PvP etiquette?

@BrotherBoB: It's the forest - i wouldn't expect anything else. And the Forest Hunter is the sole convenant who encourages the player to take any measure to protect the forest. Wether Gwydoline nor Kathee encourage you to behave like a cowardly murderer.
This happend to me very often in the Burg, when summoned via rss....

When we talk about respect/honor in Dark/Demons Souls PvP i'm pretty sure those rules of engagement where derived from bushido or chivalry. And i'm sure a BS while bow, or a 3v1 spawn gank, or worse trick your opponent with honorable behavior and then fall into his back isn't covered by those.
As i said you can choose to play a RGP as a ninja, or a dirty little murderer for roleplaying. But then you do it in the knowledge of those rules an decide to not follow them. But to say those rules never existed, or no longer exist is wrong.
Some youtuber promoted that it's cool to BS a honorable duelist while bow and the honorable duelist is the dork who deserves it. Now it became the new meta.....

@Pirate: you can give your best after he made his bow and anlone without estus. If you don't like weapon buffs i think nobody will say, that it's wrong to punish a buff right into your face. In fact if you do anything to win you should always spwan gang. Or worse hack infinite health.

Your assertion that an individual who is doing everything they can to win because they see it as disrespectful to their opponent to give them artificial leeway would do nothing but hack infinate health is flat out wrong. It's a stawman and you probably know it. Hacking is outside the bounds of the game. If the goal is "I will personally fight my opponent attempting to take every advantage offered to me, as to ignore these chances would be akin to insulting my opponent by insinuating he is not a threat to me" There is nothing about that which would cause one to want to 3v1 gank or Cheat for infinate health/stamina impossible stats ect.

Also just because the game features swords I have little to no reason to believe that bushido or chivalry has in anyway effected how I view respect towards my opponents, or how I carry my own actions in a manner that I find honorable. In fact Dark souls is primarily a game about failing, over and over. Were I to adhere to bushido code my dishonorable failure would only result in my own life being forfeit, quite the contrast to the reality of dark souls where failing is only a temporary set back.

So I know I got a little less than serious about this topic but I'd like to reiterate that there is no reasonable expectation that you have any clue about your opponent and their beliefs unless, like Forum Pirate said, you're their best friend or one hell of a psychologist/psychiatrist.  For example, in the forest when I invade I of course have the ability to heal if necessary.  My method of choice is Great Heal.  Why that?  It takes a long time and is widely regarded as one of the easiest spells to punish.  

I'm intentionally trying to be disrespectful.  I won't heal in a duel unless it gets interrupted and I allow my opponent time for that.  I will heal if someone breaks one of my rules.  Again, MY RULES.  If they heal in a duel, try to summon someone else or if I've caught them doing something unsavory MY code goes out the window.  I use Great Heal rather than humanity because if I can successfully get that off it's a slap in the face in my opinion.  I'm not great at PvP but I'm good enough to cast slow *** Great Heal and get away with it right in front of your face.  I'll also throw poison knives rather than actually attack.  I'll dodge incessantly with no intention of attacking for ages.  Basically, just be a jerk.  But even with people I blatantly will break my rules for and show disrespect to, I don't get angry or send hatemail.  I just move on.  


Because like my first post in this thread, the only real rule of etiquette in any online video game is that both parties are expected to choose to either press or not press buttons.  And I'm completely sincere in that statement.  

For Dark Souls this is especially true.  Assuming we can ferret out some intent:

Hosts are allowed to summon phantoms.  Plural.  You can not force a joint invasion.  That's based on luck.  Ganking as we call it, is a built in game mechanic.  

Some online methods of connecting allow for persons to meet and fight where there is a ludicrous difference in level.  The battle is not intended to start on equal footing.  

As a forest hunter, I am intimately aware of how well 8 or more trees can jack a host up.  Mushroom hit like tanks.  The rolly cat trio is generally assurance of a win if the host doesn't have a bow or walks in unwittingly.  

This game (natural law for criminal justice majors or fans) allows for and even encourages some of the dirtiest tricks in the book.  

Our own rules (mankind's law) will always derive from the natural law.  We make it what we want based on what is possible.  As such, man's law is allowed to deviate in as many directions as the natural law will allow. Natural law allows for "dishonorable" tactics.  As such, man's law can take this path too.  

I find it admirable that so many people in this game (and more so on this forum) have tried their hardest to make rules and live by them and improve the community.  But in the end, man's law is based on the masses.  We can (and maybe even should) work on making things "better" but we can't dictate to everyone.  And with no reasonable method of policing our man made laws (like real life enforcement) it's to be expected that deviations in this artificial environment will be very severe.  The only gripe I have is with those that seek to break the natural law (hackers).  


