From the July monthly report for the PU: July saw the Feature team experimenting with skill progression, which involves players performing specific in-game actions to make them better at similar activities. For example, building up strength will allow players to carry heavier objects with fewer penalties, while performing takedowns will open access to quicker and quieter action sets. To me, the fact that Star Citizen is a purely player skill-based game is a core pillar of it's attraction. To me, a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling is one of the main tenets of the game. I can understand that there is a need for a stats and skill-tree in the single-player SQ42, but this is one feature that should not make the transition to the MMO Star Citizen! Using stats instead of game-play to decide if an action succeeds is taking away game-play! Much of the community haven't even believed that this would even happen; we have been assuming that it would go no further than cosmetic changes, that it would not impact actual game play. What this month's report for the PU says is different. Please, do not take Star Citizen in this direction! During the discussion below, some points have emerged: EDIT 1: A big problem with a skill system is that SC is a PvP MMO. For PvE players, it might be less important, but for PvP players it is devastating. With a skill based system, any PvP loss can be written off as "higher stats" and for any win you wouldn't know if it was your own skill that won or if it was your character's skill that won. The win turns to sand. For PvP there can't be a shred of a doubt that it was your personal skill that let you win or lose, or any competition will be worthless. Since SC is a sandbox game, almost any skill feature could be used to skew a victory. EDIT 2: Important for all players is that Star Citizen so far has been building to be a simulator; systematic so it gives rise to emergent game play. A skill system does the opposite of that, moving players into tedious min-maxing meta game and making the concrete game play less tactile. For instance, your stealth ability should arise as an emergent effect from simulation of what you do, how you are dressed and how the lighting falls. Not from a stat. This is really at the soul of what SC is! EDIT 3: Some commenters don't seem to know this, but CIG put a huge amount of effort into keeping the ships and equipment balanced within the category of it's intended purpose. Partly because the game would otherwise devolve into what it is often wrongfully accused of, i.e. a Pay-To-Win game, partly because if any ship or equipment were allowed to be the clear meta, that would be the only ship or equipment everyone would always use, making all other ships and equipment wasted development time. Instead, the difference between equipment and ships is there to give players variety of play style, but to be "equally good". Like different heroes in League of Legends are balanced to be "equally good". In that sense, there is no way to "upgrade" your equipment, you can only select other equipment that better suits your personality and play style. You can not "upgrade to win" and that is essential for competitive game play. A skill system goes directly counter to that. EDIT 4: The consternation comes from moving away from a carefully balanced simulation based open world game creating emergent effects that give rise to tactile game play. Moving towards stats based game play moves us towards the tedium of meta level min-maxing. More than so, it is a radical departure from the wonderful single-mindedness of the detailed simulation CIG have been pursuing. To do so would sadden me to no end. Keeping completely focused on simulation is not an impossible task. Dwarf Fortress was able to do it and it was developed by two people. Star Citizen can keep doing it too. EDIT 5: A skill system is one way to add features to a game, however Star Citizen has always been, and bases it's entire success on being a simulation based game. The difference between a skill system and a simulation system is that a skill system does it without game play. In a simulator, things still have attributes, e.g. a thruster has a certain max output, however, in a simulator, those attributes are always a level underneath what the player directly interacts with. In a skill-system, you might be thinking of increasing you g-force tolerance value to be able to turn tighter. In a simulator, the g-force black-out level is fixed. Instead you take advantage of how g-forces work, and roll your ship so that the g-forces come from a different angle and gives your brain the blood it needs to avoid blacking out. This is how the game is emergent and tactile rather than meta-gaming. Players will always try to manipulate the attributes, that is what playing a game is about, however skill-systems mainly put such game-play at the meta level. This gives a very particular style to a game, something we recognise from all the RPGs, where we are thinking of what stat we need to increase next, not about how to move our character better in-game to achieve the desired effect. This difference is essential to what sets Star Citizen apart from the hordes of stats-based games out there. At no point do we ever think about changing our stats in Star Citizen; we don't because there are no stats to change! This means we are always in-game, inside the world, and trying to solve the issue within the world. As soon as skills are added, that is lost. EDIT 6: There have been many arguments saying that a skill system will make the game more realistic. First off, look at your avatar! Do you really think that running back and forth to the train station is enough to add anything to that physique? Can you imagine the daily hours that are already put into maintaining that body - especially when their player insists on stuffing their face with snack bars, double hot dogs and burritos? Do you really want to do the kind of concerted stringent training that would be required to further improve a body such as those we have, and are you going to be satisfied with what little concrete improvement that is possible on our bodies? Arguing that stats are needed for realism is ridiculous. The real training that we can do is learning how to get good at things. Real progression is the player getting better. That is as realistic as it gets! The real magic of a good simulation: Progress comes as you, the player, gets good. It doesn't just tick up the number on some stat.