Star Citizen's 2025 Plan Finally Coming Into Focus | Can They Pull It Off? (Chairman Letter React)

[@XMathiasxX]

4 buddies and I tried to run some cargo. Couldnt share mission, hanger wouldnt open, elevator was broke, then fell thru the ship. Back to waiting, I dont get paid to test lol

[@weltenkrank7807]

Thirteen years ago the space genre was DEAD. It was so dead the smell of the cadaver wasn't in the air anymore. I replayed freelancer at the time. Then Star Citizen comes along and space games got a massive push. Elite Dangerous, NMS, Freespace, Chronos even Call of Duty and I bet even Starfield got pushed because of SCs funding success... as a StarCitizen I m happy that Chris showed the world that you still can reach people with space games.

[@mathieubouchard5117]

Also the public appetite for Space X and watching a real Space program being developed before our eyes. Shows that there is demand for things space.

[@cmdrls212]

​@@mathieubouchard5117 what real space program?

[@XeroJin84]

Luckily those other games have competent people who made the games.

[@Damiv]

Warframe was already in development by then and released March 2013. I think it was a huge help to the scifi genre as a whole.

[@th3orist]

4.0 is a massive gamechanger in terms of performance, that alone is a huge win. if they manage to fix the major bugs and glitches it can almost feel like a complete game for the time being. its also a good thing that they decoupled new tech implementations from content and game functions.

[@AllThingsKen]

nah

[@aiur1645]

4.0 did runn so damn good for like 2 days and then started to drop in qualiti probably caused by bachend issues but im really exited going forward. after waiting almost 11 years im pretty happy with the latest progress and hope for the best in the next 1-2 years

[@thelonefloorer]

They released a hotfix and it cooked everything completely

[@slybericic4691]

I don't think the problem is getting unfinished features. The problem is that they don't finish the feature before moving on to the next. So we have a bunch of half baked features with little hope of ever having them fixed or completed.

[@1scrub2]

Until 4.0, they couldn't go anything more than a first blush at features, because the tech that would tie them together wasn't developed yet, they couldn't move any further now that that tech is complete, and it's just the dynamic aspect of the servers they can move forward without being tied together.

[@RN1441]

@@1scrub2 I'm far from the most experienced developer, but I have never seen a situation where it was a good idea to optimize for parallelism let alone split something into a distributed service on multiple machines before it was rock solid. It boils down to the famous statement from Knuth that (paraphrasing) premature optimization is the source of most bugs. If it really is CIG's plan to fix the bugs now that they have a server mesh split over many systems rather than a monolithic machine, then all I can say is 'good luck everybody'

[@MidnightWolfSDJ]

