With all due respect, I COMPLETELY disagree with your Estus count fix for twinking. It would completely negate all real PVE game progression. You would just twink with less game progression, and everyone would be twinking after a single hour in the game. Seriously, I HOPE that Fromsoft doesn't use ANOTHER reason not to create builds, and instead just play the game for an hour each time. New players getting owned is part of the beloved Souls experience. Bloodborne took much of that away, and made all PVP more opt in. It sucked, much like Bloodborne PVP. It didn't work well in a Souls online experience, much like Sony's attempt at a Demon's Souls remake. Nobody liked the PVP, so nobody plays it. I seriously hope there isn't summon range for healing items or "rune levels". Talk about taking us back to the dark ages. ****
@@honkyjesuseternal "New players getting owned is part of the beloved Souls experience" - to some extent yes that is true. However when they get beat, they should feel as though it was a fair contest. When even an experienced player like me has trouble in a 1v1, that's a sign that the mechanic needs some work.
@@hardwatergaming7965 whatever your opinion about estus cancel, it is a glitch. Even if you think all glitches are cheating, there is a world of difference between estus cancel and cheating your SL to invade people 420 SL below you
I'm a tester/"designer" for the Sekiro Online mod, and the way we handled the healing problem is to give everybody 1 less gourd sip than the host. This makes a big difference early on, but it's barely noticeable by endgame. Also, everyone does the same relative amount of damage regardless of vitality and attack power. There are still ways to twink, some more severe than others, but those two changes made a big difference.
That seems like a solid strategy. I expect that From spends a lot of time thinking about the trade-offs in healing speed, and amount of healing items in their games.
I was helping someone, long ago, who had asked for help in one of those summon sign subreddits. They were really struggling with pontiff and so I helped them. We went a little further and I kept helping him through gank city. We get invaded. I think, "this is good, he'll get the opportunity to fight a player". And at first I managed to help him relax and actually engage the invader. Then the invader hits him, he hits back, etc. An exchange happens. All looks normal to me. So the host exclaims "he's cheating! Look, he's cheating!" He was not. He was on ps4. He was using a mace. I think people are really quick to seek excuses to why they're getting outmatched. The idea of someone being better than them is unfathomable. So THEY must be the dishonest one. Twinking is much in the same vein. Other than obvious twinks at hwol, twinking isn't really that much of a problem. Certainly not as bad as reddit makes it out to be.
Yeah I agree, the overall impact to the game is definitely overstated, and I've made this same point on Reddit myself. That said, even though twinks are really only a big issue up until and including the woods, it's the first experience most people have with the invasion mechanic. That makes it more impactful.
@@iamamish I also think its unfortunate that the ecosystem of low level invasions is so damaged by twinking. Low level would be a pretty decent place to learn, and also embodies a different meta when compared to higher level invasions (thinks like poison and regen are significantly more impactful, for example) but its kind of inaccessible to a lot of people just because of the vast prevalence of twinks.
I can see you're point, but I'd argue that if the obvious cheating/twinking is a thing, it makes it that much harder to truly discern who is/isn't doing it in a subtle way. I agree that the proper mindset is to always give your opponent the benefit of the doubt, but if the game was actually balanced and didn't allow for major gaps then there wouldn't even be any grounds to argue for having that negative mindset. For example, since infinite Divine Blessings & Siegs are a thing, now any time someone uses a DB or chugs 1-2 siegs, I automatically assume they have maxed out their inventory, because these items are so rare in-game, and the prevalence of people doing this is so high. Which is a dumb because there's definitely enough of them that this player might just be using one of their 3 Divine Blessings that they have stocked. If they aren't though, then this player has an unfair healing advantage that wasn't intended to be in the game, which just feels bad. Overall I don't blame people for being overly suspicious of cheating in this game, because there are so many busted mechanics for a game that has online competition. I more blame FROM for ditching the game before most of these broken mechanics came to light.
@@bradley2349 I don't think cheating is a problem that can be addressed alongside twinking. They're both problems, yes. But fundamentally very different. Twinking is any sort of low level overoptimization using endgame/late game gear to gain an advantage over new players. It's more difficult to do, but not impossible to do, in a way that does not utilize external tools or help. Cheating, on the other hand, is abuse external to the game. It cannot be judged with the same hand as twinking because it isn't even something you should theoretically be able to do in game. To me, maxing your inventory isn't terrible, so long as it's kept realistic to the point you're invading. No matter how good you are, getting 15 estus at +10 at high wall is unrealistic, and unreasonable. Having a full lapp set with a ringed knight weapon is also unreasonable. But having a full black knight set, estus at +6 and a good scimitar or mace? It's still twinking but I see it as a lot less harmful. If you're SL1-10, and invading at +0 weapons with full estus, endgame gear and maxed inventory? I'm gonna assume you've cheated. But so long as fights are kept balanced, the methods in which you reach that point are not too consequential for me. I've used honest merchant. I've maxed on siegs. But I don't grief low level players because doing that sucks. That's it.
This is the first time I ever heard of the idea of estus scaling, this sounds like one of the best addition they could have to reduce twinking, it seems even necessary when you stop and think about it. I would also remove estus scaling once a host has fully upgraded his weapon since most players should have enough estus once they reach a certain point in the game. You don't want to have host griefers use this mechanic in reverse, say host creates a regen or healing build and purposefully not upgrade or acquire any estus to c*ck the invader from healing back. great vid
Just goes to show you too that no system is perfect. Your point about hosts strategically keeping low estus upgrades and specialized regen builds to screw invaders is so right.
I was in one of Rofo's streams a while back, and he said something that made me think. He reckoned that sl90 is a better or more interesting meta than sl120 because, as he put it, you have to make sacrifices on your build. You can't have /everything/ you want, and I understand that sentiment, I agree in some respects. /However/, he opened up his menu and had Havel's +3, FaP +3, Prisoner's Chain and Wolf Ring +3 on. Now, at sl90, you aren't twinking. That's a reasonable level to finish the game at. But it struck me that the rings he was wearing didn't add anything unique to his character build, they just artificially inflated his soul level through stat boosts. He was, in practical terms, at or near sl 133. Now consider that people at sl120 wearing these rings are /actually/ at around sl150! It really highlighted to me just how powerful these rings are, those that give you straight stat boosts without any interesting nuance in between. /Everyone/ Wears FaP and prisoner's chain, even at sl 133, because the benefits they give are simply unmatched. You essentially save 20 or so levels in core stats, so you can put those levels into damage stats, or even more survivability, and there's no other rings that have that power. It's a shame, really, that other more situational rings, and combinations of them, don't get as much time in the sun. Imagine if everyone had 4 ring slots to use in their entirety, instead of 1 or 2 in practise. The pontiff eye rings reward an aggressive playstyle, the leo ring rewards tight spacing and calculated trades, flynn's ring rewards playing light with little defence, and the sage ring and magic-boosting rings are borderline mandatory for any build using magic (though they, too, may count as stat boosting rings themselves... Imagine making a 50 dex sorcerer build just to save a ring slot lmao). And let's not get into how the priestess's ring lets anyone have tears of denial for /only 5 levels/. Even beyond their impacts on twinking, straight-up stat boosts are incredibly powerful in this game at any soul level, deceptively so. And you know it's true, because nobody in their right mind /doesn't/ use them. FaP and Chain are always the most optimal pick for your 3rd and 4th slots, and Life ring +3 is an excellent 2nd, especially if you can swap. I'm not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, but man, imagine a game where you choose ring effects that compliment your build and playstyle rather than because they're optimal or the best in every situation. Rings that are only powerful when used correctly, not ones that make you tankier and stronger for free. The diversity! In Elden Ring, From don't have to stick to the legacy of FaP and Havel's, they could implement magic items in a totally different way. Although they might keep the formula the same anyway. Either way, here's hoping Elden Ring improves on the twinking front.
I think that From should be continuosly balancing rings through the game's life cycle (for pvp at least). IMO it's impossible to get the balance right on the first try but with community feedback it should be achievable!
This is really well said and i fully agree. I think they could implement Ring + Level matchmaking along with the usual "SL" and Weapon + Level. But we both know the more matchmaking requirements we have the less activity we'll have..... Or! If we had like 4 Ring Slots, the 4th Slot is a special slot where you can only equip Stats-Effect Rings! (E.g Fap&prisoner's&pillarsoflothric) Like you can equip whatever ring you got in the 4th slot. but if it's stats effect, it is exclusive only to the 4th :) This will also kill a little bit of freedom of build making :)
When I thought about this issue, I realized there are a surprisingly few issues at the core of twinking, and in theory they shouldn’t be hard to solve. The design goal would simply be to reduce the worst of twinking, accepting a small amount of variance between weapons of the same class. Like you said, #1 concern is Estus scaling. Estus strength should be a concern for PvE but it shouldn’t govern low level PvP the way it does now. Scale Estus to host level for phantoms and reds. #2 is reduce the absorption/weight variance between early game and late game armor sets. A 13 unit starting Knight set shouldn’t be that much worse than the late game alternatives of the same weight. #3 Adjust mechanics that make certain weapons SSS tier for twinks. Twink weapons fall into a few categories - abnormally high base damage (dark hand), elemental damage that can stack with a buff (DSA, Drakeblood, all the self-buffable greatswords, LKGS), and weapons with status ailments that new players can’t deal with. Stuff with absurd base damage for their classes like the Dark Hand can be eliminated or nerfed heavily. Weapon classes shouldn’t have clear outliers in damage output. For elemental weapons, we’d either need them to be unbuffable, or we’d have to rework buffs. I’d propose that buffs shouldn’t be a flat value, but rather should scale with something, probably weapon upgrade level. Maybe a bundle adds 30 AR at low SL, and the full 100+ AR once you’re at full upgrade. Same should go for weapon art buffs, instead of a flat 80 it could be 30 at low upgrade levels and the full 80 at max. And poison could scale more with max HP so it’s less of a death sentence at low SL and more useful at high SL. Have all moss available at the start of the game, and offer a Healing Wares starting gift like DS2 with plenty of moss included. #4 get rid of rings that substantially increase stats, in particular the prisoner’s chain. It’s useful but it should provide bonuses independent of stats. Giving 15 free levels also means 20+ more points of innate defense which goes a looong way toward making you absurdly tanky at low SL. Pair that with the additional equip load for Lapps Armor and you got an easy, high defense, high absorption build ready to twink on newbies.
Prisoners chain was a mistake, the rings in general would need a little balancing, having 2 rings for damage for each school of magic is also a no go, horseshoe ring and knightslayer ring shouldve been one single ring with both effects
@@Jeenine I think in general, these games could do without the "have more stats" and "do more damage" rings. Rings should be more about utility and less about stacking stats on a build. I love stuff like the Leo Ring / Knight Slayer Ring / Silver Cat Ring because they're about situational use, whereas there's no good reason to choose any of those rings over something that gives you 15 more levels.
All excellent points here! I found it hilarious that you threw shade at the supposed“twink hunters” that generally have lots of hatemail on their steam page surrounding them twinking lol
Personally I was kind of pushed away from low level invasions because of this issue. Once you hit level ~80 it kind of stops being a thing, because you could reasonably get just about any gear at that level, but even around SL 40-50, the disparity in power level between a twinked out character and a regular one is pretty massive. I think you may have spoken about this before, but one of my biggest pet peeves is twinks pretending to honor duel while having full siegbrau, overpowered gear, being embered, etc. It sucks to see newer/less knowledgeable invaders get goaded into thinking they are engaging in a fair fight all while the odds are so stacked against them. Then of course the host bows and pretends to be courteous once they've won- obnoxious!
