In a brand new Letter From the Chairman, CI Video games boss Chris Roberts has spoken in regards to the studio’s plans for Star Citizen, and the way one of many studio’s foremost priorities for the sport this 12 months could be “playability”.
Within the letter, Roberts explains that it plans on letting gamers get a style of the gameplay demo from again in 2019 with Star Citizen Alpha 4.0. As a part of the discharge, Star Citizen will run two variations in parallel, with each having its personal development. The explanation for that is that the studio desires to check not solely the brand new content material, but in addition how properly its take a look at servers can deal with excessive participant site visitors.
Alpha 4.0, nevertheless, is not going to be 100% full in terms of the brand new content material it’s going to characteristic, and might be lacking just a few mission sorts from earlier releases. Gamers that need to take a look at the brand new content material can play the Alpha 4.0 Preview, whereas gamers fascinated with accessing all earlier mission sorts can persist with taking part in Alpha 3.24.3.
For context, a key new characteristic of Star Citizen with its 4.0 Preview would be the capacity for gamers to journey backwards and forwards between the Stanton System and the Pyro System by making use of a Soar Level. The studio factors out that, within the course of of creating this journey, gamers may even be travelling by totally different server layers that make up the entire recreation.
“Every planet, touchdown zone, or main station is now coated by totally different recreation servers,” wrote Roberts. “Because of this know-how, server boundaries are successfully invisible, even at our excessive ranges of constancy, guaranteeing clean, uninterrupted gameplay. Which means that server efficiency, playability, and general well being are actually native to every of the nodes within the server mesh.”
It’s price noting that, because of this know-how, points that have an effect on server stability might be localised to solely the particular space hosted on the server. Gamers elsewhere within the recreation might be unaffected by these server points.
On the gameplay entrance, 4.0 Preview may even carry two new competing mission chains, which is able to enable gamers to align themselves with two distinct factions: the Headhunters or Residents of Prosperity. There may even be new Contest Zones within the Pyro system with its personal gang factions, all providing their very own rewards.
“As we bounce into the brand new 12 months, our main focus throughout our Star Citizen groups is evident: enhancing playability,” wrote Roberts, speaking in regards to the studio’s foremost targets for 2025. “Our drive for playability surrounds three essential areas – efficiency, stability, and content material. We perceive that the Dwell setting have to be way more dependable and constant, and we’re decided to ship on this.”
To assist on this aim, the studio is splitting its improvement efforts by decoupling characteristic improvement from improvement of latest content material and bug fixes.
“This implies new options will not maintain up content material supply or danger destabilizing the Dwell setting,” wrote Roberts. “This strategy will leverage the Tech Preview Channel, which was reserved for main new items of know-how, just like the Replication Layer and Server Meshing, however will now prolong to gameplay characteristic testing too.”
For Star Citizen gamers, because of this the sport will get extra content material and have extra bug fixes with out one being held on the launch schedule of the opposite. This may in the end result in the sport being extra playable, with higher efficiency and extra content material.
Roberts closes out the publish by thanking Star Citizen gamers for his or her assist, and revealing that greater than 1,000,000 gamers spent 32 million hours within the recreation over the earlier 12 months.
