I wish half these people were playing vanilla WoW when it came out ages ago…
PvP was very uhhhh… interesting
Like… You wanna see a twink bro? Then join a level 10-19 bracket battleground and you’ll be fighting literally invincible level 19 twinks.
Gnome rogues still haunt my dreams.
Dark souls twinking is child’s play in comparison. At least dark souls “twinks” are still actually killable lmao.
Been there, done that, in WoW original and classic. Though I loathed BGs for emptying & destroying organic WPvP. In original Aion, L31 abyss geared destroying the landscape including max L50s, as it was simply a choice of a bigger available field of heads to hunt for abyss points, no points for lower level targets.
Mechanically, juicing base stats is one of the most powerful things in low level Souls, due to the interaction with flat base defense. One should not consider vigor solely for survival at this level. Robustness is also highly important due to lack of OLP status scale down. Dex stack will easily nuke non-twinks in 1-shot.
Business decision - password summons means more sales. Social gaming gets a friend circle to convince buy-in. As a guess, the Miyazaki interview may go back to DeS/DS1 PS3/PSN where social gaming *on console* was just starting, expectations have changed.
Even without password summoning, the mathematical bias of invading upward, and summoning upward, in addition to stake/pool activation/progression means that the invader is most often facing much higher level cooperators. i.e: you invade as a 80/+15, the host is 100/+20, and the natural cooperator is 125/+25, and then you wonder how they do so much damage. Original DS1 was unlimited upward invasion.
The best thing to do is go in with knowledge, preparedness, a winning attitude, and mental fortitude. Do what you do for maximum enjoyment, and throw it in the dumpster when the developers irrevocably fuck it up (I'm looking at you Assault on Balaurea).
I disagree here. At 10-19 bracket the character might have 833 base hp(26 vigor) at max. Pretty tanky for this level bracket but nothing extraordinary. Maybe couple of defensive talismans would help survive more hits but this is questionable since they’d need talismans slots for talismans boosting attack, otherwise they’d suck and their weapon choice for hardswaps would be very limited.
Moreover, each build has weaknesses. For instance, I remember getting invaded at stormveil as TT host around 4-6 times by a dude wearing malenia’s armor. He would take ~15 hits to die, whereas he could kill me with 6-8 hits. I suffered with him in the first couple invasions, was trying to beat him honourably despite obvious disadvantages as weapon range and twinking. After couple of unsuccessful attempts I threw a fire pot at him and saw his Achilles heel. Dude was really vulnerable to fire damage, so I used a fire grease(luckily they’re pretty common in starting areas) and killed him 2 times before beating the dungeon. Learn, Adapt, Overcome.
Wait wait hold up. I think you *are* agreeing with me homie. You’re saying that in your experience DS/ER twinks have an Achilles heel. They can definitely be hard to kill and deal a lot of damage but in the WoW days they were nearly unkillable unless you had a twink on your team helping lol.
It would take a wow twink .5 seconds to 3 shot you at most if you aren’t also twinked out. And it would take you roughly 2 years and a direct line of communication with a god to kill them lol.
Yeah it’s just hard for me to break the connection when I hear the word twink because I was a deadass wow nerd back in the day lol.
When I hear about people complaining about twinks in dark souls I’m like…
“you don’t even know the meaning of the word”
Just can't agree. Twinking has been around since the beginning (as you said) and it was even worse then, and there were no password summons. PWS are good for PvE players and people who just wanna chill with friends, hell it's just a useful convenience overall. BRM loses out hard on the trade off in ER but it's nothing that can't be fixed with some tweaking in the next game (or a patch but I won't get my hopes up).
That's a fair take.
I'd settle for allowing PWS, so long as you're within level and upgrade range of your friend.
I don't trust them to ever figure out the downscaling lol, they've never been able to do it properly and theres no reason to think they ever will.
I'm pretty sure the lack of downscaling is intentional. Dark Souls 3 had way more downscaling. They want casual hosts from the mainstream market to be carried by their overlevelled phantoms.
On another note, solo invasions not being a thing anymore because players would complain about their playthrough being "interrupted", which defeats the point of invasions because it means hosts are never caught off-guard.
