PVP is alright at the moment but they need to bring poise back to what it used to be. Having 100+ poise and still getting staggered from 1 hit of katana is kinda dumb.
Magic seems to be bad atm compared to MLGS, the only thing you get hit by is the occasional flame swathe. Connections to people seems to be pretty good this time round, hitboxes are wonky in places, and stunlocking is so easy now, but so is parrying. The hitboxes issue seems to have affected parrying as well, you can parry someone from 2ft outside their swords hitbox and still riposte them.
Just saying that i recommend everyone get themselves a bleeding or poison "broken straight sword" the thing uses like 0 stamina per swing, stunlocks, and also has good range and movement on the R1. You can go HAM at someone, swing 20 times with the stone ring (+ poise damage) and you can just stunlock someone. You will see why the poise in DS2 is useless.
Also from what i can tell leveling strength gives you a shit ton more damage than leveling dex this time around due to the way strength scales full damage, while dex is split between damage/bleed/poison bonus. A spear/halberd is now a lot stronger in a str build, unless you are trying to stack poison or bleed, which you probably shouldnt.