So the real question that should always be asked in these threads is this:

What etiquette do you, and you alone, WANT to see in Dark Souls?

or maybe better yet;

What etiquette/rules do you seek to promote?  

assuming you're not sick of me yet:

Jansports wrote:In fact Dark souls is primarily a game about failing, over and over. Were I to adhere to bushido code my dishonorable failure would only result in my own life being forfeit, quite the contrast to the reality of dark souls where failing is only a temporary set back.

Correct, if you fight dishonorable your life is sensless if you are on the bushido way. But if you fight honorable and follow the bushido rules dying in a battle is your goal.

I can understand your point behind trying everything to show that my opponent is a thread to me. It's humiliating to invade naked/bare fist, bow and let him BS you while that and then parry&riposte him to death with the rest of your hp.
But i thin this is only an alibi (strawman ;-) to get the justification to promote the right of the strongest, or better the survival of the fittest.

We (mankind) try to get away from that natural law (survival of the fittest, no moral involved, no good or evil exist there) and even Dark Souls has a term of sinner and good and evil. So it is not true that Dark Souls promotes the survival of the fittest. Why should the DM punish anybody if there is no moral? You can't sin without a moral/rules to obey or not obey.

btw: i agree with your rules skare and i want to promote chivalry/bushido because the cool youtuber who taunt honorable player promoted another DkS i got to know way back when i startet. It changed, i give my best to change it back - a revolution back to the old days

As a new pvper, what I learned from my numerous battles, is that you choose the time and place to be honorable. 

If I invade someone, I invade as a dark spirit, so I should act like one (although I never resort to bs. That is just low imo). 

I invaded someone in blighttown. I was standing right at the entrance to the she-spider-quelagg, and was waiting for my opponent to arrive. He was running and ran right past me to summon the woman butcher whose name I forgot. As we fought, being two vs one, I lured him up from the fog gate to where the two spawns of quelagg were, and hacked away at them, releasing the worms. It was caotic, but I won against my opponent.

Notice I didn't use the term victim, even if I did something that I consider dirty.

After that, a naked guy with giant club invaded me and killed me with 2 bs. I hope the irony isn't lost here (with it's multiple facets).

When I invade and I see someone is alone, I wait for him to make the first move, see if what he expects is fair or dirty. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. But the only time when I go all out, and damn the consequences, is when there are phantoms with the host.

Battling the klin is, most of the time, honorable when someone invdes. 

Sometimes it's not.

If you care about honor, then you do the best you can, but there is no right or wrong when there are no clear rules - and the rules other try to force on us with words like honor and respect, are just rules for them to feel safe try to minimise risk.

This is a video game, and in an open environment, the rules are what you make of them. I welcome any type of player, because I know I can win. If I lose I can blame it on whatever, but then we have to remember it's a game, and losing dirty will not affect our real life, even if it is sometimes annoying.

Play as you want, not as you expect others to play.

What do I personally expect out of my opponent:
-They will either choose to press, or not press, buttons

Oh ho.  A perfectly acceptable philosophy.  Whether deliberate or not, it's a code of cherry-tapping .  Although perhaps you're not deliberately seeking to handicap yourself just so that you can beat opponents from a position of disadvantage, that's the end result.  Amusing, though it must suck for the other guys to lose to someone who isn't playing to their complete potential .

It's kind of like handing it to an enemy team in Call of Duty with one of the pathetic (IE much weaker than any alternative primary you could possibly select) shotguns.  There's an inverse relationship between the quality of an option and the satisfaction one gets out of beating the opponent down with it !

I'm too whimsical to stick to one process in PvP.  Sometimes I just kill the target ASAP, but often I let them finish off mobs, heal, and face me.  Sometimes, they turn into practice dummies for me as I try things out.

BrotherBob wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:hon·or
[on-er]
...
5.
high public esteem; fame; glory: He has earned his position of honor.

I think that definition #5 implies that an "honorable" code of conduct is (at least partially) dependent on what the general public agrees is honorable.

Only by that definition. That was, again, my point. There are many definitions of honor and within each definition there are many ways to meet the criteria, thus "honorable" is a rediculeously vauge and unhelpful way to describe anything/one. It can mean so many things, it is essentially meaningless. Evary person who reads it will have a different interpretation of the word/concept so the word/concept cannot be used as a basis for anything.

Some of this may boil down to morals vs ethics.

