Would you be happy with a PVE only MMO if....

MrMelGibson

Would you be happy with a PVE only mmo if the creators of the mmo created an A.I. in game that could compare to players?  An A.I. we have never seen before.  One that changed and adapted to any player and didn't win with cheap tricks, but tactics that a player would normally employ?  An A.I. that could also interact and even join player controlled groups for raids and dungeons etc.  I imagine an A.I. that the average player might not even realize is an A.I. but another player. 

You could still have battlegrounds and even OWPVP (consensual of course).  But the opposing players/faction are all A.I. controlled.  I personally feel the A.I. in most games/mmos are most times an after thought or not even A.I. but just scripted bots.  Would be interesting to see a developer take the time to just develop A.I. and if it was successful being able to even lease it out to other developers the way game engines are.  Let me know what your thoughts are on the subject.

Sovrath

MrMelGibson said:

Would you be happy with a PVE only mmo if the creators of the mmo created an A.I. in game that could compare to players?  An A.I. we have never seen before.  One that changed and adapted to any player and didn't win with cheap tricks, but tactics that a player would normal employ?  An A.I. that could also interact and even join player controlled groups for raids and dungeons etc.  I imagine an A.I. that the average player might not even realize is an A.I. but another player. 

You could still have battlegrounds and even OWPVP (consensual of course).  But the opposing players/faction are all A.I. controlled.  I personally feel the A.I. in most games/mmos are most times an after thought or not even A.I. but just scripted bots.  Would be interesting to see a developer take the time to just develop A.I. and if it was successful being able to even lease it out to other developers the way game engines are.  Let me know what your thoughts are on the subject.

Absolutely.

stayontarget

You betcha i would. 

DarLorkar

Of course people would be happy with it..

But you are asking the impossible for the foreseeable future. 

True A.I. , as you are talking about, able to be mistaken for another person, is years away. If ever.

Would have to be able to make decisions on the fly with changing gameplay, like a person, not be scripted.

Scripted, coded, behavior, what we have now, and what you are describing...worlds apart and as far away in time i expect, at least for gaming.

deniter

I wouldn't need even the A.I, PvE only MMO would suffice.

And why would you play on battlegrounds if the game was PvE only? Surely there are deeper gameplay than instanced zerging if you don't have to please PvP crowd.

MrMelGibson

DarLorkar said:

Of course people would be happy with it..

But you are asking the impossible for the foreseeable future. 

True A.I. , as you are talking about, able to be mistaken for another person, is years away. If ever.

Would have to be able to make decisions on the fly with changing gameplay, like a person, not be scripted.

Scripted, coded, behavior, what we have now, and what you are describing...worlds apart and as far away in time i expect, at least for gaming.

That is fair, but I didn't exactly say it has to be now.  I could see this down the road like 5-10 years.  Imagine someone like Google investing only into the A.I. of a game and selling it to other developers.  If a developer only spent time on the A.I. I think it's definitely possible to see it not too far off from now.  

The real question is who would fund this type of venture and would it profit them.  I think that's really the only question that any developer would be thinking before getting started.  

Tiller

Decent NPC A.I., one could only dream.

MrMelGibson

deniter said:

I wouldn't need even the A.I, PvE only MMO would suffice.

And why would you play on battlegrounds if the game was PvE only? Surely there are deeper gameplay than instanced zerging if you don't have to please PvP crowd.

I'm guessing for the same reason games like Overwatch have a game mode where a team of players plays against a team of bots (and other FPS that have this system).  When I rarely play Starcraft 2 I personally prefer to play against the bots with other players (3 players vs. 3 bots for example).  I think some people just enjoy the actual activity and the other players are just the cherry on top.  I could be wrong though.

SpottyGekko

You mean an AI that cheats, exploits and uses 3rd-party hax to win ? 

It would not be comparable to a human player otherwise...

MrMelGibson

SpottyGekko said:

You mean an AI that cheats, exploits and uses 3rd-party hax to win ? 

It would not be comparable to a human player otherwise...

Maybe this A.I. could spot players using cheats and report them.  Then send them a really mean whisper and quickly put them on their ignore list to further put salt in the wound lol.

