Perpetual work-in-progress Star Citizen might never be a real game you can just nip down to the shop and buy, but watching developer Cloud Imperium try is endlessly entertaining. In the latest update on the game’s test server, players have figured out how to use newly-added healing guns to deliver drug overdoses to unsuspecting players, knocking them unconscious and stealing their stuff, even in areas that forbid player-versus-player combat. What fun!
Bases in Star Citizen are meant to be safe havens where players can fiddle with their inventory and play with their very expensive spaceships without a care in the world. That’s why PvP combat is forbidden in these areas. But healing other players? That’s a beneficial act that does not count as an act of aggression. Utilising the new medical gear introduced in update 3.15 on Star Citizen’s public test universe, players can target and heal other players without their consent. This wouldn’t be a problem in most massively multiplayer online games, but Star Citizen loves its systems, and one of those systems allows players to overdose on healing meds.
Once players receive a large enough dose of these drugs they fall to the ground, incapacitated. Other players can flip their bodies about, drag them around, and even strip them of their inventory, leaving them strewn about in their underwear, as seen in this beautiful screenshot from Redditor AFloatingLantern
Again, this looks like so much fun. Maybe not for the serious players who keep getting knocked out while they’re in the middle of accessing their docked ships, which renders them unable to run or defend themselves for a brief period. They’re probably pissed. But for the most part, players seem to be having fun drugging others and holding them hostage. YouTuber Greasy Khaleesii has even put together a little how-to guide for aspiring medical griefers.
Now, this is all on the test server, and the mechanics are likely to change once they make the move to whatever Cloud Imperium considers the full game. Some players on the forums have been suggesting making consent to be healed mandatory, which seems like a nice way to fix this hilarious situation.
Until then, may the Star Citizen test universe’s bases be filled to the brim with naked space explorers. That’s the sort of progressive future vision I can really get behind.
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