With Alpha 4.0, one of the most important updates in the development of Star Citizen is about to launch. The new features and improvements are so extensive that you will have to say goodbye to a significant part of your previous progress.
Why are player progress disappearing? Even though the “Engineering” feature planned for Alpha 4.0 will be added later, the upcoming update will intervene so deeply into the systems that a reset of “all three pillars of long-term persistence” will be absolutely necessary.
What will be reset? The developers explain in a post on the official forum (via robertsspaceindustries.com) what this means in detail.
- Due to the extensive new features for missions, guilds, and various systems, the reputation earned so far will be reset with Alpha 4.0.
- The new features for the economy make it necessary to reset all wallet data.
- The introduction of the star system Pyro requires a fresh item database. Therefore, all earned items will also be removed, including ships that you have purchased with in-game currency.
The developers emphasize that all account-bound items, such as ships bought with money, subscriber bonuses, and rewards, will remain intact.
The fire system unfortunately won’t be coming with Alpha 4.0 for Star Citizen:
Necessary wipe for a better player experience
How does the community react to the wipe? This is not the first wipe in the long development period of Star Citizen, and it probably won’t be the last until the final launch. Accordingly, many supporters of the Sci-Fi MMO are already hardened.
Additionally, many players understand how extensively the major update will affect the player experience. Accordingly, the anticipation for Alpha 4.0 and the upcoming wipe is great:
- meckle writes (via robertsspaceindustries.com): “Thank you so much for this! I’m curious to see how the economy changes and develops!”
- JJ Idaho celebrates (via robertsspaceindustries.com): “WIPE HYPE!!! Thank you!”
- For Oracka, the wipe doesn’t go far enough (via robertsspaceindustries.com): “Let the tears flow, but many others and I welcome this. But please, for everything good and holy: Conduct a complete wipe, everything must go. You should only start with what you have in your account.”
Due to the upcoming reputation grind, several players have a request for the developers. The post by Wolfbrother84 exemplifies this (via robertsspaceindustries.com):
Hey, that’s all well and good, but can you at least set it up so that reputation is NO longer split among group members? Grinding 100 missions is bad enough, but having to do even more just because you want to do it with friends is insane.
Criticism of the wipe can hardly be found under the official post. Marten writes, for example (via robertsspaceindustries.com):
If you are going to do a wipe, at least give us the chance to keep our ships. Some of us have invested more than 50 hours into this game just to get one ship. Resetting everything means there is no reason to keep playing the game.
With Alpha 4.0, Star Citizen receives a lot of improvements
What will come with Alpha 4.0? Due to the postponements of the entire engineering features (including life support and fire system) and the early implementation of some 4.0 novelties with Alpha 3.24.2 (such as multi-tool updates and new vehicle HUD), the list of features for the major update has significantly shrunk.
- The core technology of server meshing allows developers to use multiple servers per shard, improving interaction in the universe and facilitating seamless transitions between systems.
- The entire mission system is being overhauled to be compatible with server meshing.
- With Pyro, a new star system is coming that contains six planets and moons, as well as space stations. This will also include colonial outposts and the first jumping points for the persistent universe.
The first Alpha 4.0 build was actually supposed to be available to the “Wave 1 EPTU” players (EPTU = Experimental Public Test Universe, a test server for selected players). However, according to a post on Reddit, there has been a slight delay. The developers are hoping for a launch on November 22, 2024. The release on the alpha live servers is expected to occur later this year, where patch 3.24.3 is currently playable.
If you are wondering what happened to the story spin-off Squadron 42, there was a sobering update at CitizenCon 2024 in October 2024: The single-player game of Star Citizen has all features, shows great gameplay, but won’t be released for a long time
