I had no idea people hacked the PS3 version. I guess I naively thought it was too much effort for people, but I was hanging out in the forest today in human form and happened to summon a white phantom who I won't name to avoid giving undue publicity. He appears and instantly starts Dark Grain-flipping in full Havel armor with the "Grant" hammer... like nonstop. He also had what appeared to be 0 or 1 health, so I downed an Estus and his health didn't move one bit with my +5 flask.

Gotta admit, I thought it was pretty amusing how totally blatant he was with his hacking. Before my suspicions were confirmed completely, a spirit invades, he ninja flips his way over to him at Benny Hill-like speeds, and before the poor dude knows what's happening he's getting backstabbed. Another invades, and another, and his antics are repeated. I message him something like "didn't know PS3 hacking was possible," but he doesn't respond.

At this point I'm feeling pretty guilty, having racked up almost half a million souls (I think I'm level 108 or so). This isn't really fun and I can already feel the whole game getting stale (don't know why anyone would willingly ruin such a great game for themselves). I'm about to send him home when he drops an item in the distance. I pick it up, and it's a crystallized sword called "?weaponName?" or something similar, with 427 base damage and +125 stat adjustment. He then promptly drops another for me, this time with 999999/80 durability (although after using it a bit later-on (on the npc forest phantoms) I found it has the normal crystal weapon durability and isn't repairable).

Anyways, I barely notice another spirit invading who quickly Soul Spears me and I die (I really suck at PVP). I get my bloodstain and then Mr. Hacker invades as a Spirit of Vengeance at the exact same time as another SoV and in the exact same location (does he have access to a server browser-type-thing, too?). He doesn't attack me, but it doesn't matter because I suck and the other SoV promptly backstabs me.

Whole thing bummed me out, I guess. Must suck on the PC where this stuff is far more rampant. The gameplay they've shown of Dark Souls 2 looks fucking incredible, but more than anything I want them to address the hacking (and lag, while we're at it).

Anyone else see any PS3 hacking? In your experiences, is it as bad on the PC/360 as Youtube would have me believe?

edit: did a 2-second Google search and this came up: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/608635-dark-souls/66057655 . Same basic thing, it seems, though they don't say what platform they're playing on.

Huh, I never saw anything like that at all. I avoided other players whenever I could though. Did summon some people a few times, but that was only for boss fighting. Some of those people were really high level and powerful, but nothing outside the realm of how the game is supposed to work.

But yeah, hopefully Dark Souls II doesn't have those issues.

People have hacked all versions of Dark Souls. Luckily i've only encountered one hacker through all my playthroughs of the game. I've heard there are a lot more on 360 but that could be because more people are playing on the Xbox. (in europe at least)

I dont know what the PC version is like but I'd assume it's even worse since the character information and stats are more easily accessible.

@mooseymcman: I've played a lot of Dark Souls. Probably around 500 hours, and this is the first I've seen of any hacking. I've been having way more fun with co-op, simply because the lag makes PVP an unpredictable frustrating mess. It's always fun jumping into an early area of the game with fully upgraded weapons and destroying the bosses and any hapless invaders.

@development: Ah. I only played through it once, and that was about 69 hours (including the DLC).

I've had people backstab me while standing in front of me.

It sucks :(

@development: This is my faviorate "hack" of dark souls

It definitely does. The lag really is just embarrassing for From Software, and I hope they fix that nonsense in DS2. I don't like that it sounds like they're keeping the backstabs in multiplayer.

hey Development.

I played the shit out of DaS on Xbox360 and recently purchased a PS3 (and immediately ended up buying this awesome game again ^^)

from my experience, the hacking is very frequent on Xbox360 (maybe 10% of encounters) while I did come across only one person on an obvious "training mode" cheat with invulnerability on Ps3 so far. So I guess the Hacking goes PC>XBOX360>PS3

to make up for your distress of being stuck on the most hacker plagued platform o the game, this is also the most beautiful and stable: the PS3 version has actually more lags that the Xbox360 version, even out of typically laggy zones common to both platforms.

Yeah dude, the PS3's framerate hits literally between maybe 7-10 frames per second in some places of Blight Town. My first time through the area I couldn't believe how bad it was (especially considering I'd heard it was "fixed" shortly after launch), but I've sadly just gotten used to it since then. I'd love to be playing the PC version but my PC suuucks.

That would be a cool feature for a new covenant actually. I'd love the idea of being able to invade someone and wear exactly the same stuff as them.