Elden Ring is a FromSoftware title, and you’d expect that it’d have a PvP mode, as that has been a staple of titles like Dark Souls in the past. However, it’s recently been revealed that Elden Ring will only have invasions available in co-op mode, and the primary reason seems to be the in-game horses. As one might expect, gamers aren’t really pleased with this development, but they’re being very gracious about it. There’s also a chance this could change by the time Elden Ring launches next year.
The mounts are not available when players are in co-op mode, in part it seems because the ability for multiple players to move around on mounts would be too taxing to implement in-game. It’s a similar thing with regards to why PvP isn’t possible on solo mode: With players being on their horses, they would be able to simply escape their invaders too easily, or at least that seems to be the assumption made by the players.
As you might imagine if you know anything about the sort of gamers who play Dark Souls, they have mixed feelings about the lack of solo invasions in the game. A thread on the Elden Ring subreddit collected reactions to this news from fans, with players also offering possible solutions if From decides they want to include solo invasions after all, including the ability to keep it to dungeons and limit the over world to co-op only invasions. That sounds complicated, but it could work if From is committed to getting solo invasions into the game.
If nothing else, they’re gracious about how the developers must have come to the decision to cut this feature out of the game, as it couldn’t have been an easy one. Players are reacting with amusement to the idea that they might be thrown off their horses as a stopgap solution to allow PvP invasions while still keeping mounts in the game.