I feel like I'm missing part of the thrill of Dark Souls.  I did spend portion of my games with 2 to 3 Humanity point on my character and I try to offer myself to be summoned to help other player.  Most of the time I place the summoning stone at the light before a boss fight and wait 5min to see if I can get summon, but it never happened. 
Am I misunderstanding the criteria for an invasion or summon? 
 
And I dont see any many blood stains around as well, I think it might have to the do with the dark red color and I just happen to miss them or people are better at the game.

That only happens when you are in human state. You're probably undead (or hollow, or whatever it's called).

Edit: You have to go to a fire and use a humanity point to become human.

@doe3879: It seems harder to get summoned this time around, although reports vary quite a bit. Generally I lay down a stone right before a boss to get some more souls or humanity, and it generally works eventually, but sometimes I have to wait for a while before it happens. Sounds like you're doing it right. It looks like being in certain covenants may have something to do with this, as I know belonging to some covenants makes it more likely to be matched up with someone else from your covenant.

My only advice is: make sure you don't put your stone down in an area that is way below your level. Apparently you can only summon someone within 10% of your level, so a level 30 can only summon a level 27-33, so that could affect how often you get into games.

I also notice less blood stains than in Demon's Souls.

Also, I'm not human much, but I've never been invaded by another player.

Join the cat covenant and wear the ring. I have to invade another player to defend the forest every 10 minutes or so and it's awesome. First time it happened I was speechless, didn't know the covenants were multiplayer related like that.

Join the cat covenant and wear the ring. I have to invade another player to defend the forest every 10 minutes or so and it's awesome. First time it happened I was speechless, didn't know the covenants were multiplayer related like that.

Somehow signs only show up when I reverse the hollowing.
Never, ever saw them before I did that.
No one ever responds to my signs tho, hollow or human, so sod that.
I generally clear an area out till I find the fog, then back to the bonfire to become human, mess around a bit till I find a sign, otherwise just go for it and face the boss. 
 
Bloodstains all over the place tho on my game, people die too much.

@doe3879: It seems harder to get summoned this time around, although reports vary quite a bit. Generally I lay down a stone right before a boss to get some more souls or humanity, and it generally works eventually, but sometimes I have to wait for a while before it happens. Sounds like you're doing it right. It looks like being in certain covenants may have something to do with this, as I know belonging to some covenants makes it more likely to be matched up with someone else from your covenant.

My only advice is: make sure you don't put your stone down in an area that is way below your level. Apparently you can only summon someone within 10% of your level, so a level 30 can only summon a level 27-33, so that could affect how often you get into games.

I also notice less blood stains than in Demon's Souls.

Also, I'm not human much, but I've never been invaded by another player.

I haven't tried putting my summon sign down yet, but I see bloodstains/messages/ghostly images of other players fairly often. The second time I made myself human was so I could summon someone to help with the gaping dragon. On my way to the boss door I was invaded...I managed to take him out. Then when I got to the boss door I tried summoning someone to help me. The first two I tried failed for whatever reason, but the third guy I summoned worked. So, personally, I haven't had much trouble with seeing other players.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Somehow signs only show up when I reverse the hollowing. Never, ever saw them before I did that.

Yeah...you can only summon someone if you are human, so you won't see the signs while hollow.

@xaLieNxGrEyx: According to Namco's response, which was posted here, it is percentage based.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@metalhead87: So both parties have to be human? I was under the impression you could be a good chap and help out a random dude to get some humanity if you were in need.

You can be Hollow and place a White Summon Sign, but you have to be human to summon someone.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@metalhead87: So both parties have to be human? I was under the impression you could be a good chap and help out a random dude to get some humanity if you were in need.

Yeah, you can. From my understanding, you can be summoned by putting down your sign while human or hollow. I was just saying that you won't see other player's signs unless you are human. Meaning you can't summon anyone into your world unless you are human, but you can be summoned by other players while you are in either form.

