Welcome to the April 2021 Star Citizen Progress Report
This is the 9th progress report about Star Citizen & Squadron 42 in the series since November 2018.
Information for this report comes from the SC FOCUS features completion page which has been updated again here: https://scfocus.org/star-citizen-s42-features-complete/
Stretch Goal Completion Scoring
Completion for Star Citizen & Squardon 42 is scored based on a total of 104 features that were chosen to represent major gameplay milestones for both projects.
Previous Star Citizen & S42 reports:
Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Report Conclusion
Star Citizen is roughly 40% complete as of April 2021 (Alpha 3.13).
This represents an increase of 3% on the previous report from November 2020 which covered up to Alpha 3.11.
This shows Star Citizen is continuing progress and the pace has sped up slightly from glacial to slow.
Playability Score
Playability Score: 3/5 - Barely Playable
- Playability (3/5)
- Player Count (1/5)
- The Economy (2/5)
- Flight Model (3/5)
- Dogfighting (3/5)
- FPS Combat (3/5)
- AI (3/5)
Playability - How Playable is Star Citizen Alpha 3.13?
Alpha 3.13 brings several major tracked features after a period of stagnation. Overall playability score for Star Citizen remains unchanged at 3/5. Again, it was a tough decision not to lower playability back down to 2/5.
In the previous reports it was mentioned that the stability had deteriorated significantly. Since then stability seems to have stayed almost as bad. Servers disconnect mid-session with high frequency. Sometimes it is even impossible to join the game at all.
Game and server crashes can lead to lost progress.
The game is still very much for testers. People looking to play can have limited fun but the experience can and will be be very frustrating. Welcome to alpha!
3/5
Player Count
Player counts are still 50 players per server. Far from anything that can be considered an MMO. This shows the infancy of the Alpha still.
This is constantly the area of the project with the least progress again.
1/5
The Economy
The economy feels faked.
Since the last report it has actually become somewhat harder to make some progress due to increase in bugs. Without cargo transferring, refining, ship selling, item stealing, unique items and more, the economy still feels like a test-bed shell. While some issues have been fixed many new ones have appeared.
Read more about the Star Citizen in game economy.
2/5
Flight Model
In the last report the flight model was increased from a 3/5 to a 4/5. This seemed to be premature as some glaring issues with ship flight have been reported and appear not fixed in Alpha 3.13 such as strange behavior in atmo.
"Realism" is still to be improved and combat still has a lot of issues. This score is being dropped back down to a 3/5 at 4/5 seemed too high for what was "playable".
Flight model is being dropped back down from 4/5 to 3/5. For the flight model to be 4/5 it will need to go from where it is now to something that better meets the vision.
3/5
Dogfighting
Issues still plague dogfighting but it is improving slowly.
3/5
FPS Combat
FPS combat has not changed much with 3.13. Character models still warp and suffer from desync and hitbox issues.
3/5
AI
AI seem to be receiving continuous yet small improvements. They are seen less standing on chairs (but still often) and AI pilots seem better than in the previous report. For a score of 4 AI will need to be much more capable of complex behavior as well as better response time. For a score of 5 it will require AI crew as well as AI navigating the universe freely.
3/5
Suggestions
New Suggestion: Separate testing and live environments.
As the alpha grows the gap between those who know all about Star Citizen and those who just want to enjoy what is currently there is growing.
What normally happens is that a new major updates is released and even though the features may be exciting the first few weeks of release are always terrible for performance. New players wait to join at new releases with the hype, soon to be followed by dissapointment as bugs and network overload plague the player experience.
At this stage it could be better to have the Live PU only released when it is heavily tested by private testing rounds of evocati and early wave testers only. Make use of the testing wave structure better. Longer testing periods and rolling private PTU / Evocati.
The live release could be at all times one quarter from the PTU patch and this would provide the live environment to be far more stable and beginner friendly, while at the same time allowing for evocati and early wave testers to matter more. They would have months of content to test before the community, making their roles more presitgious and desirable and subsequently increasing testing quality. Additionally, it would avoid the masses and chaos that surrounds patches on launch day.
Sure, at first the community would revolt beliving that early testers would have an unfair advantage and too much time ahead with the new patch. Eventually, testers would prefer having a stable patch running constantly, and an extremely unstable one that leaks from time to time.
Star Citizen is already quite an enjoyable experience when it is running well. The live environment should not be perfect, but it should allow for testing of things that need stability, and the PTU could be used for testing the most recent unstable features.
Also the suggestions from the August 2020 Progress Report still stand.
https://scfocus.org/progress-report-august-2020/#suggestions
Summary of suggestions from August 2020:
- Realistic Flight Model
- Territory
- Player Operated Hangars
April 2021 Report Conclusion
After a development mini ice-age of 2020, Star Citizen is back on track and finally reaching 40% completion. While three out of four complete features are for Squardon 42 and not Star Citizen, since both games share the tech, Star Citizen should eventually receive full attention once S42 has received its core tech and is in polishing phases.
2021 looks to be a strong year for content and gameplay in Star Citizen, but many major technlogical hurdles remain.
Besides the features that were marked as complete this Progress Report, it is worth noting that some features were also considered and / or are very close:
- Massive Ships - During the Xenothreat event the Idris and Javelin were somewhat operational. This means they must be getting close.
- Dropship Gameplay - While there are no current dropship missions, there are opportunities where dropships can be very useful already.
- Medical - Star citizen offeres ways to cause and treat medical conditions. While rudimentary this could easily reach completion.
- Ship Modularity - Continues to expand and offer more customization options.
- Insurance - Insurance systems in Star System somewhat work. Final implementation could be easy from here.
About this report
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Caveats
The list of 104 features used to track "progress" in this report are listed at the Star Citizen Completion Features Percentage Page. This is a highly simplified list of features out of thousands of technical, art and gameplay features that the game(s) will end up having. 104 features were chosen as a simplified average set of gameplay features that the author guesses are plausibly required in the final games to be considered "complete".
The data is gathered as objectively as possible and is non-promotional in nature. This information is purely speculative based on personal criteria. Opinion can and should vary. It is provided for free and actually costs time and money to maintain.
Disclaimer
As always, this article does not represent the official views of Star Citizen. It is provided as speculation to help SC FOCUS org plan the strategy going forward. This information is provided to readers openly and freely and each reader is free to form their own opinion.