Ethics is community-imposed rules of conduct. As such, it can be ephemeral. Morals is a self-imposed rule of conduct, which is usually static (but can change as the individual changes).

Take capital punishment. It is ethically acceptable (where legal) under certain circumstances. But, that doesn't make it morally acceptable.

We all have our own definition of "honor", which would equate to our own morality. However, developing a community-accepted "ethical" play is much different. If it were possible, many people would have to compromise their own view of honor/morality for this to happen.

Obviously, that is not going to happen. We all need to respect the different points of view and understand people view this game differently. I find it quite enlightening to see all these different points of view, even if I don't agree with every one.

I tried for a long time to grasp what was considered fair when I started Dark Souls. Being as that its beyond its prime, there are some old, some new, and some twisted views on it. The wiki seems to say that all fights should be fair, one shouldn't rush in as as invader and take advantage of a bad situation. This is obiviously not the way Dark souls was originally meant to be played, and not the way it is most of the time anyway. Not to mention doing so puts yourself at a disadvantage when they are the one holding an estus flask. So i believe at some point most of the community must have held to it. But i don't see it. And the times I do invasions I'm attacked upon entering so I have decided to play by my own rules and moral compass.

As such, if I'm invading by normal means, I will kill you by the most efficient means possible. Luring a host and phantoms to engage a taurus demon while I shower them with dragon slayer arrows, or kicking them off a cliff if they put their back to it are prime examples. However, If you bow before i get off a sneak attack, I feel obligated to not attack you, back up to give you room, and even when I'm a darkmoon 90% of the time bow back before attacking.

If I'm being invaded I'm even more ruthless, throwing people off ledges with force, chameleoning into a pot or shelf, and awaiting the one hit kill backstab. As i see it, you invaded my world, without my permission, therfore I am to expect your tactics to hold just as low a respect for fair play. I try not to attack a bowing phantom, but If i bull rush, I bull rush fast and usually am hitting them as they start it. But don't expect me to bow back if I do manage to stop in time.

If I gravelord, or invite in a dragon sign it's completely different. It is then a duel to me, as both sides consented. There will be an open area and bowing, and a restriction of healing. Only change to that is if there is a 2nd invasion, and thats a case by case basis. I've had a spirit of vengeance chase and kill my red, and I've had a red and blue work together.

Ba22crow wrote:The wiki seems to say that all fights should be fair, one shouldn't rush in as as invader and take advantage of a bad situation. This is obiviously not the way Dark souls was originally meant to be played, and not the way it is most of the time anyway. Not to mention doing so puts yourself at a disadvantage when they are the one holding an estus flask. So i believe at some point most of the community must have held to it. But i don't see it.

Though I can't speak for the community, I can speak for myself. When I started playing Dark Souls, it was approximately a few months after release. Then, I can say that, in my experience, 60% of the fights I encountered anywhere were what the wiki defines as honorable. Keep in mind that I am on a strict NAT, so could only play with players with open NAT types (if that makes any difference at all). Anyway, I kept to being that definition of honorable. Over time, 60% started to fall towards 10%-20%, so I decided that if most others weren't being "honorable" (my definition closely resembles the wiki's), there was little point in blindly extending the courtesy of a bow unless the host did first. Thinking back, when I first started, I was pretty fiery about the whole subject of "honor" (you can check my first post on the forums; I got downrepped 8 times, but apparently one person wanted to support me and uprepped me). Over time, it seems that players have gotten a lot more numb towards the subject, and I can say that objectively since it has been months since I have gotten a message about being "dishonorable" (and I used to get quite a few at the Kiln even though I was playing "honorably" according to the wiki). Nowadays, I doubt there'd be anyone that would uprep a flaming post about honor. Just my perspective. THIS WAS NOT A PRESUMPTUOUS, FLAMING POST!

Forum Pirate wrote:

BrotherBob wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:hon·or
[on-er]
...
5.
high public esteem; fame; glory: He has earned his position of honor.

I think that definition #5 implies that an "honorable" code of conduct is (at least partially) dependent on what the general public agrees is honorable.

Only by that definition. That was, again, my point. There are many definitions of honor and within each definition there are many ways to meet the criteria, thus "honorable" is a rediculeously vauge and unhelpful way to describe anything/one. It can mean so many things, it is essentially meaningless. Evary person who reads it will have a different interpretation of the word/concept so the word/concept cannot be used as a basis for anything.

Well played, and the search for a word with an undisputed definition begins...  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

As for me, heh. if your talking about burg, since that's the only place i PvP. No one i faced ever bowed to me so far. So



O wait there's also the forest, but then again. My preferred combat style in the forest is, a bit unorthodox