True. But even worse was the relative stagnation of AI.
Most games today have AI that's dumber than a cockroach, whereas in the past each game was a huge leap forward in terms of enemy bots and intelligence. Just remember all the crafty bastards and their skillshots and headshots from ID Software's titles.
[my life]
Wasn't believing it until recently when my son described himself as casual player. For the understanding, he played in some (small) e-sport tournaments and, while never winning, was always on the podium ; would he'd been a little younger, that he would probably have past from his semi-pro team to a pro team.
Then I realized that something like 25 years after the release of games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and other Quake, that were a challenge for me, the only thing that prevented me to finish "Wolfenstein - the new order" in hardcore mode was the lack of ammunition during the final combat ; and my laziness, I could have restarted the last level.
While the habit surely play its role here, it's not normal that, at now almost 50yo, I'm able to do this. I don't have the same reflex, I have a fucking low attention spawn, and I only play for the pleasure (so generally start with a medium difficulty, increasing it only if it bore me). Games should be a challenge for me, at least when put at their maximum level of difficulty ; here a level intended for pure hardcore gamers, and that, if my memory don't betray me, is available only if you finish the game in hard mode.
[/my life]
So yeah, the AI should undeniably be better. It was undeniably better, and should have at least stagnated, not regressed.
But isn't it the cost to pay for a technology like this one ? All animations are based on motion capture, you've to pay those guys, and the technology to make the capture. Hair are near to be individually rigged-like (they aren't effectively rigged but react as if), what need that you'll have to pay a fortune the guys that can handle them. The rendering precision is so great that you've also to pay a fortune for the guys that will do the texturing. There's also the cost for the computers that you'll use to render the animations, and so on.
I don't know how much it cost to make the original Doom, but apparently the reboot cost near to US$100 millions... I doubt that the original cost even just 1% of this. So, you need to sell, and sell a lot. And to achieve this, you need to make the game playable by anyone, from the 10yo who tricked his parent, because the game isn't for him, to the old grumpy guys like me. What imply that you'd to lower the difficulty, and so limit the AI.
At least, it's the conclusion of my thinking ; after the depressing, "what the fuck, how can my son already have the age I had when he was born ?", of course
[...] yet the get stuck on the navmesh in even the newest most well-funded AAA titles.
It's not necessarily always a bad thing. There's an anecdote regarding a dungeon (in Oblivion, but no guaranty) that have been changed because one of the tester past one hour only turning right, and could have been doing it eternally because he didn't understood that he already past there thousand of times. Yet I totally agree that there's a difference between this kind of situation, where too much freedom of movement can lead to confusion, and nowadays navmesh that, globally, can only lead you from A to B.
But, you need to sell. And you've no options. If you don't spend millions in the game, nobody will buy it because it don't look good. And if you spend millions, you'll need to sell it to everyone, even dumbass idiots that don't understand that you should hide when under constant fire, and that they possibly aren't walking in the right direction since it's ten minutes that they only encounter innocent rabbits.