Are MMOs DYING!?...or are we just expecting too much?

[Ath192]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9GAgXxf_AU



The MMO genre is an oligopoly with a few legacy games like WoW, FF14, ESO, having a stranglehold on the playerbase due to entrenched network effects and switching costs. There is little competition, and even the competition themselves consist of players switching from one oligopolistic firm to another.

Single player, non live-service games are designed to be fun, since their sales depend on the quality of the game. MMOs are designed to trap you within its network. As Josh Strife Hayes says, sometimes it even breeds a parasocial behavior in its players where its players treat the game as their personal identity.

What is ultimately so ironic is that we aren't getting better games in the MMO genre because ultimately the consumers have a preference for those networks. They want a second life. They want to treat the game as a social hub over making friends IRL. That's what creates this non-competitive oligopolistic equilibrium, and why these games don't care about innovating. They don't need to. They have trapped you here since you want to escape into a second life. They have found a group of players who are very easily exploited and are now defaulting to rent-seeking behavior. They have breeded a codependent, parasocial relationship with its customer base, which is the ultimate dream of every billion dollar company.

FF14 will never have the best gameplay CBU3 can pump out. It will never have the best story that its writers can write. It will never have the best, innovative content that its designers can make. Because its core playerbase will never quit no matter how bad this game gets. What is sad is that this also means the entire MMO genre will never allow for an innovative game to succeed because the playerbase want comfort over novel experiences, over quality gameplay, and over thought-provoking stories.

AI will reduce the cost of development of these types of games enough that someone will make a good one for those seeking challenge and gameplay, right now it costs millions but as AI advances and can produce HQ assets and such the teams developing these games will be able to get really lean to where enthusiast communities will be able to release games that fit their niche.

It will compose the music, sound effects and graphical assets, so really you will need few developers familiar with using a good engine to produce decent games.

For example this is an AI song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJ-rYBC68Q

It's good enough for a game if you ask me, and its free to use. It will only get better from today.

In fact, as hated as the opinion may be CBUIII should use AI to design armor sets for those times where they don't have the time to manually build the sets themselves. Instead of gee... IDK, reusing the same assets over and over again with a different color.

[DiaDeem]

For example this is an AI song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJ-rYBC68Q

It's good enough for a game if you ask me, and its free to use. It will only get better from today.

And this is why executives at Ubisoft, Activision or EA have no issue treating costumers like drones who deserve no more than mass produced soulless content from the machine without any care for quality or artistry. Because some of you listen to some generic bombastic AI trash song and think it's "good enough" and just gobble it up. People like you, with no respect for the artistry and the skill involved with making games have no right to ever complain about the current state of gaming.

For shame.

[Ath192]

And this is why executives at Ubisoft, Activision or EA have no issue treating costumers like drones who deserve no more mass produced soulless content from the machine without any care for quality or artistry. Because some of you listen to some generic bombastic AI trash song and think it's "good enough" and just gobble it up. People like you, with no respect for the artistry and the skill involved with making games have no right to ever complain about the current state of gaming.

For shame.

Zzzz. It's gonna happen, get over it. That being said, its a free market, you can, absolutely offer hand crafted assets for a premium, in the same way you can go to a bespoke store and get a tailored dress or suit made for you. But most people are content with mass produced goods that make things accessible.

In this case I am completely fine getting MORE games that put pressure on companies to step up their games instead of having an oligopoly. But that's only going to happen when MMOs don't cost absurd amounts of money to make and maintain. I'm sure plenty of communities would be dying to have the power to make their own interesting games and AI will enable them to do so. I'm not for gate keeping that capability just so people have to rely on billionaires that can pump out the money to have everything hand made.

Look I'm sure some farmers that used donkeys and shovels didn't welcome the tractor at first. But today, we can produce so much more food because things became mechanized and mass produced. And yes a lot less people are needed to tend huge fields, but it brought the cost down and has led us to have a decent amount of food stocked in our groceries at all times. It's just the way things are.

Sure, AI can help an indie game dev out, you're not wrong. But the AAA studios pumping out soulless, derivative, stale bugfests are not going to be helped by AI at all. They're already making AI-tier generic slop, how will AI make that any better lol

Like this:
Current situation, god knows how many people actually work on a dungeon right? Lets say 10 for simplicity. - These 10 people start with a linear corridor, add a couple of trash pulls, design the bosses, make the mechanics and need to be done in one month to make the boss happy. It takes a lot of work because the team runs lean but it gets done.

