How terrible a person am I for wanting to opt out of invasions in Dark Souls?

[Branovices]

The other time was, again, someone with high stats and kickass gear (I was right near the very beginning of the game both times) and he basically just ran around and wasn't even trying to fight. He was just being an idiot, and of course, I couldn't just get on with the game with him in my world. I ended up just standing in a corner near the bonfire and waiting for FIFTEEN. MINUTES.

Seriously. What's the point in that?

He might've been there to help you. Sometimes people join other games as Black Phantoms to help them kill enemies, since enemies will ignore black phantoms. I didn't see what the guy was actually doing, so I don't know, just letting you know about the possibility.

 

[Ren_Li]

The other time was, again, someone with high stats and kickass gear (I was right near the very beginning of the game both times) and he basically just ran around and wasn't even trying to fight. He was just being an idiot, and of course, I couldn't just get on with the game with him in my world. I ended up just standing in a corner near the bonfire and waiting for FIFTEEN. MINUTES.

Seriously. What's the point in that?

He might've been there to help you. Sometimes people join other games as Black Phantoms to help them kill enemies, since enemies will ignore black phantoms. I didn't see what the guy was actually doing, so I don't know, just letting you know about the possibility.

In this instance, no. He was not. Once I realised he was having more fun running in circles and hitting my shield I tried to get on with the game. He backstabbed me. Looking back, I'm... surprised I was left with the sliver of health I was.
After his screwing around, he started dropping items- Dung Pie mostly, but it also included a weapon that I wouldn't be able to get and upgrade for a looooong time. So: what was the point? Where's the fun in that?
(Sadly I was playing on said friends' xbox just to see if I liked the game, so the sword did not come with me when I started my actual, real game on my own console. Oh well.)

 

[hazabaza1]

It's understandable. But nothing feels quite as satisfying as killing that ganker with end game gear.
For my first playthrough what I would tend to do if I wanted to avoid invaders was figure out what was the best shortcut to the boss and only turn human when I was doing a boss run.

 

[IronMit]

Join the Way of the White. You get invaded a lot less.

And as you are only human when you want to summon, when you do get invaded you should have back up. Just run away and let your partner deal with it...do some cheap shots. Make sure you don't do a long move and keep backing off because the invader is going to come after you.

It's good when 3 of you gang up on one invader. It's depressing when the invader kills everyone

 

[GundamSentinel]

I've played both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls mostly offline. Demon's Souls because it was just a lot easier to manage World Tendencies, but Dark Souls because invaders were such an annoyance and I didn't need summons. Never regretted it. In fact, I enjoyed the atmosphere of loneliness much more when playing on my own. The game felt much more epic without invaders or summons. Also, unlike in Demon's Souls, there's very little penalty to playing the entire game hollow. Playing as hollow solves a lot of problems.

 

[chikusho]

Play as hollowed, join way of the white, use black separation crystal.
Problem solved.

 

[Broderick]

Well you could always go way of white, makes you last on the list to get invaded. You could always just stay hollow as well, as you cannot be invaded while hollow; you cannot summon people either but that is the trade off. I havent had too bad of lag spikes with invaders luckily. I had a few times where I would get lag stabbed, but the guy was nice enough to give me a fully upgraded silver knights shield(much better than what I had at the time).

The thing about invaders though(black phantoms, not blue ones) is that they can only invade people equal to higher level, so if you are being killed by an invader in a fair non lag/hack fight, he/she essentially is just better geared or skilled than you unfortunately(unless they are cheesing the hell out of you). Lag usually always pays a part unfortunately as you obviously know however. I hear that in Dark Souls 2, they are going back to a server system rather than Peer to peer; hopefully that will help. Getting some moderators to kill the hacking helps as well.

Here is a video for everyone's enjoyment.

Spoiler

 

[Casual Shinji]

I've had invaders kick my ass, but I've paddled my fair share of invader behinds as well.

