EVs again

[Faust]

Good post Derrick.

[Derrick]

Good post Derrick.

Thank Batlin, I'm just the messenger on this one
It's absolutely incredible that we are able to witness this stuff, it's like a having time machine.

[Faust]

Good post Derrick.

Good work Batlin.

Fixed.

[Sandro]

the ev doesn't poison in that video

[nightshark]

The energy vortex in this video always follows the same pattern - summoned 2 tiles away from the blood elemental, walks toward it and begins attacking. Strangely, it shoves the blood elemental "out of the way" and stands on the same tile. Nearing the end of the video, the EV repeatedly does this, which would normally be an impossibility since the EV would receive something like -10 stam every time it shoves the blood elemental, and not be able to "shove" again.

If you did the same thing as this video on UOSA, the EV would immediately attack you, pathfind toward you, and then attack the blood elemental as they would end up within 1 tile of each other (that is the flaw in batlin's test - the EV would end up attacking this stationary blood elemental on UOSA also).

Notably, UOSA's AI would cause that blood elemental to "spaz out" in an attempt to pathfind toward the avatar, and eventually the blood would find it's way over.

[2Cents]

Nobody used ev at that time, they were too risky to handle, they had lightning run speed (the same as efreet which is funny slow in the shard), i'm not sure if they could out run you, but i think they could especially with lag and 400ms ping. They were a bitch to target next to a mob, and if they targeted you it was byebye most of the time. They were hard to dispel i clearly recall at gm magery i needed sometime up to 3 dispell to have them go (no fizzle i talk about the ev resist here). Nobody used them, apart from provokers, and they most of the time would be dispeled by mobs before killing them anyway. Blades where just more efficient with their poison, you could out run them much easely it was still tricky thought, and were easy to dispel. Even my bard never used Ev but blades if needed to pull an other "mob" from nowhere. But once more i think i never saw blades but in ogre lord room and that's it, it was just not worth the trouble. Still blades where used more often, i don't think i ever saw a EV on Osi but few rare times. The only thing that made blades popular is that you just needed low magery to cast them, thats all, it was a noob stuff lol.

In an other hand everyone used summoned deamons, you had some guys even running always with one like a pet rping necros. Nobody used ev, blades rarely, but everyone used deamon for many many purpose, deamons were also a kind of status stuff, you were a gm mage woooo. Even in pvp you would use deamons often. I don't know why people even want to use EV here, they were just not worth the trouble, and deamon had same very strong magery, if a ev could kill a mob, probably a deamon would do it the same. Even the uber Ev defense or mass hp i odn't know was a problem, it was just too much and would turn against you at the end. Even if deamon were physically a lot weaker, you lost nothing using them compared to EV or blades (blades still was nice for the poison thought). Ev/blades are a post UOR crap to me, pre uor it was deamons, period. Now the mechanism are here, run speed efficiency of magery, easiness of controling are all there to support what i say.

[Panthor the Hated]

The energy vortex in this video always follows the same pattern - summoned 2 tiles away from the blood elemental, walks toward it and begins attacking. Strangely, it shoves the blood elemental "out of the way" and stands on the same tile. Nearing the end of the video, the EV repeatedly does this, which would normally be an impossibility since the EV would receive something like -10 stam every time it shoves the blood elemental, and not be able to "shove" again.

If you did the same thing as this video on UOSA, the EV would immediately attack you, pathfind toward you, and then attack the blood elemental as they would end up within 1 tile of each other (that is the flaw in batlin's test - the EV would end up attacking this stationary blood elemental on UOSA also).

Notably, UOSA's AI would cause that blood elemental to "spaz out" in an attempt to pathfind toward the avatar, and eventually the blood would find it's way over.

Not only that but the EV makes no attempt to attack the player even after the blood ele dies.

To me this seems to be a case of the demo being at least inaccurate for our time frame. I never experienced at any time from late 1999 to about 2004 an EV that acted like this.

Was this video some how used as justification for the current EV implementation? It's nothing like how our EVs function at all.

[Quin the Wretch]

Was this video some how used as justification for the current EV implementation? It's nothing like how our EVs function at all.

my thoughts exactly

^ top-Some official EV & BS news.
[Eric] July 25 - 6:06 PM EDT
Adrick posted the following...

The energy vortex and blade spirit AI was rewritten to remove alot of inefficiency in their cycle counts. This has resulted in substantial reduction in dungeon server cpu cycles used by these programs.

As a result they now attack targets with better prediction and spend less time "thinking" and more time fighting their target. The z exploits have been removed so that they can be dispelled correctly. Using a blade spirit or Energy Vortex on creatures that have the ability to dispel them is not going to be effective unless those creatures are mana drained.
Ive done some checking and they appear to be working (they do damage, they are dispelled correctly, they attack).

Balrons are one of the most challenging monsters in the game - it may indeed take more of them to kill the more challenging monsters but for the (upper mid) level creatures they should be functioning the same.

So yes, EV's and BS's will be noticeably weaker on the stronger monsters. The one thing I like is that they no longer "think." What does Adrick mean by "think?" Basically, the EVs/BS's will no longer sit idle when there are targets in the line of sight. A dragon for example will target you almost immediately if you are within its view. Blade spirits and EVs will now act in the same manner. Although they are weaker, I think this one fix helps a bit.