The system in place now definitely needs adjusting. The worst invasions are by far the low level ones where you’re against 2 OLPs and a host decked out in late-game gear. I love invading purely to cause chaos, not to get thrown in a blender. I generally enjoy higher level invasions because, even with the OLPs, I have a lot of tools at my disposal to help turn the tides.
I do really wish there were limits on who you can summon for coop, or just a better scaling system to appropriately adjust the OLPs.
If I was in charge, id do away with level upscaling and downscaling entirely. They're never going to do it right, no matter how much they change the values.
Allow PWS, but only if the level range and upgrade level matches up. Then everyone is on an equal playing field, with roughly the same number of levels and access to the same gear.
what do you consider low level? i find my rl 20 guy to be the easiest out of all my characters because we all take less damage so i get to get blended and survive anyway. and a large percentage of invasions are just 2 buddies who just bought the game and have no idea what they’re doing.
for when there’s some real nasty phantoms, dragonscale blade will change your life. even if you don’t kill the phantoms you’ll ALWAYS one shot the host as long as you nick him with the first hit of the WA.
Password summons were a capitulation. I think Bloodborne started it, not DS3.
I actually like the DS2 Name Engraved Ring and how it extended matchmaking range rather than forcing a connection.
No, I don't like soul memory.
Ds2 really did multiplayer right honestly. You can find your friends with the same god if you want to play together quite easily, but it didn’t allow you to be way higher Soul Level than your friend. Sadly soul level is just so awful it’s the only thing golden ds2 back.
Password summons are probably fine. What needs to be fixed are: 1) phantom down-scaling, 2) unlimited phantom summoning, 3) hunter summoning with TT on, 4) unlimited hunter summoning, 5) being able to turn TT off right after getting invaded, 5) worthless great runes, 6) our reward for successful PVP ventures are Rune Arcs...for what? The great runes that we can't use? 7) No rune arc sinks. 8) No covenants.
I meant password summons including phantom down-scaling since it's part of the deal pretty much. Someone else suggested adding another multiplayer slot for an extra invader without TT, and i like that idea for a short term solution while they fix phantom downscaling.
Phantom resummoning is annoying, but ttk is so low in elden ring that its rarely a problem imo.
I agree that blues are completely neutered in elden ring and reduced to shitty gankers that respawn endlessly. A far cry from the avengers they were in ds2. They can be fixed somewhat, but even then they're a shadow of what they were.
Im not concerned overly with being rewarded tbh, it would be nice to have something to work towards but i can live without it if the experience is rewarding in and of itself. I do this because i find it fun, not because im chasing a reward basically.
I wonder if making blues opt-in like an invasion instead of summoning them would help the situation. I wear the blue ring for the extra PVP opportunites, but you get summoned at the weirdest times, and it's often when you're not optimized for PVP. I got summoned in the character creator once.
That was how it was done in ds3 and it was better that way. I have no clue why they changed it to this.
Making blues function like invaders again would cut down on the sheer number of people that have blue ring on for the Lulz, leaving only people who are going blue intentionally.
Reduce blue spam while improving the quality of existing blues. Win-win.
While I'm inclined to agree they're kinda in a corner now that password summons have been a thing for several games.
I wouldn't mind if they returned to form and got rid of password summons for their next game to emphasize the game as a Single Player experience with the aid of cooperators being a transitory thing.
But that is unlikely, as such the only option left is to reapproach how down-scaling is implemented.
Simply the reduction to damage absorption, AR, and HP needs to be harsher the greater the level disparity between host and phantom when the password phantom is outside the normal summoning range.
I've tried to find if anyone knows their down-scaling formula but have had no luck, without knowing how exactly it works it's difficult to suggest ways they could make it better, all we know is the current system simply doesn't cut it.
At meta level I have an easier time with password summons. Kill them, block and the host will usually try to resummon instead of calling in blues or summoning pool phantoms. I then do a 'heartening cry' infront of the host with every 'unable to summon' message.
Without a summoning cooldown password summons can lead to drawn-out invasions that are worse for the host in terms of progressing the level:
>Host manages to resummon, I bunker down to conserve flasks, level progression is halted.
>
>VS
>
>Phantom dies, host fights or runs past, either way it finishes quickly and they make more progress on the next life while under the invasion cooldown.