To build a solid house that will be incredibly stable, that can withstand much of what is thrown at it, you have to first poor a solid foundation. You then have to take 1 brick at a time, 1 layer at a time and place it so that, that brick layering creates a seamless and fortified wall. Star Citizen is the house in this analogy. Game and server tech are the foundation in this analogy. And game features and content are the bricks in this analogy. CIG cornered themselves into this style of development because of the format at which they were kinda forced to pursue. Let's start with the crowd funding method. No publishers would dare risk a huge lump of money to make a game like Star Citizen become a reality. So CIG reached out to their consumers to help fund an idea, a concept, a vision. As a result, when you ask to borrow money from someone, almost certainly will that loaner want a return on their investment. They also want to see progress is made and that their money was well spent. The only way to keep CIG investors (consumers) happy was to open up their development to the public as well as creating an active testing environment for the consumers to be able to see if their investments were worth it. Even though CIG doesn't have publishers breathing down their necks to get content out, CIG does have their backers breathing down their necks. They are forced to do what they can to get features and content out on a regular basis or their funding will dry up. This led to the development of features and content that was uncertain if it would be possible without certain foundational tech. CIG also doesn't want to spend a whole lot of time on features that do heavily rely on foundational tech until that tech is fully implemented so they can optimize or bug fix on a stable and concrete foundation. If the foundation is to be replaced, you now have to rip out at least part of your wall to lay the new foundation. This leads to more bugs and instability. This is why it is so crucial that CIG get this tech out the door and into the game. The tech introduced in 4.0 finally completed the firm foundation. That being said, because content was already placed on top of the old foundation, that part of the wall is going to be weaker, until CIG can go back and redo that wall. That is what this whole year has been about. They finally got server meshing working outside of the game. They have spent a huge amount of this year redoing much of their game to get it compatible with the new infrastructure. Now that the tech is complete (minus the dynamic part) they can focus on strengthening the features and tech they do have and reinforce the weaker side of the game. This is why from a logistics standpoint it is better to have all the tech done first, then build the game on top of that finished tech, rather than having to revisit old code and features to make it compatible with the new stuff. CIG did not have that luxury in a crowd funded model. Most game developers seek a publishing deal to help fund the project. It is then after the deal is made, that the game tech that will run the game is developed. Then with the tech in place they build the game on that. During these phases of development, the public is not aware of the grind and nitty gritty of what is going on. They have to discover and deal with bugs in secret until the game reaches a point where the publishers feel it is ready to go public. By this time about 3-5 years of development have passed. Consumers are usually notified of a games existence about 1 1/2 to 3 years before a game releases. If you do the math, a game will release after about 4 1/2 - 8 years of development. It has been about 12-13 years that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 (2 different games mind you) began their development. If you divide 12 by 2 you get 6 years of development per game. This means for CIG to reach the higher end of the 8 year development window, they have another 3-4 years left before they reach 8 years per game. People seem to forget that. Sorry for the ramble, but I just wanted to remind you that yes many features they release are half baked but it is only now that they can finally finish the features and content.

[@chawkes70]

As usual CR is full of promises and it is unlikely he will follow through. He rarely does. As for the two LIVE servers I think its a good idea. Keep alternating the stablish live with a new live. The new live you get to keep progress to encourage people to move across and the old live is there for people who want stability but their progress is capped at when the new one went live.

[@weltenkrank7807]

Well Disco was so fair to inform us that 4 updates thing will be partly broken because the two milestones of persistent entity streaming and server meshing which came back to back.

[@GrandHeresiarch]

All I know is I downloaded one of the alpha hotfixes, it's awesome if not completely unbroken, I can't wait to play the normalised version after the holidays.

[@th3orist]

you mean after january, because the whole studio will be on vacation also throughout january. They won't be back to work early january.

[@First_Chapter]

Great to see CIG put a player survey into the launcher in these past few days.

[@senn4237]

Thank you, I didn't see it until now.

[@senn4237]

They need to add more substance and continue to fix bugs and poor performance. And desperately need to add a reputation system. They still have so much work to do to get this to an actual "game".

[@TFTrickster]

They do not have enough features in the game to not keep doing wipes. People will have billions if not trillions of AUEC and they will need to add some form of wipe to keep people playing

[@arfazero1]

@@TFTrickster this is not an eastern game no rice please

[@SpaceTomatoToo]

They can still wipe wallets. When they say they don't want to do wipes anymore they generally mean FULL wipes. Rep+Ships+Wallet. We'll probably keep ships.

[@adrianbarreto4225]

when it works, you can see what it could be. But right now there is a lot of desync and server issues. I'm just glad they didn't openly release it as the live build. This sort of launch needs to be special, like Santa winning a bar fight against the easter rabbit special ya know

[@gunsmoke9030]

No they won't pull it off, i go off their past track record.

[@slipline4threcon688]

I just spent 7 hours last nite doing 1/3 contested zones full play- best gaming experixce i have had in many years this game is already a masterpiece without all else it still shines

[@gastiresoil9758]

Masterpiece? Calm down lil bro, you’re playing a tech demo still.

