It's not really that bad. In DS3, OP low-level invaders could force you to play single player, since given 100 games, no new player is going to beat a vet with a dragonslayer axe build, and there's no where else you can go.
In Elden Ring, there's OP shit available from the start (dragon spells, blood daggers), and you can always just go somewhere else.
Invaders are at a massive disadvantage if any time they go to engage one player, the other can just make an entire area death, so in practice you can just end any invader you don't feel like fighting.
I think it's just a problem with the whole structure of involuntary PvP to begin with, at least in the Souls series. People rightfully have negative feelings about it when they're the one being invaded just trying to get through the game, and it is a pretty toxic griefing culture. Others have fun... if they're invading, which requires a supply of people who are not going to have fun. Or there's going to be ganking, wherein maybe 2-3 ish people can basically choke out PvP in an area by hogging all the invasions where the invaders can't really win and where the invaders can't go invade someone else.
I liked Darkmoon invasions in DS1 and DS2 because at least I knew I was invading someone who (probably) invaded someone else and so could put up a fight, but like overall it leads to this place where there has to be so many mitigations and protections for the host that things have to be pretty one-sided, one way or the other.
As far as fight clubs and duels in general go, the balance has been noticeably worse than in other games, other than maybe DS2 with its extreme armor values and Soul Memory allowing for a level of imbalance that made it impossible for some people to even damage the other. Most of the other games had issues but Elden Ring at least for now has a lot of very non-interactive rocket tag shit that renders a lot of the game's rebalanced movesets kind of irrelevant. Maybe it's just a matter of players not yet knowing all the counters to this, but it feels like it's just going to result in what always happens with these games where some people make SL20 twink characters with bigoted screen names and invade people who have no hope of having a coherent build that could deal with them.
Like if the game's going to make it so they can only be invaded if they have summons, and additionally summon hunters to come rescue them every minute or so... maybe just rework the structure of invasions entirely. There's prolly a way to have those scummy, creative fights without the elements that motivate stacking so many things in the host's favor in a way that privilege gank squads that've cleared the map and defeat the point. Like it could be possible to structure this so that in order to invade, you have to yourself open yourself up to invasions, and so you're only invading other people who themselves are trying to invade, and so there could be more justification for hosts not having gank squads ready to spam roll into your spawn and instantly kill you with a status effect.
I've been on both sides of invasions where people aren't using meta builds and it's as good as DS PvP has ever been. Lots of rolling around trading hits and trying not to get parried, spamming homing soul mass/glintblade phalanx, and throwing no heal pots.
It's the meta builds that are killing it. It's not just that there are ways to reliably instagib the other player, it's that there are at least ten different ways to do it, and with a little faith and dex you can have three of them ready at the same time. It's easy to have dragon rot breath, madness beams, and dual blood katanas all ready to go, and any one of those shuts down an opposing player reliably unless they get a OHKO on you using another meta build.
I hope they can balance it but it's such a wreck right now I don't know how. Like when my super-un-meta sorcery and bow and twin straight swords build goes up against someone else with a goofy un-optimized build it's fun and we get to run around whacking at each other until someone runs out of pots or stamina or whatever. But the meta is cancer in ten different ways and that just seems like too much to easily fix.
I honestly wish they'd give people a hard opt-out for PvP so they could do their thing in single player and people who like PvP (hi!) could have regular invasions back. And it sucks that multiplayer is limited to 4 slots. They could have gone in the other direction and let us have crazy fights with 8 or 10 or more, but instead we're down to four total from six in the last game. Feels bad.
Yeah, when there isn't rocket tag I'm actually really digging the PvP, there's a lot more to movesets now. Even for weapons with heavies that are just too slow for PvP, crouching now does your rolling R1 without you needing to roll first, so greatswords now have a reliable fast and long range attack they can use to deal with runners and roll spam. Jumping has two different attacks that are both viable. Weapon arts are actually useful now. There's a variety of funky-scaling talismans and catalysts and weaopns that permit builds to always have something they can use to dip into a different playstyle to supplement their main tactic, which gives every build some mixup potential so long they're willing to put at least one non-core stat into the mid-teens.
But none of that really matters if there's rocket tag options. Why try to have an actual back and forth fight where you're trying to remain unpredictable, land parries, fake your opponent out thinking you're gonna go for a roll R1 but instead you went for an R2 that fucked up their timing and caught them out, when you could just grab an instagib build?
And for invasions, literally just have the invasion item you need to invade other people itself open you up to invasions so long you possess it, the only way to be invaded. You can't just put it away, even when you're wandering around doing PvE you can get invaded, but in return you can also invade people trying the same thing. If you got that bloody finger, you're fair game. There's no more need to have gank squads at all, at that point you can just disallow all friendly phantoms except for Hunters (to act as time pressure so invaders aren't just camping near enemies the entire time), if you summon a friendly phantom then the assumption is that you wanna do co-op and that is the only way you can turn off invasions.
Lorewise a Souls game that just assumes this is how invasions work now would be refreshing. Just literally an ethical murder cult, bragging about murdering each other and taking offense to the idea that they'd ever lay a hand on anyone innocent. Rewards are more or less what they are now, nothing you can't reasonably get without the PvP but a fun way to make doing PvP worth your while. Hell, you can even reward people just for being invaded, even if they fucking die! Just a joyous, friendly murder cult where if your murder comrade gets your ass they still leave you a present - maybe even give them an option to "tip" anyone they kill!
I pirated this game and at first I regretted it because I was worried about missing out on the MP stuff.