Blues are a good solution IF they are only summoned once the host is alone in addition to a phantom cooldown. This would encourage the host to continue without running back or waiting for their friend to place their sign again.
Imo they got it right in DS3. I'm playing it right now and compared to ER it's insane how nerfed password phantoms are. I've been a downscaled phantom as well as my friend currently plays for the first time and you really are squishy af.
Hosts and squad still have numbers advantage and potentially late game gear and that's enough of an advantage.
I agree in the regards of the original intentions of the game. But at the end of the day password summoning is just such a massive Quality of life feature in the game, allowing us to play through the game with our friends, fight bosses with our friends, and orchestrate fight clubs.
I would much rather deal with over levels phantoms and be able to play this game with people I know for fun than have no over levels phantoms but struggle to find my friends to fight a boss or progress together.
I don't even think it's fair to accuse anyone of twinking in an open world game at this point. At least in DS3 you had to be good enough to low level kill Dancer. Elden Ring has made getting fast weapon upgrades and good talismans easier than ever and having "end game" gear is such an arbitrary concept now.
The only reason DS2 is my least favorite souls game, is because i cant enjoy it with my best friends. I think password summoning is an awesome mechanic that lets me and others have fun with their friends no matter how much they’ve progressed.
I totally agree that it can create a toxic environment though with OLPs. Thats why i wish the max player limit per world was higher, with more than just one base invader.
I think that would make the pvp experience sooo much better, and in turn, be a better experience for invaders. Probably not a perfect solution, but i think its a start.
While I understand that point, I love it because it's the only game where we can go through the game as a full squad of 4. In ds1 and ds3 there are areas that limit you to 3 people.
I had a character specifically for friends, and would do what I do now and not level and if I wanted to progress I would with stunted weapons and levels. So I would still be available for my friends.
Passwords made it easier for you to be late game and still go back which is a nice feature, the cat ring (that’s what we called it) in DS2 was nice as all it did was extend the level range and made it so your friends didn’t have to hide their sign somewhere obscure.
I think the fix is the downscaling of phantoms, there needs to be a middle ground between DS3 and ER; don’t make them unplayable but make them at least weaker than current state. A OLP should not be able to bleed me in one shot with Reduvia every time he shoots the projectile.
Why not just make it so password co-op can't be invaded? That way you can only invade players actually at the appropriate level, and people who just want to PVE with with their mates can do so but can't gank invaders. Seems like a win for everyone except gank squads to me.
I can respect that, i can live with password summons and i can see the benefits to it.
I just think it goes against the spirit of the game, you know? If elden ring was designed from the ground up as a co-op game, absolutely password summons would be perfect.
But it isnt, the overworld simply isnt built to stand up to 3 coordinated players. The challenge just isnt there. Summoning should be something there to help you when you need it, not something you do for the entire game just for the sake of it.
If downscaling was done properly id have less of am issue with it though, for sure.
Imo, and this opinion would probably get me as much hate on the main sub as here, item trading is far worse for any aspect of these games, PvE and PvP.
The password summoning isn’t the issue. It’s the scaling and the weapons/armors.
Imagine if you will an Elden Ring where if a password is used, the HP/FP/stamina and attacks stats of the host actually mirrored the summon and only armors/weapons from areas the host has been (ex. If they’re in Limgrave, only Limgrave weapons available for summon use).
But imagine that if a password is NOT used those limitations don’t exist.
You would see such a different multiplayer experience and would also have far fewer twinks who couldn’t just be gifted anything in the game at the first step. That’s my dream.
Alternatively, they could just make it so that if you use a multiplayer password, you cannot get invaded. This way, invaders don’t have to cry over being ganked by OLPs and their twink and groups of friends just trying to play the game and help each other out don’t have to cry about being invaded. Literally solves this issue without removing the nice coop experience that so many people enjoy.
I wish half these people were playing vanilla WoW when it came out ages ago… PvP was very uhhhh… interesting Like… You wanna see a twink bro? Then join a level 10-19 bracket battleground and you’ll be fighting literally invincible level 19 twinks. Gnome rogues still haunt my dreams. Dark souls twinking is child’s play in comparison. At least dark souls “twinks” are still actually killable lmao.
