Video with interesting view on PvP

Here is a player who enjoys every aspect of pvp in souls- healing, BS, ganking no matterwhat he doesn't mind (he'll repeat that a lot too lol), but interesting is his view on divine blessing. He says blessings are worse than other kinds of healing because they might be and probably are hacked.

To me this is pretty interesting. I'm of the view in pvp that if you heal, I'm instantly just gonna stop playing. It's not on. He however is fine with other heals, but because the item might have been copied a few times it's wrong.

Harking back to the days of demon's souls. Everyone did that with darkmoon grass. It was the norm. Everyone healed in fights with grass and everyone could. Obviously in dark it's not quite as easy to obtain the blessings, but honestly I don't think objecting to one form of healing and not another makes too much sense.

What's your thoughts?

Thought you don't watch souls vids. Foxeo's pretty cool, brings up some good points but can whine a bit too much at times.

I don't usually, it came up on my youtube home page and I thought why not

False premise number 1, divine blessings are hacked.

he addresses that to an extent. I have hundreds of divine blessings, the first 99 were given to me, and before the mega mule was widely known (we're talking first 5 months or so) and the rest are what i've gotten myself since. i don't have a computer, so i couldn't even hack them if i wanted to.

false premise 2) amount hp bar moves indicates total hp.

not past either 1800 or 2k it doesn't. if that guy has 22 hundred hp, the bs would look like it hurts a lot less than it actually does, based on the hp bar that you can see.

false premise 3)

its like that everywhere. its really not. there are always some, but he's in the forest, where lawlessness is the rule, on the 360 where hacking is more common, complaining about cheating. he's arguably in THE hacking capital of dks and complaining about hacking. that would be like going to a rave and complaining about drugs. you may or may not dissagree with it, but you intentionally put yourself in a place where its not only going to be preasent, but common.

false premise 4) hacking is hacking. (don't have a better phrase)

Hacking 99 divine blessings is very different than hacking +15 havels. know why? because +15 havels does not exsist naturally. it cannot be done without a hack. the same with infinite hp.

its all hacking yes, but one merely provides something that could have been gotten anyways and merely saves time, where one gives one something that is not possible to obtain within the rules of the game.

even if you are of the opinion that all hacking is bad, there is still a clear distinction between hacking a sword with 9000000000 ar to kill in 1 hit, and hacking items you could have had anyways, in order to save time.

to say otherwise is essentially the same as saying "crime is crime." well yes it is, but are you hinestly telling me that you consider going 5mph over the limit the same level of harmful ar murder?

This is silly.

I agree with the uploaders views on PvP. Everything is fair game. 
I may not like some things, like bs fishing and spell spamming. I may disagree to some things, like frowning on Hornet Ring, or demanding pre-fight buffing. But in the end, it's all fair game. 
As far as invasions goes, everything is permitted. However when I use a RSS, I ask for a honourable duel. Even though everything is still permited, I would prefer to refrain from ganking, healing etc. That's what I believe RSS is for.

That is unless hacking/modding is involved and you're facing someone with infinite HP, Curse weapon, +10 Havel's Armor etc. That's when I just quit the game and go cool myself. It doesn't make me mad that I lose to these people. Heck, my odds of winning are very slim, so it's no wonder if I lose. It's just that people that use cheats like this infuriate me, only because they exist and because they ruin the game for others.

However, I disagree with the uploader's view on Divine Blessings. 
I played a few hundred hours of Demon's Souls PvP, but never got beyond random invasions. All those "rules" that were in 4-1 baffled me and I prefered to do whatever I want and remained mostly in 1-4. No point in ruining their fun. So I moved elsewhere.
As such I had to deal with people chewing on Dark Moon Grass everyday. Just like Divine Blessings, they were supposed to be a very rare item. Just like Elixirs in Final Fantasy games. But thanks to a glitch, everyone could have an unlimited supply of these items. It was a lot easier to interrupt the healing thanks to absence of Poise system, but thanks to backstab cancel on rolls, they were harder to punish if you failed to interrupt it.

Dark Souls doesn't have the same glitch, but that doesn't mean people can't have unlimited stock of Divine Blessings.

You can get 9 per game + 2 as a starting gift.

Spoiler:

So a person on NG+ can have up to 20 of them.

