Remember when people got bent when Blizzard introduced instances to their open world? I admit that taking people out of the common areas and isolating them for the sake of a more personal experience was weird, but now it’s a feature that’s become so prevalent that no one bats an eye anymore. I like instancing in part because it allows me to focus on what I need to do without the interference (real or perceived) of other people, which is why I’m very excited about CIG currently testing the first round of content instancing in their latest PTU patch.

As of right now, we know of three probable-most-likely-verified instance locations. The first is a new edition of the Siege of Orison which is in active testing. The second and third are two larger, more involved settings: the Municipal Works of Levski, and The Depths of A18. Names and locations are subject to change, I suppose…or else I’ve mixed them up as CIG hasn’t nailed down specifics themselves from what I gather.

Siege was one of the first scripted events that CIG put out a few patch years ago. Players could group up and fight their way through the platforms of the floating city of Orison on Crusader until they reached the top of a skyscraper where they’d engage the content’s final boss. The event took place in the open world, but it was separate from the normal Orison public landing zone. That meant that performance was subject to the load on the servers that were dedicated to that regional shard, and the event was released before many of the optimizations that the game has received. While it was apparently do-able, it was also a massive slog against server performance and a wealth of in-game bugs.

Now, Siege is going to get it’s own closed instance. From the patch notes, it looks to be smaller than the original — only three platforms with only FPS gameplay. The notes also mention that the event has been redesigned to improve navigation and sight-lines, among other things. I’m hoping that if this test goes well then we’ll see the entire redesigned Siege event making it’s way into the game in 4.9 or 4.10.

We have some idea about the Municipal Works and The Depths, but it’s old news at this point (CitizenCon 2954/2024) so I’d fully expect there to be revisions by the time it hits the testing servers. In addition, it’s been mentioned that CIG would like to apply instancing to areas like Distribution Centers which were added to the game with great fanfare, only to be more or less ignored in traditional CIG fashion, ASD facilities, and even open world areas like where the “Align and Mine” events took place.

As stated, I’m very excited for instancing tech to come to Star Citizen, although I’m carrying my usual suitcase of trepidation. They still haven’t gotten hangar instancing correct, so I don’t know that they’ll be able to really pull off instancing entire areas with gameplay. I would also fully expect all instances of…instancing…to be half-assed, as is the traditional CIG M.O.

On it’s own, an instance is just an area dedicated to an assigned group. The content is only accessible by that group, and multiple groups can spawn their own content areas. On top of that, CIG can apply different rules. I can choose for my instance to be PvE only. You can choose your instance to be PvPvE. Someone else’s instance can be PvP only. Maybe there’s an instance that’s got no combat (HAHAHAHA who am I kidding; this is CIG we’re talking about!) and is just some kind of puzzle scenario, or even a standard mission area for something like an advanced delivery job which layers a story on top.

There’s a few “wait and see” bullet points I’d add to my personal assessment of this situation. The first is the loot distribution, as CIG (and other game operators, of course) will no doubt keep the best loot for PvP or PvPvE instances; I’m OK with that so long as they don’t “punish” PvE players by only giving baseline stat items. Another issue I foresee is that CIG seems to be relying heavily on rep grind, even in this pre-1.0 state. While I understand that rep is a relationship mechanic that rewards those who achieve the highest tier of buddy-buddy with in-game organizations, I do hope that access to all instances isn’t rep gated, especially pre-1.0 where the game could benefit from more eyes on content even on the persistent universe servers.