Dark Souls 2 - To play with friends or not? My view, whats yours

Many people love to say this game is meant to be played "alone" which is untrue because is has a very intricate coop system.
They love to say its meant to be played with random people forced not to chat, which is also wrong because they added voice chat.
They say playing with friends makes the game to easy, well again I say you are wrong. In fact it makes you MORE careful and the game MORE difficult.
Let me explain.

Me and my ONLY buddy who also tolerates the souls games like to play together. This is not to make the game easy but to actually make it harder. We played Demons souls side by side and as much of Dark as we could. When playing with someone who is you're friend you are are taking extra careful steps even as a phantom because you dont want to screw your buddie's game up. You can occasionally say, oh let me go ahead and check but then again thats the same any phantom would do and honestly its an easy way to get you both killed. You fight harder and explore more because you are doing it together as a coordinated team. I HATE when I die and my buddy has to come back to get me alone, ripe for an invader or trap.

When you summon a random person in your game the FIRST thing they do is start indiscriminately attacking EVERYTHING and running for the boss. They want souls and thats it. They want those juicy boss rewards. They know the board already, they know exactly what weapons to use and what magic and more often than not (ESPECIALLY ON BOSSES) they loiter in the boards their characters are best suited for.

I was fighting the Old Iron King last night, who I was actually almost able to solo but decided to summon some guys cause they were there. Both literally DEVASTATED him with lighting bolts. I landed maybe 1 hit. Now I helped others mele him so I know its tougher but can be done, yet it felt REALLY easy and cheap having these two guys rail him.

With a friend you learn and build tactics side by side. We are both mele pyro so we would have to use our guys to the best of OUR abilities. This actually makes it much harder in the end because honestly we both HATE bringing a 3rd wheel in because again while we are nook and cranny'ing the level he/she is off killing.
Its irritating when you find a cool item casually while souls are being dumped in your bank and you have NO IDEA where they are coming from.

Also when you are helping your friend you dont feel so cheap when you find a cool item in his game and say "nice now i need to get that in mine" because you really found it together. You are not using your friends game for pre scouting you are trying to make him boss'able to then help you do it all the same.

This is just my opinion. I cant not see why they never added an invite feature. This does come from my other post about me and him now on the SECOND Dark Souls and once again having issues. We have played MULTIPLE coop games with ZERO issues (we just finished borderlands 2) but the Souls Games still just SUCK with their coop. Again I feel a tad cheated and we sit on the phone while we each play our own games like dickheads. Its just dumb. We summon someone else in and all the other one hears is "AW CMON WTF MAN" or "DUDE WHERE THE FK ARE YOU GOIN!"

How do you feel