I speak for myself and myself only, but it seems that my feelings and opinions are shared by a sizeable portion of backers, including some that simply do not bother with Spectrum, they simply have stopped playing, as have I, their reasons may vary. It is utter disappointment and feeling betrayed. It is lack of faith in the project despite its progress. It is a feeling that everything that was showcased and promoted in the past decade of development was merely placeholder to be swept away in hopes of reaching a broader audience that doesn't exist yet. We have backed this project as much as anybody here but are somehow being downplayed as being salty or pathetic and simply wrong. I personally backed Star Citizen because it was promising to be something unique and exceptional- most if not all of the recent changes and the ones promoted to come in the future showcase a product that I have not backed- more of the same that the industry is over-saturated with. I spent nearly 3 years happily playing very actively and about a decade following the development and using the same rhetoric as people who are detracting my opinions and critique now- Give them time, it's a grander vision, there is plenty of work to be done, it is only a matter of time, it will get fixed and polished, it is worth the wait and so on. As it stands this game is unrecognizable besides the artwork and overall scope of it. It does not play like it did and doesn't aim to. I did not pledge for something that is simply big, huge, large, wide, massive, expansive and a shared simultaneous experience with thousands of players; there was more to it. It seems that all the promised core gameplay will get implemented but will be put in play as anything in the game currently- just as a thing to do without any real substance to it- this is not the game that I was backing or was promoted to expect OR playing for years. I've tried, but it is lackluster and boring. I've tried every activity in the game and the only thing that made me HAPPILY still play the game despite not caring to branch out to every single activity in the game was flying- we pledged for a ship, in a game that centers around flying- it has now suffered the same fate as other activities in the game- simplified, streamlined, pushed to be another dream that one day it will make sense, while I was already playing the game I wanted (minus balancing, polish and implementation of features to come, naturally), now that game doesn't exist and has no intention to. MM is fine, it's just fine, but it is by no standard anything special or interesting. I already own games that do exactly what it does but simply better, and the rest of the game in those cases works too. You can not make it "better" by balancing or iterating on it, that will simply make it play better in terms of what it does, but I don't like how it even intends to play. And I did not pledge for this type of gameplay. I wanted a unique experience and had one, now I am looking at something completely mundane, mediocre, predictable and ultimately just standardized. Scope and endless repetitive tasks do not equal compelling gameplay. That was not the dream, it was never the dream, as much is on paper, spanning back decades. Wasn't this supposed to be all or nothing? All the way? To the moon and beyond? All in? No holds barred? No mountain too high? Some folks will settle for less and demand the game cater to them as they do not have the time to dedicate to a profession or spend their time with a single activity. They need to be good at everything right away so they can effectively complete as many tasks as possible with the minimum effort possible. I guess it is within their right but I was expecting to see a living, vibrant and complex 'verse with varying degrees of expertise shared among its Citizens,- pilots piloting, mercs mercing, haulers hauling and pirates pirating, with little to only some crossover because learning a profession or skill was supposed to have DEPTH. That was the pitch and it was more or less the game we had for literally years. Now we all do it all with the same ease of access- we have 0 agency or identity, in all things. How this kind of feedback is lost on my fellow Citizens is beyond me and I can not agree with the direction this project has suddenly taken, how could I possibly? It is going against everything I knew about the project including hundreds upon hundreds of hours of gameplay, promotional material and concept pitches, design sheets and the list goes on. As long as the game itself, what it did right, held my interest I was looking forward to things to come, hell or high water,- the last bastion was taken within a single patch and now we simply wait for something we already had, that might never arrive as it has no reason to. The bugs, glitches and lack of features were simply something to wait for to be ironed out, I knew what I was waiting for, now I do not know why I pledged to begin with. Somehow this makes me villainous, a cry baby, moronic or otherwise reprehensible, and so be it as there is nothing I can do about it at all besides HOPE that the game will return to form one day in some shape or form, but- If this project goes out the release doors with its current design-ethos I feel we will simply see more of the same iterated on, not the game I backed, so there simply is no amount of work that can be done to make it appealing. I already own a copy of similar titles, I did however not purchase hundreds of dollars worth of equipment to really enjoy the gameplay to the fullest for their sake, I did that because SC at its core was simply amazing to play, even as a unfinished broken alpha. Now said equipment sits gathering dust doing nothing at all. I've melted my entire fleet as NONE of the ships do what they did and I purchased them with intention for specific use. I am now rebuilding at random but I don't even know why. Just because, I guess. Something I took care in deliberating on has become "it's neat, why not, don't care". It really is all the same- completely irrelevant. Yes, I can still play the game, I just don't enjoy it and I don't understand at what point I was supposed to see "this", whatever this is, happening to the project I was backing. I have been blindsided, and before someone mentions all the available data and roadmaps and such- I understand, I have seen them, but I can not expect the game to take what I consider a nosedive even with the available data and information. So it feels like a massive rugpull and while I can fully understand the reasoning on behalf of the developers to make such choices I can not support them in any shape or form. That was not a part of the pledge. No, it wasn't. And if this is what I should have expected by default then the dream was a nightmare to begin with. To the older backers who want to tell me war stories and pat me on the head for being naive: Just because you have been here longer than I have does not mean that my expectations are somehow invalid- I based them on available gameplay and nearly a decade of following the project before pledging, I thought I knew what I was getting in to and felt like I was not mislead until now. So, no, it's obviously not a scam- it is something far worse- it is mediocre and more of exactly the same that every other publisher and developer is pushing; something I did not sign up for. Please stop hating on us for voicing what is I think fairly valid critique as we have not much else to try at this point- we already paid, we already pledged, we already held the line, and I at this point submit to you- for what? I just don't see it anymore and that is somehow my fault alone -while I did nothing but support what I was already playing. And yes, I've moved on to do other things and to play other titles, I don't need another reminder to do so, I'm fine playing something else, it's fine, this is fine. Yet, here I am, speaking at great length, in repetition, to nobody in particular as for what I've come to understand, from many sources, -this type of feedback is considered noise by the developers and hostile or irrelevant according to other backers. If this is how CIG operates in the future, what makes you think that your dream is safe from not becoming something that you did not pledge for? What evidence can you base your expectations on if displayed gameplay and experiences can be traded off on a whim for something obscure in a future iteration? Do you even care? Did you ever care? I feel like I did but I assume I'm about to be told in some shape or form that I am mistaken about all of this, my opinions, feelings and observations included. What even is this, now? But hey, here's hoping SQ42 will be a decent title; as far as I gather, in the end, that's where most of the cash and time went anyways? I have no expectations about it and can only hope the current represented gameplay we are allowed to try out suits a single player adventure better. Time will tell. There's still hope of some sort, for something... anything, anything at all... please? Maybe? o?