Dark Souls 3 cross-region play is broken. Here's why.

[Stanky Leg Greg]

My friend lives in Europe. I live in the Middle East. I want to play with my friend.
Turns out, the game automatically chooses a server shard, so no matter what, i can't join my friend's game unless i use a VPN.

Cross-region play is enabled, we're within 10+/- levels of each other, we have no upgraded weapons, we're both embered and we even set a password. Still cannot see his sign, and he can't see mine.

Why is the online implemented like this? Is there no other way around it?

[Dagungus]

Have you tried the passwording system ? which is similar to the Name engraved ring system in dark souls 2.

[Stanky Leg Greg]

Nope, that didn't work either.

[Glamboro]

My GF and I were not always seeing each others signs last night. Something that worked for us was having the host teleport to firelink then back. Somehow if it was not showing this often fixed it. Don't know if it will help you at all, but you could give it a try.

It also seemed to take several minutes sometimes, up to 5, did you make sure to give it a good wait to see what happened? Also, make sure you don't to drop the sign, then pick it up and drop it again over and over, wait at least 2 minutes before placing a new one.

Hope you get it working

[Stanky Leg Greg]

I'll give that a try. Thanks for the pointers.