The video criticizes Star Citizen 4.7’s mining and crafting systems as tedious, inefficient, and poorly designed, with complex mechanics that discourage player engagement and create unrealistic demands on a small subset of players to supply the entire economy. It further warns that these flaws encourage real money trading and cheating, undermining the game’s fairness and sustainability, and calls for major improvements to make the systems more accessible and rewarding.
The video expresses strong dissatisfaction with the mining and crafting systems introduced in Star Citizen 4.7, describing them as tedious, poorly designed, and discouraging player engagement. The presenter, who rarely mines in the game, tried the system firsthand and found it frustrating due to the complexity and inefficiency of the quality tiers for mined materials. Specifically, materials below a quality level of 500 are essentially worthless, creating a large buffer of unusable resources that players must sift through to find valuable items, which significantly diminishes the incentive to mine.
A major issue highlighted is the cumbersome scanning and identification process for mining resources. Players must scan multiple unknown contacts, many of which are irrelevant items like plants or wildlife, adding unnecessary tedium. The presenter criticizes the need to rely on third-party tools to decode radar signatures and suggests that the game should instead directly display the type and quality of ore detected to streamline the process. This would make mining more accessible and less frustrating, as players could focus solely on valuable resources without wasting time on irrelevant targets.
The overall mining experience is described as boring and time-consuming, lacking the enjoyable and relaxing qualities typical of gathering professions in other games. Despite being a mandatory activity for progression, it offers little reward relative to the effort involved. This design flaw raises concerns about the sustainability of a player-driven economy, as only a small minority of players are likely to endure the tedious gameplay required to supply materials, making it unrealistic for them to support the entire player base.
The video also warns that the tedious and inaccessible mining system encourages real money trading (RMT) and cheating. Because obtaining high-quality materials legitimately is so difficult and time-consuming, many players will turn to purchasing these items from third-party sellers. The presenter notes that most high-quality materials sold this way are likely obtained through exploits such as item duplication or cheating, problems that Star Citizen has struggled to control for years. This undermines the game’s economy and fairness, especially given the vertical power progression tied to gear quality.
Finally, the presenter questions the viability of the current system, emphasizing that even without RMT and cheating, it is unrealistic to expect a small subset of players to supply the entire player base with necessary materials. The mining and crafting mechanics, as implemented, create more problems than they solve, making the gameplay experience unenjoyable and fostering an environment ripe for exploitation. The video calls for significant quality-of-life improvements and system redesigns to make mining and crafting more accessible, rewarding, and sustainable for the Star Citizen community.