The developers of Star Citizen are revealing less about the future of the project. The reasoning behind the controversial step is the main source of annoyance.
Aw, sometimes I just want to put certain ladies and gentlemen of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) over my knee and give them a good spanking. Yes, there is plenty of information out there about Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. One is inundated with texts, emails, and interviews.
But CIG’s customers are gamers. We use our senses when we play a game. We enjoy the visuals, the sound, the gameplay. We love a great presentation. That’s why the show (Inside Star Citizen) , which comes out every Thursday, is so popular. There you can see gameplay scenes, videos and news in pictures. Information you can touch! Why CIG doesn’t use these visual presentation opportunities much more often is beyond me. Star Citizen and Squadron 42 have so much to offer that can amaze players.
Most recently, however, it was (a simple text) of all things that spread like wildfire, needlessly enraging many of CIG’s most loyal customers. Because as of patch 3.18 for the Star Citizen Alpha, there is no more concrete information on the Star Citizen roadmap about content and updates planned for the future. What does this mean for the giant project? And why has the community reacted so allergic to it?
Star Citizen: Where are you going?
What is the Star Citizen Roadmap? It basically consists of two parts:
The so-called (Progress Tracker) contains detailed info about all elements of the development. From the animation of an NPC drinking coffee to the most complicated server technology, you can find the targeted development time and who is working on it. The disadvantage is that this is not very clear. In addition, you can’t tell from this information when, for example, the personalised hangar will find its way into the alpha, because many other steps from other areas have to be completed for this.
(The Release View) is the overview of the patches that are released every quarter. Here you can immediately see what is to come next and what is planned for the near and distant future. This part is clearly understandable and visually well presented … and leads to expectations that are rarely met.
The Star Citizen roadmap is one thing in particular: unreliable!
CIG never tires of explaining that the roadmap is only a rough path through the dense jungle of game development, which does not allow any fixed release predictions and only fits in time if everything runs optimally and without problems. But rarely does a game development go as planned.
Especially the second part of the roadmap tempts people to understand the listed features of a patch as a guaranteed release announcement and to immediately forget the hints from CIG. The disappointment is then great when a hotly anticipated feature (Salvage, *cough, cough*) is postponed at short notice.
For this reason, CIG is now cutting back on the clear second part of the roadmap: In the future, you will only see the next patch and its features, which will most likely not be postponed. This way, CIG hopes for less unpleasantness among supporters and fans, because postponements will no longer be so obvious.
Let’s recap:
- An overview was deleted that was unreliable anyway.
- You still have the detailed part of the roadmap.
- Fans aren’t waiting for elements of the game to be postponed at short notice.
- So nothing has changed much in terms of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 development. Ergo, everyone should be happy and satisfied. Unfortunately that’s not the case and CIG brought this on themselves.
Poking in the dark can be a real eye sore …
With the small change, CIG has gotten carried away with blaming supporters and observers of the roadmap, among others. So the post talks about the constant complaints about postponed features being annoying and many people not understanding the concept of a roadmap:
“It has become abundantly clear to us that despite our best efforts to communicate the fluidity of development and explain that features labelled ‘tentative’ should not be relied upon, the general focus of many of our most passionate players has led them to interpret anything in the Release View as a promise.
We want to acknowledge that not all of you have seen it that way; many have taken our new focus and words to heart and understood exactly what we were trying to convey. But there is still a very vocal proportion of roadmap watchers who see projections as promises. And their constant noise every time we move the dates has become a distraction, both internally at CIG and in our community, as well as for future Star Citizen fans watching our communication of open development from the sidelines. “
CIG may be right that not everyone understands a roadmap, and there are definitely people who get artificially worked up over every little thing. But do they shout this in the face of their customers?
Many fans were not particularly pleased with the comments in the Roadmap Roundup and CIG was urgently reminded across various platforms that the developers should take a look at their own noses when it comes to communication. The change of the roadmap stands in a special context: the continuing silence about Squadron 42 and the lack of any halfway clear information about the development status of Star Citizen.
Despite all transparency: The backers and fans are in a dark cave regarding the development status of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Information flashes up again and again, but not enough to find one’s way in this cave. The second part of the roadmap, however uncertain the content, served as a small beacon in this dark cave.
If CIG doesn’t want their fans and backers to get lost in this darkness, fireworks should be lit as soon as possible. Because only well-informed backers are willing to continue supporting the fascinating Star Citizen project in the future.
What does the community say?
Editor’s verdict
2022 should be very interesting for Star Citizen. The new star system Pyro and the key technology Server Meshing are within reach. Long awaited ships are leaving the space docks. New professions are being added to the Alpha. But the year is still long and CIG should not delay too long in lighting the fuses of the fireworks. A good start would be extensive information in video format about Squadron 42 and a current status of the development. This would smooth a lot of waves and show that CIG really listens to its customers.
So dear developers, give yourselves a jolt and show the people what lies dormant in your dark closet. And, please, please with sugar on top: if you think that the fans can’t cope with the postponements, don’t find the fault with them. Instead, try to find out how you can communicate even better.
