do, since an invader could just wait it out until the host's partner(s) despawns. I imagine this will reinforce summoning at the boss fog gates rather than by the bonfire since the phantoms are on a time limit.
• Dying in hollow form will cause your health to decrease each time. Think Demon's Souls system of halving the player's health in soul form on a smaller scale (unless dying enough consecutively causes your health bar to pretty much get to a minimum threshold where it is barely visible). You may think, "oh great, now I have to be in human form and be prone to invasions if I want full health." Well, about that......
• You can now be invaded in both human and hollow form. Yes, the one crutch from being in the less than pleasant skin complexion mode has now been removed. This will no doubt encourage people to stay in human form, except I'm sure the items for reversing hollowing will be in limited supply.
• There's a covenant currently named 'Way of Blue' that allows a blue phantom to be summoned to a host's world to fight off a red invader phantom. I don't think it's been made clear whether the members are the hosts or the blue phantoms (perhaps the blue phantom is simply an NPC).

Welp, looks like the new directors at the helm aren't fucking around. This game seems to be a mix of the original and its spiritual predecessor along with its own unique flavour of sprinklings.

EpicNameBro mentioned that you might get bonus utility out of your stats too. Like Dex giving dodge or movement speed and extra poison damage, while Int would increase elemental damage on weapons. Really neat updates all in all!

Also while I see how the always online invasion thing can be offputting, I think I'll just roll with it. Let's see what happens.

News sounds great.

People always be complaining though, no matter what. At first people were worried the game would be too easy, now there are people in comments section complaining about the loss of health and the white phantom thing. Personally, I really like these ideas because it seems like they're really pushing this game to make you do the work and learn the game, with there being little to no possible crutches.

Sounds a lot tougher, and I'm all for that.

Sounds nice, except for the time limit. They really don't want people to be able to play with friends, do they?

I barely played either souls game, but I am more excited for Dark Souls 2 than anything else coming out. dude what?

the health penalty for dying could turn out to be a nice change. more in line with demon's souls

Everything sounds great except the timed white phantom thing. Maybe that won't be a problem though depending on how long they'll actually be able to stay.

I like the kill/time limit. Hopefully it will discourage griefers from partnering.

Wait a minute... No more ragdoll physics?!

Is there any way to not be invaded at all? That sounds like a quick way for me to completely stop playing a game. In Dark Souls, all you had to do was stay ugly.

Otherwise... I should play more Dark Souls 1.

@believer258: You can still play offline; presumably that's in the options somewhere. If worse comes to worse you could disconnect the system while you play.

oh jeez

oh jeezzzzz

It'll definitely take a little getting used to, but I'm all for the game subverting my expectations from playing the first Dark Souls. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is having your health decrease every time you die in hollow form. I wonder if there's a simple way to reverse that.

The nature of the souls games is trial and error. Besides losing souls, being further punished for dying, which happens a lot in these games, just sounds plain sadistic on the developers part. It kind of makes suicide runs an even more risk reward scenario. Of course, I don't really know the way or extent they'll implement that in the game. Maybe they'll put in a threshold for your health to stop dropping, or give the player a somewhat easily accessible item to reverse the effect. Speculating is all I can do. We'll just have to wait for the details when we play the game.

I believe the original video about it said that those in the blue covenant are the ones who are protected, and that there is possibly another covenant that are essentially the 'guardians of blue' who get sent in to help you.

@themanwithnoplan: Apparently the maximum penalty is 50% hp, so it's basically a more forgiving version of the Demon's Souls system in that regard, and that game also used the way to turn human as the way to reverse the health penalty, so I'd guess this would work the same. I personally think the purpose of this is to force people to slow down and seriously rethink their strategy rather than running head-on at a brick wall as the error part of trial and error will just make them have more and more of a disadvantage. To me the Souls series is more about learning how to avoid the more fatal trial and error attempts and instead learn to gauge a situation long before the "YOU DIED" screen pops up.

I'm not sure how I feel about being able to be invaded at all times. Getting killed in half a second by someone with a some crazy spell and high level is never fun also hackers aren't either.

The great thing about Dark souls is that you need to feel isolated. If you had stuff like voice chat or matchmaking and normal co op it would take a ton of that away what this game makes great.

All of a sudden i'm way less interested. Being invaded was never fun to me at all. Give me an arena or something and i'll go there if i want PvP. Playing offline is also a really poor substitute since you miss out on the rest of the great online features.

Kinda dumb about being able to be invaded while hollow... that was the main draw of playing hollow (that and not being penalised as bad for dying). I'm just trying to do my own thing here, slowly working through this game with no clue what I'm doing, discovering things as I go along slowly but surely... until suddenly I get invaded by some min/maxed hardcore pvp'er in that full crystal gear who's practically impossible for me to kill. Yeah this change kinda sucks for people just trying to play the game instead of gank others.

How many romanceable NPC's are there?

Can I send out challenges to my friends on Facebook?

yyyyyyyyyyyyup. I can still remember so many instances of me backstabbing an invading player, only for it to do zero damage, while I then also get backstabbed while I'm still in the animation... Be it lag or a hack or whatever, I did not get anything out of being invaded besides needless frustration.