Furthermore, there are trading possibilities. Five friends can gather a whooping 100 Divine Blessings (similarly to what I did a long time ago). On Xbox and PC you can backup your save file on USB and use that to multiply them and all five friends who pooled their DBs now walk away with 100 each. On PS3, this is possible only with PS+, which is not fair to those who don't have PS+, but that is only as far as multiplication goes. There is still trading and farming them. So yes, it is possible, albeit requires a lot more work. An argument could be used that Mega Mule has broken the save file protection and thus can be uploaded to USB, which means everybody can get the same amount of DBs. However, I would rather not use this argument, because I actually am against usage of Mega Mule and haven't used it myself, so I can't prove the possibility of this.

The uploader talks about 99 DBs, but quits after the invader uses 1-3. I never saw his opponent use more than the 9 you can pick up. Even still, there's no proof the player isn't on NG+2 to get three stacks of WoG and picked up his share of DBs along the way. He himself has 59 of them. I don't question where he got them, for I don't care, but he does have them. That means the playing field is even. Just like in DeS. Such a scenario can turn into a long battle of attrition to see who has more DBs, or will end with the help of gravity. But that's up to the person who gets into such a situation. The uploader chooses to quit the game. Save himself the time and trouble of fighting such players. And why not? I would probably do the same. We don't have to win every single fight we get into. If we insist on fighting such a fight, we have no right to complain about it, because it was our choice to stay.

My initial response, was aimed at putting DB users on the same level as hackers and modders. It is indeed silly. You can kill a DB user with your weapons and spells. You can't do that to a guy with infinite HP. No amount of hacking and casting will fell them down unless you ask gravity for a hand.

tl:dr
Having Divine Blessings doesn't necessarily mean modding/hacking.

Sentiel wrote:tl:dr
Having Divine Blessings doesn't necessarily mean modding/hacking.

 

TooLeet wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:False premise number 1, divine blessings are hacked.

he addresses that to an extent. I have hundreds of divine blessings, the first 99 were given to me, and before the mega mule was widely known (we're talking first 5 months or so) and the rest are what i've gotten myself since. i don't have a computer, so i couldn't even hack them if i wanted to.

I'm guessing your addressing MM because more hackers have appeared since it's release. The only things you don't get with it are divine blessings and mushrooms. I don't know if that's what you meant but i figured i'd just address that.


On a side note, good fine Serious. I thought it was a pretty good video and he made good points. The only thing that troubled me was, the entire time he was talking about hacked DB's. I thought in my head, "yeah, that makes sense" until he popped one himself. There is no justification for that. All he did was contradict himself after he did that. I stopped watching after that.

Of course I'm talking about the mega mule. I explicitly stated I was talking about the mega mule. I was saying that I have hundreds of db's, and did not use the mega mule to get them, nor did my inital giftwraith use the mega mule to get theirs. The assertion that I hacked based on my use of a db alone is hilariouly presumptious.

I'm aware that there are more hackers since it became popular. he's still on the 360, in the forest, complaining about hackers. see previous metaphor.

I know it's presumptuous, but I assume that my opponent is "not legit" (not necessarily hacking) if they pop even one DB. My reason is that I find it unfathomable for anyone to want to use such a valuable and rare item, unless they have an unnatural surplus of it. Again, that's my perspective and it is presumptuous, but I feel that most people who would be willing to use up a DB in any case either have an illegitimate amount or just don't care.

1) what you feel is irrelivant

2) even within the parameters of your logic, there is a 50%+ cannce they got them legitimately and used them because they don't care or really want to win the fight.

Haven't watched this video but I haven't liked Foxeo's style in the past videos I've seen, so I'd probably be biased against before even watching.

BrotherBob wrote:I know it's presumptuous, but I assume that my opponent is "not legit" (not necessarily hacking) if they pop even one DB. My reason is that I find it unfathomable for anyone to want to use such a valuable and rare item, unless they have an unnatural surplus of it. Again, that's my perspective and it is presumptuous, but I feel that most people who would be willing to use up a DB in any case either have an illegitimate amount or just don't care.

I am of a similar opinion. Same goes for Mushrooms.  

If you're invading me, you're clearing intent on PvP, if you then go and use 3 DB's or Mushrooms, I'm going to assume that you have more than the 20-30 or so (less for EM) that you would reasonably have through preparing your player for PvP (NG++ for spells/souls/weapons/etc - and most people don't even go this far).  

Obviously it's different if I invade someone and they use a DB or two, as they might not be an avid PvPer and may very well just be trying to survive and get through the game. It's all situational. It's pretty easy to tell on PC though, as you tend to invade/be invaded by the same person many times, so you can clearly see if they regularly use DB's in a fight, as opposed to a one time thing.

