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 major priorities for the sport this 12 months can 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 rationale for that is that the studio desires to check not solely the brand new content material, but in addition how nicely its check servers can deal with excessive participant visitors.
Alpha 4.0, nonetheless, won’t be one hundred percent full in relation to the brand new content material it should function, and shall be lacking just a few mission sorts from earlier releases. Gamers that wish to take a look at the brand new content material can play the Alpha 4.0 Preview, whereas gamers all in favour of getting access to all earlier mission sorts can persist with taking part in Alpha 3.24.3.
For context, a key new function of Star Citizen with its 4.0 Preview would be the potential for gamers to journey forwards and backwards between the Stanton System and the Pyro System by making use of a Leap Level. The studio factors out that, within the course of of constructing this journey, gamers can even be travelling via completely different server layers that make up the entire sport.
“Every planet, touchdown zone, or main station is now lined by completely different sport servers,” wrote Roberts. “Because of this expertise, server boundaries are successfully invisible, even at our excessive ranges of constancy, guaranteeing clean, uninterrupted gameplay. Because of this server efficiency, playability, and general well being at the moment are native to every of the nodes within the server mesh.”
It’s value noting that, because of this expertise, points that have an effect on server stability shall be localised to solely the particular space hosted on the server. Gamers elsewhere within the sport shall be unaffected by these server points.
On the gameplay entrance, 4.0 Preview can even convey two new competing mission chains, which is able to permit gamers to align themselves with two distinct factions: the Headhunters or Residents of Prosperity. There can 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 major focus throughout our Star Citizen groups is obvious: bettering playability,” wrote Roberts, speaking in regards to the studio’s major targets for 2025. “Our drive for playability surrounds three crucial areas – efficiency, stability, and content material. We perceive that the Dwell setting have to be much more dependable and constant, and we’re decided to ship on this.”
To assist on this purpose, the studio is splitting its growth efforts by decoupling function growth from growth of recent content material and bug fixes.
“This implies new options will not maintain up content material supply or threat destabilizing the Dwell setting,” wrote Roberts. “This strategy will leverage the Tech Preview Channel, which was reserved for main new items of expertise, just like the Replication Layer and Server Meshing, however will now prolong to gameplay function testing too.”
For Star Citizen gamers, which means the sport will get extra content material and have extra bug fixes with out one being held on the launch schedule of the opposite. It will in the end result in the sport being extra playable, with higher efficiency and extra content material.
Roberts closes out the submit by thanking Star Citizen gamers for his or her assist, and revealing that greater than one million gamers spent 32 million hours within the sport over the earlier 12 months.
