Honestly I can't stand dueling anymore

At this point, with all the ins and outs of what is considered "honorable" and the fact that you can't land a backstab on someone using sorcery without the other player saying you are a backstab fisher, or immediately switching to divine blessings: I've just grown sick of dueling.

Not to mention duels have taken on such a stale form, with 9/10 just being flippy matches where it is claimed that you need to learn the other players moves and predict them, but if you watch enough duels and fight enough it suspiciously seems to come down to more chance with good players fighting each other.

So I've gone back to exclusively invading and hosting during PvE, and I'm loving every moment of it. It's liberating to expect nothing but every possible strategy to win from both sides, instead of this patchwork idea of an honorable duel that has been cobbled together.

1. Just ignore people and play how seems right to you.

2. Yes those flippy matches are annoying

3. Indeed.

Solution. Play with friends/people you know.

I can definitely understand where you're coming from but you gotta take the good with the bad in this game, it has one of the best communities I've ever seen, and also one of the worst xD

I'll put my sign down in the burg and have 10 brilliant matches, close fights with ripostes, well aimed spells, then I'll have a guy fish for BS, another guy spam blessings or estus and who knows what other none sense but I come back for more every time >.< I'm glad you're enjoying the original invading stuff though and maybe just try and ignore the haters cause there's too many to open your ears too without getting deafened.

I've never actually duelled anyone. I don't really understand duelling. I do hate that a guy with a knife and one ring can 1hko the most tank oriented build possible. It pretty much makes any defensive build moot. Yay! defense is now contingent on counter back stabbing or wearing thorns armor. How exciting!

Maybe you should give the Gravelord Tour a try. It is unique in many ways. The most outstanding one is the random nature of the fights. You just don't know who you will invade or be invaded by. There is a link in the OP to Ribosome's channel where you can see some of the action of the past events.

Just a suggestion.

DxV04 wrote:Maybe you should give the Gravelord Tour a try. It is unique in many ways. The most outstanding one is the random nature of the fights. You just don't know who you will invade or be invaded by. There is a link in the OP to Ribosome's channel where you can see some of the action of the past events.

Just a suggestion.

I actually make most of my mainly PvP builds into gravelords. It normally just seems to be a more convenient way to get duels. I dunno, it's ok. I would enjoy it more if it was possible to gravelord while playing through on PvE, because unless you are in a duel area it is unlkely to get an invader.

Buggy Virus wrote:

DxV04 wrote:Maybe you should give the Gravelord Tour a try. It is unique in many ways. The most outstanding one is the random nature of the fights. You just don't know who you will invade or be invaded by. There is a link in the OP to Ribosome's channel where you can see some of the action of the past events.

Just a suggestion.

I actually make most of my mainly PvP builds into gravelords. It normally just seems to be a more convenient way to get duels. I dunno, it's ok. I would enjoy it more if it was possible to gravelord while playing through on PvE, because unless you are in a duel area it is unlkely to get an invader.

Interesting, this is exactly what we are trying to achieve. And also as a side effect spread some misery for others. For example our next stop is Blighttown and all participants will activate the EoD at the top then start making their way down. If we see a gravelord sign we will invade that gravelord to interfere with his progress. Unless you know Blighttown very well it will be difficult to race through it and I will definitely ask people to take their time heading down to the bottom bonfire. Once there who ever wants to hang out they can. Otherwise anyone may just go on to kill Queelag and prepare for the stop in Sens 2 weeks from the stop in Btown.

If you like gravelording you should try it!

I hear you Buggy. I was getting burned out on duels. Different sense of honor, expectations of play, etc. I started invading as a Darkwraith and a Forest Hunter and am having a blast. I still do duels on occasion and also coop. Balancing my online time helps.

Reim, I myself am not much of a duelist either. I love the random nature of Dark Souls and to get into specific duels does is not my first priority.

stand alone in the forest. you will encounter every fighting style and get ganked by fh's, in fact the other day i met the lorax in there....

To me, one of the best things about invading, rather than dueling, is that I have no expectations of how my opponent should behave.

In a duel, once we've both bowed, I assume my opponent will behave in a certain way (that I won't get into now!). If he doesn't, I can let it slide, but only for so long. When all you do is duel, all those things you let slide pile up and eventually they outweigh the fun.

