Is it me or are summoners in bloodborne awful?

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'm a huge fan of the souls games, but I've not played much of the online aspect. I got into Demons Souls and Dark Souls much too late in their life-cycles and coop and PvP didn't appeal to me much in Dark Souls 2. Still, it's a component that a lot of people love about the games, so I decided to try out the coop in Bloodborne.

So far my results in coop tonight have not been positive.

The first guy who summoned me died when he charged into a huge group of enemies. Not the best plan in the world, but at least an understandable death.

The second guy who summoned me had a good run of things. He seemed fairly keen on exploring and I took him to see a few of the more hidden areas. I lead him to a friendly NPC and sat down in front of her to let him know that she was friendly. He immediately attacked her and was brutally slain. Of course summons cannot interact with NPCs so I just had to sit there and watch him die.

My third, fourth, and fifth summons all died to the same exact extremely obvious trap, a trap I could not possibly warn them about and which I could not prematurely trigger to protect them.

My sixth and final summon of the night decided to roll off a cliff instead of using the ladder that I had guided him to and died from fall damage.

I have yet to successfully get a summoner anywhere near a boss, much less help them win the fight.

How do people manage to accomplish anything in coop in these games?

 

[Pandalisk]

I've co-oped with a friend or helped co-op other people's bosses till I've amassed enough soul levels to laugh my way through. All in all I prefer it to the old system, the network password means I don't have to worry about people I don't want summoning me so I don't have to hide my summon sign in a tree and the Bells seem to be pretty reliable (takes a few minutes for them to resonate to my friend).

I mostly focused on the PvP elements, Nightmare of Mensis mostly, I've gained so much salt from players I can coat the roads of the country come winter time.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Everyones still new, give it time. Wont be long until nothing but hardened vets are left.

 

[Fappy]

Getting summoned at high level for NG+ content is way less painful

Then again, my experience with NG summoners was never all that bad. Got way worse luck in Dark Souls.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I've honestly had nothing but positive experiences with summoning or getting summoned in Bloodborne. As a matter of fact, it's a bit too good, since you hardly get invaded at all. I got invaded only once in my entire first playthrough.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

I've had similar issues. Instead of summoners being an issue I've had only one publicly summoned hunter survive an area including boss.

More related to your issue OP, I found that some players get themselves summoned to "sample" the boss/area before they attempt it in their own world. I find this to be poor form. The reason you are summoned is to assist the player that summoned you, not to preview the area to come. Other player worlds are not your trial run. Whats more, bosses and enemies become slightly more difficult with added co-op partners, with higher health pools and (I believe) increased attack damage. As far as I'm concerned, this is a form of griefing.

I've honestly had nothing but positive experiences with summoning or getting summoned in Bloodborne. As a matter of fact, it's a bit too good, since you hardly get invaded at all. I got invaded only once in my entire first playthrough.

They seemed to design the "invasion" system in such a way that it makes it hard for it to occur commonly in new game. The only viable way to invade early on is with 2 people using sinister bells simultaneously or someone using a sinister bell in an area with a bell ringing woman.

The bell ringing woman only appears in certain areas or if someone initiates co-op. This limits what an invader can do and where they can do it. Only a few late game areas has a bell ringing woman by default. Most of the time invaders will only appear during a co-op session, which is obviously going to work against the invader.

However, by late game or new game+ covenants will come into play. Unlike Dark Souls where covenants simply provided different ways to play online, Bloodbornes covenant system is almost exclusively for PVP.

If you join the executioners and get summoned to a vilebloods world for "co-op" you will spawn as an invader and you will have to duke it out (and vice versa). There is also Hunter of Hunters, which will turn hostile towards "blood addled" hunters if summoned.

What is a "blood addled" hunter? I don't know... but I assume it's similar to the Darkmoon Covenant and Blue Sentinel covenants in that your primary target is other invaders (which apparently includes other Hunter of Hunters).

I think this design is intentional to prevent the ganking of new players by PVP builds at low levels. While pvp explodes in all souls game by new game+ and up, there were always a few asshats who would exploit the systems at play and fuck around with players that have no hope of fighting back (either new, or avoiding exploitative builds). While seemingly quintessential souls behaviour, it wasn't intended by the developers...

 

[loa]

Well, they probably summon help for a reason.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I've honestly had nothing but positive experiences with summoning or getting summoned in Bloodborne. As a matter of fact, it's a bit too good, since you hardly get invaded at all. I got invaded only once in my entire first playthrough.

I think this design is intentional to prevent the ganking of new players by PVP builds at low levels. While pvp explodes in all souls game by new game+ and up, there were always a few asshats who would exploit the systems at play and fuck around with players that have no hope of fighting back (either new, or avoiding exploitative builds). While seemingly quintessential souls behaviour, it wasn't intended by the developers...

You'd think Fromsoft would've made the amount of Insight play a part in this though, like it does with summoning help. For example, the higher your Insight the more prone you are to getting invaded starting at 10. And for those that wish to invade it'd cost 1 Insight to do so (unless that's already the case as I've never invaded anyone before), and that you would get 2 Insight back should you kill the other player. They could've still kept the bell ringing woman and maybe had her change location whenever she'd respawn.

Afterall, you can already choose to play offline should you wish to avoid getting invaded at all.

 

[Lufia Erim]

I only summoned someone once and it was only to see what it was like. I summoned right becore the gravedigger guy boss.

I tried to summon in front of Rom the spider from hell but nothing came up. He's was freaking annoying.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

So...you're upset because they're not playing the game the same way you are? I get that you're trying to be nice, giving people tours and showing them around, but the point in these games is death. Death is going to happen a lot, especially since this is still a new game. I've already beaten it and am on my second run and I'm still getting stomped in some areas. And as you said, sometimes there's no way to warn people about traps. I stepped on the first log trap in the forest and got killed instantly. I didn't see it, but now the traps are obvious. You learn from death in these games. Odds are all those people won't fall for the same trap again.

As for attacking NPCs, there are just some players out there who do that. Be it for kicks, or be it for wanting to see what happens. There are people out there who kill every single NPC they find regardless. I personally don't understand that, but they find it amusing or challenging.

If this is really bothering you, you can just summon people into your world, or abandon summoning all together. You are asking to be let into another person's game, so you can't really get too mad at them when they play their game the way they want to.

 

[Kingjackl]

Apart from the time it takes to find someone, I haven't had too much trouble when it works. That said, I do miss the soapstone system of the previous Dark Souls.

My bigger problem with summoning is that I tend to get performance anxiety in co-op, and can almost never pull it off. I got saved early on by summoning someone to help me beat the Blood Starved Beast, and I pretty much sat back and watched while that person and Alfred (the NPC) did all the work. I felt a bit guilty for that, so a bit later, I decided to start helping people fight the Witch of Hemwick after I beat her solo. You'd think replaying a battle I'd already one, with another person would be easy, right? Well apparently not, because I kept getting killed during the first phase. I'm not sure if my partners one any of those battles, but I doubt they were impressed with me.