First, if you don't want to read something negative, please just skip this. I'm not here to argue and not here to cause trouble. Here to share a viewpoint that I have to imagine is not unique. I Kickstarted. I watched with, really awe, as stretch goal after stretch goal was reached. Mostly it was due to thoughts of, "Oh shit, I'm not the only one." There's a lot of sci-fi nerds out there, it seems, and it was pretty heartwarming to see everyone dogpile on such a cool concept. Star Citizen. A living, breathing sci-fi future. Definitely sold me. I backed immediately, and when the first hangar preview came out, I was in there, slack-jawed, staring at my Aurora like something fundamental in gaming had changed. In many ways it has. But in others, it has not. Star Citizen development has been troubled. But trust me when I tell you that all game development is troubled. Deeply. CIG is just public about their struggles. MMO servers always tank on patch day. Bug are always innumerable. People always get upset at this buff, or that nerf. It's the nature of the beast, and one I've been happily accepting of for a long time (anyone else remember the UO alpha?). Even the frustrations of the last few days, I'm easily able to brush aside as the growing pains of new features and content. It's the natural way of things. The reason for this post isn't due to any recent patch, but more of a general direction the game has taken in the last few years. Star Citizen was sold to me as a place to explore, and expand and move forward with humanity. Science, and colonization, and crafting, and tourism, and cartography and so on. But there's almost nothing in the game you can accomplish that isn't done so through the barrel of a gun. I'm not opposed to game violence in the slightest, but I am opposed to it as a primary design direction for this simulated universe. You heal with a gun. You mine with a gun. You repair and salvage with guns. You want to craft? You have to get there through combat. Salvage? Keep your eyes peeled for pirates? Haul/Trade? Same. Mine? Same. Nothing is optimistic. Every action is taken under the shadow of persistent threat. Most of the flagship content over the last few years has been buried under hours of group-based FPS combat. Starting around 3.21/3.22/Wikelo content started to become group/grind focused. Go to a place, with people, do combat, over and over again. Repeat. Every patch, this worldview has been extended. More items to get, from another group grind. Repeat. Repeat Repeat Repeat. Not systemic content with repetitious behavior, like mining or salvage. But twilight-zone/groundhog day repetition. Not even repetition by way of player agency through boredom ('I've done this before, I'll do it again'). But truly, WoW-era, go kill this single mob boss 10 times to unlock gear mission content. That stuff was supposed to be extra, to all the systemic content. Cool narrative stuff to push the lore forward, and give everyone context. But now it seems one of the main pillars of the product. I've been waiting years for more systemic content, to extend gameplay beyond this kind of typical, mmo-grindfest stuff. Then, finally, crafting! ... Also (mostly) gated-behind all that grindtent. It's just been so long since the game felt optimistic. It's just the same grindy, scarcity crush as traditional MMOs, but with a lot of advanced backend tech. Now, when I log into the game, that sense of wonder I have had for so long is dulled. Global is full of wild immaturity and reprehensible profanity, and I don't think it's coincidental. I think that the direction the game has taken, with it's PVP-centric take on large-group combat content, has pulled in a crowd less interested in the futurism, and sci-fi wonder, and more interested in winning the space game, fu git gud cry more, etc. I log in almost out of duty now. To the time. To the effort that everyone's put into it. To the money. But I always feel like I'm trying to have fun at a party that just isn't for me anymore. If they really want Star Citizen to be about mission content, I wish they'd take all these advancements in technology, all these new systems, and build content that doesn't feel like it's structure is pulled straight outta 2004.