Today Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games released a new video and revealed the upcoming overhaul of Arena Commander.
Arena Commander is the first part of Star Citizen released including actual gameplay, allowing players to dogfight within beautiful-looking arenas, fend off waves of enemies, and even race in dedicated courses.
The main difference from the persistent universe is that it's an enclosed experience that lets you jump right into the action. Lore-wise, it's supposed to be basically a simulator.
The feature had pretty much fallen by the wayside as the developers prioritized the progress on the persistent universe, but now they have assembled a dedicated team that will overhaul the experience starting with the upcoming Alpha 3.18 update and continuing in multiple stages throughout this year and the next.
Soon we'll get refactor of the Dying Star map and a brand-new one, Jericho Station, on top of quality-of-life improvements, a renewed UI, and much more, including the incorporation of the Star Marine FPS feature within the same menu. Going forward, we can expect a whopping 12 racing tracks to be gradually added, taken directly from locations in the Persistent Universe.
This will let players test ships and train their racecraft without risking their lives in the Persistent Universe. You can hear all about it below.
In the meanwhile, Star Citizen's growing crowdfunding campaign is continuing apace, and the game has nearly reached $548 million ($547,997,799 at the moment of this writing) from backers.
The number of registered users is now at 4,395,293, albeit not all of them are paying since many register accounts to access the popular free fly events that provide a chance to test the game without pledging any money. According to the latest information from creative director Chris Roberts himself in October 2022, 1.7 million players are actually paying customers.
Star Citizen just ended its best year ever in terms of crowdfunding, with a staggering $113 million pledged in 2022, marking a 31% increase over 2021. The tally has been consistently increasing year-on-year since 2018.
Full disclosure: the author of this post has backed Star Citizen all the way back when its crowdfunding was first launched in September 2012.
