Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

Many people have reservations against multiplayer invasions in souls-like games. I wanted to record the kinds of no-mic interactions I have with other players to hopefully encourage more people to try them and to show how active the Seamless Co-op server is.

Among the reasons that a person might not do invasions are

• Invading is intruding on others free time. I don't like the idea of violating their play

• I have limited free time and don't want invaders interrupting my experience of the game

• People online are mean and will be unpleasant

• People on Seamless Co-Op will use cheat engine or other exploits to make the game uneven

The following reasons also can also play a role but I don't think I can collect data that will affect them

• People online act in ways that disrupt the artistic vibe of From Software games

• I just enjoy soloing stuff. I don't want help and I'm not sufficiently interested in PvP to use the taunter's tongue

• When co-oping I feel a pressure to not waste the other person's time, and I often want to just screw about trying to get up to a ledge or similar if I see something interesting

• I am aware that co-op has an etiquette that I don't know and have not taken the time to learn

Hopefully with this data I gathered you will be able to see for yourself what Seamless Co-op invasion experiences are like, and it may dispel some conceptions about multiplayer in From Software games. Invasions are a vibrant and complex experience that I think more people may find they can enjoy in a less restricted environment like Seamless.

The players: I've grouped the largest demographics of invasion encounter types according to how the hosts were playing and whether they seemed to want to be invaded.

Co-op Group 1 are players who I conceptualize as the most common type of multiplayer interaction. They probably did not particularly wish to be invaded on their playthrough, but they left the setting turned on that allows invasions. Almost all invasions on standard From Software servers are upon players of this type, but who cannot opt out of the interaction.

Co-op Group 2 are players who intentionally express their intent to be invaded or their enjoyment of the experience. I read indications of this through interactions such as dancing/cordial greetings, intricate and creative character cosplays, and use of the Taunter's Tongue multiplayer item which invites multiple invaders to attack simultaneously

Fight Clubs are a spontaneous player-initiated armistice of traditional invasion gameplay where a single host summons multiple invaders who instead of collaborating to kill the host take turns dueling the host or each other in single combat. They are the second most common on standard servers.

Solo hosts inviting multiple invaders are rare. It is a single host usually with a high amount of dueling experience seeking to fight as many other players as possible at all times.

Group 1-B are co-op players who undeniably did not wish to be invaded and were able to nonverbally communicate so. This takes some effort to accomplish. I feel they deserve their own category since if you don't want to intrude on people's playthrough this is the group of players who will expressly ask you not to.

Ganks are rare and often misunderstood. They definitively are when a group of 3 or more co-op players invite single invaders to a world with no living enemies to kill them in a 3v1 fight. I'll be only using this strictest definition for my data because anything less than what I mentioned is standard invasion gameplay and to initiate these on either Seamless or standard servers requires intentional and focused effort

Avoidants are players who so expressly did not wish to be invaded that they immediately cease gameplay in order to interrupt it. The methods to do so include closing the game, using various means to kill their character such as leaping off ledges, or simply becoming passive until the invader kills them. In all cases they did not realize Seamless allows you to turn off invasions. I only recorded players as avoidant if they did one of these behaviors without trying to fight back or communicate at all.

Factors I tracked separately: they are represented as part of the above groups, but I have tallied them for your consideration

•Players using dropped gear: a "soft" exploit that I hear many people do not wish to encounter in multiplayer. I have them tallied for people who consider them an annoyance

•Instances of multiplayer jank: gameplay bugs that affected online play. Seamless set out to correct these but one I still encountered was myself or hosts being invisible to other players

•Use of cheat engine: a program that hooks on to a video game and alters the code in real-time to perform exploits such as preventing player death or giving bell-summoned ash creatures infinite health. From Software standard servers protect against this but Seamless Co-Op does not

Further considerations and connection time Over the course of the 30 hours I logged 2 hours and 26 minutes waiting for matches. However, they all occurred during the night and morning hours 10 pm to 7 am. I didn't record how much time I spent at what times of day, but I'll assume most people want to play in the day hours of their time zone. During day hours at time of writing there is no wait to connect to a host.

Three things I did not record are times that I connected to a host right as they were

• walking into boss fog wall (which ends the match)

• times that the connection failed right as I connected

• my victories/losses (I'm not posting that, I got my ass beat)

The dropped connections could possibly represent players who did not wish to be invaded and were turning off their internet, but I have no way to verify

Hopefully if you've had reservations about playing Elden Ring online that are rooted in fears about interacting with the community this helps. People are surprisingly receptive to invasion mechanics when they have a way play with their friends and still to opt out. Seamless Co-op also removes the in-game barriers to the world that normally appear during an invasion which also reduces hostility. There are still obviously people who don't read the settings ini when setting up multiplayer but nothing is preventing you from leaving those people alone if you ever do find yourself in their game. Alternatively if you are the kind of person who would rather fend off invaders and help Tarnished reach their goals in the lands between, this shows there's never been a better time to get out there and try to protect them from me 😁 Thanks for reading. Thank you to @Skua for your insights and feedback in making this

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45430573

Bonus

Source

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/1969121/hare-and-hedgehog-costume-from-a-fairytale-ball-in-munich-germany-1862

Hare and Hedgehog costume from a fairytale ball in Munich, Germany, 1862

Upcoming first person Soulslike by the Ghostrunner devs. New content showcase in this trailer that wasn't in the alpha playtest last year. I'm cautiously optimistic.