[@slipline4threcon688]

@ name a game better-

[@thelonefloorer]

It was all smooth and working relatively well. They then released a hotfix which has essentially broken the game completely. Global chat and contracts do not work anymore, an absolute shambles

[@redrumcoke2363]

14:01 THIS. Even after the promise that the devs moving over from Squadron 42, would ensure new features would be introduced in something other than a tier 0 or 1 state, this hasn't really happened. At least not MMO-staple features that people who want "Star Citizen", are looking for. I think they were conflating, likely on purpose, that we would see new features come to Star Citizen, in a more developed state, but knew they had been meaning the already matured features of SQ42 they had been already worked on, to mean ALL new features. What the Star Citizen MMO community is asking for, are features that also specifically help create this MMO dream to debut at something other than tier 0 or 1

[@cmdrls212]

They never finish anything and they sang this song before. Tier 0 is their code name to "released" because the money keeps flowing regardless of quality

[@4tonmike]

18:28 I've rarely met a publisher who would execute my vision something something. - Chairman Letter Yeah Artistics usually hate someone breathing down their necks to deliver a masterpiece. I'm not saying become Bethesda and bow to Microsoft and Wall Street but would it hurt to manage priorities that matter to the backers within a sustainable work pace to fully realize the game before either I or Chris Roberts dies of old age? That said, this update has been a very positive change. I'm cautiously more confident in CIG. It feels like things are happening.

[@Terran0va_Plays]

They CAN do it. With a whole lot of time and money. Will they? Not the way they hoped. But i think by 2030 we will get a great game. SQ42 will be my stomping ground until then.

[@First_Chapter]

Any word on when we may be able to align with or join the Fire Rats? That's the chosen faction.

[@nosygamer180]

At 10 servers per 500 people, is CIG's server meshing technology even commercially viable? Your reaction at @6:33 makes me doubt it. And for commercially viable, would it be possible to support the number of players EVE Online did today? That was an average of 26,000 at any one time with a peak of 31,600. And CCP Games does that with a server farm of 26 machines plus some servers rented from AWS to run minor tasks like system chat. And that's the same number of servers they'd use for twice as many players. It sounds like CIG would need 640-800 servers if Star Citizen became as popular as EVE.

[@sc_cintara]

Servers are cheap. A server costs about 15k USD and the same in rack-space, power, cooling and connectivity over a three year lifespan. All-in-all, about 10k per year per server. A dev costs 100k per year (including office space, SW licenses, taxes and pension, etc) and they have 1100+ devs. So a few hundred servers is a comparatively small cost if it pulls in players to pay for the devs.

[@0PsychosisMedia0]

​@sc_cintara To pull in new players? That's the real issue though. New players see a demo that is funded with 1B dollars and it took over 10 years. Let's add on to the hostel immersion derpers that force over complex, meaningless systems in a scifi game set 200 years in the future....yeah thats going to be a hard pass for thoes new players. That new money will not be comming in, and this demo is dead in the water sinking.

[@LucidStrike]

It's a temporary measure.

[@FrazzleCat]

Eve isn't a great example. You're not piloting your ship in Eve. It orbits a target automatically and you click to activate a weapon. Even at that, they still do time dilation for large scale fights. You don't exit your ship to run around, or do FPS combat, or jump between ships, or have multiple players in a ship on turrets or walking about inside as you fly, or drive vehicles across the ground, or all of that at the same time no less; you don't even directly pilot your ship at any time. You click and it travels on its own to where you clicked.

[@barretthenderson5808]

@@FrazzleCatyeah terrible comparison

[@DaRealDrama24]

5 YEARS!!!??! Bro, this game is getting release next year. They are out of money, out of time and people are out of patience.

[@Semabachos]

As of 10 minutes ago. I have ZERO missions showing up for me. Had a few yesterday but now nothing.

[@CecilIsANerd]

Regarding reputation hostility. I'd really like to see it so if I don't do anything against faction (B), let's say I'm just delivering medical supplies to faction (A) it should only improve my rep with (A) but not increase hostility for me with faction (B) therefore I could do neutral type missions for both, and not be affected by their ensuing war. I mean, how would (B) even know I delivered humanitarian aid to (A) in the first place. It's not like I attacked them. I doubt they will do anything this deep but for cargo pilots like myself, I'd prefer to stay neutral and keep my options open in Pyro and beyond.

