Home / Professional / Star CitizenCon had lots to show, but not much is coming soon

Star CitizenCon had lots to show, but not much is coming soon

The big Star Citizen CitizenCon 2016 show certainly had a lot of exciting new technology to tease the player base with this year, giving them a look at new planets, mission types and enemies to combat, but none of it is coming soon. With a delay announced for the Squadron 42 single player content and much of the new features not coming until sometime in the future, Star Citizen still has a long road ahead of it.

Following a lengthy introduction of back patting and continued comments on the dreams being made reality with the creation of Star Citizen, CitizenCon dove straight into timelining past and future events. One of those future events is the Squadron 42 single player campaign. According to Cloud Imperium, although much of the core tech is in place, there is still a lot that needs to be done. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIiMqVdbHqo']

Pathfinding, finalised animations, better combat and flight AIs, all of that needs to be completed before it's ready, so we won't be seeing Squadron 42 until at least 2017 and potentially much further. As it stands, the developer has yet to bring even one chapter to finished quality, so the final version is going to be a long time yet. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPQeNoJYJCc']

Moving away from concrete dates, CEO at Cloud Imperium, Chris Roberts, outlined when various features would come to the main Star Citizen Game. Trading, Cargo and Piracy would all show up in the next big, Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 update, though again, it wasn't clear when it would be released. Mining and refuelling would come after that, followed by salvaging and repairs and farming and rescue in turn. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDj5v81Nd0′]

But the big content update that will be required to get the sandworm planet into the game is not coming until Alpha 4.0, which will come after all of the above has been completed. Only then can players expect to be able to travel to more than one star system.

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KitGuru Says: As much as I love the scope of Star Citizen and really admire what the developers are trying to do, it seems like a game destined to be forever in development. The longer it goes on, the less impressive it is graphically, the more the engine becomes outdated and the more other games and experiences begin to catch up.

If ever released in its idealised, finalised guise, Star Citizen will be amazing, but if the journey there is too long, it's hard to imagine it ever being finished. 

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12 comments

  1. No KitGuru, you are mistaking something here. Even at Patch 3.0, Star Citizen will be already a AAA title ready to be enjoyed, even with a bit of a limited content, that we will get patches throughout the year – it’s still all well and good – we are not paying for those updates as a “Season Pass” like other games, all ships are reward for the pledges people are giving to fund the development. Through this one year, 2017, I do not expect the gaming industry to catch on that quickly – AAA studios will not invest into as such big projects, yes there are other space games, like Dual Universe (recommended by Chris Roberts himself), Everspace, and couple of others. Currently I do not see any good space game coming to consoles… Star Citizen may have a long way, but at the same time, they have very little competition, which is rather a “collaboration” rather than a competition with other space games. No Man’s Sky is dead and gone.

  2. I have to laugh at the author claiming it gets “less impressive graphically as time goes on” Clearly he never saw what was shown because he’s too eager to jump on the Hate Train.

  3. Agreed.
    A lot of people have been jumping on the hate train, here is why:
    1. They can’t afford a PC to play or to pledge. They want the big ships but since they are too expensive, they turn that into hate thinking it is Pay2Win – wrong. It’s about rewards for funding the game, and supporting it.
    2. Trust of Chris Roberts, being caucious of rip off, even though they see it is succeeding – many want the final product delivered at the time of purchase, not later.
    3. It’s only on 1 platform – PC, and a lot of console fanboys drool over it.
    4. Too many do not trust publishers that do not put their games on Steam / Origin / Uplay. Again, trust issues.
    5. Patience… yeah, that’s the main problem I guess…
    I would agree with most, except the console fanboism, but the world is cruel and unless somebody doesn’t the put the hours of work, it won’t happen magically.

  4. Aye, just look at the original demo for the kickstarter or the Hangar module when it came out. They’re constantly updating the graphics to avoid it being average when it comes out.

  5. 4 years in dev and more is “forever”? I think you need to become more familiar with standard AAA dev times, especially larger mmo based games (ESO took ~7 years and was total crap in all areas).
    For Star Citizen to be out within 4 years would be impossible considering they are making a game of this scope AND building 4 studios to do it.
    Heck, even if they had everyone from day one it still would have been a herculean task to get this project done in 4 years.

  6. What he means is that the longer Star Citizen is in development the more every other new game will catch up to that graphical level and when that happens the only thing Star Citizen will have to show for it, graphically wise, is that it was merely the first, not necesarilly the best

  7. That may be the case, but the game doesn’t look as good compared to contemporary games now, as it did when first unveiled.

  8. Not quite 4.0, 4.0 is where they SPLIT things into systems, until then they are cramming the headline objects from multiple systems into the single Stanton system. The final version won’t appear until it’s in it’s own system, but a version of it will appear in the 3.x system.

    He also implied about 12 months to get to 4.0 from 3.0, so sometime around December next year. At that point you hit 4.0 which is content fill out until 5.0 which is the full beta i.e. features all in and they stop selling ships and the like.

  9. You forgot to mention they had to pretty much rewrite cryengine to make the game feasible.

  10. ‘Currently I do not see any good space game coming to consoles…’

    I pledged for Star Citizen pretty much at the start so im already in and patiently waiting but in the meantime Im still quite enjoying Elite Dangerous…… which I also have on the Xbox One which is a console ?

  11. Yeah ok. I don’t find this game that satisfying so I decided to pass on it…

  12. Dino Kritiqal Samardžić

    what a biased shit site please stop posting clickbait cancer