Summoning Coincidences and/or Tricks?

I've been doing a lot of boss fights as a phantom lately, and something has happened that seems a little too strange to be a simple coincidence.

After 4 or 5 fights, I'd sometimes re-log to get into a different lobby, as my sign had been laying down for 10-15 minutes with no avail.

However, last night something strange happened.  I was abnormally busy, and would leave my sign down periodically looking at my TV and/or listening for "the sound".  4 times in a row, I simply "checked my sign" and as soon as I did the "your being summoned" message would appear immediately upon this action.

It made me wonder about people mentioning having better luck being summoned/summoning by simply rating messages.

Are small actions such as these merely a "kick start" that the lobby needs to find you, or mere coincidence?!?!?!

I say, let's call Myth Busters...

Make that 5...I'm  literally in a load screen from simply checking my sign...

That's not what I mean though...not saying it would be the first time a souls game trolled me lol.

No I mean I LITERALLY see the "your being summoned" message when I push "ok" to check my sign.  I mean its an immediate response.

Good read, although not 100% related to Orig post

http://steamcommunity.com/app/211420/discussions/0/882962698499356788/

This is kinda related though,   I've relaid my sign in a different spot, just as the "you are being summoned" message pops up.  Happens with the orbs too.

I'd say it's related.  Thanks for the contribution.  Good article.

Also, I'm close to 5/20-30 now.  I call conspiracy theory.

You receive my thanks.

Well, here's a dumb trick I know works a little bit.

People seem to think that having a Gravelord Sword or a Black Knight Great Axe or etc etc means you are either skilled, or at the very least "DPS capable".  I often equip the Gravelord Sword to put my sign down and switch when being summoned....

sshhhhhhh:

^ I always summon people with the least armor equipped. I just think the less armor a person needs the better they are at the game. (Not that I don't wear any armor. I always wear what looks cool. I'm just under the impression that naked players die less.)

Wow lol.  I'm of the complete opposite opinion.  I always think, "If you just put on some Hollow Thieves or maybe the Painting Guard, you wouldn't have died would you???"

But that's just a different perspective.  I tend to stay below sl 40 until NG at least.  Every time I see someone naked at Artorias, O and S, or the Township at those soul levels I cringe. 

I can totally see your point of view though.  I can see the logic in why you, or anyone would think that.  If you don't get hit you don't need armor right?

Interesting theory Djem.  I tend to outright slaughter naked enemies.  It's one of the niches I tend to be decent against. Dragons, nudists and mages...

In seriousness though I see your point.  If someone thinks they don't need it, they've probably been around the block a couple times


To Animaaal's point, on slow nights in the forest I used to throw down a red or white sign very quickly or use a cracked orb (all while wearing the cat ring) and those actions seemed to kickstart a bad night.  Could just be my perception though.  I also think Mythbusters is in order.

Animaal when you're reloading is your sign still down? Sometimes it happens to me when I co op. If my sign is down and I do a quick reload, the sign hasn't reset cause I made it back in time for the summon. I've had a friend from uk get my sign while I was reloading cause it took a bit to get to him

twigsterxd wrote:Animaal when you're reloading is your sign still down? Sometimes it happens to me when I co op. If my sign is down and I do a quick reload, the sign hasn't reset cause I made it back in time for the summon. I've had a friend from uk get my sign while I was reloading cause it took a bit to get to him

WOW really?!?! Never had that happen. But I've had a buddy tell me, "Nope...failed...nope failed...nope....what the???... "

I'm not sure if we meant the same thing though. I meant I would relog into PSN to get a different lobby. I'd lol if that happened to me though.

skarekrow13 wrote:....To Animaaal's point, on slow nights in the forest I used to throw down a red or white sign very quickly or use a cracked orb (all while wearing the cat ring) and those actions seemed to kickstart a bad night...

Do you mean one of those 5 minute fog door quit and reload a dozen times nights? I've had a few of those, and they were frustrating.


PS-These 2 were supposed to be together...sorry for the double post.

We always open a chat cause 1,000 messages saying got u is annoying LOL. 
Quite a few times he has said got u and I get summoned soon as I've reloaded. You might be getting summoned by someone on other side of world cause it took a few minutes to show on his end. Just think of co op'ing from Canada to UK. An american will see my sign 1st because they are closer

I always reload if my prior session ended with some sort of connection problem, or if I go more than 5-10 minutes without a summon.  I've been summoned as quickly as while I was still standing back up from putting my sign down, so if you go a really long stretch without any action it is usually a connection problem.

