Star Citizen is far from complete, but that didn’t stop Foundry 42 director Erin Roberts from talking to Wccftech about the future of its expanding universe. Most notably, he teased the big releases of 2017 and jobs in 3.0. He also defended the project’s seemingly constant delays.
Speaking to the 2017 pipeline, Roberts made it clear that alpha 3.0 isn’t the only thing players have to anticipate. “We’re looking at putting out perhaps two or three big releases this year which significantly push the amount of locations, gameplay mechanics and content that players will be able to experience and give feedback on,” he said.
In relation to those substantial strides, Roberts touched on highly discussed features like distress signals and jobs. For the former, he described scenarios where players will be able to send out beacons if you want another player to join you or you need help. When casting a wide beacon, the sender offers a bounty for completing the task. It’s the other player’s job to decide if they want to kill the messenger or fulfill their duty. Special beacons can also be dispatched to specifically attract friends too.
With jobs the current iteration appears just as deep. To ease community concern that certain jobs may be more boring than others, Roberts spoke briefly about the case of engineers. “When the ship is taking damage, we have the whole power node system. Power or systems go down, and people have to run around the ship and go to locations to reroute power.” In those instances, there’s much more to the task then firing a gun. Some will prefer to do that, but everyone cooperating in different capacities will be critical to survival.
That’s especially true considering there will be stiff penalties for wrecked ships in upcoming alphas. “Right now, if your ship blows up, so what. In the future, though, it will carry real consequences. People are really going to need to work together to figure this stuff out,” he cautioned.
Incredible concepts like these are a huge part of what has kept Star Citizen relevant for the past five years, but it’s no secret that delays have dogged the project from day one. To those ends, its leader spoke frankly. “It’s often developers saying ‘oh yeah, we can do that!’ It’s not Chris [Roberts] making up dates. People want to give their best, but then a roadblock appears, some contingent work isn’t finished in time or sometimes priorities change.” This was very much the case when Star Marine was delayed late last year. These issues are common in development, but Erin expressed hope that they’ll improve as the company matures.
Star Citizen is available in alpha for Kickstarter backers on PC.
Do you think Star Citizen will be able to meet its 2017 release target for alpha 3.0? Do some of its finer details get you excited? Tell us in the comments section!
