Yeah, you don't go out onto Aldrich's Porch embered up unless you're spoiling for a fight.
I get the feeling they wanted The Watchdogs of Farron to be the Forest Gankers Covenant, but it's the Aldrich's Faithful that really capture that, "Aw, fuck it, I got shit to do so I'm just gonna jump off a cliff and do this hollow" feel. They have that special combination of sheer numbers and blazing incompetence.
I have to admit, it was a lot of fun, though. I had a giant, the two Night's Watch wannabes, the fire-clerics throwing fireballs, and two invaders. Then a third invader after I killed the first invader (he didn't get far, though, as I was killed pretty quickly after dispatching #1). If nothing else, it was invigorating!
I'm a bit confused on the auto-summoning though. I admit to knowing barely anything about covenants, but I had the Farron Watchdog one on, it was flashing, but I never got auto-summoned, and I spent quite a while in the right area. Maybe just my luck (though saw Plague on twitter recently complaining about how the two "defender" covenants don't seem to get summoned much either, so maybe its a bunch of problems).
Speaking of twitter, Pat just tweeted that the DS3 playthrough has finished recording. He's free!
(Until the DLC, anyway)