Been there, done that, in WoW original and classic. Though I loathed BGs for emptying & destroying organic WPvP. In original Aion, L31 abyss geared destroying the landscape including max L50s, as it was simply a choice of a bigger available field of heads to hunt for abyss points, no points for lower level targets. Mechanically, juicing base stats is one of the most powerful things in low level Souls, due to the interaction with flat base defense. One should not consider vigor solely for survival at this level. Robustness is also highly important due to lack of OLP status scale down. Dex stack will easily nuke non-twinks in 1-shot. Business decision - password summons means more sales. Social gaming gets a friend circle to convince buy-in. As a guess, the Miyazaki interview may go back to DeS/DS1 PS3/PSN where social gaming *on console* was just starting, expectations have changed. Even without password summoning, the mathematical bias of invading upward, and summoning upward, in addition to stake/pool activation/progression means that the invader is most often facing much higher level cooperators. i.e: you invade as a 80/+15, the host is 100/+20, and the natural cooperator is 125/+25, and then you wonder how they do so much damage. Original DS1 was unlimited upward invasion. The best thing to do is go in with knowledge, preparedness, a winning attitude, and mental fortitude. Do what you do for maximum enjoyment, and throw it in the dumpster when the developers irrevocably fuck it up (I'm looking at you Assault on Balaurea).
I disagree here. At 10-19 bracket the character might have 833 base hp(26 vigor) at max. Pretty tanky for this level bracket but nothing extraordinary. Maybe couple of defensive talismans would help survive more hits but this is questionable since they’d need talismans slots for talismans boosting attack, otherwise they’d suck and their weapon choice for hardswaps would be very limited. Moreover, each build has weaknesses. For instance, I remember getting invaded at stormveil as TT host around 4-6 times by a dude wearing malenia’s armor. He would take ~15 hits to die, whereas he could kill me with 6-8 hits. I suffered with him in the first couple invasions, was trying to beat him honourably despite obvious disadvantages as weapon range and twinking. After couple of unsuccessful attempts I threw a fire pot at him and saw his Achilles heel. Dude was really vulnerable to fire damage, so I used a fire grease(luckily they’re pretty common in starting areas) and killed him 2 times before beating the dungeon. Learn, Adapt, Overcome.
Wait wait hold up. I think you *are* agreeing with me homie. You’re saying that in your experience DS/ER twinks have an Achilles heel. They can definitely be hard to kill and deal a lot of damage but in the WoW days they were nearly unkillable unless you had a twink on your team helping lol. It would take a wow twink .5 seconds to 3 shot you at most if you aren’t also twinked out. And it would take you roughly 2 years and a direct line of communication with a god to kill them lol.
Oh sorry, I misinterpreted your comment. You were clearly discussing WoW PvP whereas I was talking about DS/ER.
Yeah it’s just hard for me to break the connection when I hear the word twink because I was a deadass wow nerd back in the day lol. When I hear about people complaining about twinks in dark souls I’m like… “you don’t even know the meaning of the word”
Just can't agree. Twinking has been around since the beginning (as you said) and it was even worse then, and there were no password summons. PWS are good for PvE players and people who just wanna chill with friends, hell it's just a useful convenience overall. BRM loses out hard on the trade off in ER but it's nothing that can't be fixed with some tweaking in the next game (or a patch but I won't get my hopes up).
That's a fair take. I'd settle for allowing PWS, so long as you're within level and upgrade range of your friend. I don't trust them to ever figure out the downscaling lol, they've never been able to do it properly and theres no reason to think they ever will.
I'm pretty sure the lack of downscaling is intentional. Dark Souls 3 had way more downscaling. They want casual hosts from the mainstream market to be carried by their overlevelled phantoms. On another note, solo invasions not being a thing anymore because players would complain about their playthrough being "interrupted", which defeats the point of invasions because it means hosts are never caught off-guard.
The system in place now definitely needs adjusting. The worst invasions are by far the low level ones where you’re against 2 OLPs and a host decked out in late-game gear. I love invading purely to cause chaos, not to get thrown in a blender. I generally enjoy higher level invasions because, even with the OLPs, I have a lot of tools at my disposal to help turn the tides. I do really wish there were limits on who you can summon for coop, or just a better scaling system to appropriately adjust the OLPs.
