AI and the future of FFXIV.

I noticed in a recent group of publications that Square Enix is looking to invest in the functionality of AI to enhance development times and procedures for the game's future development.

This is, of course, a very un-surprising turn of events. What I want to bring to the development teams' attention (hopefully through the community as my Email directly to feedback was likely observed and lost in the shuffle years ago) is the lack of necessity this might require for the future cycles of the game.

FFXIV has a LOT of content. I remember making a forum post about how much I adored the game when I first hopped on to it - It felt like people really wanted to feel proud and enjoy the interactivity with their work in an MMO. FFXIV still stands true as one of the only MMORPG's online that feels like people genuinely cared about the features and design of the game, even with its flaws. There's no such thing as perfect! When I think of AI taking the reins in portions of the development cycle I get this cold, eerie feeling of dread with memories of competitors and their shallow, emotionless and very-dead feeling games and environments.

This is, a game Afterall. There are computer systems that automate parts of development right now - It's computers. With that being said there is so much to do and so many things already to enjoy with FFXIV I don't see much of a point lusting after faster content although we all know that is progressive and parallel to business. I am worried that, in the future, the game might see ache and sorrow from the lack of human-made effort. You can think of a big snowy MMORPG that's always touted their millions of players on the box - I can assure you their new content is as dead and as shallow as ever. It's why their classic campaigns are popular and that entire franchise with all of its expansions was created as a platform to be enhanced later by AI systems. This was not only to train and catalogue interactions of players to then turn into population AI (for buffer zones of inactivity for consistency I assume) but to make sure they can machine-automate the development cycle of a videogame title that automatically maintains itself and its potential current and future equity.

There's a very funny relative aspect of understanding when observing AI - (trust me, those that practically push it as their main stay have even developed AI to bombard people in comment sections who understand this concept) - where you can result in a similar, echoing agitation of your senses in a similar way looking into a mirror after watching nothing but completely flat, edited people on a social media site can do to the way your brain processes the game played. It can end up being like the freshest looking bread ever but taste and feel stale in your stomach! It's what those who run those (mainly big-tech, big-science, big-religion and big-social media) never, ever want you to understand.

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Full post summary:

In the same way listening to a high volume of electronic audio can dull your ears, eventually a large amount of AI-extensive algorithm generators will pollute your mind and erode the consistency in which you are able to perceive and enjoy things of the presented nature.

It sounds a little silly, but it's relative to the same function of what you can physically see with AI as a concept. An easy example would be blemishes - errors AI doesn't know how to compensate for as an ongoing algorithm. This example will be pertaining to GTAO Ambient Occlusion types! When you're in foreground, AI doesn't know your shadow shouldn't be cast like you're a giant onto the background that is not near you - like lakes, hillsides, etc. This does in-fact erode your capable perception of the quality of the image while making the image you see more rich in other areas. It's an extensive effect that should really be cached and then referenced once AI has generated the necessary zones for shadowing. The more features that use and rely on this type of concept for, artistic motif, the more these types of things start to add up and detract from your perceptual capability of immersing yourself in the environment. Imagine if every single AI-based auto-effect has a blemish to be found like this - (things that automate do have those, when you manually work on a creative project you have complete control to omit these issues and AI should be used as a tool to speed up that process not deployed to automate it entirely. Algorithms are intrinsic functions not applications but this is why I'm harassed when I attend school or professional environments - Nobody wants you to know that, especially in North America.) - eventually everything does have an added augmentation to fidelity but yet another issue that clouds it further. At a certain point, if every single graphical feature worked with AI it would be a complete, redundant mess. You'd need to do exactly what I've submitted to SQUEX through their in-game suggestions and feedback system and cache this information after using it to build your information to then use as a static referenced feature in compilation with your graphical user-settings, and want to anyway to avoid the whole 'I'm a giant in-front of a TV' issue you're wanting to avoid with things like ambient occlusion, anyway.

A point last brought up before I stopped reading:

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Originally Posted by dwodmots

There's a lot of things AI can help with in this game. Having voice overs for every side quest is an obvious example. A more ambitious idea would be something like AlphaStar (AI system that beats StarCraft 2 pros) to have NPC allies that actually learn the fights together with the player.