When I invade, though, I don't care whatsoever how my opponent behaves. I can still stick to my own code of honor (is this word taboo now?) just as if it was a duel, and I do, and then some, and my opponent can play as dirty as he wants and it won't bother me. So it's a win/ win!

Downside to invading rather than dueling, though, is obviously in the quality of the fights. That's why I give my host every chance I can when I invade, because otherwise there'd just be no sport in it. But as far as having fun, to me, invading is better than dueling, hands down.

I really only play as dirty as my opponent plays.

sparkly-twinkly-lizard wrote:stand alone in the forest. you will encounter every fighting style and get ganked by fh's, in fact the other day i met the lorax in there....

I love the forest.

I'm making a super high level build to tank around in the forest and fight multiple opponents at once.

i've got one of those! issue is im rusty after two weeks away and need to practice more...

Frankly, there is no "honour" in the community of Dark Souls, and I imagine there won't be ever, at least in a general sense. What is perceived as honour is really just people robotically (is that even a word?) following the norms without any thought put in to it, no creativity. Ever notice how most people bow after a duel that was either quite laggy, definitely lopsided (whether fair or not), or just wasn't a good duel/fight, along with other stupid events (backstabbing when gesturing, backstabbing when buffing before the fight started, and healing, for example)? That's what I mean by robotic. That's why I do not bow anymore unless I actually know the person I am fighting, and/or the fight was actually fought well and hard; it's become such an empty gesture towards other people.

Here are some of the rules I personally follow, not all of them:

1) No healing, unless the other person healed
2) No fishing for backstabs, in fact, I only really backstab to punish people for going way out of position, such as doing an R2 attack on an ultra greatsword, or a long spell, and, of course, healing
3) Spells that are clearly imbalanced (e.g. Wrath of the Gods) shall not be used
4) If someone is staggered, don't hit them over, over, and over again. (I know this isn't really popular, but I despise the mechanics of PvP in this game when it comes to a lot of equipment, so I find stun-locking someone unfair and not really a display of skill, only taking advantage of a weak system)

I PvP not to win, although I like winning obviously, I do it to see how well I can actually do it. Winning or losing is not necessarily an indication of how good you are. One of my favourite players is Knutaf, and he wrote about this: http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/knutaf/dark-souls-and-the-style-over-substance-mindset-231722.phtml

Part of the problem people have with people is they do try to follow the norms too much. This is fine, and I do it myself to a degree, but you run the risk of meeting everyone else who follows the norms to a tee; people who aren't really interested in respecting the game and players, people who just want to win no matter what. I find that if you go out of your way to break the norms, such as PvPing in more obscure places, you can find a niche of respectable players. For example, I used my red sign soapstone last night at Lost Izalith at level 70 and had 3-5 fights within an hour... obviously, that's a long time to wait, but boy, that was some good PvP.

I'm on the same page. I gank-hunt pretty much exclusively now. Way more fun.

Pretty much what everyone said, you can only take so much in duels, invading or global'ing is more fun since you never know what you're gonna go uo against.

same here, tired of seeing the same thing over and over, Katanas and ninja ring.

I used to gank hunt in the forest and it was satisfying until I realized the gankers didn't care about losing, they'd glitch themselves infinite humanity/DBs and just keep on trucking. The only way to really annoy them was to cut into their farming rates by running away into the basin or something and wait it out for 20 minutes with nobody else invading to give them souls. So I decided to try to do something more constructive and focus on coop, in particular on trying to get a 100% success rate when summoned. It's amazing how hard it is to keep every host alive, given the wide range of skill levels and all the glitchers or hornets rapier pivot BSers out there. You end up using all sorts of obscure weapons and tactics to be a good bodyguard, it's actually really fun and you get a lot of thank you notes instead of hatemail.

I'll probably end up moving on to something like that eventually. Right now it's just fun to take out the trash in the Kiln. Try to make it a little cleaner for everyone else. The build I use is SUPER op and I've got a really high success rate because I invade at the 2nd BK, so I don't get swarmed when I spawn.

befowler wrote:until I realized the gankers didn't care about losing,

You and me are fighting different bunches of gankers evidently. the ones I fight HATE losing and will spout the most vitriolic hate when beaten fair and square.

and if they were actually doing it to farm rather than just to win why not glitch some souls too

It seems the community has come full circle on dueling and invading when I read this thread.

Jaded we are. turned to the dark side we have.

It's just a matter of needing a change occasionally. Made a new build and went back to duelling today. Having a lot more fun now than I was before the break.