Dark or Light
logo
Logo

Star Citizen Devs Actually Discuss Its Biggest Playability Issues From 4.0.1

Even Star Citizen loyalists are stunned

Victoria Rose Updated: Posted:
Category:
News 0

In a rare, but hopefully not so much anymore, post from Cloud Imperium Games, staff has acknowledged some of Star Citizen’s biggest playability issues with a promise to look at and tackle them. In an official post on the forums, some highly-prioritized 4.0.1 issues are laid out, and there's hesitant positive acknowldgement from its players. 

However, this comes at the cost of the Red Festival Free Fly, one of Star Citizen’s free-entry events that lets players try the game without needing to buy a ship (and a loaner is given). Given that during the last Free Fly event, the entire ship expo desynced and ran at twice its speed, this might be for the best. 

The biggest targeted fixes are outlined in the post, though a major one everyone hopes Cloud Imperium is serious about is elevators. Transit is actually a key element of Star Citizen, and one of the first things you learn to do is take an elevator (like, they really love elevators). Unfortunately, it’s a gamble every time you hop onto an elevator for the small chance that something goes awry. The post claims: “The team has a bright spotlight on these issues right now and is actively working toward more reliable fixes for this.”

Load-in times for the game itself are acknowledged for the “Alpha Live” 4.0.0 version, as they’ve gone up with this version. Plus, CIG acknowledges loads of instability issues across various game systems, including character inventory, hangars, stowing and repair, and quantum travel. 

The post encourages players, when necessary and possible, to submit a bug report to the Issue Council. In it, players submit bug reports, and players are asked to attempt to reproduce the issue ten times in ten days, with these players allowed to make additional comments. On top of browsing open tickets, there’s also a log of which issues are fixed. 

There are increasing signs that Cloud Imperium Games is at least hoping to be even more serious about its bug fixes—and that it needs to be. To its credit, it’s acknowledged Star Citizen’s current state multiple times, from its CitizenCon presentation on 1.0 goals to this very forum post. However, multiple waves of layoffs, actual restructuring, and reports of financial instability suggest debugging is a “must” for the company to keep the bleeding faith of players a decade after its first crowdfunding campaigns. 

Plus, even more transparency was much in demand after the server meshing team gave elaborate updates about its team’s progress to stellar feedback from players essentially asking, “Why doesn’t the rest of CIG do that?” Here we are, then. 

Still, given Star Citizen and Squadron 42’s dragged-out progress, and the latter’s eternal “two years from now” release date, including this past CitizenCon, it’s understandable if anyone is hesitant regardless. Damage control? Too little, too late? Or maybe, is there hope? 


riningear

Victoria Rose

Victoria's been writing about games for over eight years, including small former tenures with Polygon and Fanbyte. She mostly spends time in FFXIV, head-deep in roleplay campaigns or stubbornly playing Black Mage through high-end raids. Former obsessions include Dota 2 and The Secret World (also mostly roleplaying). Come visit their estate: Diabolos (Crystal DC), Goblet, Ward 4, Plot 28.