It's subject to absurd feature creep and overambition, in addition to regular ol incompetence.
The design goals for Star Citizen are kinda absurd. It's like how the No Man's Sky devs claimed at one point they'd individually simulate air molecules and a unique periodic table, except the difference is that NMS axed that (or more accurately, were never actually doing it) instead of spending the next decade trying to make it work.
At the same time, it helps that their supporters have essentially given them a financial incentive to keep adding feature creep instead of releasing, because if they release a game they can't keep asking for more donations for increasingly lofty goals.
This game is going to be No Man's Sky 2.0. I'm calling it now. Watching that whole demo the other day, all I could think of was, yep, no man's sky of 2023.
No disrespect to No Man's Sky, because they got that game pretty much sorted. Not sure Bethesda will ever throw that much resources, especially with this news, at Star Citizen. I'll be waiting for the first Steam Sale, and only if they have it mostly sorted by that point. Their track record isn't awesome, in that regard.
You're definitely thinking of Starfield, which is the new Bethesda game. Star Citizen won't be No Man's Sky 2.0, because Star Citizen is never going to come out.
NMS released. They put it in a box and said “This is the finished game”. It was then torn to shreds and the long road of updates was a redemption story for an already released product.
Star Citizen will NEVER be done. It will always exist in some weird development alpha-beta limbo. It’s never going to go on Steam or shelves as a finished product. This allows the developers cover to always say the game is in development as a shield against any and all criticism. From their perspective it’s kind of perfect. Fans throw money at it endlessly and the development never really needs to reach a coherent state of being finished. Why would they ever want to actually release a finished game?
I know what you mean, but even the idea of "getting into Star Citizen" doesn't make sense to me because, well...what in the world is there really to get into beyond the few demos they released?
In fairness, the "Persistent Universe" stuff they have going right now can be pretty fun with friends, and the jank is kind of novel for a while. I tried to deliver a box and got a concussion trying to figure out how to get a drink on my journey.
Without friends or a tolerance for jankiness though, it's pretty hard to get into. You really get the sense the devs have been figuring out what a wheel looks like the hard way, yet still insisting on their own uniquely terrible spin on things.
I think you're thinking of Starfield, because Star Citizen is nowhere near done. They only have one solar system, with only a few people per instance, terrible optimization, only a fraction of the planned features, etcetera. It's very immersive (aside from all the glitches and low FPS) but there's not much actual content.
People are that incompetent. Just look at some of these comments, and the comments on any thread talking about it. These people giving away their life savings will defend it with every breath. Almost cult like devotion.