Octagon7711

There are bots who are able to play your character in PvE (completing quests, selling goods in auction house, gathering, etc.) or PvP and most other players wouldn't know until the player behind the bot rubs it in during PvP or you notice the same player every time you're online doing the exact same thing.  So I think it's there it's just that the costs for such AI would make for a very expensive MMO to support such NPCs that couldn't be distinguished from real players running 24/7.  The closest I've seen in an RPG is Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.  Being able to flip an NPC to work for you and help him get promoted through the ranks to further your cause, as well as taking out other NPCs before they gain rank is priceless.

I wonder how can you have any kind of AI without running scripts?

k61977

One of the biggest issues here would be the code for the AI.  It would have to be able to expand and grow as it learns.  So it would basically have to be able to write it's own code and make changes.  So you would need to keep increasing the size of the servers to handle the new code.  Also if this AI was independent for each NPC then you would basically have to have a server farm just for the AI's. 

There are many people in the world that just are not comfortable with that idea today.  They grew up watching movies of AI taking over and killing everyone.  More over it has made them paranoid whenever anyone suggest AI.   I really doubt that we will ever see this type of code in our life time.  Just look at what people did to the Goggle AI on twitter.  In a matter of days it became this racists program that they had to remove from the web.

In theory this is a great idea and one I would love to see, but again not one we will most likely ever see in our lifetimes.

immodium

Why bother when I can play with the real thing?

I'd rather developers work on tools/mechanics to bring players together rather than to replace them.

centkin

MrMelGibson said:

SpottyGekko said:

You mean an AI that cheats, exploits and uses 3rd-party hax to win ? 

It would not be comparable to a human player otherwise...

Maybe this A.I. could spot players using cheats and report them.  Then send them a really mean whisper and quickly put them on their ignore list to further put salt in the wound lol.

That would be quite neat -- put in AIs that run around doing their business and look for people who are afk botting.

Mendel

MrMelGibson said:

DarLorkar said:

Of course people would be happy with it..

But you are asking the impossible for the foreseeable future. 

True A.I. , as you are talking about, able to be mistaken for another person, is years away. If ever.

Would have to be able to make decisions on the fly with changing gameplay, like a person, not be scripted.

Scripted, coded, behavior, what we have now, and what you are describing...worlds apart and as far away in time i expect, at least for gaming.

That is fair, but I didn't exactly say it has to be now.  I could see this down the road like 5-10 years.  Imagine someone like Google investing only into the A.I. of a game and selling it to other developers.  If a developer only spent time on the A.I. I think it's definitely possible to see it not too far off from now.  

The real question is who would fund this type of venture and would it profit them.  I think that's really the only question that any developer would be thinking before getting started.  

I think that an AI capable of emulating a player is further off than the 5-10 years.  There just hasn't been major developments in character AI that have been incorporated into games to build upon.  Games will have to take academic AI as a starting point.  Many of those academic AI improvements are proprietary, with students and professional working towards robotic applications (where they think there are piles of money waiting for them).

I certainly don't know how easy it would be to convert academic research into applications in an MMORPG.  When you mention 'AI in games', many professionals are still going to think of path-and-movement determination algorithms, and not behavioral simulation of individuals.

Funding would indeed be a sticky situation.  I really don't see many companies willing to do that, as the tried-and-true scripting method is exactly that, both tried and true.  Developing AI for a new aspect is both complicated and costly.  Without a decade's worth of precedence in actual MMORPG applications, there may be no foundation to build upon; every developer would likely consider individual AI as something they haven't done before, and therefore risky.  I expect some EQ:N developers learned this lesson the hard way.  (and they were focusing on group behaviors, not individual decision-making behavior).

Kyleran

I'm having a hard time understanding why you want this.

Most people eschew PVP now because player characters routinely beat them, sometimes badly, and interrupt their fun.

A properly coded AI would do the same thing.

It would emulate all the behaviors of players, it would try to kill your healers, beat you with superior gear, numbers or information.

If you create the gaming equivalent of Skynet it's going to annihilate you far more efficiently than most players do now.

Be careful what you ask for.

Wizardry

it is called AI ...Artificial Intelligence for a reason,it is and always be artificial.

Nothing more than scripts that need triggers or simple automation.

Act like a real person would?How would that work with a Boss?He would NEVER lose because he is more powerful right and would not fight anyone unless he figured to win.I mean gamer's don't go into a fight thinking "ok we will be losing" they have scoured the net and watched bvideos and written down the exact scripts to watch for and go in accordingly.

I will point at an OBVIOUS scenario.Would a Boss just be standing at the end of some cave waiting there to be attacked?No he would be wandering around and if he had real player like thinking,he would want to be learning skills and magic and healing and crafting and finding food and looking for players to ransack and steal all their goods.

