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I don't think it has to be an either or. I think AI can solve a lot of problems that currently exist in human spaces with the result being that humans are more drawn in to those spaces.
Take an ELO matchmaking algorithm as an example. In a 'pure' setting there is a pool of players looking for a match and the algorithm matches the players to their closest ELO available. But what happens if you are having a bad day? Or the players around your ELO happen to just be better than you? If the algorithm is 'pure' it wont care, because technically the ELO will balance itself out, so it wont account for the fact that you just lost 3 matches in a row and are probably tilted to the point where you will stop playing if you lose again. But if the algorithm isn't 'pure' and is instead designed with the goal of keeping players playing as long as possible, it can pick up on the fact you are losing to much and send you to play a lower ELO player so you don't burn out. The problem there being that a lower ELO player has to take a loss.
Now the algorithm has a lot of 'power'. It essentially dictates for 80% of players whether they win or lose. The only way to make the field 'fair' is to segment the playing population until the vast majority of players trend towards a 50% winrate. Having a good day? Face higher ELO players, lose, go back to your own ELO. Got tilted? Playing bad? We happen to have a player that's significantly lower ELO, who still has one loss to go before we have to give him a 'win' game, cheer up.
The problem with a 50% winrate is that it isn't satisfying. The problem with ELO is that you can see it go up and down and it might demoralize you. The problem with hidden ELO is that you start feeling the algorithm working behind the scenes. A 50% winrate feels like a slog. It burns people out and they stop playing.
So what happens if we inject the player population with bots? Bots that just lose. Or if need be, bots that win. We can use the bots to break up the predictability of the algorithm. Just throw in random bot games. Give players an extra win because winning feels good. Don't worry about feeling lonely, the vast majority of players are human. We can even make the bots emulate a bad player. Have it make obvious rookie mistakes so that instead of suspecting it of being a bot, you just feel sorry for it. No one is worse off here. Matchmaker has happier players playing for longer.
As an example for the motte, I am sure the AI can figure out what kind of a post will garner the most replies. Why would it be bad for the motte to have an AI that constantly fuels discussions that keep people glued to their screen? If we are completely honest, what else is this place good for?
AI isn't bad for humans from a hedonistic perspective. If we have some higher goals for humanity than wasting time playing chess and arguing online then, sure, AI is probably bad. But for the internet? So long as you know that there are real people watching, like twitter recently started showing, the interaction is real. It doesn't even have to be typed by human hands. A new age of Robot Wars. Watch an AI expertly rattle off all the arguments of 'your side' against the 'opposition'. And if we are being honest, how different is that from the type of representative politics we already settle for? Be it in parliament or in media or online.
I made be a weird outlier, but I find a 50% winrate perfectly acceptable and satisfying as long as the matches feel fair and the competition is close.
I neither want to feel like I'm effortlessly cruising to victory nor like I'm struggling just to keep pace. Okay, there are times I'd like to go on a power trip and just crush everyone, but that's not the same kind of satisfaction as a hard-fought victory.
I think the 'problem,' then, with most matchmaking algos is that they aren't so good at optimizing for close wins except at the very highest levels, and only in games like Chess where random factors effecting outcomes are minimized.
Basically, if you get a couple 'lucky' wins you get paired with people who will absolutely stomp you and that is demoralizing. If you get stomped badly enough you're paired with people who are probably not so good and you win handily, which increases your morale but isn't as satisfying as eking out a hard-fought win. Win too hard and you get launched up back to the big leagues to be smashed.
Maybe 1/4 of the matches you play, if that, are genuinely close to your actual skill level. Thus, the 'quality' of every match, in terms of its enjoyability, varies immensely even if your win rate is consistent.
This yo-yo effect is what I find frustrating. I'd like to play against people whom I feel challenge me when I'm playing at my general 'best' without exerting myself to try to keep pace.
If AI can optimize for that better I'd say "AWESOME." If that means I end up playing against AIs that are optimized to give me that experience, I'd be rather annoyed.
I imagine that one major issue is that peoples skill varies greatly between different matches.
How's their mood? How tired are they? Are they on drugs? Etc.
What is measured is a very rough estimate of average past performance, but any given game you might be significantly higher or lower than that number.
This goes for every player in the game and if you end up with the people who's playing their first game of the day, had a cup of coffee and haven't smoked pot you're going to roll the other team if two of their players took a smoke break..
For people who play as groups the issues get even worse. Are they trying hard to coordinate in order to win or are they just hanging out, using the game as an excuse?
It is impossible for an algorithm to solve this equation for people who aren't extremely invested in the game and therefore make sure that they almost only play at their best. The issues get worse the further down you go in the rankings.
Yep.
I think the general solution that works well enough is to simply separate out 'casual' and 'ranked' mode, with the expectation that in casual mode you'll get matched with people of wildly different skill levels and competitiveness and thus the game isn't going to be able to keep your winrate consistent
The bigger problem to is how ubiquitous cheating has apparently become, so that you can't be sure that any given match was 'fair' and thus the whole concept of playing multiplayer online with randos gets soured.
Yeah, holy shit it's bad. I returned to playing Dota for a bit and there was cheater in at least every other game, I'm not exaggerating. The scripting has gotten ridiculous and it turned me off from playing, even with friends.
I saw that there was a massive ban wave where even pros got hit but I'm unsure how big of an impact that had.
There was a recent video examining the phenomenon in Escape from Tarkov, which is a game I have really wanted to play for a long time but now, having seen how your odds of being matched up against 'undetectable' cheaters in a given match/raid approaches 1, I literally don't see the point. I play a game to have a certain kind of experience, and that experience assumes everyone is on some kind of level playing field. But no, given the chance to cheat with minimal risk, people do:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=p5LfGcDB7Ek
(the video is long but you only need to watch the first 15 minutes)
If you can't expect other players to uphold the 'spirit' of the game absent some kind of severe policing, then what is the point of being part of a 'gaming' community?
Not a new phenomena, cheating has quite the long and illustrious history in the gaming community.
But the fact that almost all games these days FORCE you play online multiplayer with randos they match you with, it's kind of an important issue if they expect people to keep playing.
With community servers, there were plenty of cheating horror stories of a different kind - people excusing/turning a blind eye to the cheating of a popular member of the community, or people turning to cheats to keep up when they care more about the community than the game.
Though I guess they were still rare enough to be stories, instead of business of usual.
I'm not sure there's ever going to be a full solution, since detection can be so difficult. Although if all game information was kept completely server-side, and the player was just receiving a datastream (like Google Stadia or Amazon Luna) it would fix a lot of the issue.
But I also place a pretty high premium on owning and controlling my own hardware, so I dislike this solution.
Another option would be a persistent, cross-platform, cross-game reputation system tied to player IDs, where proven instances of cheating would follow the player between games and games can do their best to match players with good reputations to each other.
But THAT will of course be abused for other purposes too so... I really don't know.
Oh yeah, the other problem is that cheating can be dialed up or down too. So even if someone isn't using a full-on aimbot, they can still use tools that make them just a tiny bit more accurate on average while still looking like 'natural' gameplay. So cheats can be fine-tuned to a much higher degree than detection can be.
Bring back couch-based multiplayer and LAN parties, so cheaters can immediately be nut-tapped upon detection.
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