Board Thread:Dark Souls/@comment-24591958-20141115064416

What happened to me just a few minutes ago while I was on a new playthrough with a new character has made me realize what the biggest problem with the Souls series' pvp in general. After having a bad experience with an invader a long time ago, I decided to stop letting one bad experience sour the whole game for me and try to play online in human form. I was up in the Undead Parish, making my way towards the gargoyles when I was invaded. Now, I'm at least happy that the invader didn't immediately make a bee line for my back the minute he saw me, but he was dressed in full Smough's armor and had a lightning battle axe. I'm only around soul level 15, so there's no way in a million years this guy should be able to invade me, but he did, and promptly stunlocked and two-shotted me with his battle axe.

The problem is this: The game is very poor at making fair matchups. Yes it prevents level 100s from invading you, but it doesn't stop a level 15 getting fully upgraded gear traded to him from a friend and then stomping everyone with it. I've pretty much arrived at the conclusion that it's next to impossible to have good pvp at low levels because no one wants to play fair. Dark Souls 2 tried to do something about this with the soul memory system, but ultimately did nothing to stop it and introduced a new problem whereby soul level 150s get matched up with players 100-300 levels higher than them if their soul memory is too high.

Now this post has sounded like a lot of QQ moar, but I want to offer a suggestion to fix this problem. My suggestion would be a threat system, whereby every individual piece of gear, has a threat value assigned to it (which increases depending on upgrade level). So if you're soul level 25 or something and have full Havel's plus a fully upgraded weapon, you won't be able to invade other level 25's because your gear sets your threat level too high. Of course, higher soul levels would curb your threat level less so you don't get punished by being pitted against overleveled players just because of the gear you equip. I know I'll get a lot of "QQ moar git gud" type comments, but I think I have a good idea here and genuinely want to hear what you guys think and any suggestions to improve it (or if you think my idea is crap, please explain why). And no, getting ganked by players with overpowered gear (compared to your stage in the game) shouldn't be part of the game, so don't even bother saying that. 