[@wusleezy4343]

4:10 yeah, 1.0 BETA

[@cmdrls212]

ah yes another plan that will again not pan out. How many times have we been here? Just release the game and add features overtime like everyone else does Chris. It really isn't a hard concept to understand. CIG account growth has collapsed and this plan seems like asking for another half a decade for an undefined product at a cash burn rate that's unsustainable and undoubtedly trailing new account decline. CIG is playing a game of chicken with funding and it is going to lose spectacularly.

[@andrewboyer7544]

4.0 has been a complete disaster for me. I was so hyped for it even knowing it was going to be rough but it was so much worse than I expected. Sure, it runs smooth, but it's so buggy you can't do anything. Everything that can go wrong does. Servers crash constantly, hangers are a raid boss to fight before you can even fly, you can't do missions because they don't populate or break. After 10 hours of attempting to play 4.0 I'm no longer excited for the patch and it's lost all momentum because I can't do the simplest thing without bugs. You got 1 try to release 4.0 and wow people and this is what you did. I wouldn't have dropped this before Christmas for anything if I were CIG. After 7 years my first real taste of pyro was dogwater.

[@4tonmike]

@@andrewboyer7544 I'm a little insulated from having a Vulture, but yeah. Especially for a new or returning player with nothing but an Aurora? Unless you have a thing for logging bugs, it's not enjoyable to say the least

[@mebrian5728]

Maybe server differences, because last night I had the most fun I’ve ever had with Star Citizen. This patch has been buggy, but it’s not NEARLY as bad as 3.24.3. I’d say it’s a massive step in the right direction.

[@andrewboyer7544]

@mebrian5728 Well it's been every server so far. I had a way better time last patch because while it was more choppy I could get the elevators to work after a couple tries and after that stuff basically worked. Nothing is working in 4.0. Nearly every step is bugged. My friend spent 2 hours past night just trying to leave his hanger. He quit after his 3rd ship got impounded.

[@mebrian5728]

@ True the primary residence hangars are absolutely busted, but anything else I did worked. QT is wack right now as well, but I had no problems with elevators or transit systems.

[@andrewboyer7544]

@mebrian5728 I got trapped on the train at NB and had to relog and got trapped in an elevator at orbituary.

[@Bland-79]

I still can't change components, paints, or weapon's on my ships. I apply them and and it doesn't stick when I leave the mobiglass.

[@metalmeltdown31]

You're clicking save and equip before leaving the mobi? Modded a few ships today with no issues.

[@thefixxer72]

I've been watching your vids for a while and really enjoy them I'm also enjoying the game. I'm interested in possibly joining an org but not sure what direction to go. Does your org accept new members?

[@ericwollaston5654]

They do

[@FrazzleCat]

4.0 Preview is just a renamed PTU. Same thing, different name, so this is hardly any different from running Live + PTU. This is a (brilliant) move to get more people into 4.0 PTU to stress test it. I won't be surprised if there's another wipe for 4.0 Live.

[@Mgtow_Monk]

The main difference is the 4.0 became the "live" and the "Live" was demoted to ptu.

[@cmdrls212]

Yeah. calling it live is hilarious. It's just P-PTU

[@FrazzleCat]

@@Mgtow_Monk Yeah, absolutely. They just swapped places.

[@islael123]

Spanwing into hangars is a game changer, makes a lot more people hop on. A lot of people don't play some days just because we don't wanna deal with the trains or running to the hangar at 2 fps in pyro

[@j.d.4697]

I don't like the special rewards for contested zones. To me it's just like the events, an excuse to get people to play buggy, lazy gameplay loops.

[@Terran0va_Plays]

The only problem is, the guardian isn’t in 3.24. So i’m stuck flying around orison pretending i can run bounties in it lol. I hope they fix QT soon

[@arfazero1]

main gameplay loop QT to sun, thunder dome, that is all. i can see it now. yes you can still reach people with space games also mech games and aircraft games who would have thought that people liked cool shit omgh, but the saboteur needs to go they ruining Christmas with this pyro hot fix bullshit

[@keno101]

What I am seeing here is proof that we could have separate PVE and PVP builds running concurrently. Good to know...

