Dark Souls 3 – Not being summoned for covenants

I’m currently still on my quest to 100% Dark Souls 3 and I am having huge problems getting the items you need for the covenant rewards.
The biggest problem is: I’m just not being summoned.
This post is meant as a guide for those who have the same problem like me, but there is one problem. I don’t have a solution yet.
Instead I’m going to post the stuff I’ve found out so far and I’ll update this post as we discover possible solutions.
There is this theory that our soul level(SL) is too high, but I’ve had this problem from SL30 to SL160. I’ve never been summoned once (in 69 hours of gaming). Meanwhile other players are reporting that they are being summoned non stop and actually need to leave their covenants to progress in zones. So there seems to be somehting fundamentally wrong with the whole summoning system. Here is what I’ve tried so far:
- Switched between all covenants (multiple times)
- Reversed my hollowing (which cost me 1 million souls >_>), so that the covenant in the top left looks different.
- Tried being in different zones
- Stayed alive for two hours and didn’t go to a different zone / loading screen / bonfire (the covenant never stopped searching)
- Changed the matchmaking settings
- Went through forums and websites to see if anyone found a solution yet
So one thing is clear: the summoning system is somehow broken and it’s not the users fault. One theory is that maybe the queuing system is LIFO (last in first out) which would mean that when you don’t get immediately summoned, you won’t get summoned at all since new players will queue after you and take your spot. This sounds plausible to me and would mean that being summoned in Dark Souls 3 is dependent on your routing to the Dark Souls 3 servers (and you won’t be able to fix this at all).
I really hope From Software addresses this issue soon.
Maybe it’s something different. It’s really hard to tell with this kind of stuff. So: do YOU have a solution? Please let us know in the comments below!