A +1 message rating does not reward humanity nor estus

From wikispaces:

A positive rated message will reward the author with +1 Humanity. (unconfirmed? some claims additional flasks)

From wikidot, previously:

If you find a message useful, give it a positive rating. The person who wrote the message will receive 1 Humanity...

I did some message testing (PS3), and I've found that there is no reward for receiving a +1 rating on a message.

I was unable to get more than +1 on a few of my messages, so I was unable to test for receiving a certain number of upvotes. If anything is rewarded, it requires more specific conditions. Perhaps there are certain benchmarks that need to be hit? Like +5? But that's just speculation.

Having never seen documentation of anyone receiving a reward for a message upvote, and failing to get anything after having four messages receive a +1, I say the ball is in the court of those who believe it rewards humanity. It's a rumor that should be proven to work before people believe in it, imo.

I believe that players unfamiliar with receiving soft-humanity by killing enemies before the area boss is defeated, or receiving estus from others kindling bonfires, may have falsely attributed those to messages. There is also evidence of soft-humanity inexplicably being received 'out of thin air' pre-patch, which may have contributed to the rumor, but that has occurred offline and is definitely NOT the result of messages.

I know that others who have done some preliminary testing have also been unable to receive humanity when their messages are upvoted. When players pay close attention and control for the other known causes of obtaining soft-humanity or estus, messages very strongly appear to not work. Unless someone has carefully tested for it, and knows of more specific rules to make it work, I'm starting to believe it's a false rumor entirely.

You can obtain soft-humanity by not killing enemies when some one (i forget which) lights a bonfire or kindles a bonfire. I think it's by lighting a bonfire. Kindling hands out estus. I think.

EeAyEss wrote:You can obtain soft-humanity by not killing enemies when some one (i forget which) lights a bonfire or kindles a bonfire. I think it's by lighting a bonfire. Kindling hands out estus. I think.

Hmm, I don't think that's the case. If it was, we'd see free soft-humanity being obtained nearly as often as the free estus from kindling, then. Free humanity seems to only come from killing enemies - and also some reports of pre-patch weirdness - like this:
http://cinemassacre.com/2013/01/07/dark-souls-xbox-360-first-impressions/
(around 1:35 in)

The game is being played unpatched and offline, so it's not a message or bonfire, and it's certainly a mysterious humanity. I would guess that the Black Knight fell off the cliff, but no souls were received. Maybe certain enemies used to not drop souls if they fell to their death? Or it's something else? Doesn't help that the person recording the video is a new player giving their first impressions, so he has no idea that it's odd.

Ok. Well, you seem to be the expert here lol.

Frankly, I don't really know.

I believe that this rumour came about because people didnt know about the kindling giving you a free estus shot or enemy killing giving you humanity.

It either gives nothing or it glitches. I've written about how broken messages are but no one seems to care because, we'll, it's just messages.

This stuff will work much better in dks2 since it will be server based.

I would really wish if devs could clarify the mechanics behind this and many other things.

In DeS, if my message got upvote it recovered my HP and I had written on my screen as well. It was a great motivation to write helpful messages.

In DkS, it seems pointless, because I get the feeling that nobody reads my messages and I don't even have anything from writting them in the first place.

i've never had one of my messages rated, either up or down. but i have seen plenty of messages with 100s of ratings, but the messages with high ratings are always non-sense for some reason.

also, the messages in Dark are linked to the character's save file and only appear when you are playing that specific character. while in Demon's the messages were linked to your PSN and stay visible in the game even when you're not online.

i think it may be true that if your message gets a possitive rating you get humanity. rarely does my messages get rated but i think i've noticed a time or two when i did get a rating, i dont noticed the exact time it gets rated cause i'm not always paying attention but it does seem like i've aquired 1 more humanity...

...i give positive ratings on all helpful messages i see...

It would be easier to test if people rated messages. None of mine get rated, and lots of people write the same thing. The average rating is probably one, but that's based on what I've seen in the game.

However, there used to be a message that sain "Bonfire?" next to the Firelink bonfire. It had 100+ ratings.

sentiel wrote:In DeS, if my message got upvote it recovered my HP and I had written on my screen as well. It was a great motivation to write helpful messages.

