Are there any plans to reintroduce the big jump gate structures, or is this entirely off the table?

I mean, this kind of gets back to what you were saying earlier. Back in 2019, when I first joined the company, we were doing some previs, checking out what we thought looked cool and what made sense for Star Citizen. And the end result is we decided to go away from that jump gate ring visual because we didn't think it made sense for the way we envision jump points working in Star Citizen. They're not something that is maintained by human technology. You can't create one, you can't maintain one, you can't make one larger. There's no technology for that currently in the system. And with that visual in mind, it didn't feel consistent to have that kind of architecture around it.

Those are all narrative choices. Those are all choices we've made for the project.

It's a creative decision. Absolutely.

We just don't like them?

No, I mean, I liked it. I know a lot of people did really like it. There's something very iconic about that Stargate ring, for instance. But for the way we're envisioning jump points to work in Star Citizen, it just didn't feel right, so we made that call.

Yeah, I mean, you could also look at it this way. If you were looking at it, even in a lore sense, if someone had to build a gate structure to make a permanent jump point, and you jumped to a system that no one has ever been to, the permanent jump point on that side still works, even though, who built the gate?

There's those kinds of logical inconsistencies that make it difficult, and there's also the fact that we're not some other games where we have this ancient alien race that left behind a bunch of technology. There's a number of reasons why we felt that it was inconsistent for Star Citizen, the lore and the creative decisions we want to make, and at the end of the day, right now, we don't think it's appropriate.

One of the things you said there was right on. You said right now. As I said earlier in the show, we've all been here now long enough to know that whatever the intention and the thought and the plan is today doesn't mean that it won't change. Doesn't mean that one of us won't have a different idea. Doesn't mean that through the natural process of growth and learning we won't come to a different decision later. So this is not to say that they will never come back. But at this point, on this day, August 9th, 2024, there are no intentions whatsoever of bringing them back. There is no gameplay use for these. There's no gameplay function for these rings at all, because they're strictly an aesthetic thing.

People are very passionate about it. People want it. They can also make problems, though. Having rings like that could make problems. It could make effectively blind spots, griefable positions. They could create more problems by having this.

Any design decision we make ends up having knock-ons of some sort.

I mean, it's also like the jump point itself has had lots of visual treatment on its VFX. It feels a little bit disingenuous to say taking away the gate is like taking away the jump point, because so much work has gone into it. It's pushed farther than what we saw in ISC. Just because we didn't go this way doesn't mean that the way that we are going doesn't have the same amount of love poured into it to make it the best it can be.