The only time you can get invaded is if you're human, and the only time I was ever human was when I was trying to summon other players. So many times when I got invaded said invader found himself facing three dudes instead of one.

And one of the most satisfying things in Dark Souls is killing some twerp who thought he could just enter your world and wreck your shit. Beats any Boss defeat.

 

[ramboondiea]

if pvp aint your thing, then it aint your thing, so just dont do it,

personally the pvp is probably my favourite part of the game, probably why i always join the cat covenant as soon as possible.

also pyro skills wreck in pvp, i mean completely wreck, acid breath destroys armor and most of the fire skills stunlock, so maybe my experiences with it were slightly coloured ha

 

[StriderShinryu]

If you don't want to partake in them, I do feel you are losing an aspect that makes the game unique.. but with all of the cheating, I can't say I blame you. Opt out if you want.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I don't play either game online. The first was due to it messing with world tendency, and because people were dicks. The second because it honestly wasn't fun at all for me. I spent some time pvping in both and I overwhelmingly preferred Demon's Souls.

Though I find both to be pointless wastes of time unless you like actively being a dick to people, or enjoy pretty unbalanced and laggy pvp. Even when its a good fight, its over in a few seconds, and then you get to hope for another good fight after a few hours of garbage ones.

I'd rather play the actual game. Its rather fun.

I did like helping people in co-op in DS, and never tried to do it in DKS.

Half the time they just pm you to ***** you out for killing everything, or not killing everything, or they are helping the invader or some other annoyance.

 

[lapan]

The other time was, again, someone with high stats and kickass gear (I was right near the very beginning of the game both times) and he basically just ran around and wasn't even trying to fight. He was just being an idiot, and of course, I couldn't just get on with the game with him in my world. I ended up just standing in a corner near the bonfire and waiting for FIFTEEN. MINUTES.

You could have just continued the level. as soon as you enter the boss fog, he gets disconnected. If he wasn't trying to fight you nothing did stop you from this.

use black separation crystal.

Doesn't work on invaders. You can use it to banish white/gold phantoms or to leave a world if you ARE the invader.

"So hey, our game has this awesome mechanic where people with much better stats and gear can just teleport into your game and kill you, robbing you of progress and XP in the process. Awesome!"

Yeah, fuck that.

My tactic was to wait until they were in sight, then just yank the internet cable.

You sir, are a man after my own heart. I thought I was the only one who did that.
The only difference is that I laugh maniacally when I do it. There's nothing quite like picturing the look on your e-bully's face when you deny them souls and cost them a little humanity in the process.

Invading doesn't cost humanity, you just have to be human to do it. They only use 1 humanity if they die because they have to reverse hollow.

 

[Ren_Li]

The other time was, again, someone with high stats and kickass gear (I was right near the very beginning of the game both times) and he basically just ran around and wasn't even trying to fight. He was just being an idiot, and of course, I couldn't just get on with the game with him in my world. I ended up just standing in a corner near the bonfire and waiting for FIFTEEN. MINUTES.

You could have just continued the level. as soon as you enter the boss fog, he gets disconnected. If he wasn't trying to fight you nothing did stop you from this.

Perhaps I should have said he wasn't interested in fighting BACK. I could barely do any damage to him, but when I actually tried to ignore him and play the game, he hit me. And it took a LOT of damage off me.
And by "boss fog", do you literally mean "fog door TO the boss", or the fog which stops you from leaving the area when you're invaded? Because I was under the impression that you couldn't leave the area once it locked you into being invaded (although, as I said, hardly a veteran of invasions, or the game for that matter.) If you meant actually going TO the boss, you're assuming that I was both near it, and ready to face it. And, frankly, nobody should feel pushed into facing the boss if they're not ready and willing, just to get rid of some jackass who's more interested in stopping them from playing the game than in playing it themselves.

Irrelevant now anyway, because I play it at home, where I have no desire or need to be connected unless it's to DL patches or DLC.

