I don’t want to pile too much criticism on Elliot or his team. He’s already taking a lot of heat for problems that aren’t his responsibility—desyncs, bugs, unresponsive AI. None of that falls under his responsibility. His job is mission content design. That said, it’s become very clear that since CitizenCon 2024 the studio has shifted its vision for what Star Citizen is supposed to be. The ambitious space-sim sandbox no longer seems to be the priority. The new goal appears to be delivering a “safe,” theme-park experience designed to appeal to a wider audience. What I'm about to say, has nothing to do with the hard work Elliot and his team have put in siege. I'm just using Siege to demonstrate a much larger problem that affects Star Citizen's vision as a whole. I remain convinced this is a serious mistake—one that still hasn’t proven its long-term viability, regardless of whatever internal numbers are being cited. Siege of Orison is the clearest illustration of this change. From Lazarus through both versions of Siege, the intent has increasingly been to create a conventional FPS map experience—essentially a Call of Duty-style mode inside the persistent universe. But in my opinion, that approach risks undermining everything that makes Star Citizen special. Here’s why: 1. It strips out the elements that define the game. Ships and vehicles are locked out—even dedicated assets like dropships and medical ships that exist precisely for this kind of content. The seamless, interconnected sandbox is replaced by a lobby that drops four players into an isolated instance with no lasting impact on the Persistent Universe. Player-driven stories and emergent gameplay give way to an on-rails experience. In short, the very features that make Star Citizen unique are deliberately sanded away until the mode feels closer to an Arena Commander lobby than part of the living universe. 2. It invites comparison with games that already do this better. If you’re going to offer Call of Duty, Escape from Tarkov, or Battlefield-style content, players will hold it to those standards. A generic FPS map has to be exceptionally polished to justify its existence. “It’s okay” or “it has some jank” won’t cut it because players can simply go play the far more refined versions of those experiences elsewhere. 3. Star Citizen is a niche game. It was always meant to be a niche game. And niche games succeed by being different, not by chasing the mainstream. Titles like Arma, Foxhole, and Squad are full of jank and mechanical roughness. They are not smooth Call of Duty experiences. Yet they maintain strong, dedicated communities precisely because they deliver something no other game offers. Star Citizen once had that same potential. It still could. Instead, the studio appears afraid of being niche or different. It seems more interested in becoming the next mainstream game phenomenon (a goal it will almost certainly never reach) than in delivering a unique experience that keeps players coming back because of "no other game gives me this" experience. That “nowhere else” quality is what defined Star Citizen. It is what made many of us tolerate the game’s flaws for years. When the studio shows it is chasing something bold and distinctive, players are far more forgiving of imperfections. When it instead decides to copy whatever is currently popular and delivers a generic shooter experience, jank and half-measures become much harder to overlook. Even if Siege of Orison eventually runs smoothly, I doubt it will have lasting appeal. It is too disconnected from the Persistent Universe and makes almost no use of the game’s actual strengths. The priority should not be “How do we remove ships and vehicles so we can deliver the catered FPS map experience we want?” It should be “We have dropships, bombers, and medical ships—how do we design content that lets those roles matter?” If I wanted to have a "cinematic" FPS map experience, I could buy Battlefield 4 at 3.99 and enjoy watching a building blow up, which looks infinitely more bombastic than whatever SC can achieve. I don't need to play SC to get that experience, better... and cheaper. I play Star Citizen to experience something these generic games you try too hard to emulate CAN'T provide. You could be different, but you chose not to. All you want is to deliver an "industry standard" experience. The genuine “wow” moments in Star Citizen will never come from Siege of Orison. They come from running an operation with your friends when a flight of Valkyries suddenly drops on your location and a full-scale fight erupts over the spoils. That is the “this can only happen in Star Citizen” experience that keeps hope for the game alive. You COULD push that experience. But you actively do your best to stay away from it. Why? THIS is what SC is supposed to be! Even if it's janky and unbalanced. At the very least. It's an experience that ONLY Star Citizen can provide. And that... is the diamond in the rough for Star Citizen. And this problem is not limited to FPS content. It runs through the entire project. Siege is just the most recent example, but this has been going for the past two years in EVERY facet of the game. Engineering is a clear example. The original promise was that ships would no longer be glorified health bars that explode after enough damage. Most of the time they would lose power or become disabled instead. Early Evocati and Wave 1 testing seemed to deliver on that vision. Then the design shifted. A “magic” health bar was added to the power plant that can be chipped away by shooting the hull anywhere. In effect, a balance change nullified the very reason many of us wanted engineering in the first place. Rather than committing to the space-sim vision, the studio chose not to disrupt the status quo. Other systems have followed the same pattern. Refueling, once more nuanced, has been reduced to a single automated button press. The pattern is consistent: CIG is steering Star Citizen toward broad mass-market MMO appeal. But what it fails to recognize is that the game was always meant to serve a strong, loyal, dedicated niche player base (that's not a bad thing. That's a strength, CIG!) Sacrificing that audience on the altar of mass appeal risks creating a product that satisfies neither group. And everyone loses. I’m not arguing against making the game more accessible. Getting more players is a good thing. But discarding the hard-won identity that gave Star Citizen its “this exists nowhere else” aura in pursuit of a wider audience is unlikely to work long-term. This is only my opinion, but I urge the people guiding the project to reconsider the course set in 2024. Sales figures may look reassuring right now. I am far less convinced that the underlying direction is.