As for "checking" your sign or interacting with messages, I often do both and have never noticed them affecting anything.  The orange signs are a good proxy for how much activity is going on in your area and how good your connection generally is, however.  You can also watch the near real time activity around area bonfires since the phantoms you see there tend to be right around your level and able to summon people.  I've actually waved to people there and been summoned by them shortly thereafter.

Finally, the covenant you're in seems to make a difference, making your sign more likely to appear for folks in the same or "aligned" covenants.  My darkwraith characters get noticeably slower summons than a Way of White or Sunbro character of the same level and identical gear, presumably because most fellow darkwraiths are invading rather than summoning, and my sign appears less often and disappears more quickly for Way of White or Sunbro hosts summoning in their world.

I had one last week where I got sick of waiting so I cancelled my summon sign. As soon as I did that it said I was been summoned. When I arrived, there were no one in sight and they had half cleared The Depths already.

I think appearance has a lot to do with summoning. Especially on active times such as early night time rather than 4am when I'm drunk. When being summoned I try to wear the flashiest gear as possible, and the biggest weapons. I always switch as soon as I enter their world.

Sometimes it's a matter of choice as well. Where I have a dex build, I try to co-op with one mage and one tank(Havel'ers). I've not selected a lot of contenders based on that fact.

We always open a chat cause 1,000 messages saying got u is annoying LOL. 
Quite a few times he has said got u and I get summoned soon as I've reloaded. You might be getting summoned by someone on other side of world cause it took a few minutes to show on his end. Just think of co op'ing from Canada to UK. An american will see my sign 1st because they are closer

From a network perspective this doesn't make sense.  Even from USA to Australia, the latency is ~500ms, and sometimes less (more like 300-400ms).  While that kind of lag would make a FPS like Call of Duty nigh-unplayable, "a few minutes" is completely ridiculous; latency like that is more like half of a second, and that's for literally near-max-distance-across-the-world-possible.  Even if you factor for signs appearing and syncing, summoning across the world on a decent connection should be a variance of seconds, not minutes.  Something fishy is going on.

Despite From being quite good with the controls, UI, and motion fluidity, I suspect this is the one area of programming where From is objectively mechanically bad: network coding.  Even between 2 people in the states where latency would often be 100ms or even as low as 30ms in some cases, you see front-stabs and side-stabs or have to parry before they even swing in some cases.  It's completely ludicrous that people with ~70ms ping to each other can't see things at very close to the same time; most human beings can't accurately perceive a 30-80ms latency (average human reaction time is over 200ms, and nobody has recorded faster than 100ms).  That's not to say you won't notice 100ms ping because latency can spike, but with that kind of lag or less any host advantage should be extremely minimal...if the game is coded decently.  The lag in this game is a real eyebrow raiser and is its 2nd biggest flaw behind the hackers having too easy a run.

I would just recommend pairing in Way of White, Princess Guard, or Sunbro (WoW easiest) and it should help a bit.

on the flip side of this i see a tactic used to invade a specific host.


   how it happens: i summon someone, always a white so far. they enter my world. look me over for an instant. then i think they black crystal out i guess. then suddenly, i get invaded by the sAME person. establishing a connection? nobody every replys to my messages in game when this happens.

as for the main topic, happens to me to. alot when i remove my sign, in the same instant it says im being summoned, only to fail i assume because i removed the sign in the same moment someone selected it. i have no recorded figures but it has happened alot.

This is shaping up to be a pretty informative thread.  Everyone obviously has some "coincidences" "tricks" and/or "oddities" to share.  Thank you all, I've learned some things and validated some things I've been wondering. 

Something else I should bring up is the white soapstone from my experience.

I've never really gotten the extra 10% range to work very well.  For me and a couple buds it's always +/- 10.  Whenever the extra 10% is suppose to kick in, it seems like it takes longer....A LOT longer.

And vise-versa, when we're closer to each others level, say 1-5 soul levels, the wait time is shorter.  We Skype and talk on our phones, so we know this to be true for us.  The time difference is fact from our perspective.  It doesn't matter if we're in one of the three co-op covenants, or that we are friends on PSN.  When we go outside of 10 levels, the wait time is noticeably longer.