@@hardwatergaming7965 It's not just about when you finish your play-through, it's more so at what level having superior equipment stops being as significant an advantage. In my opinion its still significant at 50.
@@jacobwood2649 I dunno man, I think SL50 is probably about the average level for having access to all rings etc, there has to be a point where you can use the items youve collected whilst playing without being accused of twinking. Agree about the 'honor duels' thing though, always amuses me when I see someone celebrate winning a duel after healing.
I said this in a previous video of yours about twinking: The biggest crime of twinking is 7 +10 Estus. Yes the other gear matters, but having a massive healing advantage isn't right. My suggestion was to not change matchmaking but lower the amount of Estus if you invade or are summoned by someone with less.
Good points! I totally agree with you that one of the biggest final hurdles is balancing the amount of healing. They already got the level & Weapon/armor balancing down pretty fair, while still allowing people with good builds to have a slight advantage. I'd like to see two more things, as well: Phantom Hit-Stun is one of these. Yeah I know this could lead to traitor phantoms, but if they added a quick-use kick item I think it would be fine! Then the other thing I think would work well would be to assign invasion thresholds to certain bosses or story events in game. Idea being that if you get by a certain boss in-game, you're lower level invasion limit immediately gets set at a specific level, regardless of what level you're at. For example, if you beat Abyss Watchers, now the lowest person you can invade, regardless of the area in game, is now 30, even if you're still level 10. If you beat the Dancer, now it's level 55. If you beat Champion Gundyr, now it's 65, dragonslayer armor - now it's 75, etc. Yeah it would be a minor blow not being able to get that reward for beating the game low-level. But if the reward is a power fantasy invading low level players who don't even know what the prisoner's chain or +10 estus is, then is that really a bad thing to lose?
@%username% yeah you could do that but then the ring becomes essentially worthless (you could just level up instead). I think frankly the ring is just too powerful.
Thanks mate. I'm not sure what happened btw but the last 3 or 4 comments I've left on your videos have disappeared, but one is still there. Probably got flagged as spam for some reason.
Yeah, Twinking really is just the bane of invasion balancing, isn't it? Unless the difficulty curve/levelling scale were flattened a bit more somehow, it's very difficult to eliminate the issue altogether. For DS3 at least, I do really like the suggestion of matching a host's estus level. More systems that match not only the invader, but also any summoned phantoms to the host's power would be really excellent.
Thanks and yeah the key to me is to ensure everybody is roughly of equal power. I'd hate to see From get rid of twinking reds, but keep the OL phantom summoning system in place. As of now most reds won't even bother with High Wall or Undead Settlement due to these issues.
Really appreciate you helping out honest hosts with twinks at the high wall. Im also intrigued by your discussion of balance and i really like it. Invaders aren't entitled to a fair fight yet there has to be balance between the hosts experience and the invaders experience. Building a balance scaling system would be interesting so long as ppl can't circumvent this mechanic and essentially have sl802 'twinks' at meta, for example. Im also curious to see if they use items to vet certain players from interacting with each other.
Yeah invasions are fundamentally impossible to balance. Hosts can summon, they may have 15 estus when you invade, or 0. They might be skilled, or not. There might be latency, or maybe not. They might have away of Blue. If they do, the blue might be skilled, or free estus. How do you balance a game with such a wide variety of scenarios?
@@iamamish right it seems paradoxical lol. Having a huge dynamic of weapons and movesets will ultimately change the balance of the game even after subsequent patches. It makes sense that they would impliment rules to have some form of balance, though it would also be interesting to see how aware Fromsoft is about players exploiting tools a tricks to their advatage, which i think is ultimately important to maintaining anything close to balance. If they have rules there should be consiquences for breaking them. We know we want dynamic gameplay until we see how we need to limit such axioms.
Good video as always man, you make valid points. Often people complain about twinks killing them even though they happily summon their overlevelled twinked out buddies. I think the best way to go about it would be to fix the estus count like you suggest, but also to just not allow you to summon anybody outside of your level range, they've proven that they cant balance things properly with the scaling so instead they just shouldn't allow a SL10 to summon a SL802. Will be extremely disappointed if I cant be invaded when I'm playing Elden Ring solo.
I think a good solution to solo host invasions is what was done in Dark Souls 2 with the Effigy Effect: preventing invasions from other players for a time while it is active and can be stopped prematurely at the bonfire at any time. That way people can play online and deal with invaders at their own pace: like if they want to be online so they can be summoned to help players with tougher bosses. In my experience, Dark Souls 1 has a MAJOR twinking problem: I cannot be human in the Undead Burg without being invaded by a troll build with instant poisons or armor my attacks cannot get through, making them completely invincible while they can one shot me or poison me while I cannot even cure it and they can just taunt me while I can't defend myself. Then there was one invasion I had in the Undead Burg that made me feel better about low level invasions: someone with the Uchigatana that was about my level. I was a low level cleric with a halberd at the time, working to getting the Giant's Halberd later on. I hid at first, fearing I just going to deal with another troll, but it was a fight for my life I actually stood a chance in: that alone made me feel better. Even if I lose, I want to feel like I at least stand a chance and that is a rare and treasured feeling these days.
I'll be honest, when I first started getting into invasions, I was getting clapped by everyone unless I got lucky. It was very discouraging and I quit for a while. A bit later I learned about 'twinking' and gave it a try. I did so as an SL 15 +1 weapon character. I thought this would at least give me a chance to develop some of the skills needed to invade. Things like understanding how to use the level/PvE and opponent player tendencies. How to get out of and/or avoid gank blenders. Also learning what type of weapons and tactics work well depending on the situation. I would last longer in invasions so I could better learn all of these tactics and even weapon spacing and timing. Before I would quickly die and not even understand much of what happened. I would win more, building my confidence. Once I got better, it became very dissatisfying to twink, especially on poor lone honest hosts. Although it was fun to beat fellow twinkers. I then saw your videos about gitting gud by purposefully not twinking and did that. This is what accelerated my ability to succeed the most while invading. Now I find that lvls 80+ are best since we are on a more level playing field at that point. That's my excuse for twinking.
"Too slow on the dung pies". You see, that never happens to me; I always give up a spot on my tool belt for them lol. A waste of space 90% of the time, but totally worth it when you can drop them quickly.
I'd like there to be no item trading, like in Bloodborne. If there is still a twinking problem in Elden Ring (which I expect there will be), at least make them work for the OP items. I think your idea to limit Estus is brilliant, too!
That is an unpopular take, which I do agree with, I think item trading is unnecessary and only serves to hurt people that are not willing to trade with friends and dupe for their build.
Yeah that would be great, but then, there's bound to be an equivalent of the honest merchant mod so people could just get any item in the game immediately anyway. Would be a good solution on console at least though.
So far as weapons and armor and, sure, spells, I wish you only had to unlock them on one character to have them available to all of your characters somehow - either in a common box for your saved like Diablo or in whatever the shop ends up being. This wouldn’t mean I could just drop my +10 to my new tune. Otoh, if I did, it would just lock me out of the early game coop. Perhaps I could only see what was appropriate to my level…
@iamamish this will sound weird, but I want to say I feel great when I watch your videos. DS3 is my fav game and your voiceover these clips is like an antidote to a hard day to me. I appreciate you putting out videos and I hope your channel will keep on growing. Cheers from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Its a quick solution for the problem. I think (as you also stated) that its a multifactor issue. Also I wholeheartedly agree that solo hosts invasions is a different issue from twinking. Great input Amish
That’s so funny that you mention players pulling twink weapons on new players when the new player is actually winning, I had that happen both on my first DS1 playthrough and in DeS remake. It is so underhanded!
All I need is team damage. That would solve so much balance issues. But Miyazaki too depends on bandai policy and they would never let him make the game more hard to casuls than he already did it
2:21 My perfect solution for that issue will be matchmaking improvement. What I mean by that - up to a certain level, do not even connect reds with solo hosts unless the game will spawn a blue or two immediately.
Yo awesome video as always:). I usually just lurk in the ds3 community but now i wanna give my opinion too for once. One thing i dont think i ever heard someone mention about the twinking problem is the amount of ringslots u can access. What if you start the game with just one ringslot and unlock more once you reach a certain level? Like for example you reach lv30 and now have a second ring, then maybe at 40 or 50 the 3rd etc. This would make this almost unkillable twinks pretty much a non issue. You could still get endgame stuff but at least you have to choose what you want to do, and its still possible to do fancy ringswaps but you could never reach that point where you're prettymuch unkillable bc of stacked rings giving immense amounts of statboosts for low levels. Pair this with some form of nerfed estus and the advantages of twinks arent so unbelievebly onesided anymore. The question is how that would work with the overleveled people with the ringslots unlocked already. Also i dont think this would affect a normal run through the game almost at all since there arent too much good rings you need all at once in the early and midgame.
One question I have is will we even be able to drop equipment to each other anymore. On one hand that's how all the twinks twink, on the other, it sure as hell saves a lot of time for those of us that like to experiment and make tons of different pvp builds.
Also, implementing a minimum SL to use certain items would remove this risk: even though I dropped you all those items, you wouldn't be able to use them at low level.
Maybe unrelated to this topic but related to co-op. What do you think about host and phantoms not being able to damage to each other but being able to stagger each other. That way you also teach them not to swing a sword through they friends and being aware of the other player. Better teamwork perhaps?
I like the idea, and I've heard a number of people suggest it. It would be a big change, and would definitely make co-op a lot harder (both against PVE & PVP). I would be very surprised if it showed up in a Souls game though.
Right now the invasions try to balance around the Idea that the Invader is highly skilled, which is true is some cases but outside of that its very stressful.
Good ideas but we have to wait to see some gameplay because invading system is still a question mark. Things from has to fix : lag, glitches,glitchers,unscaled phantoms,plug pullers.
Some of my 1st PVP experiences in DS3 were invading in the woods at an appropriate level and game progression. I generally avoided multiplayer interactions before that, but I had some fun collecting covenant items in DS1 remastered. It was a miserable experience and could have turned me away from PVP in general. I hadn't beaten crystal sage or abyss watchers yet, but I was facing campers abusing everything they could to get an advantage. We were basically playing different games.
Very thoughtful video, as usual, iamamish. i had 2 cursory thoughts for "fixing twinking" (at least for weapons/shields/talismans etc.), curious to know your reaction. 1st) but to properly tie weapons to their stage of the game via Weapon Level. so an example of this might be (to take Dark Souls 3), that Ringed Knight Ultra Great Sword would just automatically be a +10 Weapon Level; you don't need to upgrade it, it's only available at max level. you mention DSA (i'm assuming this is Creighton's axe you get in Irithyll), would automatically be, for arguments sake, +5? Additionally you could tie miracles/spells/pyros to have a minimum WL requirement too. so the result of this might be you're only SL10 w/ DSA, but that DSA is already on pick-up +5, so you would be SL10+5, which would preclude you from griefing genuinely new players (e.g. SL10+0), while still being able to participate in a "twink meta" (other SL10+5 players) 2nd) password summoning higher SL+WL (even if they get scaled down) needs to be gone. if you're SL10+0, then pw or not, you can only summon Phantoms within that summon range. lemme know what you think Mr.Mish ;)
as an aside, i noticed that you, likewise, play using Blue Sentinel. when you were guiding the Host, why didn't you kick the Invader that was stat-hacking SL448? just a curiosity.
So that fixes twinking (weapons available at certain levels) but do you then force that weapon upgrade level on a host if he picks it up? That's what DSR did, and I don't care for that approach. I hear you re: pw summoning. The challenge is that it makes co-op a lot less accessible. My best approach is that if you summon somebody like that, they take on the host's form - same gear, upgrades, SL, etc.
