Dark Souls - Multiplayer Mechanics

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Gamasutra is hosting a new article from Alex Wawro about Dark Souls multiplayer mechanics. He also goes on to say other games are copying them now.

There's something terrifying, in a very primal sense, about the way total strangers invade your world in Dark Souls.

The first time it happened to me, I almost quit the game. The hair on the back of my neck prickled with fear that another human being was in the game — and somewhere, somehow, they were doing their best to take me out.

Over time I came to relish the thrill of being hunted, and it seems I'm not alone. Popularized by From Software’s <em style="line-height: 1.6em;">Souls [/i]games, the concept of players invading each other’s games has inspired developers around the industry to come up with interesting new ways of blurring the lines between single-player and multiplayer experiences.

From big-budget 2014 debuts like Watch Dogs to more contemporary projects like Dying Light, developers seem excited to pick up what From Software is laying down and play around with ways to inject similar levels of tension and uncertainty into their own work.

But that entails answering a very critical question: what is it about the way Souls games implement player invasions that make them so compelling, and how do you make it work in other contexts?
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More information.
 
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Well, I'll be the dissenter here. I hate the Invasion mechanics of Demon and Dark Souls. Why would I want to ruin an expertly balanced, immersive SP experience with some random Invasion? There's no balancing of skill level or gear or builds so inevitably you get an elite group of jerks/griefers rather than an authentic "run-in with another guy just trying to survive."

In all my hundreds of hours of Souls play, I've always avoided PvP…I haven't even mentioned how absurd it is to do PvP in a third-person melee game…with the lag and weird hit detection of Souls games the whole thing is a massive disaster, IMO.

Anyway…Dying Light's implementation is quite different since it takes you to a wholly separate PvP Mode/Arena. Good for them for actually trying to build a balanced PvP system.
 
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It's good that it's now optional (in Bloodborne, their latest game).

Though i will agree that i was a scary experience to have someone invade you in DS :) only happened to me once, so i didnt think it was too annoying.
 
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I hated invasions in Dark Souls 2, very badly implement whereby I normally get invaded in the worst areas possible with difficult enemies around. In most of these cases I kick the hell out of the invaders but it is extremely annoying so much so most of my solo play is hollow.
 
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Being hollow doesn't protect you from invasions a la Dark Souls 1. You can always be invaded now. I have a very high level character, and I literally get invaded every 5 minutes on some maps. It's a real pain in the ass. It's amazing how many people have nothing better to do than disrupt another person's gaming experience.
 
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I like the idea of invasions, but it should be entirely optional and a setting you pick during the start of the game - and I think the cooperative mechanics are utterly stupid. You should be able to go through the entire campaign with someone without any kind of hassle.
 
DArtagnan said:
...and I think the cooperative mechanics are utterly stupid. You should be able to go through the entire campaign with someone without any kind of hassle.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it is very unfortunate they don't simply allow full co-op. It would bring in so many more fans. I understand though that they have their creative vision of the game and they don't want to change it for anything. I respect that I suppose...but I do think it needlessly limits the appeal of the game. I mean many of us have argued that even adding an Casual mode for less skilled players would be nice...but again, they want to make an extreme, hardcore game with limited co-op...that's their choice even if it drives away many players.
 
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