For the past several weeks, Star Citizen has been talking up the features of its upcoming alpha 3.23, often calling it one of the sandbox’s largest content updates yet. However, it looks as though CIG made some adjustments to just what features will land for the initial alpha build, as the game’s newest roadmap roundup post confirms some major gameplay pieces are going to be kicked down the road for later patches.
The features in question are the new personal and instanced hangars along with their related gameplay pieces such as freight elevators and item banks as well as the new cargo hauling missions. The studio specifically cites the “technologically complex” freight elevators and personal hangars as a major reason for the delay, and is targeting a release date for sometime in the 3.23.x series of patches.
It looks as if most of the other features touted for alpha 3.23.0 will arrive as planned, while hangars and cargo hauling missions are being replaced with API support for Vulkan graphics and a new water physics engine. This latter addition was the 12-minute subject of CIG’s latest Inside Star Citizen video.
As one might expect, fans of the game have not been pleased by the news, expressing their deep disappointment or shouting angrily at the studio in a now-deleted thread, while some are attempting to shield CIG from criticism over its overlong dev cycle.
Meanwhile, SC’s community management team has been hoping to provide enough distractions to the game’s more devoted followers, including tweeting a picture of a hoverbike handlebar (because an earlier tease got 1,000 retweets) and bringing its boozy Bar Citizen meetup event to Chicago this weekend.
