Comment by gausswho
9 hours ago
There's a third path:
3. No humans in your multiplayer
As someone who grew up amazed at Reaper bot for Quake, I'm surprised we don't see a rennaisance of making 'multiplayer' fun by more expressive, fallible, unpredictable bots. We're in an AI bubble and I don't hear of anyone chasing the holy grail of believable 'AI' opponents.
This also has the secondary benefit of having your multiplayer game remain enjoyable even when people's short attention spans move on to the next hot live service. Heck this could kill live service games.
Then again, what people get out of multiplayer is, on some unspoken and sad level, making some other person hurt.
There's just nothing like playing against other people. It's so dynamic and fun. Especially games like StarCraft. AI is just nowhere near as engaging.
Cheaters are increasingly sophisticated and hard to detect. It leads me to think if we put the effort in, we could emerge the same dynamism and fun, maybe even moreso.
If we can't fight 'em, join 'em?