Adrick also posted:

Im taking the feedback here seriously and I just concluded a test on the Lake Superior shard. I created a normal lich, I set its mana to 0. I then at 100 magery cast 1 energy vortex and it imeddiately attacked the lich - I timed it in 29 seconds the lich was dead and the energy vortex was the slightest sliver harmed.

Yes there were changes to the energy vortex spell as I detailed in several posts.

1] They now actually fight an enemy in that they can hit or miss.
2] They no longer spend extra cycles evaluating targets - they chose a target and fight it thus reducing lag mostly on the dungeon servers where these spells are common.
3] They no longer poison.

A lich is a mid level creature so my information about the relative strength of EV vs mid to high mid creatures was correct.

Thanks Adrick - I'm glad OSI actually takes the time to report the results of the changes they make. What sucks? EVs no longer poison. Aside from poison though, they seem to maintain their usual strength. If anyone does any further tests (ex. see how EVs/BS's work on cyclops or ogre lords), drop me a line.

Cya later.

The above post was dated 2001. 1.5 yrs is a long time in mmorpg land. I remember there was a time when EVs/BS were broken.(dont recall why or how) But It was something that happened. I remember there were a lot of broken/disabled things after UOR, reports of hacks, exploits etc could this have been one of them?


I did find

Jerrith - *Schattenwolf* Speaking of magery, will there be any changes to it ? I mean since Elemantals, Daemons and EVs can be easily dispelled by enemy Mages or Monsters you rendered the 8th circle useless (well, almost).
Pandemonium - I would like to see summons alittle more resistant to dispel as well.
Pandemonium - Also including a slight chance of summoning a more powerful elemental occasionally (poison/blood/snow) will make the spells more useful to players than only daemons

from http://uo.stratics.com/uohoc/logs/1999-04-22-pub.shtml

which "seems" to confirm that evs were either suck in era or that players didnt know how to use them. I wouldnt know since I rarely left the Brit gy back then and I doubt my magery was much over 70

[Faust]

The above post was dated 2001. 1.5 yrs is a long time in mmorpg land. I remember there was a time when EVs/BS were broken.(dont recall why or how) But It was something that happened. I remember there were a lot of broken/disabled things after UOR, reports of hacks, exploits etc could this have been one of them?

Again, there is no indication that a change was made in in between '99-'01 when that change took place. Secondly, the post describes many of the same features inside of the original code that existed in '98. This obviously can be used to know there were some things that were not changed in between what we have and the major overhaul of EVs/BSs that were done to make them 'real npcs' instead of how we know they worked back then. This does not mean there were possibly any minor changes done to them but it does tell us the structure of the code was relatively the same where they did not function like a regular npc.

[Roser]

I'm pretty sure EV's didn't poison in era.

Never did I see someone farming the Balron/Ancient Wyrm with an EV. I strongly remember doing Meteor Swarm wall's with around 10-20 people in the hythloth Balron room.... If it just took one player to drop and EV to take down a balron, why would so many players get together and farm Balrons this way.

Good Thread. And I cant wait for AI changes Its very exiting.

[Panthor the Hated]

im not 2cents

[Derrick]

Was this video some how used as justification for the current EV implementation? It's nothing like how our EVs function at all.

Not really, certainly not the video as it was just made last week; but the EV AI code itself which was reviewed long ago did not seem to be very reflective of how they behaved in era even though it did demonstrate the fact that EV's and Blades did have a completely separate AI, mostly unrelated to normal monster or summon AI. I agree that there were no documented changes to them, and also that at some point in time they did behave like this on OSI; but that's not really enough to go on.

I suspect it would only take minor parameter changes to get this known AI to behave similarly to what's described in era.

[SoundofGod]

Never did I see someone farming the Balron/Ancient Wyrm with an EV. I strongly remember doing Meteor Swarm wall's with around 10-20 people in the hythloth Balron room.... If it just took one player to drop and EV to take down a balron, why would so many players get together and farm Balrons this way.

The reason people weren't using EV's much wasn't how it acted - it was the noto-pks that would camp the spawns and hunt for people using them. Remember?

[Kaivan]

There is a note about an AI change to EV after the release of the demo:

Energy vortices and blade spirits will also be more aggressive.

I'm not entirely sure how this would be accomplished, under the AI system for the demo (I haven't looked at the scripts), but they were made "more aggressive" in some fashion.

[kwhiz73]

Something that should be noted:

Currently: When I'm fighting Poison eles along with an occasional fire and air, the EV always seems to attack the mobs as I remember it long ago. Heck it even mows through the snakes and vermin if they happen to wander close by. Only when the mobs are all dead does the EV seem to want a piece of me, unless I make an ill advised placement of the EV.

Blood elementals it's completely different, and seems much more dependent on accurate placement with the EV, and even when it seems accurate the Blood might as well be invisible. Quite often I have to dispell the EV due it refusing to attack the blood. I have no idea if the mob programming has anything to do with this, but in personal experience the consistancy of this rules out coincidence.

I haven't tried Balrons yet.