The topic of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is pretty big and one of the branches that are to be completely transformed by it is online gaming.
Right now ARPG games use procedural generation of data. That is:
In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power.
What this to you as a player mean is that the ARPG maps/zones for example are created randomly from a predefined set of rules.
One example of procedural generation, here used to generate realistic looking tree models. Different models can be generated by changing both deterministic parameters and a random seed.
In the future AI generation will completely replace procedural generation.
What this to you as a player would mean is that the maps/zones for example will be created randomly not only based on a predefined set of rules, but also based on your preferences and choices in the past.
An example would be that you start in your home village with a Level 0 hero and you receive the quest to kill the evil queen Nistis, which is causing great distress to the people in the village by transforming some of these to zombies at night. You walk out of the village and you step in the marshes where there are several zombies to kill and level up. So far, so good.
Suddenly you see a cave and you are forced with a choice - enter in it or continue through the marshes.
In the current ARPGs the evil queen Nistis will always be at a fixed location - the cave level 3 for example. With AI generation Nistis could be anywhere depending on where you’ve chosen to go - she will appear at some point in time (when you reach level 4 for example).
What AI generation makes possible to happen is that the world ahead of you will be generated by your will. If you like the marshes you can stay in these and explore them more. If not you can go deeper and deeper into the cave until you decide to go back in town or take a path to the forest.
You will choose in which zones to fight and how much time to stay there - the AI will simply “remember” your past choices and “offer” you the content ahead based on these.
Some players will slay Nistis in the marsh, other in the cave, other in the forest. Some however will decide to co-op with her and bring doom to their village. This is where the RPG part kicks in with a full strength. Forget about the “campaigns” we know from D2, D3 and PoE. With AI generation each time you play you will have a different “campaign” as long as you make different choices.
But this is not all, it’s just the beginning.
The player should feel that the choices he makes during the game have crucial consequences for his in-game character. The player play-style should reflect in his character/skill progression. The dungeons he chooses to visit and the enemies he is able to slain should reflect in his item/resource progression. - Skelos, 2016
AI ARPGs can serve for massive changes how character/skill progression in ARPGs is done. The AI could “create” a unique skill tree for each player depending on his play-style.
What this means is that the more you use certain skills or skill combinations the more these would “evolve” depending on your play-style during combat. The possibility two characters in an AI ARPG to have the same set of skills at the end of the Season would be practically zero.
Now that I wrote “end”, AI ARPGs would serve for massive end game content generation matching heroes with similar preferences to fight against the hordes of evil in a constantly changing environment full with all kind of traps.
Sky’s the limit really when we talk AI ARPG. Our very own real world could be one big AI ARPG.
All arpg that says they have random generated maps are not doing so at all. They just glue a few things together and call it generated.
