Events in Star Citizen Are Cool Even Now!

Welcome to some more Star Citizen today I wanted to talk about The Successes & Failures of Star Citizen “Events” both fan and official ones AND what they mean for the game.

Yesterday was the Daymar Rally which is a Star Citizen Fan Event that actually garners a surprising amount of interest. There were loads of teams across various classes of Racers from Buggies to Rovers to Bikes… and some people even try and run the 510km course… typically this is due to their vehicle breaking and them having to continue on foot.

There were around 2.5k – 3k viewers on Twitch when I was watching and it lasted for over 8 hours with the actual stream with pre and after show lasting over 11 hours total…

It was an all day event and pretty well put together. Had Sponsors, DTox, Crucian presented it along with special guests like Captain Richard, various interviewees…

This little fan event that started 2 years ago has become pretty big and works really well EVEN tho there were major issues with Star Citizen.

And it takes weeks of preparation / organization to make it work. That requires engaged enthusiastic organizers and a community that wants these things to Rally… ITS A PUN… around.

However Star Citizen is an Alpha and the Daymar rally was struct with 30ks which saw a large amount of the teams drop out during the Rally… it was hosted across multiple servers tho, so although they had a big group of teams drop out due to a 30k… the rest of the rally continued.

These events have always been at the mercy of Star Citizen’s Stability and Accessibility.

In previous years we have had similar issues… delaying the start by many hours, orgs and more pvp oriented players have also literally attacked and tried to disrupt these events too. Some people just want to watch the world burn I suppose.

Largely Star Citizen has become more stable and accessible from patch to patch BUT this isn’t always true… if there is server trouble or an update just before an event then BOOM everything could collapse, people constantly disconnected… and the event could just fall apart and you see this for orgs running their own events… typically on a much smaller scale.

Orgs running mining ops, attacking space stations, taking on the Idris… these are more manageable and even if a server does 30k… well you can just jump in and start again.

In a 5+ hour rally… if you 30k that’s a little harder to jump in.

However in the case of the Daymar Rally it’s got to a size and reputation hat CI support and promote the event and seem to be aware of that even when deploying patches and hotfixes, which really really helps the players know what they can expect and how to avoid some common bugs.

As I said the Community is the most important part of these events… they require people & teams wanting to invest time into something that could implode. Viewers that want to watch this. Broadcasters to host the stream, prizes, financial support as well as a set of robust rules… and in the case of the Daymar Rally a hunger to win OR participate in Star Citizen’s evolving History AND something like this might be Boring to Some… I love the social aspect and the general coverage of the event BUT I am not a massive fan of racing in Star Citizen myself.

But Star Citizen should see more and more events they announced the Stanton 7 which is a set of pointed races, there have been Star Marine and Arena Commander competitions/leagues and an uncountable amount of Org Events.

Part of the hunger and need for these player run events is because Star Citizen only have a limited amount of content… it’s in Alpha and the Sandbox gameplay that players come up with makes use of what’s available in interesting ways.

We also see events like the IAE from CI which sort of focus players to all experience a new area at the same time and try out ships… BUT much more of an event was the IFW in May 2020 where we had the UEE Fleet Flying around and players were watching that, fighting them, stealing UEE ships… great fun. 

In my opinion CI are about to massively increase the playability of Star Citizen with their own Server Events in the short term this is the XenoThreat Missions and Fleet Battles which should be live with in the next few weeks if all go to plan.

Actual large scale events that are supported by game systems, that players can jump in and get involved whether they are solo OR in a large group with new gameplay… that is just what Star Citizen needs to make it a lot more fun… BUT how much additional gameplay will there be, will it get old quickly? That will depend on the event, what’s involved and how in depth / replayable it is.

But as Star Citizen gets more content expect to see more in game events made by players and that barrier to entry for a good event that’s stable to become lower and easier to run.