@@iamamish it was just an off-hand thought i had when watching (not at all deeply thought-out), but you needn't force WL upgrade on the player. you can kick people who flag BS as a Phantom, tested 09/09/21 :)
In its entirety, twinking has always been a way of stacking the odds while remaining low level. As the game dies, people flock towards the activity. Twinking doesnt have to be a malicious subject. Yes, there are assholes that abuse it. But there are hosts that abuse their tools. It goes both ways. Theres no way to truly even out the playing field. Even before the glitches, ol phantoms ruined the balance. Experience itself ruins the balance.
@oohanalligator No I don't think you can argue that invasions wouldn't be better by doing as Amish says and balancing healing potential. There's always things to improve on the system. Just because there will always be experience gaps doesn't mean the game doesn't have broken mechanics that can continually be refined to combat as much of the twinking problem as possible. There's still a major difference between losing to a vastly superior opponent and losing to a vastly superior opponent who is stacking all of the defensive rings, and has maxed out estus against a new game character.
It would be great if an algorithm decided how to pair up hosts and invaders based on the equipment used by the host and/or his phantoms. I.e. normal host + phantom with endgame gear = twink invader. Twink host, no phantoms = twink invader. Normal host, with normal or no phantoms = normal invader.
Here is what I think. Up to sl35-40 or even lower than that, this level range should only be invadable by soul memory and weapon level, every level after that, sl and weapon level should be the way to go about matchmaking, imo this would solve twinking completely and not ruin the multiplayer like ds2 after a certain level.
The frustrating thing to me is that I feel as if From has nailed all the really hard problems with game design in DS 3. They just need to fix some easy ones - get rid of glitches, release another balance patch for weapons, and then add estus matching. This game would be amazing. Hopefully From takes some of these lessons to heart in ER.
Nice vid amish. Some good points and food for thought, but I think one of your ideas takes precedence here- regardless of the mechanics or balancing, all of these systems are going to be used by humans. And there are just a certain % of humans who will abuse whatever they have access to for a variety of reasons. I'm not saying we shouldn't be actively looking to address these issues, unfortunately, regardless of what is done in game, just like the world-writ-large, these folks will continue to hold the rest of us back in order to gratify themselves. My biggest hope is that with the increased player pool of a new game, their numbers get watered down to the point where we only occasionally run into them, as opposed to every day as in ds3.
How about a quick inventory scan of invaders and hosts at certain levels? Have a list of legendary armaments and if the host lacks what the invader is using in either their chest or inventory, they can't be matched together. This way we don't have RoB and Antspurs murking people fresh out of the tutorial. Even playing fields make fights more fun. Past SL80 all bets are off and the world gets opened to all the pain and cheese.
That's a similar idea to Soul Memory. I think it is an interesting suggestion, but the problem is that savvy hosts could avoid picking up weapons to minimize matchmaking. ER is still new enough that I'm not entirely sure which strategies are the most broken, but it seems once again that SL/weapon upgrade matchmaking leaves the door open for players to accumulate a lot of estus, and I'm sure that's still a big advantage.
Twinking and ganking are completely out of control in Elden Ring. I've just attempted my first ever invasion with a regular character (not overpowered at all) and fought someone for about a minute (it was kinda fun despite being very laggy). Suddenly their two buddies arrived and whooped my ass with completely overpowered abilities. Again, it was a completely fair fight initially. But when my opponent realized that I wasn't an easy breakfast, they started running for their life and summoned their buddies. I hope Fromsoft figures out a way to overcome the issues with twinking and ganking, otherwise I'll never develop a taste for invasions.
twinking is kinda ok but things like the dark hand and dragon slayer axe are just stubed also having 7 estus flasks that heals you to full health may be the strongest twink in the entire souls series
Fix phantom buildup for things like poison, getting poisoned at low levels is very bad already, but getting poisoned without even getting hit is way worse
Personally I'm conflicted, as someone both interested in pvp (well mostly in the past) and pve (specifically challenge runs/fights and the like) The existence of 'twink gear' is basically the same as the existence of sl1 gear. Prisoner's chain, lloyd rings, stat rings, and weapons like DSA are great and fun for sl1 and it'd be a shame to lose those options. It gives something to build towards over the playthrough (DSA for sl1 requires access to grand archives, which means beating 90% of the game), it's rewarding and gives some diversity compared to just raw/fire/deep broadsword. And although it's really good, other options are still useful like firelink greatsword, black knight greatsword, heck someone used the god damn pickaxe as their best option once. At the same time... most of this gear is what enables twinks, particularly stat boosting gear, pris chain being the obvious worst contender. The free defense you get is nutty at low levels, and the main drive behind why twinks can take no damage, and combined with the weaponry and buffs deal massive damage. Luckily, balancing the estus gap wouldn't affect pve, so it's a step in the right direction without sacrifice. IMO flat defenses are just a problem in general (it's a mechanic that inherently punishes the weak, it amplifies the difference between low damage and high damage further), but people already think DS3 has an unrewarding armor system (due to lack of passive poise and absorption capping out around ~50% ehp bonus) so... i don't know how that'll go over. To be honest, you can partly blame DSA doing such massive damage when buffed on the defense system. I'd put a closing statement here but I was kinda just rambling so uhh... have a nice day
Ultimately I think there isn't a good solution and trying to implement more and more matchmaking rules will lead to fewer invasions over all. What ever From decides on, there are going to un-happy parties on both sides. The only solution that I think may upset the least amount of people is if they gate invasions until the player reaches a certain point in the game (not necessarily ng+, but maybe after the first couple of areas) so players have had a time to familiarise themselves with the game and mechanics and have a few extra levels under there belt to better deal with invaders. So for example in ds3 they could have gated them after abyss watchers, that way they have a few bosses done, some good gear and levels and there is still a decent chunk of game for invaders to get there fill.
If the discussions I've had in the last few months have taught me anything, it's that you can't make anti-PVP'ers happy except and unless you remove it from the game. If we implemented your solution, then here is what we'd hear: "The game teaches you that it doesn't have invasions, and then suddenly you have to deal with them. Why can't the whole game work like this? Why can't I opt out of invasions? From proved the game works without them in the first half of the game" Despite what anti-PVP players say, what they want is clear - co-op with no invasions. Most of the complaints are just so much window dressing to hide their real concerns, because they know if they just said, "I want co-op and no invasions" they'd sound entitled and should probably play another game. I think DS 3 struck a sensible balance - no invasions until the Woods if you're by yourself. If however you engage the multiplayer, you get ALL the multiplayer.
I think one way to sort of fix overleveled password summons is to ditch the password system entirely and bring back the Dark Souls 2 ring (forgot its name), that ring widened the Soul Memory gap between friends but not to an extent where a level 10 could summon his level 800 friend. In this case it would widen the Soul Level gap So let's say normally a lvl 100 host could summon 80-120 players, with the ring that gap widens allowing him to summon players from 60 - 140
Ok, I know that you are with good intentions, but...no, soul memory Is just One of the most stupid mechanics of all the Dark Souls, it doesn't fix twinking and make every trying to co-op stupid and frustrating.
I hope they implement some sort of hard swapping anti measures. Obviously from a gamey point of view, hard swaps are cool but it's kinda dumb that the fight is often won in the menus. High end meta PvP looks utterly ridiculous at this point.
I see that point, but the melee needs some spicing up. I'm not even sure that hard swapping per se is the issue; the issue is that certain weapon arts are just too powerful (especially Gundyr)
@@iamamish Yeah, totally agree, but they've put those weapon arts on weapons with relatively limited usage so if you couldn't just hard swap, you'd have to carry the weight in order to having it in the toolbox, which makes it "fair" imo. EDIT: Also, if they prevented hard swaps, we'd probably see more build variety. Not everyone wearing the same with sometimes different infusions.
I love the dread to be invaded. I should have the experience if I want to play in solo. Co-op only invasions makes no sense is stupid and will badly hurt the longevity of this game. They just need to find a way to address twinking directly.
Completely agree with everything you said brother I love exploring a new area on my first playthrough and getting invaded, makes for a memorable experience I love getting invaded going through my 6th build, makes it refreshing
I think a that co op only invasions in normal circumstances, especially early game, is Froms best way of dealing with twinking. They arent going to eschew or alter password summons in their current function because that contributed heavily to DS3s popularity and sales. Scaling algorithms are likely not changed in any significant way. I think gimping an invaders healing resources to the hosts could kill low level invasions as well. I might say having scaled healing where the invader gets better healing for each phantom, while summons are locked on the same level as the host, is okay. Overall, I think its next to impossible to balance the game optimally for low, midlevel, AND high/meta level invasions all at once because the dynamics here are fairly different. I'm okay with allowing twinking to largely remain the same because, presumably with co op invasions, griefing solo hosts is completely impossible. While its possible to grief pver groups, sure, itz much more difficult and one mistake could mean blender even to green players.
Just remember, these are more singleplayer games than multiplayer games at the end of the day, and I think from tends to balance some around that, which then might not translate well into multiplayer, but I think ds3 started to take some steps in a good direction, heres hoping Elden Ring can also do that.
ive made a twink recently as you say "it's honest twinking" it's an SL15 poison/fire long sword build. i use poison only on over levelled phantoms or dark hand users. i start an invasion with rings set up for fighting gankers with HP regen but as soon as the phantoms are dealt with I swap to no amour no rings no regen with my +0 weapons and don't heal makes for a challenge against standard lvl phantoms and host with none of the above but i love bullying the over levelled phantoms MUHAHAHAA. as most don't carry poison moss anymore i see invaders as a core to the souls experience sort of like a mini boss ive played the other souls games and ds3 has to be the best for pvp and anti twinking. I find it very difficult to go through the game sl 10-30
Certain weapons and armor have SL or other stat restrictions ALL phantoms / invaders get scaled to match hosts Estus amount and weapon upgrade level EZ
I don't think twinking is a huge issue in ds3. Most hosts have the same tools dropped for them by co op partners or are also twinked themselves. Its important to have those tools available to be competitive. Im not talking about this in terms of a solo host new to the game, in that situation I just bc out
Do you actually think that rings is a problem though? Average host is 10 levels higher than a red invader thanks to matchmaking (even more for areal covs). Plus he has ember that makes his 27 vig look as 50. So he has something around 30 levels of effective stats for just being the host. A set of best rings hardly gives more than that. Consumables and healing is the real issue IMO. DSA also is not nearly as much of an outlier without the consumable bandles.
Fair point. Just remember that the host has those advantages because they're supposed to, so if a ring substantially closes the gap between invader/host, that's a problem. Truthfully the only real issue with rings is the prisoner's chain. I agree it's nowhere near as big a deal as the others, but especially at low level (where there won't be such a level disparity), and where damage is low, those extra stats are huge.
@@iamamish Well I agree that host should have advantages in general. However I think there should be a places(ways) where invader can even out the play field and do not feel that he is cheesed by host having huge raw number advantage every time. Like a gate-way to invasion for new players. For example, when I started invading I beat the game at low sl so hosts will not cheese me and it was huge. If I would have to face raw number advantages every time I do not think I would stick to it. On a flip side, for invader to go beyond that and flip the raw advantages in his favor is definitely not a good idea. That I completely agree with.
the one thing i am more concerned about then solo invasions or twinking (which i hardly care about at all) i want proper region select options.. IF i want to only play NA region then let me only play with NA.. or NA/EU.. japan/Aus own region.. south america own region.. china/south eas asia/russia own region africa/middle east.. own region. or split it up in some form like that.. this is like the BIGGEST issue that has affected EVERY souls game since demons.. ds1 entire pvp system is based around latency.. in ds2.. everything just stops or ur opponent is pew pewing u to death WHILE your backstabbing him.. and then when u die he finally gets backstabbed and takes the damage.. and in dark rolls 3.. it's just such a fucking issue.. i really hope ppl start making videos about this.. this is the videos and the conversation I want to hear people talking about. or if ur vpning.. maybe just skip regions and have the regions be based on latency... i dont fucking know.. but im not paid to.. im paying them to when i purchase the game.
