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Keep Playing With AI
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports
how a newly developed AI system 'learns' your playing behavior and can even play for you when its time to take out the garbage or do other non-essential things around the house. My only question is if it could even learn to bs for me on those laggy starcraft 3v3 games."
I would prefer that the AI took out the garbage so that *I* can continue playing my game ;-)
Besides which, who wants to give up their game for "someone" else to play. I mean it would be bad enough coming back from running an errand and finding that your sibling/gf/friend has died and put you back to the start let alone your friend. Or even that they've managed to get you past the point you've been banging your head against for ages so that now you feel cheated at not having achieved the goal yourself.
Nope, I think the "pause" button is not going to be replaced by an AI any time soon.
A little planning goes a long way...
Then I want it to play the best strategy, not do the same stupid stuff I do wrong...
I agree the server should be watching the player. How better to take notes on how to improve the gaming experience? But don't use it to play the game FOR the player when the player's bored with the game. FIX THE GAME.
If you've designed your game with lots of boring repetitious stuff which is well-suited for a machine, then you've gone the wrong direction.
If your idea of making certain events rare is a spawn-rate measured in hours or days, then you've gone the wrong direction.
If you think of your paying customers as gerbils who will do anything, especially hitting the spacebar or attack key every ten seconds, for eight hours at a stretch, then you've gone the wrong direction.
Instead, if you want to keep your player's interests, offer more entertainment that works within their available time. Make the player's time in the game more valuable. Make it possible to play a little over lunch, a little on Thursday evening, and still feel accomplishment.
For starters, employ adaptive spawning instead of location-based spawning. If the server notices a party of adventurers who haven't fought anything in a while, decide approximately how tough an encounter should be, then let it descend upon them. Vary the toughness, vary the approaches, vary the circumstances which trigger a spawn. Don't count server time to the next spawn, count character time to their next adventure opportunity. If the game isn't focused on hunting and leveling to the exclusion of all else (hah, yeah, like THAT will ever happen in THIS industry), then watch the players' behavior to decide what kinds of quests the player likes. Ration those out at a rate that keeps them interested, in character-time, not server-time. If the player plays twice a week, give them the stuff they like each time they log in. If the player really does enjoy slashing for hours on end, then give them a little surprise every now and then.
Massive multiplayer games should take advantage of the massive multiplayer-ness. Like, duh. The statistical analysis which could be done on player behavior in MMORPGs is staggering. The fact that game designers just don't bother doing it or using it, is mind boggling beyond the extreme. The fact that today's MMORPGs are essentially single-player games with thousands of human-powered NPCs just makes me wonder whether anyone really gets it.
[
"The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. "
An now we have AI's to play tedious computer games for us!
I have developed an AI that will make your Slashdot posts for you. It just pastes big quotes from the article and throws in a few off-topic references to the DMCA.
- Have a picture