By the time Dark Souls II came out, it was no secret that players had built their own fighting game inside of the Souls series. There were fight clubs that had been established with strict rules, letting players engage in honorable duels. PVP hotspots emerged as dedicated players congregated in specific places throughout the game world. Even FROM recognized the popularity of these duels early on, adding the Battle of Stoicism arena to Dark Souls with their DLC. By including them as default in Dark Souls II, it proved that not only did FROM know about these duels, but they actually encouraged players to participate, offering covenant rewards to the most dedicated PVP players.

The Dawn of Soul Level

Even in the very early days of PVP, players wanted a reliable way to engage in fair and balanced duels. Both Demons’ Souls and Dark Souls provided general guidelines for players to connect, but because this was not an original intention of the game, players were left to their own inventions. Players mostly used their end-game characters to battle each other. This made the most sense because it allowed them to use the all the great equipment they had picked up during their playthroughs. But using end-game characters also had another advantage.  For the most part, players finished the game around the same Soul Level. This allowed for players to connect to a larger pool of opponents easily. Eventually, the community settled on Soul Level which was easy to attain in a single playthrough and also allowed players enough points to customize their builds how they saw fit.

This system worked well for both Demons’ Souls and Dark Souls. Players were happily connecting to each other, having duels without the need for dedicated arenas. In time, some players became really good at PVP, pouring hours and hours into dueling. A couple of players even gained a significant level of popularity on Twitch and YouTube as they shared the PVP gameplay with the world. In turn, this increased the overall popularity of the Souls games. But this was when the simplicity of this matchmaking system started to fail the community as a whole.

Soul Level matchmaking was great for matching players of similar level, but there was no way to separate those who were highly skilled and experienced from those where were just starting out. Many of the players who had recently started trying their hand at PVP where getting destroyed by the veterans. It’s highly likely that this disparaging gap turned more than a few players off to the idea of PVP. But the community had done the best they could with the tools they had available to keep things fair and balanced. If anything more was to be done, than it was now up to FROM to do what they could to balance things further.

The Evolution to Soul Memory

In a move that shocked the community, FROM abandoned Soul Level matchmaking in Dark Souls II and instead, decided to match players based on their Soul Memory. Soul Memory was a completely new stat in Dark Souls II. In and of itself, it was very easy to understand. In the most basic terms, Soul Memory equaled the total number a souls a player had acquired throughout their character’s playthough. Lots of players didn’t understand the matchmaking at first. Some just couldn’t break away from Soul Level and were confused as to why they couldn’t connect with others as easily as before. Eventually the mechanics of Soul Memory matchmaking were figured out and guides were written to help players connect easily. But the resentment of change never really went away. The PVP community at large felt hurt by the change the most. But what was it about Soul Memory had the PVP community in such a frenzy?

The main problem PVP players saw with new matchmaking system was that it allowed players with really large differences in Soul Level to connect with each other. For example, let’s take a look at 2 players, both with a Soul Memory of 6.5 million. One player keeps his/her Soul Level at around 150, which is close to the level one might be at the end of the game. The other player however, either doesn’t care about or is not familiar with the PVP guidelines established by the community, decides he/she wants to be level 397. In this matchup, there is an obvious disparity, and though players have the same Soul Memory, it presents and unbalanced matchup. Admittedly, this is a failure on the part of Soul Memory matchmaking. But did this glaring problem rest solely on the shoulders of FROM, or was someone else at fault as well?

It’s obvious to anyone that the longer you play Dark Souls II, the more souls you will acquire and the higher your Soul Memory will rise. But as time goes on, you acquire more than just souls, you also gain experience and skill. This is where Soul Memory really shines. FROM expected the community to keep doing what they were doing. That is to say, they expected a Soul Level to be decided on, and they expected player’s to stick to it. By doing this, it allowed better players with high Soul Memories to continually move up in the tiers and face opponents of similar skill and experience while the new players with low Soul Memory faced each other. As players improve over time, their wins net them a higher Soul Memory and push them into higher tiers. Soul Memory was designed to balance PVP by shifting players around so that similarly skilled and experienced players faced each other. So why did Soul Memory fail?

The first real problem that Soul Memory faced was the fact that the community couldn’t decide on a new Soul Level to cap at. Some players wanted to keep it traditional at 125 while others argued that 150 was better suited for a ‘complete’ build. Still others pushed for a Soul Level of 200. What made it worse was that with Soul Memory, a level 125 could still be connected with a level 200. The second problem came when players wanted to squeeze as much out of their builds as possible. Those who had settled at say Soul Level 125, started adding a few point here and there, maybe bumping their builds up by 10 levels. After all, they could still connect to players who had stopped at 125 and they were sometimes facing players around level 200. Of course it didn’t stop there and they continued to occasionally add points, maybe to try a new weapon or spell. Before long, player levels were all over the place and it didn’t matter because Soul Memory let them still connect to each other.

What it really came down to was not the fact that Soul Memory had failed the community, but the community had failed themselves. Soul Memory was not a perfect system by any means, but it did have the ability to balance the matchmaking system more by grouping similarly experienced and skilled players together. Of course there were always going to be those trolls with the ultra-high Soul Levels, but there was no escaping them anyways. Had the community came together and really decided on a Soul Level for Dark Souls II PVP, Soul Memory would have shined. In the end, the community that strove for balance and fairness, became completely unbalanced themselves.

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