Usually the Star Citizen Live broadcast out of Star Citizen is… well, live. However the latest episode of the series was pre-recorded. Still, it’s worth fans’ time as it discusses the feature set of the upcoming alpha 3.17 build and what players should expect out of it all.
The show brought on Live Director Todd Papy to talk about the patch and the impact of gameplay elements. Of note:
- Papy promises the ship refueling system would be carefully balanced so there would not be a mass of players running out of space gas to do their usual tasks.
- Some items will not be sellable in order to launch the update without a wipe.
- Refueling is a first step into ship-based resource management that will allow multiple crew functions such as life support and basic repair, and will allow encounters where ships can be disabled instead of simply being blown up. Eventually.
- Quality-of-life features are still being made a priority across the game’s 50 teams: A given example of something needing QoL love is the star map, which is promised to be fixed soon.
- The much-maligned coffee shop vendor is just a reskinned bartender.
- 3.17 will introduce a limited number of Quanta background sim tech to drive parts of the game’s economy.
- Desync smoothing features coming in the patch will prioritize predictable movement location over visuals; this means that ships may jump around visually more than before, but visual improvements will be addressed later.
- On the topic of visuals, slower PCs will apparently have a harder time handling desync visuals, as Papy notes things will work “less good.” This incidentally lines up with an overall pussh to supporting newer CPUs.
Longtime MMORPG gamers will know that Star Citizen was originally Kickstarted for over $2M back in 2012 with a planned launch for 2014. As of 2022, it still lingers in an incomplete but playable alpha, having raised over $400M from gamers over years of continuing crowdfunding and sales of in-game ships and other assets. It is currently the highest-crowdfunded video game ever and has endured both indefatigable loyalty from advocates and immense skepticism from critics. A co-developed single-player title, Squadron 42, has also been repeatedly delayed.