But if someone is clearly looking to PvP, and uses a couple of DB/EM's in per fight, then I'm going to assume that they have a few up their sleeve than the regularl Joe, and I'm going to assume that they were either dropped by someone using a trainer/CE, or they used it themselves, which then fosters doubt about their stats and gear.


I won't quit out of the game, that to me is a bit of an overreaction best left of proper hackers (curse, teleport, etc), but I will start fighting with every cheap trick I know.
To me duped DB/EM's are the same level as using a trainer to lock your HP. Sure you can still be killed, but if the person using them is half switched on and has enough poise to tank a hit, they're essentially giving themselves as much HP as they have DB's, which could be up to 99x their HP.

Cursed weapons and that sort of stuff are a whole new level though, I wouldn't compare it to that, but there's not doubt that having 99 DB's and using several in a fight is a clear, and unfair, advantage over the regular player that might have 10 or so (which would only last a few fights if they used similar tactics).

It would be different if they were farmable, similar to Gold Resin or Humanity, but they're not, and I don't know of anyone that would go through the game several times just to stock pile them for a couple of hours of PvP.

Personally, I don't care if the DBs are hacked or other things are hacked (as long as they exist in the game). It is how they are used. In the Forest, I don't care at all. Other areas, I don't care if questers do it (spam healing). They are trying to survive. No rules. I expect them to do anything they can to survive. That is part of the fun of invading, even better if they have phantoms.

Now, campers or duellers, that is another story. They spam DB healing, I'm out of there. Call me a poor sport, but I have better things to do with my life than spend that much time on one duel. What's the point, if all we do is virtually insta-heal throughout the entire fight? There are many people out there who are looking for a real duel (where they could either win or lose).

I was told that MM used to have DBs in it, but they got removed. That means two things.

1. There will be people with the MM version that has DBs.

2. It is possible to add them to the save file again.

After some searching on Google about MM, I ran into more than one version of the MM, some of which supposedly (feel free to search for them and validate them yourselves) contain modded items, modded characters and 99x2 of DBs and EMs. Some people just took MM and changed a few things to make their own version and spread it around. I hear it's pretty easy to mod a save file once you got the file itself. However it would not be possible if MM hasn't gone public and so widespread. Thus I believe MM is to blame for most, if not all modders on PS3. As a proof of fact, I have never met a single player with modded stuff in 1400+ hours of playing Dark Souls. Now, I meet at least one per day of PvPing. That's more than enough proof for me to blame MM for the appearance of these jerkoffs no matter how people may try to defend MM, or claim this is not enough as a proof.

So, no, bringing MM into the conversation isn't irrelevan at tall, however, it should be kept in mind that PC and Xbox has these "issues" to deal with as well and they both have it much worse.

EDIT: I forgot to add, that if we're talking about MM, we should also talk about BB glitch, because there were people popping DBs like candy way before MM. And as I mentioned earlier, thanks to backing up save files, the DB users today can be leftovers from BB days as well.

In all honesty, I would much prefer if the game didn't have items like EMs and DBs. Their rarity is irrelevant. People will find a way to stack them and subsequently abuse their stacks of these items online. They're not necessary and thus I believe shouldn't be in the game at all.

@Forum Pirate: I was under the impression that the purpose of a forum was to discuss all matters related to DS, which would include thoughts and feelings. Also, I wonder how you determined that over 50% of players who use DBs in PvP obtained them legitimately. To clarify, I am considering gifted DBs in quantities larger than 10 to be illegitimate. However, if gifted DBs are considered legitimate, then I would actually agree very strongly on that point.

@StiffNipples: Your mention of farmable items made me think of DeS. I never played it but have watched many hours of gameplay. I can't imagine what PvP would have been like in DeS, where it's not a matter of skill, but a matter of how much grass you have.

BrotherBob wrote:I can't imagine what PvP would have been like in DeS, where it's not a matter of skill, but a matter of how much grass you have.

Let me help you then.
Desperate ways to insta kill, or chain kill your opponent so that he can't heal. If you fail, you start from scratch. Invasions could get pretty long like this and they usually did get long. One of the reasons why I loved invading with Hyper mode and aiming to one shot everything in my path.
Now that I think back about it, it was horrendously boring, but I still loved the game.

