From Software announced today on their website that Dark Souls -- their controversial sequel to the sleeper hit Demon’s Souls -- would receive a 1.04 patch that contains extensive multiplayer fixes and balances. To summarize the announcement, here’s a quick translation:

Review of magic effectiveness for:
Magic Shield, Greater Magic Shield, Tranquil Walk of Peace, Ring of Fog, etc.

Infinite use of items and magic
Reviewing the balance between standard weapons and weapons with additional powers
Reviewing the conditions for matching players
Problems loading while changing maps

I know that to a lot of people -- myself first among them -- the idea of sweeping balance changes to the game’s multiplayer is welcome news. Even just “reviewing the conditions of matching players” sets joyous bell-towers tolling in my heart.

Now, I have great respect and admiration for From Software, and they’ve come out with some of my favorite games of all time. The Armored Core series, Demon’s Souls, Otogi -- all amazing games with a strong vision. I even thought the much-maligned Tenchu Z was a respectable effort with a lot of ninja style. For the most part, I love Dark Souls as well; I agree with most of what was said in our review.

That said, I think my beloved From Software finally fell short of my expectations. They stepped up to the plate and swung for the fences -- but they didn’t keep their eye on the ball.

A lot of their changes to multiplayer -- especially the new covenants -- are excellent. Joining a covenant can completely change the way you play the game, adding hours and hours of replay value even beyond the nearly infinite New Game+ options. Warriors of Sunlight gain unique lightning spells and a golden aura for helping other players beat bosses. Gravelord Servants can earn dark magics and even steal souls from other players in a devious game of cat and mouse. Darkwraiths are pure selfish evil, hunting down other players to suck the humanity out of them directly. Blades of the Darkmoon gain the ability to silently infiltrate the world of a character who’s been indicted by other players for cruelty and bring them to sharp, pointy justice. It’s a stunning look at the way multiplayer can work in an RPG, and I love it. As always, From Software has a beautiful vision and they aren’t afraid to execute on it.

Unfortunately, this time their vision is a little blurry. I’m not going to even go into the PvP balancing issues I’ve run into -- I’m talking about a multiplayer system that is broken at its core. From Software has made it practically impossible to enjoy this game with your friends. If you play on the Xbox, it literally signs you out of party chat and won’t let you talk to anyone you know in-game.  The PS3 is in a similar situation, with no provisions made for voice chat or friend inviting. You can’t even use the methods that worked in Demon’s Souls to meet up with a friend in a specific location, as the game’s wonky server system means you’re unlikely to even be playing on the same server. If you and a friend both get this game, you shouldn’t ever expect to play it together.

I’ve heard a lot of justifications for this total lobotomy of the co-op system. One of the most popular is, “it enhances the game’s atmosphere of loneliness.” If they really wanted the game to feel lonely, there would be no co-op at all, much less entire covenants devoted to spending as much time helping people as possible. I understand that From’s developers had a vision, and I have always been one of their biggest fans, but this decision simply doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s even assume you don’t know anyone else that you’d want to play the game with. The game’s matching criteria are so strict and arcane that even meeting up with total strangers as the game encourages you to do is difficult. Because the population of your server can vary wildly between full and empty, you could get summoned immediately or spend twenty or thirty minutes sitting at a boss just waiting for someone to find you. The new server system doesn’t even bring good stability -- I have about 50% of my attempted summons fail, which is a bit worse than I remember it being even in Demon’s Souls. Even though thousands of people are playing Dark Souls at any given time, they are split up among so many servers that it feels like the game’s server population is terribly low.

What about if you want to invade someone else’s world as a Black Phantom and get in some good old fashioned PvP? You use one of your consumable red eye stones and the game will tell you it’s searching for a world to invade. If no one fits the tight level and location criteria on your server, the invasion will simply fail -- but you still lose your consumable item. There aren’t many of them in the game to begin with unless you join one of the evil covenants, so a failure can be very frustrating. These tight level restrictions don’t even really make all PvP matchups balanced, as it only takes into account your level and not the quality of your gear or the spells you know. From Software has traded fun and accessibility for, seemingly, nothing.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Dark Souls. I am probably going to play it some more as soon as I’m done writing this. I have three different characters and I plan on beating the game with all of them. I just hope that this new patch announcement is going to bring me one step closer to the game I wanted and one step further from the one I have.