The community's just gotten better over time for the most part. If you're brand spanking new to it, its a really rough ride at first.
I agree about jumping into Dark Souls right at release. This is one of those few franchises where its great to be part of the initial rush. I enjoyed that a lot with Witcher 3 and its reddit page. Everyone came together as a community to help each other either with the game, technical issues, etc.
Fromsoft's done screwed some of that up though. There will be hundreds of thousands of day 1 players who will have already watched full playthroughs. That diminishes the whole experience, not just for those who watched, but also those who were looking for that truly blind playthrough experience. You will encounter monster builds earlier, having known where everything is, what to use, what works best, etc. It is just a game, but its a rare breed, so I was a bit annoyed by that.
Thank you Rexly, for the lack of spoilers. It's been a chore keeping youtube videos that contain spoilers in the thumbnails and titles off my landing page lol.