YMMV / Star Citizen

• Broken Base: The Redeemer gunship's "nutcracker" engine nacelle design. The ship was a contender in The Next Great Starship contest, where teams of players competed for a chance of getting added to the game. The Redeemer was eliminated in the quarter finale mainly because the panel of judges just couldn't get themselves to like the design. It was brought back by popular vote during a "second chance" opportunity in the semi-finale and went on to win, largely because aside from the nacelle design the ship was by far the most complete model and seduced nearly everyone with its highly efficient interior design. The judges actually mentioned warming up to the nacelle design. Players are still divided, but accepting for the same reasons.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In 2012, Chris Roberts said the game would probably be released in 2014 with extra features added in later updates, saying, "It isn't like the old days where you had to have everything and the kitchen sink in at launch because you weren't going to come back to it for awhile." A decade later, ballooning feature creep and constant delays from wanting to have everything and the kitchen sink in at launch are the primary reasons it hasn't been released.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Due to its ridiculously stacked cast, Squadron 42 has already gotten a lot of this. Not only does it feature both Luke Skywalker and Director Krennic, but also both Gollum and Gimli!
• I Am Not Shazam: The people making Star citizen are Cloud Imperium Games, while Roberts Space Industries is an in-fiction ship manufacturer. The two are often confused, primarily because Star Citizen's website is RobertsSpaceIndustries.com
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Star Citizen has an interesting relationship with this reaction. On the one hand, many are hoping that it'll end up as everything EVE Online isn't. On the other hand we have a bunch of EVE players hoping it'll be like EVE, but actually fun. (Their words, not ours.)
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I got that ice cream you wanted."^note One "commercial" had a pilot, after fighting aliens, casually telling his partner that he got that flavor ice cream they wanted.
  • dreams.txt ^note Refers to the very common theorycrafting or Fan Wank threads made by heavily invested backers on the star citizen forums, that are outlandishly complicated systems that are often well outside the intended gameplay, would involve basically adding entirely new games to the existing game, or would obviously be incredibly niche & boring to everyone else.
  • The game's long development period has resulted in it receiving a reputation similar to Beyond Good & Evil 2 or Half-Life 3, in that it's a piece of Vaporware that is seemingly never going to get released.
• Misaimed "Realism": The game features a g-force blackout system where excessively tight turns at speed can cause your vision to dim and eventually black out entirely for several seconds. However, the early implementation of the effects were wildly overblown, causing your pilot to black out in a turn that someone in a basic Cessna would be fine with, let alone someone in a fighter wearing a g-suit. G-force tolerances were increased in an update, along with making the Inertial Dampening thrusters swivel effectively instantly, which is less realistic but far nicer to fly with. The aforementioned inertia-dampening thrusters also have absolutely crazy thrust-to-weight ratios to prevent ships from endlessly sliding, leading many to wonder why the ships even have their huge aft engines when the dinky RCS thrusters produce as much force.
• Nightmare Fuel: Alpha Patch 3.9 added Survival Mechanics to the game, one of which is body temperature and the ability to die of hypothermia/heat stroke if you're in an extreme environment for too long without a suit that provides adequate protection. As the Player Character's core temperature continues to drop/rise to dangerous levels, the sound of their increasingly raspy breathing & moaning as the interface fades to black & white is pretty darn horrifying - This video speaks for itself.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • As the development drags on, discussion on the developers' handling of funding and constant delays is beginning to displace discussion on the game itself. In 2019 Forbes magazine put out an investigative piece exploring the game's long development process and said that while there's no fraud being committed since a game really is being developed, there is excessive waste, micromanagement, and changing scope that is causing the final product to experience constant schedule slips.
  • In 2021 only three of the items on the roadmap for the end of year 3.16 patch actually made it into the game. One of the missing items was the ability to go prone, which is a basic feature of FPS game engines, including Cryengine, which Star Citizen is using.
  • The game's protracted development cycle caught flak again in early February 2022 when a dev blog post revealed that the game's development roadmap would no longer be made public, citing "a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises" as the primary reason for the shift in communication. In any other context, this would look like a reasonable reaction to a Vocal Minority, but a portion of the game's massive Kickstarter base misinterpreted this as a defensive, borderline hostile Dear Negative Reader moment from a developer that effectively marketed the game as replacing the oversight of a publisher with allowing the backers in the community to fund the game while being clued into development like a publisher would have.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The IFCS system, which controls the gimbaled RCS thrusters on your ship for turning and strafing, rather than the traditional space-sim method of dedicated, fixed RCS thrusters and gyroscopes. The system looks beautiful in motion, but it results in extremely jittery movement which can make targeting enemies very aggravating. When combined with the current less-than-stellar control implementation, maintaining a bead on an enemy can be an exercise in frustration. The IFCS has been improved massively since the initial release of the dogfighting module, but still requires a lot of work.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • In general, Star Citizen is this to both Wing Commander and Freelancer, as all three games were attempts at a genre-redefining game that pushes the limits of the technology of the time.
  • Squadron 42 is this to specifically Wing Commander. You're a pilot in the human navy, based off The Battlestar, taking on criminal elements and an alien species that is attempting to invade the sector.
  • The Persistent Universe is this to Wing Commander: Privateer. The cheapest direct entry requirement for Star Citizen is to purchase a game package that includes a basic combat-capable ship. More expensive game packages include (a) better starting ship(s), referencing Privateer where the player character already has some experience freebooting in the universe.
  • The Persistent Universe is also a spiritual successor to Freelancer in that it is Chris Roberts's second attempt at making a fully dynamic sandbox space simulator, with Freelancer being the first (and vastly toned down due to Executive Meddling).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Thanks to the constant iterations and additions to the game over time, some early backers are angry that the game they supported isn't the game that's being developed.

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