Online Multiplayer games does not make sense, unless you use it for chatting and not gaming.
I think that online multiplayer games does not need to exist as most games could be played offline with AI and with higher enjoyment also.
I think the reason a lot of people don't enjoy AI offline instead of multiplayer games is because as a capitalist society we associate multiplayer games with higher joy, due to the huge amount of ads and streamers targeting teenagers to show them how much fun they are missing by not playing in online multiplayer games. I had met a variety of people with different ages and a lot of the older generations prefer offline games and consider it the norm.
You rate AI way higher than you should. Bits designed to play games have been a thing forever, but they just suck.
No matter how fancy they still follow patterns and eventually become predictable.
That's not to say it wouldn't be good to have the option, but it's just not the same.
I generally prefer single player games anyway coz I can't keep up with people who spend all their time online though.
Younger people grew up playing games online with their friends and having fun social interactions with people online. You can't do that with ai. It's like sports. An important part of sports is playing with others.
I hate playing online multiplayer, and I only play solo games. But it doesn't bother me that online multiplayer games exist. Let people have their fun, it's not bothering us.
At least for me, who was a disabled kid who literally couldn't go out and play under the sun, online multi-players were my salvation. For collaborative games, such as MMOs, few things are as fun as a full squad with comms, whole party of friends investigating a brand new dungeon. Or the gorgeous chaos of a full chain of command, creating strategies and forming friendships in the heat of a 60 v 60 battle, gathering resources beforehand to make yourself useful, the commaradery of giving your old, engraved armor and weapons to your guild's treasury, or to a growing player you took under your wing.
A lot of its allure is for isolated people, a place to build a community and sure, chatting is a significant aspect, but once you know your squadmates, everything flows just better.
Its about the social aspect of playing with other people. Thats the draw. I go through the pain of setting up private servers just to play online games with my friends.
I used to play all kinds of FPS games online and loved it because people in each match would play differently. I always kept my mic/voice chat off because I didn't want to listed to 13 year olds screetching or 30 year olds yelling at their kids. You can't replicate this with AI because developers only do so much work with this stuff and you start to notice patterns and repetitive behavior from them after so long. With real people you might sometimes get your ass whooped while other times your team winds up camping the enemy spawns and cleaning the floor with them.