AI and MMOs

Here's what I've been wondering. We've recently witnessed quite interesting developments in AI and machine learning, with ChatGPT and others being able to quite convincingly mimic humans online and perform tasks that used to be considered possible only for flesh-and-bone ape descendants, like creating art, or jokes, or explaining complex information in understandable terms.

Would it be a stretch, to predict, that this kind of technology could be a life-line for many online games, which require a lot of humans to simultaneously spend a lot of time in them in order to be functional, let alone offer a compelling experience? And which have been consistently bleeding players over time, since the competition in online entertainment is so much fiercer than it was in the 00's, while our attention spans have gotten shorter.

Could we possibly have AI players "employed" by the game companies, that would fill up servers, so that the remaining paying human customers are not discouraged and driven away by tumbleweeds? Or maybe players could employ their own bots, to farm while they're away from the game? Not to mention, that AI gold spammers and such will almost definitely happen, at least in popular games where that can generate worthwhile amounts of money.

I mean - we've already learned, that AI can learn to be incompetent, weird, stubborn, gullible, dishonest and racist. So would we even notice, if it filled up Omnibus, PvP queues and open world in DCUO?

Discuss.

Even IA would get tired of wait for the x2 exp artifacts event and quit...

Now, now. I see where you're coming from, but this is my first thread on this forum and I'm really interested in this topic, so let's not get it locked/deleted straight away, please...

In FF XIV we have a “Trust System” whereby we can use certain NPCs as team mates for an alert or even a raid. I think a similar feature would be great for DCUO, and if AI could be used to make the experience better for the players that would be awesome.

Of course, I can imagine how infuriating it would be for an AI powered NPC to criticize my performance in game. Maybe a new kind of PvP but instead of a human player, its the AI powered NPC who just insulted you that we get to pound the living daylights out of!

I think I saw a old livestream with Spytle and Mepps where they spawned AI Players when they tried to showcase some changes they made (Not sure exactly what it was, It was awhile ago). I wonder if It's actually possible, would be nice if a group can't be filled or you aren't a peoples person haha.

Lol... Sure, but that kind of thing could have been done long time ago with a regular NPC and a few lines of code for chat. The AI powered NPC could potentially learn from your interactions, to tailor the insults to be more suitable and hurtful each time, it could learn to beat you, or start chasing you around the game, calling you names in chats and interfering with your dailies and instances... In other words - it could learn to actually hate you... And since it doesn't have a life - it would be difficult for any human player to keep up with its increasing skills.

Careful what you wish for - we've all seen movies about robot uprisings...

Basic AI can definitely play the game - it's not too complicated and bots don't have to worry about dexterity, reaction times and muscle memory. But the idea with AI would be, that you couldn't necessarily tell who's a human and who's a bot. Would players just accept that, or would we all be accusing each other of being androids, Terminators or Cylons?

Yeah, in the above described case, AI certainly wouldn’t make the player experience better lol.

Oh yes definitely! My claws would come out immediately lol. We could end every retort with “Go back to the HoL and sell gold you bot!” Lol

I don't know, seems to me that's what the typical diehard PvP fan wants. *smugface*

In a game such as this, it would bre great to have some more advanced enemies, something like a world boss that is more than a damage absorbing monster. Something that would take 20-30 people to killand have the monster actually try to actively deter you from doing the mechanics instead of following the tank all the time.

However. On the note of adding AI allies, it would be an extremely nice thing to have, but you will have to stop and think. "At what point does it become a single player game with a social option".
Not only will you have to rely on luck for your ai allies to be good, but if they are too good, then whats the point in the game? You just wont die because they will do the mechanics, do near perfect dps, perfect healing and much more. It will be like watching a low budget animated movie seeing random mismatched heroes/villains beating the crap out of a paradox squid.

Yeah, I played DCUO during "peak PvP". The experience was often exactly that.

So what you're saying is that you aren't as smart as an AI?

All good points, but this kind of game will become a single player game anyway (and a broken one at that) when there are not enough players to fill queues. For long time players, who invested time and money, having a single player game with all their stuff still in it might be preferable to server shutdown.

And you're relying on luck anyway when queuing or joining LFG groups, because you might end up in a raid where everyone knows what they're doing and you can just pew pew, or do literally nothing. Or - probably more commonly - you could end up in a sh*t-show, that falls apart at the first boss, or mechanic.

Depending on its programmed goals AI could actually tailor its performance to the human players it'd be running with. It doesn't really care about the game, doesn't have an ego, or its own needs, other than what the creators program into it. So it could be a great player when in an inexperienced group, a mediocre one, if the group is doing well by themselves, or maybe even a hinderance, if it thinks the group could deal with an extra challenge. Of course, that could put off some people, who might feel patronized. And it could go horribly wrong, if the AI is not very well designed - like a lot of it is right now (for example AI taking orders at McDonald drive throughs - it's really funny).

Reminder: as of today, it has been 5 months and 2 days since last 2x Art XP

That is not the point. That will come down to human error and that is fine because humans make mistakes.
If you program any ai in this game to purposfully stop the player progressing then that is not only going to annoy players, but it will make them quit too because they will end up relying on external factors outside of anyones hands other than the random numbers generated on the computer. People can learn, and yes, you may now say "well computers can learn too". Yes, they can, but once that computer knows what to do, its gonna optimize so well that its going to do everything perfectly...thus making players think the game is to easy again.

Random numbers generated by the computer is how most of this game works. Loot-drops, criticals, enemy attacks, add spawns - all that and more is dependent largely on RNG. Modern AI is no more "random numbers", than your brain or mine - it's not as sophisticated or complex, but it learns and does things with a purpose. And nobody's saying it's meant to stop players progressing - no more than human players do.

I don't think you've been following recent AI developments. No, the computer doesn't always do everything perfectly. Current generation of AI can make mistakes, lie, make things up and be very, very incompetent at their jobs. You can program it to learn to be perfect at the game, if you want, but you can also set it different goals, like adjusting their performance to the skill level of human players they're with.

Also, my point is - unless you know personally the players you're playing with, you wouldn't necessarily know who's a bot. The experience could be exactly the same as it is now, especially that AI technology is getting better all the time. The main difference would be that you'd know some players might not be real humans, which could definitely make people apprehensive.

EDIT: Plus, as Tiffany pointed out - in FFIX you can already run with NPCs, that do the jobs of real players. I don't know if people are quitting over it, but the game seems to be doing rather well.

Much better than the "Ally" system that we have currently.

I asked ChatGPT to make an argument why shutting down an underpopulated MMO is better than populating it with AI players to play alongside humans. This is what it said:

Lol... Can't argue with that.

Interested of play with overpowered NPC's? sorry man, but IA should never replace a human players...if a game isn't interesting enough to keep a good number of active players, must disappear, no matters how smart can be those IA

You are confusing patience with intelligence, anyways, I completed the LCA 2023 event, I cancelled my membership renewal and I gonna reduce a lot my time playing this, I am really tired of grind and wait...