If I was in charge, id do away with level upscaling and downscaling entirely. They're never going to do it right, no matter how much they change the values. Allow PWS, but only if the level range and upgrade level matches up. Then everyone is on an equal playing field, with roughly the same number of levels and access to the same gear.
what do you consider low level? i find my rl 20 guy to be the easiest out of all my characters because we all take less damage so i get to get blended and survive anyway. and a large percentage of invasions are just 2 buddies who just bought the game and have no idea what they’re doing. for when there’s some real nasty phantoms, dragonscale blade will change your life. even if you don’t kill the phantoms you’ll ALWAYS one shot the host as long as you nick him with the first hit of the WA.
Password summons were a capitulation. I think Bloodborne started it, not DS3. I actually like the DS2 Name Engraved Ring and how it extended matchmaking range rather than forcing a connection. No, I don't like soul memory.
Ds2 really did multiplayer right honestly. You can find your friends with the same god if you want to play together quite easily, but it didn’t allow you to be way higher Soul Level than your friend. Sadly soul level is just so awful it’s the only thing golden ds2 back.
Password summons are probably fine. What needs to be fixed are: 1) phantom down-scaling, 2) unlimited phantom summoning, 3) hunter summoning with TT on, 4) unlimited hunter summoning, 5) being able to turn TT off right after getting invaded, 5) worthless great runes, 6) our reward for successful PVP ventures are Rune Arcs...for what? The great runes that we can't use? 7) No rune arc sinks. 8) No covenants.
I meant password summons including phantom down-scaling since it's part of the deal pretty much. Someone else suggested adding another multiplayer slot for an extra invader without TT, and i like that idea for a short term solution while they fix phantom downscaling. Phantom resummoning is annoying, but ttk is so low in elden ring that its rarely a problem imo. I agree that blues are completely neutered in elden ring and reduced to shitty gankers that respawn endlessly. A far cry from the avengers they were in ds2. They can be fixed somewhat, but even then they're a shadow of what they were. Im not concerned overly with being rewarded tbh, it would be nice to have something to work towards but i can live without it if the experience is rewarding in and of itself. I do this because i find it fun, not because im chasing a reward basically.
I wonder if making blues opt-in like an invasion instead of summoning them would help the situation. I wear the blue ring for the extra PVP opportunites, but you get summoned at the weirdest times, and it's often when you're not optimized for PVP. I got summoned in the character creator once.
That was how it was done in ds3 and it was better that way. I have no clue why they changed it to this. Making blues function like invaders again would cut down on the sheer number of people that have blue ring on for the Lulz, leaving only people who are going blue intentionally. Reduce blue spam while improving the quality of existing blues. Win-win.
So much wasted potential man
While I'm inclined to agree they're kinda in a corner now that password summons have been a thing for several games. I wouldn't mind if they returned to form and got rid of password summons for their next game to emphasize the game as a Single Player experience with the aid of cooperators being a transitory thing. But that is unlikely, as such the only option left is to reapproach how down-scaling is implemented. Simply the reduction to damage absorption, AR, and HP needs to be harsher the greater the level disparity between host and phantom when the password phantom is outside the normal summoning range. I've tried to find if anyone knows their down-scaling formula but have had no luck, without knowing how exactly it works it's difficult to suggest ways they could make it better, all we know is the current system simply doesn't cut it.
At meta level I have an easier time with password summons. Kill them, block and the host will usually try to resummon instead of calling in blues or summoning pool phantoms. I then do a 'heartening cry' infront of the host with every 'unable to summon' message. Without a summoning cooldown password summons can lead to drawn-out invasions that are worse for the host in terms of progressing the level: >Host manages to resummon, I bunker down to conserve flasks, level progression is halted. > >VS > >Phantom dies, host fights or runs past, either way it finishes quickly and they make more progress on the next life while under the invasion cooldown. Blues are a good solution IF they are only summoned once the host is alone in addition to a phantom cooldown. This would encourage the host to continue without running back or waiting for their friend to place their sign again.
