For those that have yet to dip their toes into the massive multi-million dollar enterprise that is Star Citizen, the game has long been touted as being a bit of a slow burn in terms of development, with creator Christopher Roberts and his team continuously planning new features that don’t make it into the game for years at a time. As one may imagine, this doesn’t sit particularly well with a portion of the Star Citizen player base, with many calling Roberts out for focusing his efforts on developing the ‘wrong’ things instead of what the players want.

In a recent thread over on the Roberts Space Industries forum (H/T: IGN), Christopher Roberts issued a response to Star Citizen user Camurai, who noted that the “atmospheric room systems” feature promised four years ago had still not found its way into the game. Roberts stated that developing such a system would be difficult and would take some time to implement into the game.

We are just going for a higher level of systemic gameplay (versus scripted) than most if not all games, and to architect all of this so it works in multiplayer at scale is no small feat.”

Roberts went on to explain that such a system would eventually allow for various sub-systems for monitoring oxygen, fire, room, pipe, and the player, all of which would react to damage and promote teamwork among crews to band together and deal with the problems. Camurai responded to Roberts by calling his statement “the same old same old,” saying that it would likely take “another 10-20” years to get the systems implemented into Star Citizen. At this, Roberts seemingly took his gloves off, cracked his knuckles, and issued a more lengthy response schooling Camurai on what it takes to develop a game with a scope as massive as this one. “I sense from your reply to me that it’s the time taken and priorities that you’re frustrated with, as you feel like we’re focusing on the wrong things,” Roberts said.

I can see that point of view, but you’re looking at it from the outside without the full knowledge of exactly what it will take, and the order it needs to be done in to deliver the gameplay that will set Star Citizen apart from everything else.”

“This is the game I’ve dreamed of my whole life. Now I am in a position to realize it, I am not willing to compromise it’s potential because it is taking longer than I originally envisioned,” Roberts continued. “What I will commit to, and what is an internal priority is to improve the current gameplay and quality of life as we go, as Star Citizen is already fun in many ways, even if more buggy and not as stable as I would like, and just finishing off and polishing the basics will make it play as well or better than most other games. I can promise you the gameplay I described is not a pipe dream, nor will it take 10 to 20 years to deliver. I described systems we either have working or are working on.”

Star Citizen is now in various states of playability.

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