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To extend your point, it is also clear from analytics in Steam & mobile gaming that games have massive amounts of player dropout. It is pretty rare, even in rel

To extend your point, it is also clear from analytics in Steam & mobile gaming that games have massive amounts of player dropout. It is pretty rare, even in relatively short single player campaigns, to see 30% of people who bought the game finish it. So effort making the AI even better is always going to only be for an extremely small niche of players that play a game long enough to exhaust the limits of simple AI. Just look at the achievements for Left for Dead. Only 40% of all players have got the achievement for "kill one of each Uncommon type" which is trivial to get if you play for a few hours.

thrower123 7y ago
Steam numbers are massively inflated by the tons of game purchases that come through sales, bundles, and giveaways and are never played. I have something like 600 games in my Steam library, and I would bet that the median playtime would be 0.0 hours... Just today I saw something that looked interesting, and it was 85% off because of a Halloween sale. So I grabbed it for a couple bucks. Free time being such a rare commodity, there's a solid chance I never even install it... and then there's always Stellaris or Mount & Blade or Medieval Total War that I could happily play until the heat death of the universe, competing for my attention.
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  Isn't that just proving my point? Most people who buy your game aren't going to invest even 10 hours in it or come close to maxing out the AI because they only picked it up because it was 85% off during a Steam sale. Maybe you'll be able to figure out from Early Access numbers how popular your game is and whether you need to invest in super-awesome AI. But it seems like for most games it would be a waste of effort. More likely it would be retrofitted into an already popular game in a DLC or future patch or something.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >Maybe you'll be able to figure out from Early Access numbers how popular your game is and whether you need to invest in super-awesome AI. But it seems like for most games it would be a waste of effort. Maybe the reason people quit your game is because of the AI. What made me stop playing Heroes of Might and Magic 6, Civilization 6, and Total War Three Kingdoms is the poor AI. It takes the fun out of the game, because at lower difficulties the AI puts up no challenge and at higher difficulties you're just exploiting the AI the same way over and over again to keep up. You might think that that's fine, because you already got the money, but then you'd be looking at it from the perspective of singular games. But studios usually don't just release one game and then disappear. After my experience with HoMM 6, I had zero interest in HoMM 7. 2K Games could release Civilization 7 tomorrow, but without them showing that the game's AI is much better than in civ6, I probably wouldn't pick it up. Yes, the Civilization series will still have players, but it could easily just fizzle out like many other franchises and even genres. You also can't add this in as a DLC, because people make up their mind about a game near the start. This only works if the game already has longevity, but at that point the game is already popular, so does a better AI at that point make a difference?
Mirioron 7y ago
It doesn't matter how short or long the singleplayer campaign is. AI in games is so simple and rudimentary that you'll have it figured out in most games in less than an hour. You might not figure out the most effective ways to exploit it, but usually you'll figure out something. This alone can make the experience boring, especially when your game is heavily focused on playing against the AI.

thrower123 7y ago

Steam numbers are massively inflated by the tons of game purchases that come through sales, bundles, and giveaways and are never played. I have something like 600 games in my Steam library, and I would bet that the median playtime would be 0.0 hours... Just today I saw something that looked interesting, and it was 85% off because of a Halloween sale. So I grabbed it for a couple bucks. Free time being such a rare commodity, there's a solid chance I never even install it... and then there's always Stellaris or Mount & Blade or Medieval Total War that I could happily play until the heat death of the universe, competing for my attention.

freddie_mercury 7y ago
Isn't that just proving my point? Most people who buy your game aren't going to invest even 10 hours in it or come close to maxing out the AI because they only picked it up because it was 85% off during a Steam sale. Maybe you'll be able to figure out from Early Access numbers how popular your game is and whether you need to invest in super-awesome AI. But it seems like for most games it would be a waste of effort. More likely it would be retrofitted into an already popular game in a DLC or future patch or something.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >Maybe you'll be able to figure out from Early Access numbers how popular your game is and whether you need to invest in super-awesome AI. But it seems like for most games it would be a waste of effort. Maybe the reason people quit your game is because of the AI. What made me stop playing Heroes of Might and Magic 6, Civilization 6, and Total War Three Kingdoms is the poor AI. It takes the fun out of the game, because at lower difficulties the AI puts up no challenge and at higher difficulties you're just exploiting the AI the same way over and over again to keep up. You might think that that's fine, because you already got the money, but then you'd be looking at it from the perspective of singular games. But studios usually don't just release one game and then disappear. After my experience with HoMM 6, I had zero interest in HoMM 7. 2K Games could release Civilization 7 tomorrow, but without them showing that the game's AI is much better than in civ6, I probably wouldn't pick it up. Yes, the Civilization series will still have players, but it could easily just fizzle out like many other franchises and even genres. You also can't add this in as a DLC, because people make up their mind about a game near the start. This only works if the game already has longevity, but at that point the game is already popular, so does a better AI at that point make a difference?

Mirioron 7y ago

It doesn't matter how short or long the singleplayer campaign is. AI in games is so simple and rudimentary that you'll have it figured out in most games in less than an hour. You might not figure out the most effective ways to exploit it, but usually you'll figure out something. This alone can make the experience boring, especially when your game is heavily focused on playing against the AI.