If you now can be invaded at any time, then they better be a lot more vigilant in combating hackers or running their servers ect. Otherwise this could potentially fuck up the whole game. I could always play offline, but that would also deprive me of the messages and ghostly apparitions, too.

People can still only invade you if they are within a level range of you. If the person invading you has some crazy gear that you don't have the whole point of the game is that you should be able to acquire the same gear. There are no excuses Dark Souls is a game about being skilled. I'm sure there will be initial imbalances such as the way Ring of Fog was abused to death in the early days of Dark Souls but things will get ironed out.

Being invaded at any time seems REALLY crummy. This definitely changes my stance on the game and I'm suddenly far less excited than I was twenty four hours ago.

if someone does a low level run through the entire game and gets some savage shit towards the end then goes back to fuck your shit up how is it your fault that you lost? I'm not bad at the game but I've gotten invaded by darkwraiths in the parish and there was really nothing I could do at that point.

If someone wants to attempt a low-level run through the game without fear of being destroyed by an interloper, they can always play offline. Otherwise, it's the risk that players will have to take into account.

If you are complaining about being invaded, you should not be playing the game.

I'm just saying that saying it's your fault, as a starting player, to die from that person who came from before the kiln of the first flame or whatever to gank low level player is more than a little unfair.

Yup, its like people haven't played Dark Souls lately. I replayed it a couple months ago, i was in the parish, got invaded by guys in full havels with +5 lightning weapons who would would then send me hate mail calling me a "noob" cus he one shotted me with his lightning claymore when i'm god damn level 15.

I have no problem with a fair fight. But when it turns into griefing thats when its bad. I've played as a darkwraith and ive had people use summons against me, I think thats fair. I'm invading THEIR game, i SHOULD be at the disadvantage. People whining about being 2v1's is pretty lame.

The way of blue thing or whatever sounds pretty awesome though, defending against being ganked. I'm all for that.

I dont get why people here are acting like the invader has a right to a fair fight, or good odds at killing the other player. It's supposed to be hard to kill the person you're invading, not the other way around guys.....

Welcome to the world of online gaming.

You didn't understand what he is talking about. He is saying that there are people who do low level runs to get great gear (because gear isn't level restricted) and then go into other peoples worlds (mostly newbies) and kill the low level people with the high level gear. It isn't that uncommon, but it is a shitty thing to do.

Well that is just the thing in the end gear and stat points don't matter in Dark Souls they never have which is why low level runs are so possible. So, regardless of gear if you lose unless they are a straight up hacker its your fault. Its no different than jumping on a fighting game and getting savagely beaten. Some people are just more inherently skilled at a game than you even if they are the same rank/level. Its at that point as the player up to you to learn from you mistakes and advance your skill level. And honestly, even outside of the invasion stuff that is what the souls games have constantly done to the player knowledge is key and at first you don't have that knowledge and you die and it sucks but that is part of the learning process and experience. Invasions are no different you fight you lose and then you learn how people are playing the game and react/learn from those experiences. I think they absolutely corrected course on this as Dark Souls was honestly a step down in difficulty from Demon's Souls as there were very little penalties outside of losing whatever souls you had on you when you died which honestly in the long run doesn't matter.

:D this is going to be so awesome !!!!! Cant wait for March to play this beauty

@demoskinos: um, are you serious? of course they matter. If they can do half your health because they've fully upgraded their sword, and you can barely do 20 damage because they've fully upgraded their armor, you're shit out of luck.

Ah, I see. Well, same difference, really.

I'm gonna have to rebut on that. Gear does matter, while levels don't as much. There are endgame gear that can absolutely ravage early gear. Especially against new players. You are asking new players to learn how to counter this stuff, but the learning curve would be that much more fucked when you have people going into games and using tactics and gear that newbies wouldn't learn how to deal with until they gained more experience in the game. At that point you are just stifling people from getting better at the game.

That said I doubt the game is actually going to be that problematic or that From hasn't considered those things from occurring and having some sort of measure to meter out any potential problems, but players are going to look to exploit this anyway possible, especially before any patches or anything.

I don't see how but okay.

@demoskinos: You got that backwards, Gear matters so much that it makes low level runs possible. If you couldn't get a +5 lightning sword you wouldnt be able to do jack, the only reason people are able to do low level runs is by using the gear upgrades.

At level 16 in the parish with a fresh character, if you're invaded by a pimped out tool witha lightning weapon, you lose. You just do. No matter how good you are. Stop acting like its a super fair and balanced system, because it isn't.

I've done TONS of PvP in dark souls, im pretty good at it actually, but i can at least recognize its flaws. My main character is a Darkwraith. But the invader should ALWAYS be at the disadvantage. The invader should be the one that needs to prove their skill, not the person being invaded.

I'm getting the impression you're one of those dudes that invades low level peopel with a lightning shotel...

Online games are always full of shitheads. We don't know what countermeasures From will take to make the experience less ganktacular, but if it really is that much of a concern for some players, then the solution is to play the game offline.