I'd rather keep the ability to drop items to each other, but restrict the estus. Most of the drops aren't even problems. Aside from estus there are really like 4 other problems: * lightning bundles * prisoner's chain * DSA * fap +3 I don't think there are other items causing issues, and I'd hate to lose the ability to drop each other items when the problem can easily be solved without such a draconian solution.
You are kinda right I just believe being able to have fap, chain and even lapp's set from the start of the game if you get it dropped is obviously broken. One way that might really help with the Estes problem is by having a set %value instead
Regardless of the circumstance people twink. People twink and griefed new players in *Dark Souls 1* (1v1). Then people argue that twinkers only exist because DS3/Bloodborne have Co-op only invasions. Twinkers exist for the same reason people only use *"META"* loadouts in games like Warzone. Warzone there are 3 players. New players, people who don't want to keep up with the grind for each new updated weapons, and then the try hard sweats that use/grind the most OP loadouts/weapons/gadgets in the game. The last description are the twinkers. They are just people using the most OP gear/build/etc thinking they're good at the game when they kill people that don't have the same advantages. Basically the majority of the Warzone crowd and sometimes the majority of the Souls PvP crowd. Lastly the game is *balanced around PvE* and the stats for PvP are directly linked to PvE. Some gear is meant to be OP because it is meant to be earned in the game to reward those who stuck through the challenge. I'm in favor of keeping invasions systems around Co-op only . I want *new players* to have a good time with the game and give the game praise. Not throw their controller and refuse to play another Souls game because twinkers/griefers. Hosts that call on people are generally those that need them as an "easy mode" or to learn how to play. Now that's not to say that they cannot come up with a *Separate PvP mode* that is balanced completely different than the PvE version of the game. Maybe the gear allowed is limited? There should be an arena type game mode in the main menu that is *unlocked as a reward for beating the game.* That "arena" game mode *can be balanced separately* from the base game. It should be 1v1 focused so that invaders still do their thing in the base game if they want the challenge of doing a 2 v 1 situation etc. So people who want fair PvP will go there and twinkers will still try to invade or fight invaders in regular PvE/PvP. Whatever the case the experience for new players will be better if they're not alone against twinkers/griefers. *All that being said i'm sure you can still choose to play 1v1 by using soapstones if you want to. Just expect it to be unbalanced gameplay.* If it's not in the release game I'm sure they will add it later.
I have to say, I love twinking, but specifically while versing other twinks. Fighting a Bambi isn’t challenging or fun but fighting other twinks is enjoyable given the lack of stats being able to use and this creates some fun builds
I fail to see the fun and accomplishment you get from low level invasions. You either end up fighting a noob and it's an easy win or the new char of an experienced player. For the latter, you play with very few tools and strategies are limited. If you kill a debutant host, what's the satisfaction in that? Without discounting more technical solutions like the ones mentioned in this vid and comments (they might add some bugs and have unintended effects that will unbalance other part of the game), I think the best solution to solve twinking is to fix the unscaled phantom issue and set a minimum SL for invasion. Lore wise it's fairly easy to explain, you need a certain level of experience to master the art/magic of invading another world. Plus in a real open world like ER, the problem of not being able to invade in some early game levels like in DS3 won't be there.
@@iamamish Oh no I do, but it scares me as it's a technical solution relying on some code making the right calculation. Will the system be bullet proof? Will there be a glitch to exploit? But again it might just be a simpler mechanism than what I'm making it to be. Then as you said you need to fix overpowered weapons, consumables and other gears than someone else might give you, etc. In early game the balance is at its most fragile state (e.g. Deprived vs. Knight) and it might be a losing battle trying to fix this. So nothing solve the problem more than having a threshold level for invasions don't you think?
IMO you shouldn't even be able to invade High Wall and Undead Settlement. Let people get their bearings and learn the game before you throw pvp at them.
I think those are good ideas. Maybe this also works: Rather than just checking whether there are tools like Cheat Engine manipulating the game, the server also checks your save and looks for inconsistencies. "Oh, you have a million souls after one hour of playtime? You're playing offline then." Or something like that.
They already do something similar - save files sync to From's servers, and every Tuesday there is a ban wave if they notice an inconsistency in your save file. I'm not sure exactly what they look for. That said, twinking isn't cheating, it's just really bad for the game.
I know you were making texts about the hulk invader cheating. but I'm pretty sure he was just fucking around. yeah he cheat engined. but he didn't do that much damage and died fairly easily.
After playing through these games many times over and over... This is definitely the biggest deterrent from playing these games again. I tried showing my friends these games and this is the biggest reason why we stopped playing. I'm definitely just a casual player but I can parry and I have a few tricks up my sleeve but invaders are a special kind of something that can't be beaten. Simply because there's just too many of them. I've recently gone and made a couple different builds to counter this endless problem: Beat the Dancer, Oceiros, and Farron Watchdogs to get the hornet ring at SL10... I got a couple other things to help as well like Estus ring.... but even posing as a new player at SL10, my efforts were always proven fruitless. I thought maybe I could fight fire with fire and beat them at their own game. I waited for a host to summon me at HWOL so I could protect them from the inevitable and after a few weeks of "helping".... it's just impossible to find any of this fun anymore. I can say without a doubt that this is the reason why I won't be playing Elden Ring. I just want a fun souls like experience with my casual friends WITHOUT being invaded by someone who's been playing these games for 10 years straight. If Elden Ring is co-op invasions only, I won't be playing. Yall SL1 try hards can just have it.
"First is multiplayer should be balanced." Thing is it's not. Hosts outnumber invaders 3 to 1. Between them cycling in between to cover their estus chugs, and alternating spells, most invaders will get demolished. This only leaves the most skilled and the most tryhard invaders aka the twinks. Invasion was never about balance in the first place. The player is supposed to be an obstacle and use any means necessary to kill the host. If it was balanced, they would give 1 red phantom for every normal phantom summoned. Leaving a slight advantage on player side. But its not. So invaders have to gank spank by being better and having better gear and builds. But no, it's horribly unfair. So how do you combat horrible unfairness? By taking every advantage you can get. Not to mention the host can sit back and keep resummoning phantoms and running to keep resummoning. If they are cowardly. So you favor builds that poison the host and put them on a timer or high damage builds that can kill the guards and then the host. So fair right?
I never claimed it should be even, I claimed it should be balanced. A game can be balanced even while one side (like the host team) has an advantage. Yes the host team should have the advantage - the question is how big that advantage should be.
I think bloodborne’s strategy of having a minimum soul level you can be invaded at could work very well to prevent extreme twinking as well as allowing newer players to start coming to grips with the mechanics of the game before being thrust headfirst into what is probably one of the worst pvp experiences you can get out of this game. This video really pissed me off, not because of any of the points you were making but because of the background gameplay. seeing what some of these players will do seemingly for no other reason then to make new potential members of the community have a shitty first experience with the game is really disheartening. It’s no wonder so much of the community is filled with shitty misinformed opinions on pvp or why so much of the current ds3 community is filled with such vitriolic shit. I never thought I’d see the day where I became a DC sympathizer.
You know I never considered that part of the Bloodborne strategy in deferring invasions was a twink mitigation strategy. I always just thought of it as a way to slowly introduce players to the game. But what you are saying makes sense. Also hard agree on the clips. Very disheartening.
Nice video. Ah the twinking/cheating mindset. If it’s all stopped in the next game, the bad guys will evolve and adopt something else. And I’m guessing the new thing will be just as shitty.
People these days would see you walking around with a medium shield and call you a twink, I honestly don't see the problem with honest twinking, sure some casul will get mad now and then but casuls always get mad at games, its their thing, i mean theory crafting your build and so its one of the charms of this kind of games, I feel that the balance issue solving method always consist in extract all the fun and keep it safe and plain, glitches and cheaters in the other hand are a bigger issue than twinks in my opinion.
There's a difference between theory crafting and stacking unfair advantages to give yourself a power trip. I have no problem with someone wanting to make an interesting build from late game gear, but most people can't resist maxing out estus, pumping vitality and wearing high base defense armor. Then also holding a dark hand in their back pocket just in case someone gets on their nerves. Seems pretty lame to bash "Casuals" for being upset at being put in an almost unwinnable situation when they just started the game.
@@bradley2349 When I talk about casuals its mostly people with like lest than 20 hours in the game that get killed by someone with 2000, he will cry on the forums an call the game shit or whatever, this is the question, why should the game cater to those people? that guy with 2000+hours in the game will kill one with 20 even if he naked with a knife, what should we do then, nerf knifes? nerf nakedness? I don't even know, I am not saying that the game is perfect, far from it, but the solutions wont be of much help if we just listen to on side, usually the louder side, and casuals are the loudest at any point.
@@the_indicted I think it's fair to say Amish comes from a place of wanting these issues balances so that the pvp is more enjoyable for the majority of players, not specifically for brand new ones. It's just that new players absolutely have almost nothing to enjoy about early PVP currently, which to Amish's point immediately turns a lot of new players off to one of the best mechanics in the game. The brand new players that fight someone and get outspaced, don't land a hit, and get tagged 7-10 times would feel bad, but know they just got beat. What shouldn't be a thing is when you play someone who is obviously just toying around, tanking 17-20 hits just because they can, and healing all of that damage in one estus chug. Then breaking out a dark hand and 1-2 shotting you. That just shouldn't happen. They don't have to ruin unique low-level builds, they just need to fix the massive gulf in healing and defensive potential from late game items and upgrades, simple as that.
Here is a link to Jee's video where he talks about CE: ua-cam.com/video/r1wwWo3zktk/v-deo.html
With all due respect, I COMPLETELY disagree with your Estus count fix for twinking. It would completely negate all real PVE game progression. You would just twink with less game progression, and everyone would be twinking after a single hour in the game.
Seriously, I HOPE that Fromsoft doesn't use ANOTHER reason not to create builds, and instead just play the game for an hour each time.
New players getting owned is part of the beloved Souls experience. Bloodborne took much of that away, and made all PVP more opt in. It sucked, much like Bloodborne PVP. It didn't work well in a Souls online experience, much like Sony's attempt at a Demon's Souls remake. Nobody liked the PVP, so nobody plays it.
I seriously hope there isn't summon range for healing items or "rune levels". Talk about taking us back to the dark ages. ****
@@honkyjesuseternal "New players getting owned is part of the beloved Souls experience" - to some extent yes that is true. However when they get beat, they should feel as though it was a fair contest. When even an experienced player like me has trouble in a 1v1, that's a sign that the mechanic needs some work.
Lol, this guy constantly cheats with estus cancelling so dont really see how he can have any sort of reasonable discussion about cheating.
@@hardwatergaming7965 whatever your opinion about estus cancel, it is a glitch. Even if you think all glitches are cheating, there is a world of difference between estus cancel and cheating your SL to invade people 420 SL below you
@@iamamish Yeah some cheats are worse than others, I'll agree with that.
I'm a tester/"designer" for the Sekiro Online mod, and the way we handled the healing problem is to give everybody 1 less gourd sip than the host. This makes a big difference early on, but it's barely noticeable by endgame. Also, everyone does the same relative amount of damage regardless of vitality and attack power. There are still ways to twink, some more severe than others, but those two changes made a big difference.
That seems like a solid strategy. I expect that From spends a lot of time thinking about the trade-offs in healing speed, and amount of healing items in their games.