In DkS, it seems pointless, because I get the feeling that nobody reads my messages and I don't even have anything from writting them in the first place.

I played Demons Souls some online, but it was after it became sort of dead. I place 3 messges in the very first area (1-1, has the giant blob as a boss). They were:

1) Weakness fire: before the boss door.

2) Behind you!: at spawn point.

3) Treasure ahead: Between spawn point and hidden treasure.

Even with the game having almost nobody I still got lots of ratings. Everytime I loged on it said something like "Your message had been rated.", but no ratings in Dark.

I would say that receiving Estus is seemingly in no way related to messages in my experience. Unless I have some crazy really high rated message I have no memory of and is still out there somehow. I've only had a few upvotes but I've gotten free Estus a great deal. I thought the soft humanity was for rapid kills in an area in which the boss was still alive.... Not sure where I saw that but it seems like it could be true. I notice I get more when I'm speed running. I also used to get a decent amount back when I was forest hunting regularly. I would camp out in the Burg between invading and (since the boss was still alive) I would clear out mobs quickly when necessary to make sure invaders didn't have a nice advantage on me. Could be confirmation bias though. I haven't pulled together any data.

Kuragari wrote:i think it may be true that if your message gets a possitive rating you get humanity. rarely does my messages get rated but i think i've noticed a time or two when i did get a rating, i dont noticed the exact time it gets rated cause i'm not always paying attention but it does seem like i've aquired 1 more humanity...

But I tested this. I knew going in to this that most players aren't keeping a close watch on their votes, so I made sure to do that.

I watched my message ratings like a hawk as soon as I got confirmation from the other player that they saw my message and upvoted it. The vote didn't come through instantly from my end, it took around 10 minutes before it came through. I kept a close eye on my humanity and estus. No effect.

The second vote I got, I happened to literally watch it update live (also took over 10 minutes from when the other player rated the message). I don't know if it's normally possible to watch votes come through, like see a zero change to 1, when looking at your message list with the orange guidance soapstone. It may be possible since I saw it happen. However, the list only displays 5/6 messages at once, so you have to scroll up/down to see the one message that isn't displayed. I saw the vote change as I was scrolling up and down, which is either a coincidence or the scrolling 'refreshed' the list.

I also upvoted a couple messages of the other player, one of which eventually went through for them. They also did not receive anything.

The humanity you may have acquired could have come from killing enemies in an area where the boss was not yet defeated. A lot of people don't realize there is a mechanic for this, falsely attributing the humanity to messages when this happens. You can get up to 10 soft humanity by killing 'a lot' of enemies before the boss is dead. It's like leveling, where it takes more and more kills each time. The first will take roughly 17-34 kills, the tenth will take roughly 51-102 kills (this is going just by hollows in the burg). When you get the free humanity, you'll see a black aura fly into your humanity counter, similar to the white aura you get when you're obtaining souls.

so i can stop rating every message i come across?

I've never even placed a message before.. Thought there was no point in doing so.

lol and i've been rating messages forever now to encourage people to do the same for some humanity...what a

EeAyEss wrote:You can obtain soft-humanity by not killing enemies when some one (i forget which) lights a bonfire or kindles a bonfire. I think it's by lighting a bonfire. Kindling hands out estus. I think.

You can get a soft humanity by killing a certain amount of enemies in an area where the boss is still alive. I was farming the hollows by using the red drake, then going to the bonfire, and so on. Don't remember the exact numbers, but let's say I had 10 soft humanity at 30 000 souls

I knew that, just thought there might be something else. Oh well. Slaying enemies will have to do.

WaffleGuy wrote:

EeAyEss wrote:You can obtain soft-humanity by not killing enemies when some one (i forget which) lights a bonfire or kindles a bonfire. I think it's by lighting a bonfire. Kindling hands out estus. I think.

You can get a soft humanity by killing a certain amount of enemies in an area where the boss is still alive. I was farming the hollows by using the red drake, then going to the bonfire, and so on. Don't remember the exact numbers, but let's say I had 10 soft humanity at 30 000 souls

Retro did the numbers and its roughly 30-40 kills in an area per humanity.