Dark Souls: Ready to die

[KatanaRama]

honestly I still think DS1 has the best PVP. Functionally no but there was something about the PVP in that game that felt much more harrowing then any SoulsBorne since. Invasions actually felt like invasions. I don't know, newer games I just feel like invasions are too structured, which is fine every once in awhile, but out side of the Watchdogs of Farron I don't think I've ever had someone actively hunt me down in the environment with the sole intent of murdering my ass in the most brutal way they can manage.

I can understand that. It really feels like they've slowly removed any incentive to invade in recent games, as well as any reason to try and stay alive. You don't really lose anything (lets be real here, you end up having like 1,000 embers in the late game). You don't go hollow anymore, and they've stacked the odds so far in the direction of the host that 1/10 invasions will be actually successful and worth your time, which is debatable since you don't really get anything from invading, aside from the zone covenants to progress your rank. On top of that, every covenant you only need 30 mcguffins to get everything. Even in dark souls 2 I remember grinding away in the covenants to get all the rad, actually cool stuff at the maximum rank. And i'll not even bother getting into the mess that was "invasions" in bloodborne, let alone the PvP itself.

[Django]

A big aspect of invasions is covenant affiliation. Dark souls 1 had more exclusivity and crypticness in it's covenants ,and that immensely added to the
invasion system and the replay-ability of the regular game and new game +

i.e. for low level pvp, you could kill this super high level boss (4 kings) very early in the game, and get the dark wraith covenant ,or you get the gravelord covenant
by going to another high level part in the beginning of the game. In other words, it gave you freedom to adapt to the style of playthrough that you going for ,and
the covenant system rewarded players for having knowledge acquired through multiple play-troughs. That's called "depth" in a multiplayer.
In the newer dark souls, you could join any covenant at anytime without penalty. Makes the covenants feel all the same.

Also in Dark Souls 1, the covenant rewards were actually useful like increasing buffs, spells ,and humanity stolen. Once, again giving you a good initiative to participate in the
invasions. In the newest dark souls, either it took too long to get the rewards , like 100 invasions per covenant (dark souls 2) ,or the rewards were flat out garbage plus some
covenants not working (dark souls 3)

Plus, invasions are always balanced against the invader dark souls 3 as you can most of the time invade:

a. Someone with 2 white ghost
b. An actual fight club
c. Someone who has the exact same stuff as you