It's not often that a game's development roadmap is finalized, but recent changes to Star Citizen have ruffled the feathers of the interstellar pilot community.

A roadmap summary posted late last week highlights some of the notable changes for the upcoming Alpha 4.0 update in June, including items that have been delayed or removed until a later date.

The restructuring of the server-to-client actor network is one such feature, which was deferred until 4.1. Players and AI characters are handled by the client. That is, when you perform an action, the local client performs the action and sends that information to the server. This seems to have been a problem in tackling cheating and also means that there is a lot of rubber banding from players with bad connections. With this modification, this will be handled server-side.

According to the community team, this has been delayed as the development team is focused on making server meshing support work. Server meshing means that every Star Citizen world and station will have its own server and they will be seamlessly connected. The rework has been rescheduled for the second quarter of 2020.

"Great! More will be delayed! What about the gameplay loops?" The top comment from futurewazzup is that "4.0 is not even released yet and already delays the most important thing: Server to Client Actor Networking Rework. The top comment from futurewazzup is.

"When playing with friends, all characters jitter and lag.

Other changes include: the death animation improvements have been delayed, the PvP bounty has been removed from the roadmap (the card was apparently never intended to be released), and both the new world Crusader and its landing zone are mentioned.

In addition to the change in priorities, Star Citizen developers had to shift to telecommuting. The comments were not very understanding.

"The COVID pandemic is certainly a tragedy," admitted one player.

"But this wave of delays is just another delay on top of the delays that existed before COVID came along.

"With or without COVID. This is just too much. Sorry."

It's not all about delays. Several new cards have been added to the 4.0 column, including a souvenir shop in New Babbage and updated elevator panels. Not as exciting as the new worlds, though.

Usually, delay announcements don't generate such outrage, but "Star Citizen" has been in development for almost a decade and is the most crowdfunded video game ever. The scope changes, the separation of the sandbox from Squadron 42, and all the legal drama seem to have exhausted the community. No release date has been set for either the sandbox or the single-player campaign.