Octagon7711

Even the human brain is scripts based.  You learn something and the more you repeat it, the more it becomes a habit, which is basically a script.  So when you drive home or wash dishes the brain runs that script so it doesn't have to treat it as a learning experience which means it saves energy.

Octagon7711

centkin said:

MrMelGibson said:

SpottyGekko said:

You mean an AI that cheats, exploits and uses 3rd-party hax to win ? 

It would not be comparable to a human player otherwise...

Maybe this A.I. could spot players using cheats and report them.  Then send them a really mean whisper and quickly put them on their ignore list to further put salt in the wound lol.

That would be quite neat -- put in AIs that run around doing their business and look for people who are afk botting.

That's what they do.  Programs designed to spot botters.  Really no need to make an NPC just code running in the background flagging players who can do things they shouldn't be able to do.

Lootz

I have been playing MMO's since Everquest and Ultima Online first came out and every MMO i have played has destroyed game play because of PvP. There reason's was always for Class Balance to make it fair for players. Hay how about have two stats one for PvE and one for PvP.

LynxJSA

It depends. Does it spout profanity and teabag its victims? 

Gruug

MrMelGibson said:

Would you be happy with a PVE only mmo if the creators of the mmo created an A.I. in game that could compare to players?  An A.I. we have never seen before.  One that changed and adapted to any player and didn't win with cheap tricks, but tactics that a player would normally employ?  An A.I. that could also interact and even join player controlled groups for raids and dungeons etc.  I imagine an A.I. that the average player might not even realize is an A.I. but another player. 

You could still have battlegrounds and even OWPVP (consensual of course).  But the opposing players/faction are all A.I. controlled.  I personally feel the A.I. in most games/mmos are most times an after thought or not even A.I. but just scripted bots.  Would be interesting to see a developer take the time to just develop A.I. and if it was successful being able to even lease it out to other developers the way game engines are.  Let me know what your thoughts are on the subject.

Those games already exist or have existed in various forms forever. It is the other type of game, the PVP only types, that I don't care play. 

As to the AI being able to compare with players, that would be easy....just don't cheat.

And yes there are games out there where the opposing factions are only AI.

Rosenborg

http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/13240/AI-Uses-Deep-Learning-to-Beat-Humans-at-DOOM.aspx


Maybe one day something like this could work in a MMO. Would be interesting if there was only two factions, humans and A.I. 

During the launch the A.I. faction would be peaceful and then we humans come, start killing them and then the A.I. retaliates, hmm..

Konfess

I wrote about this over a year ago.  What I said back then (8-Oct-2015), and was trying to sell to the market was:

"I want the AI bots to indistinguishable from real life gamers.  They should be roaming the game world leveling their characters, joining PUGs, raids, PvP, and using Teamspeak.  Dev's want the AI to be dumb voiceless NPCs that they sell in the cash shop.  I think both ideas will be seen in the market soon. "

No one bought in.  I heard that there might be projects working on this.  But no one with a master's or higher in AI that I know is working on it.  The problem is when I say AI, everyone thinks of IBM's Watson.  But Watson isn't going to fool anyone in a teamspeak channel.

For the teamspeak problem I believe the answer is Less is More, and Variety is Even More.  So say less, but say a variety of things.  With prerecorded voice actors.  I'm still working on this though.

Konfess

DarLorkar said:

Of course people would be happy with it..

But you are asking the impossible for the foreseeable future. 

True A.I. , as you are talking about, able to be mistaken for another person, is years away. If ever.

Would have to be able to make decisions on the fly with changing gameplay, like a person, not be scripted.

Scripted, coded, behavior, what we have now, and what you are describing...worlds apart and as far away in time i expect, at least for gaming.

Let me tell you that when it comes to rts, I have watched this one coders AI dominate.  He also had it playing a popular mmorpg and running raids.  I'm not going to name him, because I don't want people to use his site for writing bots.  People who played with or against the AI didn't have a clue from the level of game play.  But his isn't going to participate in voice chat.

Today many games are using AI to test the game world for snag spots.  An AI character runs around the world trying to get stuck.  So IRL players don't.

All AI has to be dumbed to for release.  The first draft of AI is usually frighteningly challenging.  The level of AI the we see today is what focus groups will accept.

bcbully

Umm why not just play people? O.o You pve only types are so silly.