I am 20 hours in. All 5 times I have tried to invade anyone have failed. All messages I read have no ratings, there aren't even a lot of messages.  Even in human form I have never seen a sign or been invaded. I see ghosts of players every once in a while so that is cool : / . So far I am disappointed by the multiplayer side of things, but I love the game itself so damned much so I can overlook that I guess.

@Resident4t said:

I am 20 hours in. All 5 times I have tried to invade anyone have failed. All messages I read have no ratings, there aren't even a lot of messages. Even in human form I have never seen a sign or been invaded. I see ghosts of players every once in a while so that is cool : / . So far I am disappointed by the multiplayer side of things, but I love the game itself so damned much so I can overlook that I guess.

I've seen others saying the same kind of stuff. Makes me wonder what it is exactly causing that. Like I mentioned, I see messages all over the place...most have no ratings, but some do. The time I went human I saw around 5 or so summon signs at the gaping dragon boss door, and got invaded on my way there. I see player ghosts fairly often....mainly when near a bonfire. I'm only around 12 hours in, btw. I can't comment on trying to invade someone or be summoned by someone, because I haven't tried either yet.

I don't know the parameters for the messages but I have noticed they disappear after a couple hours. At least they disappear from my world although mine seem to stay. Maybe it updates or something, not entirely sure but I see messages a lot. I see ghosts a lot as well (especially around bonfires).

I haven't tried being summoned yet. Gonna see how that goes later today.

I have spent a lot of time playing with others. But mostly for boss fights, and it's incredibly fun.

I don't think the majority of the people really understand the humanity system though. They see the counter on 1 or higher, and assume they are human. I honestly think there are thousands of people out there who haven't tried "Reverse Hollowing" even once. Why should you, right? It's a vague option at the bottom of a menu with no real in-game description or explanation of the benefits, and slaying demons works just fine while hollowed.

It's a serious oversight on FROM's part, I think. They really should have had some kind of in game tutorial for these exact features, because let's face it, not everyone is going to play this game with a Wiki or guide on their lap, and they miss out on a ton of cool features. Likewise with the messaging system. People have to buy the Orange Soapstone, equip it, select it and use it every single time they want to write or rate a message, while in Demon's Souls, you could just hit select at all times to do the same thing.

Dark Souls made some gigantic leaps over it's predecessor, but I do think not explaining these things is currently causing the lack of online presence, and it's a huge oversight from the developer.

I've never unhollowed once even though I beat Demons Souls a buncha times.

Part of it is that I feel like I should hoard humanity more.

Another is that I feel like first time through the game I should beat the bosses myself. Like a source of pride or something..

I see very few bloodstains and almost all messages have zero ratings. I've started rating decent messages just so that maybe people see the ratings and get curious how to do it.

I only go human just to make sure a boss is even easier. Usually that means I get invaded immediately, then he warps through my body and gets an utterly bizarre backstab for 100%.

Fun times.

I've been playing about 24 hours or so. I've had one encounter in the undead parish. However, I must say, the one encounter was AWESOME! I was on my way up the stairs having just beaten the big wizard with the trident looking staff when a black phantom came at me. We went at it for a while, back and forth, he got a few back-stabs on me but they didn't hurt me that much. I was getting the best of him so he ran downstairs and tried to trigger the knights in the front of the church to come at me but they wouldn't activate from him bumping them. He was trying to wait me out in the front of the church and I ran out onto the patio in back. I came across a white summons symbol and decided to summon someone. The dude who came - I believe his psn tag was "Azurist" or something, went right at the black phantom. The knights got triggered but I crushed them while he worked on the phantom. Then we both went at the phantom and crushed him. I got a humanity.

Then the white phantom was beckoning me towards the stairs so I followed him out to the roof and we easily crushed the Gargoyles together. Then he disappeared. It was an amazing online gaming experience.

Me and 2 random bros just killed gaping dragon, and one of them cut off the tail so I got a sweet axe. Fuck yea.