With instancing becoming a major topic of discussion again recently, I also want to share some of my thoughts about the direction this game is heading. I think this entire series of gameplay experiences CIG has been putting out is boring. Extremely boring. It's shallow garbage with almost no depth. The only thing I can consistently praise is the work of the art team. The locations are always spectacular, but that's about it. Play them more than three times and everything starts to become tedious. The gameplay is repetitive, hollow, and completely static. The universe feels dead. CIG used to talk about building a "living universe," but from my perspective, the direction we're heading in now has almost nothing to do with that vision. What we have right now is basically one giant mission launcher: log into the game, open mobiGlas, accept a contract, fly to the designated location, kill a few NPCs or press some buttons, go back to a station, accept another contract, wait for the cooldown, and repeat. The missions are fixed. The process is fixed. Sometimes even the names of the NPCs are fixed. Can you imagine a supposedly living universe where the same idiot on the same ship gets kidnapped by the same gang every few hours, then posts another contract asking you to rescue him? Or you're endlessly sent back into the same facility to watch the same alien rise up and down on an operating table so you can "collect data." Excuse me, what happened to the data I collected for you last time? Did your kid accidentally format your computer while you weren't looking? Can you imagine a living universe where I can go disable the exact same asteroid base every few minutes? What exactly did I accomplish the last time I disabled it? What effect did disabling that base actually have on the universe? My point is, almost nothing players do has any meaningful impact on the universe. Accept a mercenary contract and hostile NPCs magically spawn into existence. Accept a hauling contract and cargo magically appears out of nowhere. Security in an area doesn't improve because players have been heavily participating in security operations there. Supplies don't actually move around the universe because players are completing hauling contracts. The closest thing we currently have to an actual "living universe" gameplay loop is probably commodity trading, yet trading is far less profitable than hauling contracts, so hardly anyone has a reason to bother with it. Then we have the insurance claim system and mission cargo. CIG doesn't want players to lose things, so the system constantly generates replacement items for them. Then CIG becomes worried about players abusing those infinitely generated items, so they make those items worthless or unusable in other systems. The end result is that salvage and piracy gameplay get completely gutted. What remains at the center of the game is basically just the contract list. Even replacing that list with physical mission-giver NPCs wouldn't fundamentally change anything, because the contracts those NPCs offer would still be predetermined. Players can literally accept and abandon contracts until they get one at a location closer to them, which only further demonstrates that these missions are artificially spawned content with almost no relationship to what is actually happening in the universe. What I imagine when I think of a truly dynamic universe is something more like this: Resources and commodities are produced and consumed depending on location. That naturally creates trade between companies and establishes shipping routes. Those routes then generate hauling contracts for cargo players, while busy and high-value routes naturally attract pirates. Security companies respond by issuing contracts to NPC mercenaries and player mercenaries to protect those freighters. Now the cargo player is transporting something that actually matters. Maybe they're carrying basic supplies that are desperately needed on another planet. If they fail, those supplies don't reach the people who need them. Eventually, that shortage might even prevent that location from providing certain services to players. Along the way, they might encounter pirates. Those pirates could be NPCs, or they could be players accepting contracts from criminal gangs. If a player accepts a protection contract and then turns around and attacks the merchant ship they're supposed to protect, their reputation with that organization drops, eventually preventing them from accepting those escort contracts again. The same principle applies to players taking contracts from pirate factions. Suddenly, these gameplay loops aren't a collection of unrelated systems anymore. They're different activities naturally emerging from the operation of the same universe. Then there are all these massive dungeon-style locations. I think CIG should reduce how heavily scripted and story-driven they are, because right now they feel far too disposable and repetitive. Like I said earlier, we shouldn't have the same idiot on the same ship getting kidnapped by the same gang for the same reason every few hours. But that doesn't mean all these incredible locations need to go to waste. QV Breaker Stations, QV stations, and locations used for Tactical Strike Groups could instead be scattered throughout different corners of the universe. Remove the mission markers and navigation beacons entirely and build an actual exploration gameplay loop around finding them. Exploration ships could spend time locating these places through scanning, puzzles, triangulation, or whatever other mechanics CIG comes up with. Once explorers discover one, they could bring their own team there to complete whatever challenges are inside and claim the rewards, or they could simply sell the coordinates to other players. Think of shipwrecks, buried treasure, Bastion Remnants, or even Strongholds in Minecraft. Even something like Siege of Orison could be triggered temporarily depending on factors such as how frequently players have been completing security contracts in that region. This wouldn't just enrich the sandbox and preserve immersion. It would finally give exploration gameplay an actual purpose. At the same time, players who don't want constant interaction with strangers could reduce their chances of encountering PvP by exploring remote and undiscovered locations instead of having everyone funneled into the exact same system-designated mission locations. Pyro's outposts could work as a physical representation of the struggle between its factions. Imagine players helping Citizens for Prosperity clear the Headhunters out of one of their territories. During the attack, the Headhunters could dynamically generate a defensive contract for another group of players who have good reputation with them, asking those players to defend the territory. If the attackers win, CFP NPCs begin occupying the outpost shortly afterward. Later, the Headhunters might generate another contract asking their allies to retake the same outpost. That kind of attack-and-defense gameplay would already be fun by itself — we've seen enough videos from content creators to know that player-driven battles like this can be incredibly entertaining — but it would also finally make the reputation system genuinely matter again. A player with strong CFP reputation who is hostile toward the Headhunters would actively want CFP to control as much territory as possible, because more CFP territory means more locations where that player can safely trade or participate in other activities. And the opposite would be true for players aligned with the Headhunters. That alone gives players a real reason to participate. And there are countless other possibilities like this. I'm sure CIG is far more capable than I am of coming up with them. I don't want more missions. I want the universe itself to generate the missions. Star Citizen once gave me so many dreams and so much room for imagination. I genuinely want this game to succeed, and I'm grateful to all the developers behind the scenes at CIG who continue working hard to make it happen. But the direction development has been taking recently genuinely worries me. I'm afraid that after all these years of waiting and all the expectations I've built up, what we'll ultimately end up with is just another GTA Online — a game that already existed when CIG was founded — except this time wrapped inside a cool seamless-universe shell.