@@iamamish It was actually your video about that which made me suggest it. Gourds are difficult and risky to punish, at least currently.
That actually sounds perfect
I was helping someone, long ago, who had asked for help in one of those summon sign subreddits. They were really struggling with pontiff and so I helped them. We went a little further and I kept helping him through gank city. We get invaded. I think, "this is good, he'll get the opportunity to fight a player". And at first I managed to help him relax and actually engage the invader.
Then the invader hits him, he hits back, etc. An exchange happens. All looks normal to me.
So the host exclaims "he's cheating! Look, he's cheating!"
He was not. He was on ps4. He was using a mace.
I think people are really quick to seek excuses to why they're getting outmatched. The idea of someone being better than them is unfathomable. So THEY must be the dishonest one.
Twinking is much in the same vein. Other than obvious twinks at hwol, twinking isn't really that much of a problem. Certainly not as bad as reddit makes it out to be.
Yeah I agree, the overall impact to the game is definitely overstated, and I've made this same point on Reddit myself. That said, even though twinks are really only a big issue up until and including the woods, it's the first experience most people have with the invasion mechanic. That makes it more impactful.
@@iamamish I also think its unfortunate that the ecosystem of low level invasions is so damaged by twinking. Low level would be a pretty decent place to learn, and also embodies a different meta when compared to higher level invasions (thinks like poison and regen are significantly more impactful, for example) but its kind of inaccessible to a lot of people just because of the vast prevalence of twinks.
I can see you're point, but I'd argue that if the obvious cheating/twinking is a thing, it makes it that much harder to truly discern who is/isn't doing it in a subtle way. I agree that the proper mindset is to always give your opponent the benefit of the doubt, but if the game was actually balanced and didn't allow for major gaps then there wouldn't even be any grounds to argue for having that negative mindset.
For example, since infinite Divine Blessings & Siegs are a thing, now any time someone uses a DB or chugs 1-2 siegs, I automatically assume they have maxed out their inventory, because these items are so rare in-game, and the prevalence of people doing this is so high. Which is a dumb because there's definitely enough of them that this player might just be using one of their 3 Divine Blessings that they have stocked. If they aren't though, then this player has an unfair healing advantage that wasn't intended to be in the game, which just feels bad.
Overall I don't blame people for being overly suspicious of cheating in this game, because there are so many busted mechanics for a game that has online competition. I more blame FROM for ditching the game before most of these broken mechanics came to light.
@@bradley2349 I don't think cheating is a problem that can be addressed alongside twinking.
They're both problems, yes. But fundamentally very different. Twinking is any sort of low level overoptimization using endgame/late game gear to gain an advantage over new players. It's more difficult to do, but not impossible to do, in a way that does not utilize external tools or help.
Cheating, on the other hand, is abuse external to the game. It cannot be judged with the same hand as twinking because it isn't even something you should theoretically be able to do in game.
To me, maxing your inventory isn't terrible, so long as it's kept realistic to the point you're invading. No matter how good you are, getting 15 estus at +10 at high wall is unrealistic, and unreasonable. Having a full lapp set with a ringed knight weapon is also unreasonable. But having a full black knight set, estus at +6 and a good scimitar or mace? It's still twinking but I see it as a lot less harmful.
If you're SL1-10, and invading at +0 weapons with full estus, endgame gear and maxed inventory? I'm gonna assume you've cheated.
But so long as fights are kept balanced, the methods in which you reach that point are not too consequential for me. I've used honest merchant. I've maxed on siegs. But I don't grief low level players because doing that sucks. That's it.
@@DS_DoggerX well, if you want to rock a dark hand, and/or get a homey to help, it’s way easier to have max estus and lapp’s at hwol.
This is the first time I ever heard of the idea of estus scaling, this sounds like one of the best addition they could have to reduce twinking, it seems even necessary when you stop and think about it.
I would also remove estus scaling once a host has fully upgraded his weapon since most players should have enough estus once they reach a certain point in the game. You don't want to have host griefers use this mechanic in reverse, say host creates a regen or healing build and purposefully not upgrade or acquire any estus to c*ck the invader from healing back.
great vid
Just goes to show you too that no system is perfect. Your point about hosts strategically keeping low estus upgrades and specialized regen builds to screw invaders is so right.
G9 has finally solved the problem of how to make faith builds meta :P
I was in one of Rofo's streams a while back, and he said something that made me think. He reckoned that sl90 is a better or more interesting meta than sl120 because, as he put it, you have to make sacrifices on your build. You can't have /everything/ you want, and I understand that sentiment, I agree in some respects. /However/, he opened up his menu and had Havel's +3, FaP +3, Prisoner's Chain and Wolf Ring +3 on.
Now, at sl90, you aren't twinking. That's a reasonable level to finish the game at. But it struck me that the rings he was wearing didn't add anything unique to his character build, they just artificially inflated his soul level through stat boosts. He was, in practical terms, at or near sl 133. Now consider that people at sl120 wearing these rings are /actually/ at around sl150!
It really highlighted to me just how powerful these rings are, those that give you straight stat boosts without any interesting nuance in between. /Everyone/ Wears FaP and prisoner's chain, even at sl 133, because the benefits they give are simply unmatched. You essentially save 20 or so levels in core stats, so you can put those levels into damage stats, or even more survivability, and there's no other rings that have that power.
It's a shame, really, that other more situational rings, and combinations of them, don't get as much time in the sun. Imagine if everyone had 4 ring slots to use in their entirety, instead of 1 or 2 in practise. The pontiff eye rings reward an aggressive playstyle, the leo ring rewards tight spacing and calculated trades, flynn's ring rewards playing light with little defence, and the sage ring and magic-boosting rings are borderline mandatory for any build using magic (though they, too, may count as stat boosting rings themselves... Imagine making a 50 dex sorcerer build just to save a ring slot lmao). And let's not get into how the priestess's ring lets anyone have tears of denial for /only 5 levels/.
Even beyond their impacts on twinking, straight-up stat boosts are incredibly powerful in this game at any soul level, deceptively so. And you know it's true, because nobody in their right mind /doesn't/ use them. FaP and Chain are always the most optimal pick for your 3rd and 4th slots, and Life ring +3 is an excellent 2nd, especially if you can swap. I'm not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, but man, imagine a game where you choose ring effects that compliment your build and playstyle rather than because they're optimal or the best in every situation. Rings that are only powerful when used correctly, not ones that make you tankier and stronger for free. The diversity!
In Elden Ring, From don't have to stick to the legacy of FaP and Havel's, they could implement magic items in a totally different way. Although they might keep the formula the same anyway. Either way, here's hoping Elden Ring improves on the twinking front.
I agree about FAP/chain...if there are 2 rings that basically everyone needs or they'll be left behind, that needs to be fixed.
I think that From should be continuosly balancing rings through the game's life cycle (for pvp at least). IMO it's impossible to get the balance right on the first try but with community feedback it should be achievable!
This is really well said and i fully agree.
I think they could implement Ring + Level matchmaking along with the usual "SL" and Weapon + Level.
But we both know the more matchmaking requirements we have the less activity we'll have.....
Or! If we had like 4 Ring Slots, the 4th Slot is a special slot where you can only equip Stats-Effect Rings! (E.g Fap&prisoner's&pillarsoflothric)
Like you can equip whatever ring you got in the 4th slot. but if it's stats effect, it is exclusive only to the 4th :)
This will also kill a little bit of freedom of build making :)
When I thought about this issue, I realized there are a surprisingly few issues at the core of twinking, and in theory they shouldn’t be hard to solve. The design goal would simply be to reduce the worst of twinking, accepting a small amount of variance between weapons of the same class.
Like you said, #1 concern is Estus scaling. Estus strength should be a concern for PvE but it shouldn’t govern low level PvP the way it does now. Scale Estus to host level for phantoms and reds.
#2 is reduce the absorption/weight variance between early game and late game armor sets. A 13 unit starting Knight set shouldn’t be that much worse than the late game alternatives of the same weight.
#3 Adjust mechanics that make certain weapons SSS tier for twinks. Twink weapons fall into a few categories - abnormally high base damage (dark hand), elemental damage that can stack with a buff (DSA, Drakeblood, all the self-buffable greatswords, LKGS), and weapons with status ailments that new players can’t deal with. Stuff with absurd base damage for their classes like the Dark Hand can be eliminated or nerfed heavily. Weapon classes shouldn’t have clear outliers in damage output. For elemental weapons, we’d either need them to be unbuffable, or we’d have to rework buffs. I’d propose that buffs shouldn’t be a flat value, but rather should scale with something, probably weapon upgrade level. Maybe a bundle adds 30 AR at low SL, and the full 100+ AR once you’re at full upgrade. Same should go for weapon art buffs, instead of a flat 80 it could be 30 at low upgrade levels and the full 80 at max. And poison could scale more with max HP so it’s less of a death sentence at low SL and more useful at high SL. Have all moss available at the start of the game, and offer a Healing Wares starting gift like DS2 with plenty of moss included.
#4 get rid of rings that substantially increase stats, in particular the prisoner’s chain. It’s useful but it should provide bonuses independent of stats. Giving 15 free levels also means 20+ more points of innate defense which goes a looong way toward making you absurdly tanky at low SL. Pair that with the additional equip load for Lapps Armor and you got an easy, high defense, high absorption build ready to twink on newbies.
Prisoners chain was a mistake, the rings in general would need a little balancing, having 2 rings for damage for each school of magic is also a no go, horseshoe ring and knightslayer ring shouldve been one single ring with both effects
@@Jeenine I think in general, these games could do without the "have more stats" and "do more damage" rings. Rings should be more about utility and less about stacking stats on a build. I love stuff like the Leo Ring / Knight Slayer Ring / Silver Cat Ring because they're about situational use, whereas there's no good reason to choose any of those rings over something that gives you 15 more levels.
All excellent points here! I found it hilarious that you threw shade at the supposed“twink hunters” that generally have lots of hatemail on their steam page surrounding them twinking lol
Personally I was kind of pushed away from low level invasions because of this issue. Once you hit level ~80 it kind of stops being a thing, because you could reasonably get just about any gear at that level, but even around SL 40-50, the disparity in power level between a twinked out character and a regular one is pretty massive. I think you may have spoken about this before, but one of my biggest pet peeves is twinks pretending to honor duel while having full siegbrau, overpowered gear, being embered, etc. It sucks to see newer/less knowledgeable invaders get goaded into thinking they are engaging in a fair fight all while the odds are so stacked against them. Then of course the host bows and pretends to be courteous once they've won- obnoxious!
I wouldnt say a SL50 could realistically be called a twink, most playthroughs I finish the game at around SL40.
@@hardwatergaming7965 It's not just about when you finish your play-through, it's more so at what level having superior equipment stops being as significant an advantage. In my opinion its still significant at 50.
@@jacobwood2649 I dunno man, I think SL50 is probably about the average level for having access to all rings etc, there has to be a point where you can use the items youve collected whilst playing without being accused of twinking. Agree about the 'honor duels' thing though, always amuses me when I see someone celebrate winning a duel after healing.
@@hardwatergaming7965 Fair enough.
I said this in a previous video of yours about twinking:
The biggest crime of twinking is 7 +10 Estus. Yes the other gear matters, but having a massive healing advantage isn't right. My suggestion was to not change matchmaking but lower the amount of Estus if you invade or are summoned by someone with less.
Good points! I totally agree with you that one of the biggest final hurdles is balancing the amount of healing. They already got the level & Weapon/armor balancing down pretty fair, while still allowing people with good builds to have a slight advantage. I'd like to see two more things, as well:
Phantom Hit-Stun is one of these. Yeah I know this could lead to traitor phantoms, but if they added a quick-use kick item I think it would be fine!
