I am not good with estimates. The only thing I am worse at is math, probably. Ask me how far a destination is, how heavy a rock is, or how long a table is and I might as well tell you “elephant” every time, but I do feel that we are getting closer to an inevitable 1.0 release of Star Citizen. I just have absolutely no idea when.

While many — including myself to a degree — believe that once a product is in the hands of the public it should be considered “released”, slapping a “1.0” designation on a long running project is mainly symbolic and isn’t aimed at people like me who have been with Star Citizen since its inception. Instead, it’s aimed at finance people who like to have that kind of demarcation, and also at those who have been sitting on the sidelines either silently waiting or slinging poo. While there can certainly be a lot of debate over whether 1.0 is arbitrary or meaningful, there are three elements that I believe that Star Citizen must have in order to earn that 1.0 label.

Social Tools

Without a doubt, Star Citizen cannot function as a 1.0 product without social tools.

Of course it will need a much better chat system than what is currently present in the game. It needs tabs, filters, and history. It needs to record the kinds of things MMO players like to see such as NPC conversation lines and loot information. It has to be interactive so we can take actions for and against people in chat through right mouse clicking. We should also be able to make our own tabs to display the kinds of information we consider to be important, not just what CIG wants us to consider to be important.

Next comes org tools. Star Citizen has some weak org tools baked into Spectrum, their social platform, but those don’t translate in-game. As with other MMOs, org (or guild) tools start by grouping players together with dedicated chat channels. There should also be a way to represent the structure of the org, considering that player groups in Star Citizen are literally called “organizations”; we need a way to manage the org chart. Branching out from that, an org needs permissions for something a simple as MOTD update rights to shared storage access rights. As a nice to have, integrate long-term chat options into the org tools so that members can communicate internally for things like posting shared knowledge, or even “for sale” items.

Many players have been waiting for the player rep system, and this is crucial; possibly more so than org tools in my opinion. Player rep will allow players to rate one another based on interactions. If I activate a medical beacon, for example, I should be able to indicate whether the one or ones who respond helped me or further hurt me so that other players can know what they’re in for if “xXMomL0v3r420Xx” shows up.

Although I’m sure there are more examples, the last feature I would consider to be mandatory would be the ability for secure trading. Right now, players can agree to transfer aUEC in exchange for goods, but there’s absolutely nothing in place to ensure that the transaction is respected. Thought implementation of the player rep system as well as a means for one party to make goods available for other players to purchase, we can kick-start a real player economy.

Integrated Economy

This is the second requirement. Without a working economy there’s no progression. So much of what we can currently do in Star Citizen is merely personal. I can trade items with friends or take my chances with strangers, and I can sell items to NPC shops, but it’s all very perfunctory and there’s no pathway from progressive activity to progressive profit. As much as I dislike it, Star Citizen’s true main game-play loop is to earn money to use to get better equipment, either through buying it or the materials to make it from other players or NPCs, or to hire muscle to escort our caravans through dangerous space, or to buy bigger and better ships, weapons, and components in game. All of these tasks exist so that players can make even more money to keep the cycle rolling in a forward-designated direction.

Thing is, players won’t universally work together unless there’s something in it for them. During the Alliance Aid mission arc, for example, CIG artificially skewed the rewards so that players sharing missions could reap the complete benefits of a single mission and while that brought players together, it also brought them together in groups of hundreds as a way to game the system for maximum profit. As cool as it was, that kind of intentional loop-hole is unsustainable. As with other MMOs and in real life, a player-run or player-participating economy is a time-tested way to bring together those who have something and those who want something. Of course, this would also need to use the player rep system so that everyone knows who they are buying from or selling to.

As much as players like the idea of a player-run economy, it simply cannot be the only vehicle for moving goods and currency. 4.8 is supposed to be bringing ship refueling missions and beacons, but it will offer two distinct sides of the same coin: players responding to NPC requests, and NPCs responding to player requests. Players responding to player requests is something that I believe can happen now, but as we only have one refueling ship and “tier 0” mechanics, I suspect that it’s not very high on anyone’s game loop. Players won’t always be available to nor want to respond or interact with one another for various reasons, so everyone will still need to be able to do business with NPCs as a stop-gap measure or during a new player experience.

Missions

The third part of a viable 1.0 release would be a robust mission system. Although it’s a sandbox, Star Citizen has so much space to fill that it’s already becoming impossible for players to do it themselves. On top of that, there’s going to be a lot of lore laid down with the release of Squadron 42 that would beg for expansion in the sandbox of Star Citizen. There are already several “named” NPCs that CIG has used and apparently wants to use again and create more of, so having the technology to provide “things to do” for players is certainly something that should be high on the 1.0 release list.

Missions do exist right now but they are all cut from the same cloth. Players can either pick up and deliver items, kill NPCs or players, or source materials and deliver them somewhere. The variations exist only in how much effort a player needs to put into the task. While these missions should always exist, they can get boring very quickly — ask me how I know now that the Alliance Aid mission arc is complete.

What I would like to see are more variations in the mission system that extend well beyond tense, combat-focused offerings. All of the set-piece missions that CIG has provided — Align and Mine, the Regen Crisis, and the new Rock-Breaker tasks, for example — have elements of exploration, collection, and puzzle-solving, but in the end they are all built on top of combat at their core. Even though that may be the most desirable content for players and what CIG and Chris Roberts wants the game to focus on, I remember some of the first missions the game offered — investigating the disappearance of an NPC, and disabling or re-enabling communication satellites — and would love to see more involved, lower-stakes, story oriented missions. Barring that, creating multi-step mission chains which include aspects where there is no combat, or even where combat is devalued, minimized, or potentially avoidable, would be extremely amazing. And I’m not just talking about “adding stealth” options, either.

The mission system is currently undergoing overhauls and expansions, so I’m hopeful that CIG can create tools that would allow for these kinds of missions to be created. Whether the mission team at CIG can see past the barrels of their firearms to take that step is another matter.

What About [Insert Favorite Feature]?

It pains me to do so, but I’ve left off things like additional tier work on crafting, and, more importantly, base building. I’ve also left off the fleet actions content, exploration, mission and area instancing, and a whole lot of nit-picky items that, while I’m excited to see come to fruition, I do not consider factoring heavily into a 1.0 release candidate for Star Citizen.

With sandbox games, everyone approaches the table with a wishlist of what they hope to do when the game itself doesn’t provide such guidance. In truth, I’m very excited for base building, and I know that one aspect of that system is to allow players to set up shops that other players can visit. This seems like it ties base building very closely with the player economy, but CIG has shown time after time that they’re very good at releasing half-baked, “good enough” features with the intent of iterating later on. While I would hope that 1.0 won’t release with any “tier 0” features, I won’t hold my breath. It could be possible for Star Citizen to enable a hand-waving delivery service from player to player while physicalized player shops are built and polished, and while it won’t be anywhere near optimal from a player or immersion standpoint, it would allow CIG to work on the mechanics of the economy without having to rely on the presence — and performance — of player-built structures.

That’s not to say that I don’t think we’ll see a 1.0 without base building, the fleet actions, instancing, or meaningful exploration. These are all “hooks” that can be used in the brochure to bring people into the game, and after such a protracted, fraught, and highly opinionated development cycle, marketing for a 1.0 candidate is going to need to be impeccable. I honestly believe that CIG themselves see those items as necessary before 1.0 can become a thing; I agree. But if they were under the gun for some reason and needed to get 1.0 out the door by a certain time, the three elements I’ve described are, in my opinion, the three things they would absolutely have to have in order to entice existing players to evangelize, new players to consider, and pundits to analyze to give the product a fair shake.