 

[loa]

Invasions are really obnoxious, especially with the new perfectly balanced DLC dark magic pay-2-win bullshit.
This games pvp is notoriously broken to all hell and nothing of value would be lost if it was limited to be voluntary only, leaving the functional co-op part of the game intact.
Nobody would miss mr. low level invader with maxed out pyromancy and lightning weapons (yeah that guy. Everyone has met that guy at least once) who literally spends the entire day killing low level characters.

 

[Souplex]

I hadn't really seen any cheatery on the console version, but if it's as bad as I've heard on the PC version, stay hollow or play offline. Staying hollow, but playing online does give you the chance to be summoned by, and help others. If you join the Warrior of Sunlight covenant, this can get you access to some offensive, ranged miracles.
I did feel super bad about accidentally attacking an invader while he was bowing, and felt super guilty, but I knocked him off balance, and felt I had to seize the initiative while I had it. I still feel guilty to this day.

 

[lapan]

Perhaps I should have said he wasn't interested in fighting BACK. I could barely do any damage to him, but when I actually tried to ignore him and play the game, he hit me. And it took a LOT of damage off me.
And by "boss fog", do you literally mean "fog door TO the boss", or the fog which stops you from leaving the area when you're invaded? Because I was under the impression that you couldn't leave the area once it locked you into being invaded (although, as I said, hardly a veteran of invasions, or the game for that matter.) If you meant actually going TO the boss, you're assuming that I was both near it, and ready to face it. And, frankly, nobody should feel pushed into facing the boss if they're not ready and willing, just to get rid of some jackass who's more interested in stopping them from playing the game than in playing it themselves.

Irrelevant now anyway, because I play it at home, where I have no desire or need to be connected unless it's to DL patches or DLC.

I meant the door to the boss, yeah. If he attacked you as soon as you ignored him that was of course out of question.

Invasions are really obnoxious, especially with the new perfectly balanced DLC dark magic pay-2-win bullshit.
This games pvp is notoriously broken to all hell and nothing of value would be lost if it was limited to be voluntary only, leaving the functional co-op part of the game intact.
Nobody would miss mr. low level invader with maxed out pyromancy and lightning weapons (yeah that guy. Everyone has met that guy at least once) who literally spends the entire day killing low level characters.

If you make it voluntary it would be even harder to get a successful invasion going. It can already take ages as it is. And some people genuinely have fun finding ways to trick those high level invaders into their death or to outplay them enough to still beat them despite their superior equipment.

 

[Mossberg Shotty]

Invasions are really obnoxious, especially with the new perfectly balanced DLC dark magic pay-2-win bullshit.
This games pvp is notoriously broken to all hell and nothing of value would be lost if it was limited to be voluntary only, leaving the functional co-op part of the game intact.
Nobody would miss mr. low level invader with maxed out pyromancy and lightning weapons (yeah that guy. Everyone has met that guy at least once) who literally spends the entire day killing low level characters.

My bad bro. D:

OT: Invasions are one of those small things that really makes the game what it is. You never forget the first time you get invaded, and beaten down so hard you never want to pick up a controller again. But you eventually rise to the challenge, and invade some low-levels of your own just to keep that vicious cycle going.

As I'm sure we all know, Dark Souls has that running theme of good and evil, and human nature and humanity. It's basically trying to convey the message that people are generally shit. And then it offers you proof in the form of an invader.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Furthermore, a necessary evil in my eyes that circumvents a mechanic of the game for practical reasons but anyway, you have a Black Seperation Crystal that will send home any phantoms you want allowing you to get rid of invaders as soon as they turn up. Use it if you must.

Doesn't work on invaders. You can use it to banish white/gold phantoms or to leave a world if you ARE the invader.

Ah. Well in case the host probably pulled their cable on me. I thought that was BSC at work.

I stand corrected, cable is still the best way to get rid of invaders.