AI situation:
You prompt an AI to design you a large dungeon in a deciduous forest setting with 10 differing paths and unique geographic features such as explorable lakes with fully underwater exploration available and buildings along with generic but interactive wildlife, for example, maybe the dungeon has some deer that will make an emote if you /feed them. Something no human would bother coding from scratch but a nice detail. And now that team of 10 people can focus solely on designing the enemies and bosses with unique and interesting mechanics.

TBH this isn't even a new thing, I remember the scenario builder in Age of Empires 2 could seed you a map with wildly different terrains and strategic maps that were full of fish, wildlife and well... everything you can think of. And that game came out decades ago.

I know which dungeon I'd rather run, idk about you.

[Red-thunder]

You prompt an AI to design you a large dungeon in a deciduous forest setting with 10 differing paths and unique geographic features such as explorable lakes with fully underwater exploration available and buildings along with generic but interactive wildlife, for example, maybe the dungeon has some deer that will make an emote if you /feed them. Something no human would bother coding from scratch but a nice detail. And now that team of 10 people can focus solely on designing the enemies and bosses with unique and interesting mechanics.

The issue is that those artists do not know how to code up the mechanics or have the experience to make bosses with interesting mechanics. Nor should you expect the entire team at CBU3 to have the creativity to come up with anything like that.

Using AI will not free up labor to pursue "more meaningful" work if the labor that is replaced does not have the skill to do so.

Now, maybe if you hire a bunch of regular programmers and let them use AI to get up to speed with whatever stupid engine that they're using, that might help. But lol if you seriously think most CBU3 employees have the skill to do any of what you're saying, with or without AI.

Put another way, you have two types of labor that are not substitutable: graphic/music/art design, and the programmers. Making AI help with the former does nothing for the latter unless you send all those artists to university for a year to go through some coding boot camp.

Their engineers and programmers already struggle to implement a blacklist feature that doesn't just send your PID to the client or to implement a functional company chest system that doesn't have to spend 3 seconds refreshing the company chest every time you withdraw or store an item. Like their engineers are already either deprived of skill or deprived of time. Their artists are not in the position to contribute one iota to "interesting mechanics".

[DiaDeem]

Look I'm sure some farmers that used donkeys and shovels didn't welcome the tractor at first

The fact that you're comparing mass farming to art is absolutely hilarious, and it's no wonder you're so damn clueless. Absolutely laughable.

[Ath192]

The fact that you're comparing mass farming to art is absolutely hilarious, and it's no wonder you're so damn clueless. Absolutely laughable.

You know what’s laughable? That you are so obviously compromised by your feelings about AI you can’t even hide it. But it doesn’t actually matter, because nothing you say and no matter who you shame and how much ridicule you spread it’s coming to the gaming industry.

And there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. So fire away at the insults. I understand you’re at the denial stage of grief so I understand and pity you. Let me know if you need a hug too.

[DiaDeem]

So fire away at the insults

What insults? You literally compared tractors to art. You are ridiculous. If that offends you, that's not my problem.

[Kohashi]

And this is why executives at Ubisoft, Activision or EA have no issue treating costumers like drones who deserve no more than mass produced soulless content from the machine without any care for quality or artistry. Because some of you listen to some generic bombastic AI trash song and think it's "good enough" and just gobble it up. People like you, with no respect for the artistry and the skill involved with making games have no right to ever complain about the current state of gaming.

For shame.

AI can only replace mediocrity. If your work is replaced by an AI that is actually not all that advanced to begin with, perhaps you need to take a step back and re-evaluate your options and plans.

AI should be used as a tool to enhance creativity and work together with humans to produce a better end result. Since the industrial revolution started, humans have always been replaced with machines, and thank god they did because many of those jobs were also very high risk, or boring and repetitive.

[Red-thunder]

AI will reduce the cost of development of these types of games enough that someone will make a good one for those seeking challenge and gameplay, right now it costs millions but as AI advances and can produce HQ assets and such the teams developing these games will be able to get really lean to where enthusiast communities will be able to release games that fit their niche.