It has been confirmed that Neople, a subsidiary of Nexon, has reassigned a large portion of the development team for its AAA action-adventure game "The First Berserker: Khazan,", which launched ambitiously in March last year but underperformed commercially.

According to the gaming industry on the 8th, Neople held an internal briefing this afternoon and informed employees of the decision.

"Khazan" launched globally in March last year and at one point reached nearly 30,000 concurrent players on PC, but sales later declined and ultimately fell below market expectations.

With this measure, a significant number of the roughly 100 developers on the Khazan team have been reassigned internally to a transition unit called the "R Team."

While Neople stated that this does not mean the Khazan development team has been dissolved, DLC releases and potential ports to other platforms that were initially expected are now effectively uncertain.

A Nexon official stated, "As the roadmap of the large-scale Khazan project has entered its final stages, we decided to separate personnel into those who will focus on completing the remaining tasks and those who will be reassigned to other projects that require concentrated organizational and human resources."

The official added, "We plan to actively support the reassignment of personnel who gained expertise in completing a global AAA title through the Khazan project, so they can apply their experience and capabilities to other projects."

Nooooooo, whyyy? :( The game is so good and it did so well on paper. What's with all these constant studio closures after such little time to prove themselves? Just another symptom of a sick game development industry, I guess.

From Khazan to Wukong to even Elden Ring: Long gone are the days of very methodical, deliberate combat like in Dark Souls 1 or even Dark Souls 3.

I'm not sure if it can be exactly pinpointed to it, but with the release of Bloodborne, the genre experienced a noticeable change towards fast-paced combat that doesn't give much breathing-room, considering DS3 as well as Elden Ring are noticeably faster with their combat compared to previous entries. Games like Khazan, Wukong or Wuchang take it even further, leaning more so in the direction of third-person action games like Devil May Cry.

Boss fights with huge strings of combos, wide-reaching attacks, leaving barely any time to prepare for the next wave of attacks, are what comes to mind. In Khazan, for example, I felt well-prepared for these because Khazan can be equally flashy with his combos - it's a more even playing field. However, in Elden Ring, I was struggling quite a lot, personally, because the tools I have access to aren't congruent with the amount of BS hurled my way with some enemies.

How do you like this evolution in combat? Do you prefer the slower, more methodical gameplay from earlier entries, or do you welcome the change of pace, adapting to modern audiences?

The hardest part is finding a way to farm dung pie without using other weapons.

https://games.gg/news/oasis-management-buys-kadokawa-fromsoftware-stake/

Honestly I know nothing about this company so cannot comment on anything serious, I only have this dumb joke to offer

Today is gonna be the day that Gwyn'll learn to parry too By now, you should've somehow realised that he'll come for you

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Sekiro man, what a ride...Celebratory wine is blowing this way out of proportion though XD. buut, my past self didn't think I had it in me so... Yay.

Fucking great game, the difficulty needs some serious demystifying... It was not nearly as tough as I expected. That said, this felt sorta like a trial run...

Here's to the completed playthrough, and many more to come, cheers!

An additional note:

I bursted out laughing during final boss phase two, I seriously thought the

was a community joke! XD

I tried invasions on a lark today and there was a wild amount of people online today. Just endless invasion matches with little-to-no pause between. Is there a community event going on today? I've never seen a non-standard server more active than From's official, I tried both.

If anyone would be interested, I'm considering doing a "census" of the types of multiplayer experiences you can have at peak network activity on Seamless. I would record things like:

• Time spent waiting for connection
• Amount of players who are playing for the first time
• Amount of players who are using dropped gear (possibly, this might not be relevant to anything)
• Amount of players who are conducting duels or "fight clubs"
• Amount of players willing to exploit Seamless' lack of anti cheat
• Amount of players who would deeply prefer not to get invaded (instant-suicide, dc, or immediately go afk. On Seamless this would indicate people unfamiliar with the settings)

The reason I am thinking about doing this is because in addition to high player counts, Seamless has unexpected quantities of these compared to regular From Soft severs. I thought the details might prompt more people to try Seamless Co-op or invasions. Let me know if you think any of this would be interesting to record or if you have another statistic you'd be interested in seeing

Honestly, I'm glad the game did as well as it did. Many people don't have it on their radar as much when it comes to soulslikes, but I feel like it's a very contender and it stands on its compared to contemporaries.

Kudos!