Well I personally like DS more for singleplayer but the combo of both was fun for me in ds2. And ds offers a flavour of pvp that pure pvp games can't, its slightly open world mmo flavoured.
I think it would be logical to take souls in a more mmo/pvp direction, always online is a bad word - but it would mean better multiplayer gameplay, server side gamesaves, ALOT less cheating, more competitive pvp, maybe better netcode.
Plus they could have just made offline and online characters two completely seperate gamemodes, so to participate in multiplayer you HAVE to always play that character online. you can't just solo pve, save scum to make characters like I and everyone probably did in dark souls 2.
but anyway I predict the next amazing souls game will be a far future imitator outside of from software, ds2 was overall a step back and sony can only push from software further and further back.