As Star Citizen continues its long journey toward a full launch, eventually, the developer has changed how its going to be handling its public test universe moving forward.
For those living under a rock this last decade, Star Citizen is slated to be a gigantic space-faring MMO, and has been under development since 2010. It launched its incredibly successful crowdfunding campaign back in 2012 and has since become the highest-funded crowdfunded game in existence. Combining a space sim, first-person shooter, and the trappings of a true sandbox MMO, Star Citizen has captured the attention of space enthusiasts everywhere, despite the fact that it's been slow goings for its development.
One of the crucial aspects of Star Citizen's development has been its public testing universe, which gives players the chance to play the MMO and test out the various ships, systems and updates as the team at Cloud Imperium Games implements them. However, in a forum post late last week, CIG has announced some changes to how it handles its testing environments moving forward.
While there are many, many players who take part in the PTU tests each time they are available, many players only log in to check out the new features and ships, dropping out before the end of the test. This puts a strain on the systems and resources needed to run these tests, causing "comparatively high server costs and download provisioning."
"For the last four years, we haven't changed the PTU wave system, which regulates who has access to the test servers and when. Over time, more and more players have gained access to various waves, which has ultimately led us away from our initial goals with testing waves. We have also come to notice that many players only log in once per PTU phase to briefly inspect the latest features or new ships before waiting for the live release. This led to very high player loads in the first hours of each wave release, combined with comparatively high server costs and download provisioning, but not the sustained playtesting we would have preferred. As a consequence, towards the end of a PTU phase, we sometimes lacked the necessary numbers of testers to put the servers under pressure once the most significant bugs had been fixed."
As a result, the team is changing how it's handling the testing moving forward. Now, the PTU invite waves will be sent out based on player activity, meaning if you're more active in the PTU testing, you'll be seeing your invite come sooner in the test wave. This allows the team to bring in the players who are most likely to give the environment the sustained testing the devs need to gather the data needed from the test. Playtime, but also backing level, will be factored into which wave you are in when invites for the PTU testing come out.
This means there is a chance you can move up waves as well based on your playtime in the upcoming tests.
"So, if you have been following development more from the sidelines recently, don't worry! Hop back into the pilot seat, as future activity will lead to earlier PTU access in a relatively short time."
Check out the full post on the Star Citizen forums.