@clonedzero: I don't agree. It would be one thing if you're dealing with multiple black phantoms its another when your one on one fighting. You can still dodge you can still parry you can still backstab and you can use the environment to you advantage. PvE may be a slightly different case because NPC enemies can have properties and abilities that the players can't but if were talking about two player characters fighting its still entirely possible for that person to win. It may be an entirely up hill battle but the plausibility is still there its not impossible. Its just going to be significantly harder.

This is not havel who has a set pattern about him that you can take him at level 1. This is a guy who's gone far enough in the game to know most of it, and is now griefing low level players to collect humanity. He already knows all the environment and most all of the tricks and if your regular attack does a miniscule amount a backstab doesn't do much either... I've won two of those: once because he didn't try to attack me and killed the dragon on the bridge for me, and the other I hid in a weird spot until he fucked off after 15 minutes.

It's pretty unfair and pretty annoying. The whole staying hollow to avoid that was a great system but now you can't avoid that unless you literally unplug your internet. That's not something you should have to do to play (and enjoy) a game.

@animasta: Well hey, I don't agree and I'm all for the changes. So don't partake in them if you don't want I guess. I was always sad I never got to see more invasions simply because humanity was such a limited resource that I never was in human form long enough to ever really be invaded. I'm thrilled I'll actually get to see more invasions happening.

Play Dark Souls, go to the parish on a fairly fresh character, be human and let yourself get invaded a few times. Tell me th ose fights are fair. I mean sure, you COULD beat someone using a +5 lightning claymore in full havels using your starting gear, but you'd have to be FLAWLESS and they'd have to be sloppy as hell, and it'd take forever. Or better yet, the dudes who run up to you and spam wrath of god.

What im concerned about with this new system, is it seems to give the invaders all these advantages while making it harder for the person being invaded. I have no problem with being invaded, i just want it to be a fair fight. Sure at launch it'll be great cus no one will be overpowered, but unless its super balanced people won't be.

Theres a difference between challenge and difficulty and just tedious nonsense bullshit. This could work out perfectly, it might not. Theres good reason to be concerned. I'm not why everyone seems fully on the side of the invaders here. The invaders should be at the disadvantage. This all sounds like they get all the upside with no risk.

Also I think invading should have risk to it if you fail. In Dark Souls you can invade someone else and even if you lose, you won't suffer any penalty or downside aside from having to run 10 feet to your bloodstain. Its not a risk vs. reward thing, you either win the fight and get a prize or lose and no consequences. There should be consequences to invading other players and losing.

They should also put level requirements at gear teirs. Like you need to be level 40 for a +10 weapon, 60 for +15 or something like that.

@demoskinos: I think you are missing the point that game is removing the only way to play without invasions that was always available in the previous two without severely gimping the experience by missing out on everything else being online offers. In this regard the game is absolutely inferior to it's predecessors. Skill, gear, build all matter greatly in how you can perform in PvP and forcing everyone to now have to deal with this even if they don't want to and never had too either in the first two games is not the way to go about this. Some builds and gear and upgrade paths are infinitely better for PvE than they are for PvP and vice versa and throwing everyone in the same basket at the same time with no way to opt out is a terrible idea.

There is no good way you could spin this and convince anyone this makes the game better.

The problem in DkS was that crazy gear on a level 1 was doable via a glitch, leading to +5 lightning equipment in the undead burg. When it came to invasion frustrations for new players, it often had little to do with the invader being skilled enough to do a level 1 run through first.

If you were good enough to want to be invaded, it was easy enough to have a glut of humanity anyway; I had plenty of humanity every time after my second game unless I was feeding it to quelaag's sister.

and I really wouldn't mind if they, say, put a beef gate on hollow invasions. You can only invade hollows who are at or above the same boss as you. but just as it stands, with the information they've given, where you can get a guy who has been to the end of the game be able to invade you with his 10+ (or is it 5+) lightning claymore and full upgraded armor when you're just as the parish with maybe a +4 sword, that's a problem.

Good. I want this game to be hard as balls, and it sounds like they are giving me exactly what I want.

We all worried that they would make the game easier. We never considered that they would make the game harder.

Let's see how thrilled you are when you keep getting invaded and killed till your health bar drops down to 50% and you're getting invaded by people with full health. You could argue "Have more skill." But having more skill in the first Dark Souls would mean you could stay in human form longer and experience more invasions. Constant invasions is not the solution to infrequent invasions. I don't want to progress through the game in 5 minute increments because I'm engaging in a duel every 5 minutes. Playing in offline mode is not a solution either because I would still like to experience invasions, just not constantly.

But who knows, maybe the "invading hollows" thing is a covenant specific thing.

maybe it should just be an item you get as a hollow, basically a metadimensional "come at me bro" that you have to use.

@minipato: I'm fine with games being balls ass hard. Hell, even if I get frustrated that's going to still be enjoyable because so many games now are such horrible at giving you any sort of meaningful challenge because were in the age of lets hold your hand and streamline everything to death. I want Dark Souls II to be the fucking Battletoads of this generation just absolutely brutal to the point where possibly I don't finish it but that might be just as thrilling of a prospect that a game finally checkmated me into a corner that I'm not skilled enough to get out of.