Cloud Imperium Games officially informed the Star Citizen community that they will hold a brief playtest for Alpha 4.0 today, October 13, with the Evocati members. This is the first time that players are testing Alpha 4.0.
According to CIG, the testing period will be limited to 2-3 hours, but the test environment will include the entirety of the Alpha 4.0 universe, including Pyro and Stanton, as well as the active jump points.
Players were given access to a portion of Pyro after last year’s CitizenCon event through a tech preview channel, but they never had the chance to experience the cross-system transition through jump points.
Regarding how brief the testing period is, CIG is probably just trying to evaluate the performance of jump points and maybe some other stuff in Stanton or Pyro. It is yet to be seen when the next Evocati session will be hosted, but if you are already a member, keep an eye on your email deliveries.
Aside from the Alpha 4.0 playtest, a new build for Alpha 3.24.2 is on the way to hit the PTU channel. This new version will allow players to test a part of a new global mission, which is yet to be fully revealed.
With a recent PTU build, CIG fixed the highly disputed issue of blurry UI. The ship UI is now much better than before and players can read lines easier, though it still needs more work around the edges.
That said, Alpha 3.24.2 still doesn’t seem quite polished. While the patch plays solid performance-wise, there are a few bugs with the new MFDs that need to be fixed before the patch releases onto the live servers.
The good news is Salvageyard freight elevators have been fixed for this patch. Also, it seems like some of the long-time broken quests like Retrieve Consignment are now working fine.
If the new build fixes the remaining issues, especially the ones related to mining, we should expect the live patch to arrive in a few days, and before CitizenCon 2024.