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Things like this are cool, AI doesn't just magically operate. There's another game entirely most of you could wager is completely over-hyped and longstanding. It creates a certain amount of rebooted material from AI players but AI doesn't actually know what humans want. It's a computer algorithm matrix. It tries to find a goal and pass and fail it's functionality based on what it can calculate is a good pass or good fail check as it abort, retry cycles to find what works regarding what it can do as defined by programming. AI enhanced players and NPC's to interact with you are always needing to be created by calculated and recorded user input on the platform for it to be any different than the current 'Trust' NPC's we have. Computers don't actually learn we just like using very sly terminology to make them seem more intelligent. The voiceovers are also things that need to be sourced from a root function and unless you're looking to harvest someone's gorgeous voice to then remix and replicate for things like the North American music industry, you're going to find redundancy and lose out on opportunity for jobs to be made with people whom actually want to voice act.

This is a huge social experience even if you don't ever use the chat. Find some other players to play with and stop feeding the train that runs alternative games as if they're dynamic but full of bots recorded from past players. It's an actual thing and I will not be argued with.

It seems like a great idea for some things but in our age of 'communication' there's a lapse between what you actually understand and what is told to you, as in any concept. You will not be able to fully grasp the concept until you can hold onto it and most people just read and think they're geniuses after appreciating a paragraph. It's not exactly as it's advertised and while you'd immediately expect extra immersion: GO TALK TO OTHER PLAYERS! I know the freaky robots in IRL like to hurt everyone but people need to be vocal about those too to stop the complications of getting hurt in online interactions. There's no point in these kinds of games if you're not going to.

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When I log into the game currently, in comparison to playing alternatives in which I've heavily played for the content FFXIV does not have (Open-world PvP, a niche) I can genuinely sit and stare at my character hanging out in its various poses and find more enjoyment than playing through action-packed content in the alternative - And this game doesn't even have the playstyle readily available!

It's an industry where a lot of conspiracy and outrageous behavior remains - You could develop AI to run your entire trade route and franchise with a number cruncher to make certain you end up 1% higher than all other investors when considering business and how much data exists. It eventually defeats the purpose of even being human and shaking hands to discuss thus eventually defeats the purpose of art and what humans perceive and enjoy from a human-created, enthusiasm motivated piece of work.
(Hehe. - This is here for someone else, pay no mind.)

Having automation to smooth over your development cycles and get us new things to do, faster is great! Please make sure it's now shallow or shallowed on purpose by technicians who enter your company to train and use this to make sure that it slowly decays and degrades the experience most people are unknowing they are even enjoying in alternative!

Again, it's something the human psyche doesn't physically recognize as it's something that is ongoing and not something we hinge on as an aspect to reality as it's created purely virtual. Imagine wearing glasses that made everything super-perfect, clean and fleckless like an over-filtered or AI face for an entire month: You'll be very startled to observe what is actually behind it. The human mind creates and facets very subtle nuances of their personality to a development cycle even if following strict guidelines and already use automation tools. The more you add and invest the more accustomed the work of art will be in comparison to a completely flat over-filtered face on social media in contrast to someone's more natural appearance (even with makeup! Ladies know that there's a trick to it, you're always looking for the superficial but natural aesthetic.)

I hope someone can grasp a concept from this. I know there's a few weirdos that prowl every social forum on the net with their own strange amalgamated and automated system to argue infinitely over these topics, so I likely won't reply too often. This is here for anyone to consume whether you're interested or not.

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AI, for some reason, regardless of whom I talk to about it if it ever shows up in conversation leads to a negative diatribe or eerie, existential crisis like comparison or opinion. I hate to be that guy but when you wager in the actual facts and laws of relative function, you're unfortunately met with the understanding that electricity (as lovely as we all feel it is) hurts you! If you are struck by lightning that's not too pleasant. There always has to be a good balance and because we're all biological beings the aspect of working cohesively or utilizing products created with human interaction and understanding as a balanced aspect generates genuine enjoyment of the product - From food to makeup, clothes and videogames.

The fine line is always out of reach unless you're the top 10 shareholders of the world - They have enough money and control now to move that ceiling like a parasail. Don't fall for the greed, Square Enix.

Regards,

Master Kinzu.

-- Sorry, modern era. I know everyone is now emotionally trained to value super-short and quick-to-the-point exposes. I get it, too but I feel this needs a bit of a lecture-spoken style of notation. You might miss something!

AI generated poster.

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Square Enix is looking to invest in the functionality of AI to enhance development times and procedures for the game's future development.

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Good!

I noticed they have already had jobs going for that, and some such people in their credits. Frankly though? They could go much further than they have so far. Development times have increased, yet this is at odds with how much time AI saves for everyone, especially programmers.

Entire files can be generated based on a description, and thousands of files that are similar could be generated based on the information in a table, again based on a description. They don't even need to work very hard to engineer AI tools because the most popular tools already implemented it.

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the lack of necessity this might require for the future cycles of the game.

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Well that is the point.