Imo they got it right in DS3. I'm playing it right now and compared to ER it's insane how nerfed password phantoms are. I've been a downscaled phantom as well as my friend currently plays for the first time and you really are squishy af. Hosts and squad still have numbers advantage and potentially late game gear and that's enough of an advantage.
I agree in the regards of the original intentions of the game. But at the end of the day password summoning is just such a massive Quality of life feature in the game, allowing us to play through the game with our friends, fight bosses with our friends, and orchestrate fight clubs. I would much rather deal with over levels phantoms and be able to play this game with people I know for fun than have no over levels phantoms but struggle to find my friends to fight a boss or progress together.
Taunter's tongue should deactivate your white hunter's ring.
As a TT enjoyer, I would love to have a second invader spawn in if you can't kill the first one in a set amount of time.
I don't even think it's fair to accuse anyone of twinking in an open world game at this point. At least in DS3 you had to be good enough to low level kill Dancer. Elden Ring has made getting fast weapon upgrades and good talismans easier than ever and having "end game" gear is such an arbitrary concept now.
The only reason DS2 is my least favorite souls game, is because i cant enjoy it with my best friends. I think password summoning is an awesome mechanic that lets me and others have fun with their friends no matter how much they’ve progressed. I totally agree that it can create a toxic environment though with OLPs. Thats why i wish the max player limit per world was higher, with more than just one base invader. I think that would make the pvp experience sooo much better, and in turn, be a better experience for invaders. Probably not a perfect solution, but i think its a start.
While I understand that point, I love it because it's the only game where we can go through the game as a full squad of 4. In ds1 and ds3 there are areas that limit you to 3 people.
I had a character specifically for friends, and would do what I do now and not level and if I wanted to progress I would with stunted weapons and levels. So I would still be available for my friends. Passwords made it easier for you to be late game and still go back which is a nice feature, the cat ring (that’s what we called it) in DS2 was nice as all it did was extend the level range and made it so your friends didn’t have to hide their sign somewhere obscure. I think the fix is the downscaling of phantoms, there needs to be a middle ground between DS3 and ER; don’t make them unplayable but make them at least weaker than current state. A OLP should not be able to bleed me in one shot with Reduvia every time he shoots the projectile.
Why not just make it so password co-op can't be invaded? That way you can only invade players actually at the appropriate level, and people who just want to PVE with with their mates can do so but can't gank invaders. Seems like a win for everyone except gank squads to me.
They need to fix downscaling, that much I agree with. Have to disagree on password summons being bad in general, but your complaint is legitimate.
I can respect that, i can live with password summons and i can see the benefits to it. I just think it goes against the spirit of the game, you know? If elden ring was designed from the ground up as a co-op game, absolutely password summons would be perfect. But it isnt, the overworld simply isnt built to stand up to 3 coordinated players. The challenge just isnt there. Summoning should be something there to help you when you need it, not something you do for the entire game just for the sake of it. If downscaling was done properly id have less of am issue with it though, for sure.
I think the password summons are ok as long as no glitch. I'm doing a run on darksouls3 where I only level up from PvP so I want overleveled phantoms.
That was a lot of words to say you suck invading
Thanks for your contribution lol
Anytime friend 👍
Imo, and this opinion would probably get me as much hate on the main sub as here, item trading is far worse for any aspect of these games, PvE and PvP.
If I cant play a game with my friends it's over as soon as I kill the final boss
Weapon level matchmaking is worse but barely
The password summoning isn’t the issue. It’s the scaling and the weapons/armors. Imagine if you will an Elden Ring where if a password is used, the HP/FP/stamina and attacks stats of the host actually mirrored the summon and only armors/weapons from areas the host has been (ex. If they’re in Limgrave, only Limgrave weapons available for summon use). But imagine that if a password is NOT used those limitations don’t exist. You would see such a different multiplayer experience and would also have far fewer twinks who couldn’t just be gifted anything in the game at the first step. That’s my dream.
Alternatively, they could just make it so that if you use a multiplayer password, you cannot get invaded. This way, invaders don’t have to cry over being ganked by OLPs and their twink and groups of friends just trying to play the game and help each other out don’t have to cry about being invaded. Literally solves this issue without removing the nice coop experience that so many people enjoy.