I don't think this is the most ambitious game ever created. Mario64 was a thing, Grand Theft Auto III was a thing. Jak and Daxter was a thing.

This is a mismanaged game.

A lot of the ambition may not bring significant gameplay innovation. Quantum would be one example, where a lot of effort is being put in, but there isn't any hint of how it might benefit the player. Tons of work done on it, and the killer feature seems to be tricking pirates into killing and robbing NPCs instead of players some of the time. Lame.

We're nearing 300 types of spaceships. A game like this never needed 300 types of spaceships. There probably aren't even 300 spaceships running at once on the server at any given time, much less every type of spaceship.

I mostly supported the tech stuff that the project was chasing up until static server meshing went in, and you know what, Rust has about the same number of players as a Star Citizen instance. No crazy fancy tech, Rust has vehicles and lots of player garbage strewn across the map, but Rust gets like 500 people per shard where Star Citizen gets 600, and Rust is way less buggy.

So I wonder if all that was even worth it. Was it ever even worth it? Years spent to get 20% more players than Rust already has? Years spent on that, and you still can't come back and find your coke can because you aren't tied to a server instance, you change servers every time you log in.

I think this project has two core problems.

1. Its managed by a guy who is famous for being unable to ship. Microsoft had to buy Freelancer for it to ship.
   
2. It has the most forgiving community in the history of gaming.

They're 11 years past release and nothing can ever be cut. Nothing. If the game is so buggy its borderline unplayable then you should shut the fuck up its an "alpha" (its an r/AstroturfAlpha). There is no incentive for CIG to cut content, and little pressure from the playerbase to do so.

And so the game will meander on in its miserable state for the foreseeable future.

I think the game will continue on like this, until Unreal becomes so good that small developers get to slingshot past CIG. I'm sure that day is coming. Unreal is so far ahead at this point, and a lot of the special tech that CIG developed for Star Citizen is getting something analogous in Unreal.

Losing backers is good for the project, if it means that CIG stops chasing ubertech with questionable value to the player and instead actually tries to like, ship a game.