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I remember making a forum post about how much I adored the game when I first hopped on to it - It felt like people really wanted to feel proud and enjoy the interactivity with their work in an MMO.

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This is still possible with AI, provided the AI is used as a tool by developers to achieve what they want and save time, rather than to replace their ideas and vision.

For example, you could ask AI to create an MSQ for you. And it would. I don't expect they will ever do that. It is the tedious tasks that surround that like copy and paste type stuff which can still take hundreds of hours of work and that AI can just prevent time waste.

They could get it to identify any spelling or grammar errors.

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When I think of AI taking the reins in portions of the development cycle I get this cold, eerie feeling of dread with memories of competitors and their shallow, emotionless and very-dead feeling games and environments.

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This happens if the entire thing is made by AI. That isn't what is really exciting about AI. What is exciting about AI is not wasting your time spending 20 hours doing something that you thought would take 1-2 hours. With AI, the thing in your mind can come true almost as quickly as you can imagine it, rather than spending months copying and pasting and reorganizing code that a machine could do like superman.

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There are computer systems that automate parts of development right now - It's computers.

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You're right, actually. A lot of things that AI will be used for can (and is) already automated with simple loop/iterate functions in programming. The problem is you have to code those loop/iterate functions... with all these AI chatbots you can just describe it with real language and save ages coding a method to iterate.

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I am worried that, in the future, the game might see ache and sorrow from the lack of human-made effort.

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That's what feedback is for then.

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I can genuinely sit and stare at my character hanging out in its various poses and find more enjoyment than playing through action-packed content in the alternative

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That isn't something I would expect to change though. AI isn't gonna change that they will record themselves doing a dance and then implement it into the game. That would likely become too soulless and I think that's kinda obvious.

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It eventually defeats the purpose of even being human and shaking hands to discuss

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Could have made this argument about loops in programming though, which have already long been able to mass-generate files or a bunch of randomized ideas. In practice, they are just used as a tool to assist the human and save time.

Actually, let me give you an example of how this already was a problem before AI. There was a concept for a game where the MSQ is "different for everyone". Without AI, this was possible with random() functions.

And games like that were made. I played Mount & Blade and went down a different path from my friend. I experienced FOMO, where I wanted to experience what my friend did. I wanted to experience "the" MSQ, not "a randomly generated" one.

AI could result in exactly the same thing. There does need to be a degree of direction and a degree of human oversight in what is happening. It needs to be used as a tool, not a replacement for the humans.

https://i.imgur.com/5BVmRGZ.gif

so, basically, Skynet is going to take over SE and kill all humans.

1. given the state of the world, is that such a bad thing?
2. not sure AI is there yet to write an entire game, and have it be...well.. good
3. AI can do a LOT of things, some good, some bad, but if used as it should be, which is a tool, then it can benefit the process. it can be used for quality checks in code, spelling errors, and this tool, can do it faster than a human can and doesnt get bored or tired looking.

dont worry about it, I am certain climate change and any AI issues will be sorted out by humanity long before the end of FFXIV

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Originally Posted by EZGIL

https://i.imgur.com/5BVmRGZ.gif

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NGL, I laughed harder at this than I probably should have. :D

What little I read of this makes so little sense and comes across as a GPT argument against AI that I cannot continue unfortunately

Also unless it it involves a privacy issue, consumer protections, etc. Ai is the future whether any poster here likes it not and your self indulgent posts will not stop it. Not here, not on any platform. Use that energy to plant a tree or something.

Hey investors of the AI sector: Refuting points with things like 'that's what feedback is for' when you know very well that feedback would not effect systems that deteriorate the enjoyment of the product if the entire product is mishandled by over indulging in the systems deacribed js pseudo-intellectualism, you need to study more.

The idea is that the less a human mind tackles what'a going on the less a human mind will seek relation or enjoyment. I didn't think you were dull enough to escape the idea that this game is very art heavy.

Go back to your competitor forum or cheek some more bitcoin strongarming into people unknowing.

With that being said there is no conspiracy here to be bashing. I'm certain all of you overfilter your selfies ;). There is genuinely no enjoyment to behold in one specific, super-franchise that competes with this game and it's due to the large allocation of completely AI maintained generation. It's nkt a very immersive World and the Craft and War aspect of it are like copy-pasting what was likely perceived by AI scrapers as popular mechanics of genre: MMORPG. I'd hate to see that happen here. Inspiration is one thing but a keen acuity can discern between what was designed and automated.

Automation should exist but not be the entirety.

The funny gif of the drone weapon compared to the human is true, electricity hurts so something maintained by it to hurt will hurt more. Imagine that.