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

[Kaurhz]

MMOs are dying..

Combination with many players not having the patience they used it, and just generally developers trying to turn it into a cash cow more than anything else... Plus there are many single player and co-op games which just do the whole thing better because they aren't bound by the same restrictions as what an MMO is. Like, I played this game very extensive until around 6.45 at which point my engage with the game went down, and for much of this expansion I have found myself playing other open world games, predominantly single player and it's just so much fresh air, versus this mundane-ness. Even games which aren't really high rated, and games I wouldn't necessarily see as highly rated are at this point fresh air.

I don't think it's a matter of asking for much.. Like a lot of feedback is very very reasonable and tenable to implement, but in the instance of this game they are more concerned with treating the game development like it's an assembly line, versus trying to make a product that actually tries to please as much of the audience as possible. Then you have the whole problem where they aren't necessarily trying to implement new or innovative gameplay systems, versus treating them as a largely inconsequential quota and illusion of choice... Like many of the systems they simply... don't matter. This issue is embedded in their core design, and it shows with how they have iterated on other systems, and how they have adjusted them over time.

[Miguel85NYC]

FF 14 is dying with the horrible content they have been giving us... Its like they dont care anymore

[Zakuyia]

Actually the real question that should be asked is. Are developers putting so little effort into projects while focusing on things that could kill off the game such as coroporate greed.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I haven't really paid attention to other MMOs, so I can't speak of them.

But FF XIV definitely is in a decline, primarily due to DT being just awful and gameplay getting stale.
It ain't dying yet, but if they keep the course it just might end up getting there.

[Mimilu]

I don't think were really focusing on the actual points of Josh's video other then having years worth of content and steering into AI talks for some reason. (Ծ_Ծ) ~?
The video is more about how established MMOs like WoW and XIV with years of content and bigger player bases are setting up expectations that new/newer games can't currently fulfill, making developers leery on making new MMOs (especially with the amount of money it cost to make an MMO).
MMO players will general stick to one MMO as their main, get bored or burned out of it, go "vacation" in newer MMOs, get bored over the lack of content (because we expect years worth of content, even from newer games) and community, then go back to their main MMO. We see this in XIV when a new expansion releases: New expansion, population surges. Expansion ages, populations decreases. Repeat with the next expansion.
MMOs as a genre are also designed for people to treat their main MMO as a hobby or second life, using their time investment and the drip feeding of new content to their advantage.

[brinn12]

We had 1 dungeon and 1 alliance raid in 8 months, both can be completed together in a single day. And yet, alliance raid gear has a weekly lockout for no reason, as it's not even BiS at release.

Chaotic and Ultimates? That's content for 10% of the playerbase, and Ulti also has a weekly lockout of 1 totem, in a game approaching the 30-job mark.

An MMO doesn’t need 2 decades of content to keep players engaged. It only feels that way because modern game design prioritizes doing the bare minimum, with lockouts as a crutch to mask the actual lack of content that would justify subbing every month, or even most months of the year.

[Red-thunder]

You definitely need to temper your expectations. What you are doing is just repeating the talking points of those trying to convince people that AI is the future without real proof. Fact of the matter is, using AI is not really generating any value, and that is not purely meant as in monetary value. AI needs constant supervision and is only remixing information it already has been fed. Its no substitute for real human creativity.

Personally, I'd rather take a humans mediocre work over anything an algorithm shat out. A labor of love stands out, one way or the other.

AI is already generating a lot of value in the enterprise/research context, given that you're using it properly (using it in a way that you're not trying to use an LLM to do something you can't already do yourself).

In STEM research basically everyone is now using LLMs. For example it can generate beamer slides for your publications with ease, including putting underbraces on parts of your equations that need to be explained. It can apply simple theorems onto simple questions to yield proofs that a math undergrad could achieve. It can help you generate unit tests. It can digest research once you feed it a PDF and answer some simple questions like "did the authors preempt this particular criticism I have," making it a glorified but very useful Ctrl+F. It is great at generating code chunks for routine tasks, or your can give it your own code and tell it add some bells and whistles.

The problem for all of this is that you need to treat it as a tool, not a replacement of your labor. For example in asking the LLM to prove a certain mathematical lemma, you will need to be the one to read its proof carefully to check if it has taken care of, say, boundary conditions or if it has assumed certain regularity conditions implicitly in its proof. For code, you'll need to read it to make sure that it is using an efficient algorithm and that it's following the logic that you have in mind. What my point is that you cannot ask an LLM to do something you yourself are not capable of doing. That will end up in disaster.

Which brings me back to my original point in this thread, and it's that using AI to free up time for the artists and musicians is absolutely pointless because they cannot code and they will not be able to do anything with some horrible and clunky engine with an LLM. The LLM will spit out code they don't understand and cannot debug. Microsoft's CEO is seeing the same problem where a lot of junior devs are using LLMs as a crutch to cover their own inadequacies. Yes, that's why AI has such a bad rep right now. Unfortunately can we really solve this problem? Telling people "don't use LLMs for things you don't understand" ain't gonna do anything.

[ovIm]

I highly disagree. It empowers people to produce things that would've taken entire teams to do before. Is it in its infancy? Yes, but this is the worst it will ever be. It will get exponentially better. As for evidence you can see this small demo

Ngl, that thing in the youtube video looks horrible in every sense of the word. It's all smokes and dazzlings. And quite frankly, you can disagree all you want, the experience of someone who actually has business expertise is worth so much more than some guy who claims to have done things in a youtube video, and a couple of mediocre half-assed assets.

AI is already generating a lot of value in the enterprise/research context, given that you're using it properly (using it in a way that you're not trying to use an LLM to do something you can't already do yourself).

While that is true, the very moment you need to double check what your LLM has done, the time that you have saved not making $thing will then be spent fact checking $thing. How much that is depends, but as you say yourself, letting an LLM do work you are incapable of doing yourself will result in unsatisfactory or simply worse results.
I can see LLMs working well in STEM research because the data used there is not quite as subject to human subjectivity like proper coding, drawing, or writing is, but based purely on objective reproduceable facts. Hells, I am hoping that we get that stuff to do our taxes for us so we have more time to do the things that really matter. But until all those algorithms can actually replace human ingenuity and creativity in creating something from nothing, a lot of time will pass.

[Ath192]

Ngl, that thing in the youtube video looks horrible in every sense of the word. It's all smokes and dazzlings. And quite frankly, you can disagree all you want, the experience of someone who actually has business expertise is worth so much more than some guy who claims to have done things in a youtube video, and a couple of mediocre half-assed assets.

I love the copium, you wouldn't believe the absolute garbage it was producing some years back and now it's like this. And this is from someone who did that in a couple of hours alone. It will exponentially get better. But again, a lot of people can't really see the potential behind things, they just look at something and bury their head in the sand, like you.

This is light years ahead of what it was even 2-3 years ago. And in a few years time it will be light years ahead of what it is now. And yes, all studios are either already embracing it or will look into it.