After many years of development, Star Citizen revealed its initial plans for 1.0 at this past weekend’s CitizenCon 2954. The controversial space and science fiction MMORPG has seen its ups, downs, skepticism and hopes, but earlier this year, Roberts Space Industries promised to tighten up its focus to give Star Citizen its full commercial 1.0 release. This means it’ll bring its already-developed features out for the public to finally sell at a fuller scale, including its anticipated Server Meshing tech and much more.
But with Star Citizen in development for so long, what exactly does 1.0 actually bring to the table (versus what it’s already given players)? Presented by Rich Tyrer, Core Gameplay Director, CitizenCon Day 2's “The Stars My Destination” CitizenCon segment aimed to bring some light to the full release’s experience.
The long story short is that while Star Citizen has quite a bit to offer in its early stages, the full game release will round out the pieces into a fully accessible and approachable MMORPG experience. There’ll be more in-depth PvE, more in-depth and fleshed-out gameplay loops, and just overall more to engage in for players of any playstyle—at least, that’s what’s promised.
Here are the major takeaways for what RSI promises will come in Star Citizen 1.0. (Of course, this all comes with the obligatory caveat that any of this can change at any time, not only because it's Star Citizen but because this is a preview.)
A Promise of Polish
With Star Citizen 1.0 being… well, a full 1.0 commercial release, being a “full game” instead of a perpetually pre-release build, the actual software itself needs to be viable for a commercial release. This means that RSI needs to get its game into top shape—or at least, in better shape—so it can sell a fully viable product.
Star Citizen claims that its 1.0 release will, indeed, be a more fully-polished experience. The game will be better optimized, with improved performance all-around, including on the lower end of computers. However, RSI hasn’t declared what this means in regard to PC specifications, so it’s hard to say yet what this’ll mean, especially given the game’s middling history of performance on that end.
There’ll also be all the tenets of an MMORPG with a full persistent universe. This means no more resets, and all features will be released at a “higher quality benchmark” than before. (Also, no more resets.)
Storylines to Citizens
Right now, Star Citizen has a pretty loose early gameplay experience that can easily leave a lot of players lost, and 1.0 looks to correct that with a full classic MMORPG experience. The first “system” that players will embark from is Stanton, where the main PvE story of Star Citizen will take place. Instead of throwing players into the PvP experience, players can earn “Narrative” EXP” through NPC-driven story lines.
And it’s not just for kicks, either: players who finish the storyline will earn “Citizen” status, which will give players certain gameplay perks. One that was announced during the game was unrestricted land choice when buying private land, which is more so two pieces of news in one if anything.
Not All, But Deeper Solar Systems
This is the bad news that, surely, nobody saw coming: There will not be 100 space systems at launch. RSI has instead pivoted its approach towards making these more fully fleshed-out systems with their own quirks and perks, including NPC missions that'll add to the story and character of these areas.
As the Pyro system launching in 4.0 demonstrates, the developers have put a lot of work into making these settings peculiar and unique. Just as Stanton will be the primary PvE narrative system, Pyro will be a more neutral system with PvP and PvE opportunities, featuring a story between gangs and other organizations fighting for control over the planets’ resources. So far, Star Citizen players know of four of these systems.
The fifth system that will be premiered with 1.0 is Terra, which is considered to be one of the core planets of Star Citizen’s lore. The system is the only one to be named after its capital planet, Terra Nova, and is considered to be one of the modern “jewels” of the United Empire of Earth with its massive, lush resources. While Terra Nova was discovered in-game already, it’ll be more fully developed as a canon planet when 1.0 releases.
Canon Factions and Guilds for All Playstyles
There’s always a delicate balance between economies, events, and movements run by players versus the game. Interestingly, Star Citizen seems like it’s going to start leaning towards in-game guilds to bolster these systems—and not just crafting and bounty hunting.
There’ll be quite a few guilds for almost every type of playstyle that’ll help players progress in in-game specializations. United Resource Workers will be a standard resource and engineering guild for industrial economies, and the Interstellar Transport Guild will support such economies with, of course, transport jobs. Researchers, hunters and the like will get their own Academy of Science, with not only exploration and research options, but animal hunting, farmers, and even search and rescue options.
The most fascinating new addition is the Imperial Sports Federation, which is a track for both legitimate and illegitimate “sports.” Not only are there the usual racing events, but there’ll also be “Marksman” sports, “Parkour Athletes” for Time Trials, and “Industrial Athletes,” the latter being for mining, cargo loading, salvaging, and repair events in the “Cargolympics.” Everyone deserves recognition, I suppose.
Player Space Stations
Saying “Player Pace Stations” could really be it on its own, but chances are that if you’re the type to get excited at “Player Space Stations,” you’ll want to know more. With these being the “ultimate end goal” for Orgs, there’s a lot to see, so this is just a cursory summary of what it’ll offer.
Players will start by constructing a Supply Bay for a “greybox” development phase; the bay will run on automated drones and require constant resupply of materials, and it’ll fully integrate into the Space Station at the end.
Once constructed, these Space Stations are huge—genuinely, truly massive. The good news is that Orgs can control who goes into various areas of these Stations. There’ll be a bridge, where leaders can control ship operations, and a central transit hub leading to much of the station, including a stunning Observation Deck. The Lower Levels hold the Engineering Deck and Hangar Deck, as well as the latter’s Control Room. Other levels are module-based, meaning just about anything can fill up the rest of the station.
The externals of Space Stations will be modules on upper and lower areas. With enough resources, players can tack on massive external “Wings” including Cargo Wings, Hangar Wings and Refinery Wings depending on Org specializations. There’ll also be major upper- and lower-level attachments; the presentation unveiled a Flight Deck below and a Crow’s Nest above. In short, Orgs with focus will be able to work towards customization options that work for their goals.
More Endgame & Persistent Gameplay
Star Citizen 1.0 will also introduce a lot of endgame content for both combat and economy that’ll create rewards and consequences for player engagement.
On top of standard missions and server-wide events, the StarSim system will allow the game to track player activities and spawn dynamic events based on where players are already engaging. There’ll also be instanced content, including Fleet Battles, FPS operations, and “strategy-based missions” (some of which already seems planned for the Pyro system).
Related:
Star Citizen Enters Closed Alpha 4.0 Testing With Server Meshing, Jump Points
The security space systems will be similar, but the devs have looked to deepen it a little bit. Of course, with the aforementioned Player Space Stations, players can launch assaults on each other’s bases. Ship piracy especially will have its own gameplay systems, with a dead man’s switch that’ll force pirates to choose between dismantling, salvaging, or buying an entirely new deed for it—which you’ll need if you wanna get through Customs Scanning.
Most importantly for all of this, the game will punish players for death more heavily. You’ll get an inheritance tax each time you die, meaning some of your credits will be chipped, and you need certain types of warranties to get a new spaceship without paying credits. The good news is that if you got a Pledge Store ship (like myself in another prehistoric era), you’ll have a Permanent Warranty, plus “appropriate Insurance” to match, so your ship can always get blown up—mind the credit loss, though.
With that Pledge Ship Warranty, it seems like they’re willing to draw old players back to give 1.0 a shot. But with so much promised, and no release date to look forward to, will RSI and Cloud Imperium games live up to the promises it made nearly a decade ago? And are you excited to try anything?