[@4tonmike]

For all their bluster, PvP players wouldn't be able to tell the difference if it were implemented, honestly. Spectrum would be so quiet.

[@jarydf]

They spent the last year making cargo, inventory, power management and the flight model less fun. They have a side project wasting time building a walk through movie. They have another side project building base game tech that is inherently flawed. The systems are about 16 locations copy pasted over and over again. They have so many people and offices that do not know what the others are doing. The tiny ship team are the only ones doing anything and that is with one hand tied behind their back. The management team have drunk so much of their own coolaid they are zombies parroting the same bs they have for the last 13 years.

[@ollie_zap]

Wish cig would fix the fps is star citizen, I have a good PC but my fps is always bad. And yes I tried all the tutorials on KZbin to try fix this.

[@Roboticus_Prime_RC]

I'd believe it if we had even half the stuff they promised we'd have this year. And miss me with the "hur dur, 4.0!" First, it's not live. Second, they gutted nearly everything from it.

[@drebbnittle5470]

People who know nothing of building anything, commenting about how easy it is to build things.

[@Desenrad]

14:13, CIG love to release features in tier 0. It’s their way of throwing some garbage out the door and moving on to something that’s more fun to work on. I’ve watched how they constantly leave things in broken states just cus either the devs, or Chris, wants to work on some new shiny new thing. That’s a serious issue. Due to them doing this, the entire game feels like a tech demo. Nothing works together well. Everything feels like It’s built with spaghetti code.

[@ThePuma1707]

Game dev isnt always as easy as "lets do it, and it works perfectly", probably, most of these shifts are because either they realized that feature would need more server capacity than anticipated, which is now solved with server meshing working. Or they realized they cant pull it of properly cause a required tech isnt finished yet, doesnt work as intended etc. It isnt always "Chris wants new shiny things", not denying it didnt happen, just saying there's more to it

[@lanceobe6801]

I hope they are successful but they still have a long way to go

[@jeffroLife]

Nooo, they can't. I reported the med beds not working...told to go to issue council and it had been archived as fixed lol.

[@Astralox]

Bro can u let the music play for another 30 sec longer thanks

[@INMATE-RAGE]

Doubt they will pull it off. if they do it will be another 6 months. the PM's working at CIG and Chris can't plan for sht. Chris must step back a bit and let the teams do their jobs. Not everything needs to be to his vision. Fail on fail year on year. A company cannot be run by one person's narrow and selfish vision.

[@redrumcoke2363]

The current server configuration is now 2 servers per star system, totalling 4 on the shard, with a 500 total player count? CIG already dropped down from the 4 servers in Stanton/6 in Pyro, 500 total player count shard? Or is it 5 servers per star system, 500 players total? You've mentioned a few here.

[@GraphiteDev]

It’s 5:5:500 with a 600 hard cap.

[@redrumcoke2363]

@GraphiteDev Much appreciated! Could you just quickly explain the difference between the 500 and 600 hard cap?

[@GraphiteDev]

@@redrumcoke2363 500 players is what the Shard is rated for and will allow individuals in before telling them it’s full. But it seems if larger groups join as parties etc, close to the 500 capacity, it will overflow and allow multiple parties, up to 100 extra players joining in that way - 600 hard cap.

[@redrumcoke2363]

@@GraphiteDev Cool. Thanks bud!

[@manegrmusa4551]

No.....multicrew concept of game is dead.I dont understand ppl who buying Polaris, Hamerhead.....etc. NPC crew is distant future and even when they implement, game will be needed to rebalance agein. I m only hoping that CIG will take a break to polish what we have now and decide in what direction will game go...fire, engenering and pointless base building (like living on the ship) and stuff like that will not improve game.

[@senn4237]

Their vision of multicrew as of now will never work. There is simply not enough players to fill all the open spots on larger ships for 99% of the player base. Without NPC crew it is doomed. Large ships should be designed for 1 to 5 players max, and all the rest being NPCs.

