In a new Letter From the Chairman, CI Games boss Chris Roberts has spoken about the studio’s plans for Star Citizen, and how one of the studio’s main priorities for the game this year would be “playability”.
In the letter, Roberts explains that it plans on letting players get a taste of the gameplay demo from back in 2019 with Star Citizen Alpha 4.0. As part of the release, Star Citizen will run two versions in parallel, with each one having its own progression. The reason for this is that the studio wants to test not only the new content, but also how well its test servers can handle high player traffic.
Alpha 4.0, however, will not be a hundred percent complete when it comes to the new content it will feature, and will be missing a few mission types from previous releases. Players that want to check out the new content can play the Alpha 4.0 Preview, while players interested in having access to all previous mission types can stick to playing Alpha 3.24.3.
For context, a key new feature of Star Citizen with its 4.0 Preview will be the ability for players to travel back and forth between the Stanton System and the Pyro System by making use of a Jump Point. The studio points out that, in the process of making this journey, players will also be travelling through different server layers that make up the whole game.
“Each planet, landing zone, or major station is now covered by different game servers,” wrote Roberts. “Thanks to this technology, server boundaries are effectively invisible, even at our high levels of fidelity, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted gameplay. This means that server performance, playability, and overall health are now local to each of the nodes in the server mesh.”
It is worth noting that, thanks to this technology, issues that affect server stability will be localised to only the specific area hosted on the server. Players elsewhere in the game will be unaffected by these server issues.
On the gameplay front, 4.0 Preview will also bring two new competing mission chains, which will allow players to align themselves with two distinct factions: the Headhunters or Citizens of Prosperity. There will also be new Contest Zones in the Pyro system with its own gang factions, all offering their own rewards.
“As we jump into the new year, our primary focus across our Star Citizen teams is clear: improving playability,” wrote Roberts, talking about the studio’s main goals for 2025. “Our drive for playability surrounds three critical areas – performance, stability, and content. We understand that the Live environment must be far more reliable and consistent, and we are determined to deliver on this.”
To help in this goal, the studio is splitting its development efforts by decoupling feature development from development of new content and bug fixes.
“This means new features will no longer hold up content delivery or risk destabilizing the Live environment,” wrote Roberts. “This approach will leverage the Tech Preview Channel, which was reserved for major new pieces of technology, like the Replication Layer and Server Meshing, but will now extend to gameplay feature testing too.”
For Star Citizen players, this means that the game will get more content and have more bug fixes without one being held at the release schedule of the other. This will ultimately lead to the game being more playable, with better performance and more content.
Roberts closes out the post by thanking Star Citizen players for their support, and revealing that more than a million players spent 32 million hours in the game over the previous year.