Then the other thing I think would work well would be to assign invasion thresholds to certain bosses or story events in game. Idea being that if you get by a certain boss in-game, you're lower level invasion limit immediately gets set at a specific level, regardless of what level you're at. For example, if you beat Abyss Watchers, now the lowest person you can invade, regardless of the area in game, is now 30, even if you're still level 10. If you beat the Dancer, now it's level 55. If you beat Champion Gundyr, now it's 65, dragonslayer armor - now it's 75, etc. Yeah it would be a minor blow not being able to get that reward for beating the game low-level. But if the reward is a power fantasy invading low level players who don't even know what the prisoner's chain or +10 estus is, then is that really a bad thing to lose?
7:54
SL1 Challenge Runner trying to equip Prisoner's Chain: ...Thanks Amish.
I would make a special exception for you Saint
@%username% yeah you could do that but then the ring becomes essentially worthless (you could just level up instead). I think frankly the ring is just too powerful.
Love your uploads, glad you are still active🤙
Thanks mate, glad you enjoy watching.
This is a fairly good video.
Thanks mate. I'm not sure what happened btw but the last 3 or 4 comments I've left on your videos have disappeared, but one is still there. Probably got flagged as spam for some reason.
@@iamamish That happens sometimes. I've had UA-cam delete my own comments on my videos. I don't know why.
I think I sent you an email though.
Yeah, Twinking really is just the bane of invasion balancing, isn't it? Unless the difficulty curve/levelling scale were flattened a bit more somehow, it's very difficult to eliminate the issue altogether. For DS3 at least, I do really like the suggestion of matching a host's estus level. More systems that match not only the invader, but also any summoned phantoms to the host's power would be really excellent.
Thanks and yeah the key to me is to ensure everybody is roughly of equal power. I'd hate to see From get rid of twinking reds, but keep the OL phantom summoning system in place.
As of now most reds won't even bother with High Wall or Undead Settlement due to these issues.
Really appreciate you helping out honest hosts with twinks at the high wall. Im also intrigued by your discussion of balance and i really like it. Invaders aren't entitled to a fair fight yet there has to be balance between the hosts experience and the invaders experience. Building a balance scaling system would be interesting so long as ppl can't circumvent this mechanic and essentially have sl802 'twinks' at meta, for example. Im also curious to see if they use items to vet certain players from interacting with each other.
Yeah invasions are fundamentally impossible to balance. Hosts can summon, they may have 15 estus when you invade, or 0. They might be skilled, or not. There might be latency, or maybe not.
They might have away of Blue. If they do, the blue might be skilled, or free estus. How do you balance a game with such a wide variety of scenarios?
@@iamamish right it seems paradoxical lol. Having a huge dynamic of weapons and movesets will ultimately change the balance of the game even after subsequent patches. It makes sense that they would impliment rules to have some form of balance, though it would also be interesting to see how aware Fromsoft is about players exploiting tools a tricks to their advatage, which i think is ultimately important to maintaining anything close to balance. If they have rules there should be consiquences for breaking them. We know we want dynamic gameplay until we see how we need to limit such axioms.
Good video as always man, you make valid points. Often people complain about twinks killing them even though they happily summon their overlevelled twinked out buddies. I think the best way to go about it would be to fix the estus count like you suggest, but also to just not allow you to summon anybody outside of your level range, they've proven that they cant balance things properly with the scaling so instead they just shouldn't allow a SL10 to summon a SL802.
Will be extremely disappointed if I cant be invaded when I'm playing Elden Ring solo.
I think a good solution to solo host invasions is what was done in Dark Souls 2 with the Effigy Effect: preventing invasions from other players for a time while it is active and can be stopped prematurely at the bonfire at any time. That way people can play online and deal with invaders at their own pace: like if they want to be online so they can be summoned to help players with tougher bosses.
In my experience, Dark Souls 1 has a MAJOR twinking problem: I cannot be human in the Undead Burg without being invaded by a troll build with instant poisons or armor my attacks cannot get through, making them completely invincible while they can one shot me or poison me while I cannot even cure it and they can just taunt me while I can't defend myself. Then there was one invasion I had in the Undead Burg that made me feel better about low level invasions: someone with the Uchigatana that was about my level. I was a low level cleric with a halberd at the time, working to getting the Giant's Halberd later on. I hid at first, fearing I just going to deal with another troll, but it was a fight for my life I actually stood a chance in: that alone made me feel better. Even if I lose, I want to feel like I at least stand a chance and that is a rare and treasured feeling these days.
I'll be honest, when I first started getting into invasions, I was getting clapped by everyone unless I got lucky. It was very discouraging and I quit for a while. A bit later I learned about 'twinking' and gave it a try. I did so as an SL 15 +1 weapon character.
I thought this would at least give me a chance to develop some of the skills needed to invade. Things like understanding how to use the level/PvE and opponent player tendencies. How to get out of and/or avoid gank blenders. Also learning what type of weapons and tactics work well depending on the situation. I would last longer in invasions so I could better learn all of these tactics and even weapon spacing and timing. Before I would quickly die and not even understand much of what happened. I would win more, building my confidence.
Once I got better, it became very dissatisfying to twink, especially on poor lone honest hosts. Although it was fun to beat fellow twinkers. I then saw your videos about gitting gud by purposefully not twinking and did that. This is what accelerated my ability to succeed the most while invading. Now I find that lvls 80+ are best since we are on a more level playing field at that point.
That's my excuse for twinking.
"Too slow on the dung pies". You see, that never happens to me; I always give up a spot on my tool belt for them lol. A waste of space 90% of the time, but totally worth it when you can drop them quickly.
I'd like there to be no item trading, like in Bloodborne. If there is still a twinking problem in Elden Ring (which I expect there will be), at least make them work for the OP items. I think your idea to limit Estus is brilliant, too!
That is an unpopular take, which I do agree with, I think item trading is unnecessary and only serves to hurt people that are not willing to trade with friends and dupe for their build.
Yeah that would be great, but then, there's bound to be an equivalent of the honest merchant mod so people could just get any item in the game immediately anyway. Would be a good solution on console at least though.
@@hardwatergaming7965 i get not dropping but damn I enjoy doing my pve runs with a Friede scythe or gael sword.
So far as weapons and armor and, sure, spells, I wish you only had to unlock them on one character to have them available to all of your characters somehow - either in a common box for your saved like Diablo or in whatever the shop ends up being. This wouldn’t mean I could just drop my +10 to my new tune. Otoh, if I did, it would just lock me out of the early game coop. Perhaps I could only see what was appropriate to my level…
@@conanthelibrarian3370 Yeah its a hard one to balance!
@iamamish this will sound weird, but I want to say I feel great when I watch your videos. DS3 is my fav game and your voiceover these clips is like an antidote to a hard day to me. I appreciate you putting out videos and I hope your channel will keep on growing. Cheers from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
That’s awesome. Cheers from up north.
Its a quick solution for the problem. I think (as you also stated) that its a multifactor issue.
Also I wholeheartedly agree that solo hosts invasions is a different issue from twinking. Great input Amish
Can't believe there wasn't a single point down in this entire video!
There would have been a lot of dung pies thrown if I'd been a bit quicker about it
2 Amish videos in a week, we are blessed 🙏
I've got a larger video I've been working on for a while, hopefully I can finish it soon.
That’s so funny that you mention players pulling twink weapons on new players when the new player is actually winning, I had that happen both on my first DS1 playthrough and in DeS remake. It is so underhanded!
All I need is team damage. That would solve so much balance issues. But Miyazaki too depends on bandai policy and they would never let him make the game more hard to casuls than he already did it
I'll even accept friendly STUN.
Yeah I would like it if they did this, but I cant see it ever happening unfortunately.
2:21 My perfect solution for that issue will be matchmaking improvement.
What I mean by that - up to a certain level, do not even connect reds with solo hosts unless the game will spawn a blue or two immediately.
Yo awesome video as always:). I usually just lurk in the ds3 community but now i wanna give my opinion too for once. One thing i dont think i ever heard someone mention about the twinking problem is the amount of ringslots u can access. What if you start the game with just one ringslot and unlock more once you reach a certain level? Like for example you reach lv30 and now have a second ring, then maybe at 40 or 50 the 3rd etc. This would make this almost unkillable twinks pretty much a non issue. You could still get endgame stuff but at least you have to choose what you want to do, and its still possible to do fancy ringswaps but you could never reach that point where you're prettymuch unkillable bc of stacked rings giving immense amounts of statboosts for low levels. Pair this with some form of nerfed estus and the advantages of twinks arent so unbelievebly onesided anymore. The question is how that would work with the overleveled people with the ringslots unlocked already. Also i dont think this would affect a normal run through the game almost at all since there arent too much good rings you need all at once in the early and midgame.
One question I have is will we even be able to drop equipment to each other anymore. On one hand that's how all the twinks twink, on the other, it sure as hell saves a lot of time for those of us that like to experiment and make tons of different pvp builds.
Dropped gear imo is not really the problem. The big problem is estus, which you have to upgrade yourself (or use a mod/CE).
Also, implementing a minimum SL to use certain items would remove this risk: even though I dropped you all those items, you wouldn't be able to use them at low level.
Maybe unrelated to this topic but related to co-op. What do you think about host and phantoms not being able to damage to each other but being able to stagger each other. That way you also teach them not to swing a sword through they friends and being aware of the other player. Better teamwork perhaps?
I like the idea, and I've heard a number of people suggest it. It would be a big change, and would definitely make co-op a lot harder (both against PVE & PVP). I would be very surprised if it showed up in a Souls game though.
Right now the invasions try to balance around the Idea that the Invader is highly skilled, which is true is some cases but outside of that its very stressful.
Good ideas but we have to wait to see some gameplay because invading system is still a question mark. Things from has to fix : lag, glitches,glitchers,unscaled phantoms,plug pullers.
Some of my 1st PVP experiences in DS3 were invading in the woods at an appropriate level and game progression. I generally avoided multiplayer interactions before that, but I had some fun collecting covenant items in DS1 remastered. It was a miserable experience and could have turned me away from PVP in general. I hadn't beaten crystal sage or abyss watchers yet, but I was facing campers abusing everything they could to get an advantage. We were basically playing different games.
Very thoughtful video, as usual, iamamish.
i had 2 cursory thoughts for "fixing twinking" (at least for weapons/shields/talismans etc.), curious to know your reaction.
1st) but to properly tie weapons to their stage of the game via Weapon Level. so an example of this might be (to take Dark Souls 3), that Ringed Knight Ultra Great Sword would just automatically be a +10 Weapon Level; you don't need to upgrade it, it's only available at max level. you mention DSA (i'm assuming this is Creighton's axe you get in Irithyll), would automatically be, for arguments sake, +5? Additionally you could tie miracles/spells/pyros to have a minimum WL requirement too.
so the result of this might be you're only SL10 w/ DSA, but that DSA is already on pick-up +5, so you would be SL10+5, which would preclude you from griefing genuinely new players (e.g. SL10+0), while still being able to participate in a "twink meta" (other SL10+5 players)
2nd) password summoning higher SL+WL (even if they get scaled down) needs to be gone. if you're SL10+0, then pw or not, you can only summon Phantoms within that summon range.
lemme know what you think Mr.Mish ;)
as an aside, i noticed that you, likewise, play using Blue Sentinel. when you were guiding the Host, why didn't you kick the Invader that was stat-hacking SL448?
just a curiosity.
@@FyterianTV I don’t think I can kick him. I think the host has to do it.
So that fixes twinking (weapons available at certain levels) but do you then force that weapon upgrade level on a host if he picks it up? That's what DSR did, and I don't care for that approach.