The more I read about the unoriginal and unfunny joke spam, the broken pvp, and unhelpful messages the more I'm certain I made the correct choice.
It's not really that bad. In DS3, OP low-level invaders could force you to play single player, since given 100 games, no new player is going to beat a vet with a dragonslayer axe build, and there's no where else you can go.
In Elden Ring, there's OP shit available from the start (dragon spells, blood daggers), and you can always just go somewhere else.
Invaders are at a massive disadvantage if any time they go to engage one player, the other can just make an entire area death, so in practice you can just end any invader you don't feel like fighting.
I think it's just a problem with the whole structure of involuntary PvP to begin with, at least in the Souls series. People rightfully have negative feelings about it when they're the one being invaded just trying to get through the game, and it is a pretty toxic griefing culture. Others have fun... if they're invading, which requires a supply of people who are not going to have fun. Or there's going to be ganking, wherein maybe 2-3 ish people can basically choke out PvP in an area by hogging all the invasions where the invaders can't really win and where the invaders can't go invade someone else.
I liked Darkmoon invasions in DS1 and DS2 because at least I knew I was invading someone who (probably) invaded someone else and so could put up a fight, but like overall it leads to this place where there has to be so many mitigations and protections for the host that things have to be pretty one-sided, one way or the other.
As far as fight clubs and duels in general go, the balance has been noticeably worse than in other games, other than maybe DS2 with its extreme armor values and Soul Memory allowing for a level of imbalance that made it impossible for some people to even damage the other. Most of the other games had issues but Elden Ring at least for now has a lot of very non-interactive rocket tag shit that renders a lot of the game's rebalanced movesets kind of irrelevant. Maybe it's just a matter of players not yet knowing all the counters to this, but it feels like it's just going to result in what always happens with these games where some people make SL20 twink characters with bigoted screen names and invade people who have no hope of having a coherent build that could deal with them.
Like if the game's going to make it so they can only be invaded if they have summons, and additionally summon hunters to come rescue them every minute or so... maybe just rework the structure of invasions entirely. There's prolly a way to have those scummy, creative fights without the elements that motivate stacking so many things in the host's favor in a way that privilege gank squads that've cleared the map and defeat the point. Like it could be possible to structure this so that in order to invade, you have to yourself open yourself up to invasions, and so you're only invading other people who themselves are trying to invade, and so there could be more justification for hosts not having gank squads ready to spam roll into your spawn and instantly kill you with a status effect.
I've been on both sides of invasions where people aren't using meta builds and it's as good as DS PvP has ever been. Lots of rolling around trading hits and trying not to get parried, spamming homing soul mass/glintblade phalanx, and throwing no heal pots.
It's the meta builds that are killing it. It's not just that there are ways to reliably instagib the other player, it's that there are at least ten different ways to do it, and with a little faith and dex you can have three of them ready at the same time. It's easy to have dragon rot breath, madness beams, and dual blood katanas all ready to go, and any one of those shuts down an opposing player reliably unless they get a OHKO on you using another meta build.
I hope they can balance it but it's such a wreck right now I don't know how. Like when my super-un-meta sorcery and bow and twin straight swords build goes up against someone else with a goofy un-optimized build it's fun and we get to run around whacking at each other until someone runs out of pots or stamina or whatever. But the meta is cancer in ten different ways and that just seems like too much to easily fix.
I honestly wish they'd give people a hard opt-out for PvP so they could do their thing in single player and people who like PvP (hi!) could have regular invasions back. And it sucks that multiplayer is limited to 4 slots. They could have gone in the other direction and let us have crazy fights with 8 or 10 or more, but instead we're down to four total from six in the last game. Feels bad.
Yeah, when there isn't rocket tag I'm actually really digging the PvP, there's a lot more to movesets now. Even for weapons with heavies that are just too slow for PvP, crouching now does your rolling R1 without you needing to roll first, so greatswords now have a reliable fast and long range attack they can use to deal with runners and roll spam. Jumping has two different attacks that are both viable. Weapon arts are actually useful now. There's a variety of funky-scaling talismans and catalysts and weaopns that permit builds to always have something they can use to dip into a different playstyle to supplement their main tactic, which gives every build some mixup potential so long they're willing to put at least one non-core stat into the mid-teens.
But none of that really matters if there's rocket tag options. Why try to have an actual back and forth fight where you're trying to remain unpredictable, land parries, fake your opponent out thinking you're gonna go for a roll R1 but instead you went for an R2 that fucked up their timing and caught them out, when you could just grab an instagib build?
And for invasions, literally just have the invasion item you need to invade other people itself open you up to invasions so long you possess it, the only way to be invaded. You can't just put it away, even when you're wandering around doing PvE you can get invaded, but in return you can also invade people trying the same thing. If you got that bloody finger, you're fair game. There's no more need to have gank squads at all, at that point you can just disallow all friendly phantoms except for Hunters (to act as time pressure so invaders aren't just camping near enemies the entire time), if you summon a friendly phantom then the assumption is that you wanna do co-op and that is the only way you can turn off invasions.
Lorewise a Souls game that just assumes this is how invasions work now would be refreshing. Just literally an ethical murder cult, bragging about murdering each other and taking offense to the idea that they'd ever lay a hand on anyone innocent. Rewards are more or less what they are now, nothing you can't reasonably get without the PvP but a fun way to make doing PvP worth your while. Hell, you can even reward people just for being invaded, even if they fucking die! Just a joyous, friendly murder cult where if your murder comrade gets your ass they still leave you a present - maybe even give them an option to "tip" anyone they kill!
We've got jolly cooperation, why not jolly dismemberment?
deleted by creator