It will compose the music, sound effects and graphical assets, so really you will need few developers familiar with using a good engine to produce decent games.

For example this is an AI song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJ-rYBC68Q

It's good enough for a game if you ask me, and its free to use. It will only get better from today.

In fact, as hated as the opinion may be CBUIII should use AI to design armor sets for those times where they don't have the time to manually build the sets themselves. Instead of gee... IDK, reusing the same assets over and over again with a different color.

I mean the problem with FF14 right now isn't even close to being how many assets they can pump out when the entire game is style over substance.

AI isn't going to magically turn artists into programmers and battle content designers. AI isn't going to solve how generic and stale everything in the game is; if anything it'll just make it worse.

Sure, AI can help an indie game dev out, you're not wrong. But the AAA studios pumping out soulless, derivative, stale bugfests are not going to be helped by AI at all. They're already making AI-tier generic slop, how will AI make that any better lol

What's the point of having ten times the graphical assets or music if they are still stuck with the same understaffed content designers team who have to pump out fights with copy-pasted mechanics to meet their deadline.

I know a lot of people in this game just want more content, and will be happy if they just made 5 dungeons and 20 raids a patch even if those dungeons are just copy-pasted linear corridors. Sure, AI can help with that probably. I would not think of FF14 as a better game if that happens. If anything it'll make think even lower of this game.

[Jeeqbit]

AI will reduce the cost of development of these types of games enough that someone will make a good one for those seeking challenge and gameplay, right now it costs millions but as AI advances and can produce HQ assets and such the teams developing these games will be able to get really lean to where enthusiast communities will be able to release games that fit their niche.

While true, my guess is they won't touch it because the FFXIV community does not like AI (despite not really understanding it or seeing good use cases for it unrelated to art). What I can tell you is they hired lots and lots of people for an AI department (since I was watching their recruitment) and this was shown quite a lot in the credits. How much this affects FFXIV I don't know but I don't get the sense it does or the development would be faster.

In fact, as hated as the opinion may be CBUIII should use AI to design armor sets

The issue they have is adjusting them to all races. I saw a clip that WoW has the same issue. WoW uses AI to solve this issue, while FFXIV showed in a dev panel that they have a method to automatically adjust it for races but that sometimes it still needs a bit of adjustment after that. For example, it gets a gear set and inflates it to fit Roegadyn. They did not specify if it used AI but it's suspicious.

Instead of gee... IDK, reusing the same assets over and over again with a different color.

If the recolors make you forget it's being reused, then it's alright. A lot of the time when they have retextured enemies, I've been completely unaware that they were reused for years. Often they used to be bosses that were much bigger with a different color and I didn't even notice for so long. Reusing them helps justify the development cost better, so it's common for all games to do it. They could have AI make adjustments to it perhaps, but as it stands you get issues with fingers. AI also struggles to understand the laws of physics.

stuck with the same understaffed content designers team who have to pump out fights with copy-pasted mechanics to meet their deadline.

They could probably use AI to generate a random assortment of stack, spread, in, out, etc. I could do that myself even. It would probably create some soulless raids that don't fit with the theme of the story/lore/music though.

you have two types of labor that are not substitutable: graphic/music/art design, and the programmers.

Really this. AI can save hours, days or months when programming. But to make that more effective you still need to understand programming so you can write a highly sophisticated, technical prompt to explain exactly what you want.

By this I mean writing a massive paragraph of explicit instructions with all the object interactions and some scenarios being clarified, that looks like rocket science and is hard to read back. The AI will understand it and write something that would take months to code and troubleshoot, free of nonsense like syntax errors, that does exactly what was desired.

Anyone can get it to code stuff without much programming knowledge but it's gonna catch you eventually when you don't have the technical knowledge to guide it to adjust the code how you want, or adjust it manually when it's not making the correct adjustments.

Apparently SE did make an AI version of Yoshi-P which was shockingly accurate.

Yes MMOs are dying because People have no patience anymore

There were always negative players in MMOs that would focus on the downsides, and positive players that would focus on the things they enjoy. The energy investment is similar. What kept people playing was that they had player-created content instead such as RP, house decorating, PVP, helping others clear raids for fun, etc. It's just a lot of these things are more formulaic in FFXIV, but they still exist.