I hear you re: pw summoning. The challenge is that it makes co-op a lot less accessible. My best approach is that if you summon somebody like that, they take on the host's form - same gear, upgrades, SL, etc.
@@iamamish it was just an off-hand thought i had when watching (not at all deeply thought-out), but you needn't force WL upgrade on the player.
you can kick people who flag BS as a Phantom, tested 09/09/21 :)
In its entirety, twinking has always been a way of stacking the odds while remaining low level. As the game dies, people flock towards the activity. Twinking doesnt have to be a malicious subject. Yes, there are assholes that abuse it. But there are hosts that abuse their tools. It goes both ways. Theres no way to truly even out the playing field. Even before the glitches, ol phantoms ruined the balance. Experience itself ruins the balance.
@oohanalligator No I don't think you can argue that invasions wouldn't be better by doing as Amish says and balancing healing potential. There's always things to improve on the system. Just because there will always be experience gaps doesn't mean the game doesn't have broken mechanics that can continually be refined to combat as much of the twinking problem as possible.
There's still a major difference between losing to a vastly superior opponent and losing to a vastly superior opponent who is stacking all of the defensive rings, and has maxed out estus against a new game character.
It would be great if an algorithm decided how to pair up hosts and invaders based on the equipment used by the host and/or his phantoms. I.e. normal host + phantom with endgame gear = twink invader. Twink host, no phantoms = twink invader. Normal host, with normal or no phantoms = normal invader.
Here is what I think. Up to sl35-40 or even lower than that, this level range should only be invadable by soul memory and weapon level, every level after that, sl and weapon level should be the way to go about matchmaking, imo this would solve twinking completely and not ruin the multiplayer like ds2 after a certain level.
That would be a solid approach too.
All I want is a goddamn balanced FromSoft pvp system for once
The frustrating thing to me is that I feel as if From has nailed all the really hard problems with game design in DS 3. They just need to fix some easy ones - get rid of glitches, release another balance patch for weapons, and then add estus matching. This game would be amazing. Hopefully From takes some of these lessons to heart in ER.
I like you honest man
Nice vid amish. Some good points and food for thought, but I think one of your ideas takes precedence here- regardless of the mechanics or balancing, all of these systems are going to be used by humans. And there are just a certain % of humans who will abuse whatever they have access to for a variety of reasons. I'm not saying we shouldn't be actively looking to address these issues, unfortunately, regardless of what is done in game, just like the world-writ-large, these folks will continue to hold the rest of us back in order to gratify themselves.
My biggest hope is that with the increased player pool of a new game, their numbers get watered down to the point where we only occasionally run into them, as opposed to every day as in ds3.
How about a quick inventory scan of invaders and hosts at certain levels?
Have a list of legendary armaments and if the host lacks what the invader is using in either their chest or inventory, they can't be matched together.
This way we don't have RoB and Antspurs murking people fresh out of the tutorial. Even playing fields make fights more fun. Past SL80 all bets are off and the world gets opened to all the pain and cheese.
That's a similar idea to Soul Memory. I think it is an interesting suggestion, but the problem is that savvy hosts could avoid picking up weapons to minimize matchmaking.
ER is still new enough that I'm not entirely sure which strategies are the most broken, but it seems once again that SL/weapon upgrade matchmaking leaves the door open for players to accumulate a lot of estus, and I'm sure that's still a big advantage.
Twinking and ganking are completely out of control in Elden Ring. I've just attempted my first ever invasion with a regular character (not overpowered at all) and fought someone for about a minute (it was kinda fun despite being very laggy). Suddenly their two buddies arrived and whooped my ass with completely overpowered abilities.
Again, it was a completely fair fight initially. But when my opponent realized that I wasn't an easy breakfast, they started running for their life and summoned their buddies.
I hope Fromsoft figures out a way to overcome the issues with twinking and ganking, otherwise I'll never develop a taste for invasions.
twinking is kinda ok but things like the dark hand and dragon slayer axe are just stubed also having 7 estus flasks that heals you to full health may be the strongest twink in the entire souls series
Yes the estus is the real issue
Fix phantom buildup for things like poison, getting poisoned at low levels is very bad already, but getting poisoned without even getting hit is way worse
Personally I'm conflicted, as someone both interested in pvp (well mostly in the past) and pve (specifically challenge runs/fights and the like)
The existence of 'twink gear' is basically the same as the existence of sl1 gear. Prisoner's chain, lloyd rings, stat rings, and weapons like DSA are great and fun for sl1 and it'd be a shame to lose those options. It gives something to build towards over the playthrough (DSA for sl1 requires access to grand archives, which means beating 90% of the game), it's rewarding and gives some diversity compared to just raw/fire/deep broadsword. And although it's really good, other options are still useful like firelink greatsword, black knight greatsword, heck someone used the god damn pickaxe as their best option once.
At the same time... most of this gear is what enables twinks, particularly stat boosting gear, pris chain being the obvious worst contender. The free defense you get is nutty at low levels, and the main drive behind why twinks can take no damage, and combined with the weaponry and buffs deal massive damage. Luckily, balancing the estus gap wouldn't affect pve, so it's a step in the right direction without sacrifice. IMO flat defenses are just a problem in general (it's a mechanic that inherently punishes the weak, it amplifies the difference between low damage and high damage further), but people already think DS3 has an unrewarding armor system (due to lack of passive poise and absorption capping out around ~50% ehp bonus) so... i don't know how that'll go over. To be honest, you can partly blame DSA doing such massive damage when buffed on the defense system.
I'd put a closing statement here but I was kinda just rambling so uhh... have a nice day
Ultimately I think there isn't a good solution and trying to implement more and more matchmaking rules will lead to fewer invasions over all. What ever From decides on, there are going to un-happy parties on both sides.
The only solution that I think may upset the least amount of people is if they gate invasions until the player reaches a certain point in the game (not necessarily ng+, but maybe after the first couple of areas) so players have had a time to familiarise themselves with the game and mechanics and have a few extra levels under there belt to better deal with invaders.
So for example in ds3 they could have gated them after abyss watchers, that way they have a few bosses done, some good gear and levels and there is still a decent chunk of game for invaders to get there fill.
If the discussions I've had in the last few months have taught me anything, it's that you can't make anti-PVP'ers happy except and unless you remove it from the game.
If we implemented your solution, then here is what we'd hear:
"The game teaches you that it doesn't have invasions, and then suddenly you have to deal with them. Why can't the whole game work like this? Why can't I opt out of invasions? From proved the game works without them in the first half of the game"
Despite what anti-PVP players say, what they want is clear - co-op with no invasions.
Most of the complaints are just so much window dressing to hide their real concerns, because they know if they just said, "I want co-op and no invasions" they'd sound entitled and should probably play another game.
I think DS 3 struck a sensible balance - no invasions until the Woods if you're by yourself. If however you engage the multiplayer, you get ALL the multiplayer.
I think one way to sort of fix overleveled password summons is to ditch the password system entirely and bring back the Dark Souls 2 ring (forgot its name), that ring widened the Soul Memory gap between friends but not to an extent where a level 10 could summon his level 800 friend.
In this case it would widen the Soul Level gap
So let's say normally a lvl 100 host could summon 80-120 players, with the ring that gap widens allowing him to summon players from 60 - 140
Ok, I know that you are with good intentions, but...no, soul memory Is just One of the most stupid mechanics of all the Dark Souls, it doesn't fix twinking and make every trying to co-op stupid and frustrating.
@@Gerreth_F_Riedrich umm who said anything about SM? Did you even read the comment?
@@Gerreth_F_Riedrich chill tf out bro who mentioned SM?😂
I hope they implement some sort of hard swapping anti measures. Obviously from a gamey point of view, hard swaps are cool but it's kinda dumb that the fight is often won in the menus. High end meta PvP looks utterly ridiculous at this point.
I see that point, but the melee needs some spicing up. I'm not even sure that hard swapping per se is the issue; the issue is that certain weapon arts are just too powerful (especially Gundyr)
@@iamamish Yeah, totally agree, but they've put those weapon arts on weapons with relatively limited usage so if you couldn't just hard swap, you'd have to carry the weight in order to having it in the toolbox, which makes it "fair" imo.
EDIT: Also, if they prevented hard swaps, we'd probably see more build variety. Not everyone wearing the same with sometimes different infusions.
I love the dread to be invaded. I should have the experience if I want to play in solo. Co-op only invasions makes no sense is stupid and will badly hurt the longevity of this game. They just need to find a way to address twinking directly.
Completely agree with everything you said brother
I love exploring a new area on my first playthrough and getting invaded, makes for a memorable experience
I love getting invaded going through my 6th build, makes it refreshing
I think a that co op only invasions in normal circumstances, especially early game, is Froms best way of dealing with twinking. They arent going to eschew or alter password summons in their current function because that contributed heavily to DS3s popularity and sales. Scaling algorithms are likely not changed in any significant way. I think gimping an invaders healing resources to the hosts could kill low level invasions as well. I might say having scaled healing where the invader gets better healing for each phantom, while summons are locked on the same level as the host, is okay.
Overall, I think its next to impossible to balance the game optimally for low, midlevel, AND high/meta level invasions all at once because the dynamics here are fairly different. I'm okay with allowing twinking to largely remain the same because, presumably with co op invasions, griefing solo hosts is completely impossible. While its possible to grief pver groups, sure, itz much more difficult and one mistake could mean blender even to green players.
Even if there are no ways to twink there will still be people who wanna grief other people and they gonna find some ways
Just remember, these are more singleplayer games than multiplayer games at the end of the day, and I think from tends to balance some around that, which then might not translate well into multiplayer, but I think ds3 started to take some steps in a good direction, heres hoping Elden Ring can also do that.
ive made a twink recently as you say "it's honest twinking" it's an SL15 poison/fire long sword build. i use poison only on over levelled phantoms or dark hand users. i start an invasion with rings set up for fighting gankers with HP regen but as soon as the phantoms are dealt with I swap to no amour no rings no regen with my +0 weapons and don't heal makes for a challenge against standard lvl phantoms and host with none of the above but i love bullying the over levelled phantoms MUHAHAHAA.
as most don't carry poison moss anymore
i see invaders as a core to the souls experience sort of like a mini boss ive played the other souls games and ds3 has to be the best for pvp and anti twinking. I find it very difficult to go through the game sl 10-30
Certain weapons and armor have SL or other stat restrictions
ALL phantoms / invaders get scaled to match hosts Estus amount and weapon upgrade level
EZ
I don't think twinking is a huge issue in ds3. Most hosts have the same tools dropped for them by co op partners or are also twinked themselves. Its important to have those tools available to be competitive. Im not talking about this in terms of a solo host new to the game, in that situation I just bc out
See that's the problem though - now the game requires you to police your own behavior. Some people do, but the vast majority do not.
WHAT is twinking??
Taking later game items into the early game. In DS 3 it also means having upgraded estus.
Do you actually think that rings is a problem though?
Average host is 10 levels higher than a red invader thanks to matchmaking (even more for areal covs). Plus he has ember that makes his 27 vig look as 50. So he has something around 30 levels of effective stats for just being the host. A set of best rings hardly gives more than that.
Consumables and healing is the real issue IMO. DSA also is not nearly as much of an outlier without the consumable bandles.
Fair point. Just remember that the host has those advantages because they're supposed to, so if a ring substantially closes the gap between invader/host, that's a problem.
Truthfully the only real issue with rings is the prisoner's chain. I agree it's nowhere near as big a deal as the others, but especially at low level (where there won't be such a level disparity), and where damage is low, those extra stats are huge.
@@iamamish Well I agree that host should have advantages in general.