[@shamanahaboolist]

Currently ZERO contracts are working on all shards 😂

[@mebrian5728]

I did contracts just fine

[@shamanahaboolist]

@mebrian5728 I have no idea how. I tried all shards except Asia and everyone had the same problem

[@mebrian5728]

@@shamanahaboolist Weird. I think the main thing to blame is server degradation. The issues are starting show when the servers run for long periods

[@1scrub2]

​@mebrian5728 same. Then it broke for about 2 hours, then it was fine for the rest of the night. QT is now patched and working beautifully.

[@mebrian5728]

@@1scrub2 Thank god. Was getting annoyed as how it only worked like half the time

[@michaeldalby7827]

Mate pull back on what you imagine this game will be, you don't seem to be aware of the history of this game and chris roberts part in it, can i recommend a few GOLGOT videos to put this company history into perspective for you.

[@DionSamuel]

Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? Any idea at all?

[@RN1441]

Ahh it's nice to be back in Luminalia for the annual lighting of the lights, moving of the goalposts and rationalizing of the broken patch. I especially enjoy the annual reading of the letter of excuses which tells us why they will surely achieve soon what they have previously told us would be done years ago. It's nice to have traditions.

[@thelonefloorer]

Give my 400i an overhaul

[@apollodorus4759]

Zero confidence in this team. I'm not putting any time or money into this game anymore. If it fails in the next five years, its just spilled milk under the bridge. They need to earn their playerbase back, but i no longer believe in this pipe dream.

[@gastiresoil9758]

Can they pull it off? Bro stop. They missed the 4.0 window by how many years? A day late and a dollar short.

[@jebidyah]

servers running great, nothing else works though. gg

[@DeadlyInsite]

For whom is 4.0 preview working? I wiped all installed versions (hard drive space issue), reinstalled an hour ago and tried again.. QT goes anywhere but the waypoint you're pointing at. So many issues scrolling in chat I can't read fast enough to catch them all. So disappointed :( I have 2 weeks off an was dreaming of 4.0.. ah well.

[@DeadlyInsite]

tried again and still couldn't QT in a straight line. HOWEVER, I kept at it, and succeeded going back to Area18. Ever since that one successful QT - I've been able to QT as normal. Now if Missions would work :D

[@barretthenderson5808]

@@DeadlyInsitemy game crashes before i’m even in now and i could previously run the game fairly decently but that might be an issue on my end

[@andrewboyer7544]

It's a complete disaster IMO. Game runs super well, but it doesn't matter because I can't do anything without bugs. I've played about 10 hours of 4.0 and accomplished nothing of worth. It's totally killed my excitement for the game.

[@0PsychosisMedia0]

Think we need to stop calling it sever meshing. Its not, its a shard server. CR quickly found out its not possible tp do what he was daydreaming about.

[@Veritatis.Cupitor]

Interesting to see how a hater thinks

[@TheJZP]

​@@Veritatis.Cupitortoxic positivity doesn't help

[@andrewboyer7544]

Care to elaborate? You need to defend your assertion.

[@cmdrls212]

It is a mesh of servers with multiple shards. You're confusing things you don't understand

[@0PsychosisMedia0]

​@@andrewboyer7544dynamic server meshing for any complex gameplay environment is a lie/bs/daydreaming. It’s literally constrained by the speed of light. Packets of info to be duplicated over other clients/nodes ect.. but allow only one as the primary. The lag alone would not make it feasible. So CR being CR covertly decided to have a hybrid shard server for each region. This is not a new concept. EvE and ED has been doing this for a long time. This is not the "server meshing " CR was planning. It's a Hyberd Shard setup.

[@ivanbluetarski9071]

4.0 hot fix dropped today

[@revengexmoon2087]

Believe nothing that is not in the game and working. They lie. 5 systems are not 100. For example. "Future plans by Chris." Is just marketing for money. Where is the BMM? 600 redo? All lies to get you to spend.

[@krisztm7221]

They never Pulled It Off, you have short memory.

[@Valium_x]

🍅

[@walter80922]

If they focused on 6 months of bug fixing, engineering gameplay, and mission system fixes and additions, they'd be in good shape.

[@fffx2]

Nothing has come into focus

[@xiuhtezcatl8161]

waste of time to do anything agan if wipe coming agan in future