Touche Sent. I had no idea there was more than one MM. All i've ever seen was Doms. Anyways, since we were on he subject earlier today i did a little research on how easy it would be to change the MM to add thing such as Db's and Em's. Because of the encryption on Dark Souls, unless you know how to code, you can't do it. People say it's easy to change the mm, which is not (at least i don't know how to code.) Everyone calls players with infinite health hackers, but call MM a mod. But to be able to "hack" on Ps3 you have to do the same thing as was done to make MM possible. What i'm trying to say is these infinite health/stamina people are doing the same thing Dom did. So if MM is modding, these people are modders, not hackers.

This reminds me of the conversation about Dead Angles, where Fex stepped in and clarified that it is not a glitch, but an exploit.
While glitches are a part of the game, intentional, or not, adding to the game something that shouldn't be there, or changing the values of something already present is the field of modding/hacking. As for the correct term, I don't care for it. We all know what I mean when I call someone in Dark Souls a modder/hacker. As long as that works, the correct terminology is irrelevant to me.

Also, with the number of modders on PS3 lately, I refuse to believe each of them is capable of coding. While modded items can be gifted, I doubt you can gift an invisible body, or unlimited HP. Lastly. When I was searching for ways to make glowing hair on PS3, I ran into a video where someone showcased weapon stat modding on PC in real time. It took only few seconds to do and was very simple thanks to some program running simultaneously with the game.  I really see no reason why this couldn't be done with a Edit and then upload the changed game to PS3.

...
Now that I think about it. Perhaps we should move back to the topic of Divine Blessings usage and leave this for a different thread, or PMs. 

@Modteam
If I got into too much depth regarding the modding issue, please edit/delete my posts as you see fit.

I pretty much agree with what the video had to say, though I also thought it was hilarious when he pulled up his DBs.

I would say that on average, 90%+ of DBs used in PvP are modded in? If you disagree, let me know, but just looking at the players I see using them and how easy it is to cheat 99 of them in (an older MM or incredibly easy on PC) I think it's a fair guess. E.g. in his video I would have assumed all of those DBs are modded in except for maybe the stone armor/bkh player, who seemed very new and may just use his DBs in times of emergency.

Someone mentioned being gifted 99 of them, where do you think they came from? Someone else mentioned using backed up saves, but how is duping not cheating?

I prefer to think of it all as cheating. On PC you can use a tool to get 99 of anything, or to increase your stats above where they would be at that level, or to freeze your hp and stamina. What is the line there between save editing/modding/hacking?

That being said, of course some cheating is worse than others. Using curse weapons or damaging someone else's stats is worse than having infinite HP, but I see much less difference between having infinite HP and poise stacking with edited in DBs.

To the "it just saves time, people could get them legitimately anyways" argument, it's the same idea as using MM to have 20 crystal weapons in your inventory. My response to this is that it takes enough time to get these things that the players just wouldn't do it without the save editing. I know I would never take the time to farm to always have crystal weapons. In all the cases that the player wouldn't take the time to get these things (and I believe this would be the overwhelming majority), they're now using save editing to gain an unfair advantage over their opponents. Which I would again call cheating.

There is no such thing as a "save editor" specifically for Dark Souls on Ps3. Xbox yeah, i seen pages upon pages of them. And about the terminology, i was just stating what learned. There is such an editor for the Ps3 but it's not as simple a save editor where you have a list of items. Either way, you don't need to mod to get 99 db's

I've had to edit out certain words and phrases and even a whole paragraph of sens post as it was so heavy with method I couldn't reword it. (If it's bad enough you need a sentence at the end saying mods can edit your post, you should probably rewrite it next time )

Guys you cannot outline how mod and hack. You shouldn't even allude to the method of obtaining it in the way you speak. Calling it a 'save edit' is fine for instance but saying words that almost explain how you get it aren't acceptable.

Please bear this in mind. We're not ignorant and don't think that noone uses MM, but we don't want to have threads with tutorials on downloading it when new players walk through the door

Sentiel wrote:I was told that MM used to have DBs in it, but they got removed. That means two things.

If you're talking about the discussion we had then you either misunderstood or I explained it poorly. There never was dbs or mushrooms in megamule. If someone knows how to save edit, then yes obviously they can be added. Just clearing this up, now continue

I figured we were starting to cross the line so i tried to keep my explaination and terminology to a minimum.

Exactly leet. I know you guys aren't intentionally doing it to explain MM or anything so I don't mind just reminding you when you guys start erring on the side of explanation, but please just out of respect for the team and just to save us time be more careful with your posting so we don't have to go around editing posts