However I think there should be a places(ways) where invader can even out the play field and do not feel that he is cheesed by host having huge raw number advantage every time.
Like a gate-way to invasion for new players. For example, when I started invading I beat the game at low sl so hosts will not cheese me and it was huge. If I would have to face raw number advantages every time I do not think I would stick to it.
On a flip side, for invader to go beyond that and flip the raw advantages in his favor is definitely not a good idea. That I completely agree with.
the one thing i am more concerned about then solo invasions or twinking (which i hardly care about at all)
i want proper region select options.. IF i want to only play NA region then let me only play with NA.. or NA/EU.. japan/Aus own region.. south america own region.. china/south eas asia/russia own region africa/middle east.. own region. or split it up in some form like that..
this is like the BIGGEST issue that has affected EVERY souls game since demons.. ds1 entire pvp system is based around latency.. in ds2.. everything just stops or ur opponent is pew pewing u to death WHILE your backstabbing him.. and then when u die he finally gets backstabbed and takes the damage.. and in dark rolls 3.. it's just such a fucking issue..
i really hope ppl start making videos about this.. this is the videos and the conversation I want to hear people talking about.
or if ur vpning.. maybe just skip regions and have the regions be based on latency... i dont fucking know.. but im not paid to.. im paying them to when i purchase the game.
The easiest solution I see is the bloodborne no drop system this could help lower the amount of twinks though not entirely
I'd rather keep the ability to drop items to each other, but restrict the estus. Most of the drops aren't even problems.
Aside from estus there are really like 4 other problems:
* lightning bundles
* prisoner's chain
* DSA
* fap +3
I don't think there are other items causing issues, and I'd hate to lose the ability to drop each other items when the problem can easily be solved without such a draconian solution.
You are kinda right I just believe being able to have fap, chain and even lapp's set from the start of the game if you get it dropped is obviously broken. One way that might really help with the Estes problem is by having a set %value instead
Regardless of the circumstance people twink. People twink and griefed new players in *Dark Souls 1* (1v1). Then people argue that twinkers only exist because DS3/Bloodborne have Co-op only invasions.
Twinkers exist for the same reason people only use *"META"* loadouts in games like Warzone. Warzone there are 3 players. New players, people who don't want to keep up with the grind for each new updated weapons, and then the try hard sweats that use/grind the most OP loadouts/weapons/gadgets in the game. The last description are the twinkers. They are just people using the most OP gear/build/etc thinking they're good at the game when they kill people that don't have the same advantages. Basically the majority of the Warzone crowd and sometimes the majority of the Souls PvP crowd.
Lastly the game is *balanced around PvE* and the stats for PvP are directly linked to PvE. Some gear is meant to be OP because it is meant to be earned in the game to reward those who stuck through the challenge. I'm in favor of keeping invasions systems around Co-op only . I want *new players* to have a good time with the game and give the game praise. Not throw their controller and refuse to play another Souls game because twinkers/griefers. Hosts that call on people are generally those that need them as an "easy mode" or to learn how to play.
Now that's not to say that they cannot come up with a *Separate PvP mode* that is balanced completely different than the PvE version of the game. Maybe the gear allowed is limited? There should be an arena type game mode in the main menu that is *unlocked as a reward for beating the game.* That "arena" game mode *can be balanced separately* from the base game. It should be 1v1 focused so that invaders still do their thing in the base game if they want the challenge of doing a 2 v 1 situation etc. So people who want fair PvP will go there and twinkers will still try to invade or fight invaders in regular PvE/PvP. Whatever the case the experience for new players will be better if they're not alone against twinkers/griefers.
*All that being said i'm sure you can still choose to play 1v1 by using soapstones if you want to. Just expect it to be unbalanced gameplay.* If it's not in the release game I'm sure they will add it later.
Would adding a minimum soul level requirement for certain weapons be too extreme?
what weapons would you even have in mind? I think the main problem is rings and items
Weapons aren't really the problem. Being later in game =/= being better
Lothric Knight SS and Valorheart for example
I have to say, I love twinking, but specifically while versing other twinks. Fighting a Bambi isn’t challenging or fun but fighting other twinks is enjoyable given the lack of stats being able to use and this creates some fun builds
I fail to see the fun and accomplishment you get from low level invasions. You either end up fighting a noob and it's an easy win or the new char of an experienced player. For the latter, you play with very few tools and strategies are limited. If you kill a debutant host, what's the satisfaction in that?
Without discounting more technical solutions like the ones mentioned in this vid and comments (they might add some bugs and have unintended effects that will unbalance other part of the game), I think the best solution to solve twinking is to fix the unscaled phantom issue and set a minimum SL for invasion.
Lore wise it's fairly easy to explain, you need a certain level of experience to master the art/magic of invading another world.
Plus in a real open world like ER, the problem of not being able to invade in some early game levels like in DS3 won't be there.
Why don't you like the idea of estus matching?
@@iamamish Oh no I do, but it scares me as it's a technical solution relying on some code making the right calculation. Will the system be bullet proof? Will there be a glitch to exploit? But again it might just be a simpler mechanism than what I'm making it to be.
Then as you said you need to fix overpowered weapons, consumables and other gears than someone else might give you, etc.
In early game the balance is at its most fragile state (e.g. Deprived vs. Knight) and it might be a losing battle trying to fix this. So nothing solve the problem more than having a threshold level for invasions don't you think?
IMO you shouldn't even be able to invade High Wall and Undead Settlement. Let people get their bearings and learn the game before you throw pvp at them.
More NPC invaders before PVP becomes available might be good.
Watch your videos just for ya voice
I think those are good ideas. Maybe this also works: Rather than just checking whether there are tools like Cheat Engine manipulating the game, the server also checks your save and looks for inconsistencies. "Oh, you have a million souls after one hour of playtime? You're playing offline then." Or something like that.
They already do something similar - save files sync to From's servers, and every Tuesday there is a ban wave if they notice an inconsistency in your save file. I'm not sure exactly what they look for.
That said, twinking isn't cheating, it's just really bad for the game.
I know you were making texts about the hulk invader cheating. but I'm pretty sure he was just fucking around. yeah he cheat engined. but he didn't do that much damage and died fairly easily.
he was SL 448, so no, he's just a cheater
@@iamamish but a funny one at that.
@@kyronix560 maybe the character but he could have made the same one without cheating.
@@iamamish don't you endorse cheats like honest merchant though?
@@kyronix560 OK, if you cannot see the difference between honest merchant and your tank build then you should just stop playing the game
After playing through these games many times over and over... This is definitely the biggest deterrent from playing these games again. I tried showing my friends these games and this is the biggest reason why we stopped playing. I'm definitely just a casual player but I can parry and I have a few tricks up my sleeve but invaders are a special kind of something that can't be beaten. Simply because there's just too many of them. I've recently gone and made a couple different builds to counter this endless problem: Beat the Dancer, Oceiros, and Farron Watchdogs to get the hornet ring at SL10... I got a couple other things to help as well like Estus ring.... but even posing as a new player at SL10, my efforts were always proven fruitless. I thought maybe I could fight fire with fire and beat them at their own game. I waited for a host to summon me at HWOL so I could protect them from the inevitable and after a few weeks of "helping".... it's just impossible to find any of this fun anymore. I can say without a doubt that this is the reason why I won't be playing Elden Ring. I just want a fun souls like experience with my casual friends WITHOUT being invaded by someone who's been playing these games for 10 years straight. If Elden Ring is co-op invasions only, I won't be playing. Yall SL1 try hards can just have it.
"First is multiplayer should be balanced."
Thing is it's not. Hosts outnumber invaders 3 to 1. Between them cycling in between to cover their estus chugs, and alternating spells, most invaders will get demolished. This only leaves the most skilled and the most tryhard invaders aka the twinks.
Invasion was never about balance in the first place. The player is supposed to be an obstacle and use any means necessary to kill the host. If it was balanced, they would give 1 red phantom for every normal phantom summoned. Leaving a slight advantage on player side. But its not. So invaders have to gank spank by being better and having better gear and builds.
But no, it's horribly unfair. So how do you combat horrible unfairness? By taking every advantage you can get. Not to mention the host can sit back and keep resummoning phantoms and running to keep resummoning. If they are cowardly. So you favor builds that poison the host and put them on a timer or high damage builds that can kill the guards and then the host.
So fair right?
I never claimed it should be even, I claimed it should be balanced. A game can be balanced even while one side (like the host team) has an advantage.
Yes the host team should have the advantage - the question is how big that advantage should be.
I think bloodborne’s strategy of having a minimum soul level you can be invaded at could work very well to prevent extreme twinking as well as allowing newer players to start coming to grips with the mechanics of the game before being thrust headfirst into what is probably one of the worst pvp experiences you can get out of this game. This video really pissed me off, not because of any of the points you were making but because of the background gameplay. seeing what some of these players will do seemingly for no other reason then to make new potential members of the community have a shitty first experience with the game is really disheartening. It’s no wonder so much of the community is filled with shitty misinformed opinions on pvp or why so much of the current ds3 community is filled with such vitriolic shit. I never thought I’d see the day where I became a DC sympathizer.
You know I never considered that part of the Bloodborne strategy in deferring invasions was a twink mitigation strategy. I always just thought of it as a way to slowly introduce players to the game. But what you are saying makes sense.
Also hard agree on the clips. Very disheartening.
Yeah they did none of this, and twinking is even worse in Elden Ring then other games. Add in constant ganks and well the game's PvP gets old quickly.
…yeah
Nice video. Ah the twinking/cheating mindset. If it’s all stopped in the next game, the bad guys will evolve and adopt something else. And I’m guessing the new thing will be just as shitty.
People these days would see you walking around with a medium shield and call you a twink, I honestly don't see the problem with honest twinking, sure some casul will get mad now and then but casuls always get mad at games, its their thing, i mean theory crafting your build and so its one of the charms of this kind of games, I feel that the balance issue solving method always consist in extract all the fun and keep it safe and plain, glitches and cheaters in the other hand are a bigger issue than twinks in my opinion.
There's a difference between theory crafting and stacking unfair advantages to give yourself a power trip. I have no problem with someone wanting to make an interesting build from late game gear, but most people can't resist maxing out estus, pumping vitality and wearing high base defense armor. Then also holding a dark hand in their back pocket just in case someone gets on their nerves.
Seems pretty lame to bash "Casuals" for being upset at being put in an almost unwinnable situation when they just started the game.
@@bradley2349 When I talk about casuals its mostly people with like lest than 20 hours in the game that get killed by someone with 2000, he will cry on the forums an call the game shit or whatever, this is the question, why should the game cater to those people? that guy with 2000+hours in the game will kill one with 20 even if he naked with a knife, what should we do then, nerf knifes? nerf nakedness? I don't even know, I am not saying that the game is perfect, far from it, but the solutions wont be of much help if we just listen to on side, usually the louder side, and casuals are the loudest at any point.
@@the_indicted I think it's fair to say Amish comes from a place of wanting these issues balances so that the pvp is more enjoyable for the majority of players, not specifically for brand new ones. It's just that new players absolutely have almost nothing to enjoy about early PVP currently, which to Amish's point immediately turns a lot of new players off to one of the best mechanics in the game.
The brand new players that fight someone and get outspaced, don't land a hit, and get tagged 7-10 times would feel bad, but know they just got beat. What shouldn't be a thing is when you play someone who is obviously just toying around, tanking 17-20 hits just because they can, and healing all of that damage in one estus chug. Then breaking out a dark hand and 1-2 shotting you. That just shouldn't happen. They don't have to ruin unique low-level builds, they just need to fix the massive gulf in healing and defensive potential from late game items and upgrades, simple as that.