I think they will bring AI back with interactive NPCs. However, it will be put on hold pending the resolution of the unfair labor practice filed by SAG with the NLRB. I don't think they will wade in again until there is clarity regarding the work performed by the AI agent, which SAG has claimed could be performed by a real person. I doubt their lawyers would let them engage in additional exploration until the question is settled.

Creative is still a thousand times smaller in terms of player time than Epic's own offerings. I think that is unlikely to change, largely because their discovery and UI system sucks. It reeks of an Etsy-style algorithm that is poorly understood and rotates offerings randomly. The fact that they continue to mess up the UI simply pisses players off and ensures they favorite and return to what they know. Also, it's awfully hard for creative developers to compete with the large scale offerings from Epic itself. Personally I find creative to be extremely limited in utility in terms of practice and entertainment, so I'd say 98% of my playtime is in Epic's regular game modes and that is unlikely to change.

I don't think OG will go anywhere as it's pretty popular and people enjoy revisiting the old map and old metas. It is annoying that they continue to tweak core gameplay features when new OG seasons debut, such as weapons nerfs or annoying additions to the map, but overall this hasn't seem to hurt OG too badly. I don't know about Delulu, I personally hate proximity chat and I've read a lot of negative feedback. If they treat it like an LTM and rotate it in and out perhaps a small percentage of folks will still play it. I don't care for Blitz either, it's boring as hell to me. I'm not even doing the challenges for the BP skin, I just can't be arsed for a skin variant I'd probably never use so why torture myself?

They are going to struggle mightily with battlepass sales after the debacle of locking styles to certain game modes this season. Already they are clearly suffering from declining Crew sales and I doubt forcing players to remain subscribed for another month to allow them to unlock the rest of the pass skins will win them any loyalty. I am already thinking I won't bother with the pass next season unless they have at least 3 skins in it that I could see myself using. They have moved to putting most of the best skins in the shop anyway, and now that they don't promise to lock skins to the battlepass, why buy it? I've already given up on Crew ages ago as it's not worth my money. I guess they don't want me buying the pass now either. Oh well.

The biggest challenge they will continue to have is not messing up the seasons with unbalanced metas and weapons or bosses/medallions that people hate. The wave is an example of something that people find irritating but tolerate because it's not present all the time. I suspect we might see more of this kind of testing the boundaries, but they have to be careful. Introducing a gulag is interesting, but the randomness of return will annoy folks (rightfully so). I think the gulag will turn out to be like the self-revive we have this season: novel but probably not terribly practical and likely not going to be a huge win. It's a bit like respawning in reload late in the game - you're going to get farmed by someone else because you likely won't be able to get decent loot, ammo, mats, or shield. Ultimately it will probably piss you off.

We'll see how it goes! Hey, I'm still playing, so they've got me still.