I never contributed to it, but I have a close friend that built an x99/5820k/2x980ti as fast as he could so he could play with the ships he had purchased.. he had over $1000 in ships... and here I thought the game died off... to me, anything "in development" shouldn't be sold... period. Find your testers and stay with them until it is ready.. Ark is another sham of a game, but I actually gave them enough money for me to buy the game.

I haven't contributed anything to it. A guy here at work who's been trying to get me to play it since August '16 has contributed so much money to it, including his dad. They are both really into it. They've probably spent thousands on that game, every time a ship comes out or something they buy it. I remember he was like the next big patch will let you land on planets and some other stuff. That was supposed to happen December/January, never happened. I remember me telling him since he's been trying to get me to play that there wasn't enough content or places to fly around. I mean the game looks fantastic and would run great on my machine. But there has to be more to it. And I'm not gonna be spending a butt load of money on additional ships. Also IMO you can't compare Fallout 4 to Star Citizen, apples to oranges there on how the company is getting money from the player base. I too find it shady on the amount of money so far accrued and there isn't much content there to show. They talk about all this great stuff that they want to put in, which is great. But stop adding new ships for more $$, focus everything on getting the core of the game complete and more optimization. I feel they are dragging it out more than it needs to be just to sell more stuff. Case is I'm not spending any money until there is more content in the game.

I think a large issue with the game is directly related to how much funding they've received and how much they are still receiving.

Let's say I want a house built for me. I tell the contractor my budget is $250,000. He makes some plans I agree to and starts building the house. Two months later I give him another $50,000 and tell him to make the house larger and better. A few months later I give him another $50,000 and tell him to make the house even bigger and even better. I do this every two months for five years, then I wonder why the house is never being finished.

As long as they keep getting funding and have to add content to appease the people giving them money, I don't see how the game can ever be finished.

Anyone that followed Star Citizen will remember that they've redesigned the core engine multiple times. One of the devs mentioned they had to do that when adding EVA and FPS combat aspects to the game. It's a problem with long-term development games, the original engine falls behind or the graphics falls behind and they have to update a lot of the original work all over again. If they had focused purely on a starfighting sim that wouldn't have ever been a problem, but now the game has been in development for so long they are suffering from major feature creep and having to replace existing work that took many months.
 
Star Citizen is exactly the sort of game I love. But I never supported it as this is the result I worried about... Steam's early access game sales system has proven the odds are against these sorts of games from ever emerging out of beta into a launch release, let alone a successful one. I'll support the game by buying it after they get a finished product out the door. 

Have they done anything with first person mode or is it still on hold?