Many people have reservations against multiplayer invasions in souls-like games. I wanted to record the kinds of no-mic interactions I have with other players to hopefully encourage more people to try them and to show how active the Seamless Co-op server is.

Among the reasons that a person might not do invasions are

• Invading is intruding on others free time. I don’t like the idea of violating their play

• I have limited free time and don’t want invaders interrupting my experience of the game

• People online are mean and will be unpleasant

• People on Seamless Co-Op will use cheat engine or other exploits to make the game uneven

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The following reasons also can also play a role but I don’t think I can collect data that will affect them

• People online act in ways that disrupt the artistic vibe of From Software games

• I just enjoy soloing stuff. I don’t want help and I’m not sufficiently interested in PvP to use the taunter’s tongue

• When co-oping I feel a pressure to not waste the other person’s time, and I often want to just screw about trying to get up to a ledge or similar if I see something interesting

• I am aware that co-op has an etiquette that I don’t know and have not taken the time to learn

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Hopefully with this data I gathered you will be able to see for yourself what Seamless Co-op invasion experiences are like, and it may dispel some conceptions about multiplayer in From Software games. Invasions are a vibrant and complex experience that I think more people may find they can enjoy in a less restricted environment like Seamless.

The players: I’ve grouped the largest demographics of invasion encounter types according to how the hosts were playing and whether they seemed to want to be invaded.

Co-op Group 1 are players who I conceptualize as the most common type of multiplayer interaction. They probably did not particularly wish to be invaded on their playthrough, but they left the setting turned on that allows invasions. Almost all invasions on standard From Software servers are upon players of this type, but who cannot opt out of the interaction.

Co-op Group 2 are players who intentionally express their intent to be invaded or their enjoyment of the experience. I read indications of this through interactions such as dancing/cordial greetings, intricate and creative character cosplays, and use of the Taunter’s Tongue multiplayer item which invites multiple invaders to attack simultaneously

Fight Clubs are a spontaneous player-initiated armistice of traditional invasion gameplay where a single host summons multiple invaders who instead of collaborating to kill the host take turns dueling the host or each other in single combat. They are the second most common on standard servers.

Solo hosts inviting multiple invaders are rare. It is a single host usually with a high amount of dueling experience seeking to fight as many other players as possible at all times.

Group 1-B are co-op players who undeniably did not wish to be invaded and were able to nonverbally communicate so. This takes some effort to accomplish. I feel they deserve their own category since if you don’t want to intrude on people’s playthrough this is the group of players who will expressly ask you not to.

Ganks are rare and often misunderstood. They definitively are when a group of 3 or more co-op players invite single invaders to a world with no living enemies to kill them in a 3v1 fight. I’ll be only using this strictest definition for my data because anything less than what I mentioned is standard invasion gameplay and to initiate these on either Seamless or standard servers requires intentional and focused effort

Avoidants are players who so expressly did not wish to be invaded that they immediately cease gameplay in order to interrupt it. The methods to do so include closing the game, using various means to kill their character such as leaping off ledges, or simply becoming passive until the invader kills them. In all cases they did not realize Seamless allows you to turn off invasions. I only recorded players as avoidant if they did one of these behaviors without trying to fight back or communicate at all.

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Factors I tracked separately: they are represented as part of the above groups, but I have tallied them for your consideration

•Players using dropped gear: a “soft” exploit that I hear many people do not wish to encounter in multiplayer. I have them tallied for people who consider them an annoyance

•Instances of multiplayer jank: gameplay bugs that affected online play. Seamless set out to correct these but one I still encountered was myself or hosts being invisible to other players

•Use of cheat engine: a program that hooks on to a video game and alters the code in real-time to perform exploits such as preventing player death or giving bell-summoned ash creatures infinite health. From Software standard servers protect against this but Seamless Co-Op does not

Further considerations and connection time Over the course of the 30 hours I logged 2 hours and 26 minutes waiting for matches. However, they all occurred during the night and morning hours 10 pm to 7 am. I didn’t record how much time I spent at what times of day, but I’ll assume most people want to play in the day hours of their time zone. During day hours at time of writing there is no wait to connect to a host.

Three things I did not record are times that I connected to a host right as they were

• walking into boss fog wall (which ends the match)

• times that the connection failed right as I connected

• my victories/losses (I’m not posting that, I got my ass beat)

The dropped connections could possibly represent players who did not wish to be invaded and were turning off their internet, but I have no way to verify

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Hopefully if you’ve had reservations about playing Elden Ring online that are rooted in fears about interacting with the community this helps. People are surprisingly receptive to invasion mechanics when they have a way play with their friends and still to opt out. Seamless Co-op also removes the in-game barriers to the world that normally appear during an invasion which also reduces hostility. There are still obviously people who don’t read the settings ini when setting up multiplayer but nothing is preventing you from leaving those people alone if you ever do find yourself in their game. Alternatively if you are the kind of person who would rather fend off invaders and help Tarnished reach their goals in the lands between, this shows there’s never been a better time to get out there and try to protect them from me 😁 Thanks for reading. Thank you to @Skua for your insights and feedback in making this