That is true of basically every game. It is why we moved away from “Game, wait a year, expansion, wait a year, expansion. new game” on to DLC and now straight up live games. It is just a reality of development as it lessens crunch (you can put features off for later updates) and removes the old ramp up/down model.
The issue is not that star citizen is trying to be a live game. It is that it is horrendously mismanaged and helmed by a “rockstar developer” and his family. Apparently the brother actually DOES know how to ship a product, but he isn’t the one who runs around telling people to prioritize bedsheet deformation. Or to insist on needing 64-bit coordinates rather than using the industry standard approach of only loading a few cells within range of the player (and then lots of complex shenanigans to update the rest at a much lower rate). And so forth.
And I am not even going to complain (too much) about the sp campaign never coming. That is what I bought a decade or whatever ago and I am still pissed that was immediately dropped in favor of making the game Microsoft said “… fucking no. Release Freelancer god damn it” to. But the majority of current players want star citizen so… fine.
But the issue is just that there is no competent leadership. And all anyone has been able to figure out is “If we keep releasing ships, people will keep buying them”.
Because if they had gotten a vertical slice in? This would have eaten ED’s breakfast and NMS would never have had a chance at recovery. It was everything that every elite game has been working toward (and Evochron already did a decade or so ago…) and would actually give people stuff to do with those ships. Add in new solar systems, game systems, etc after the fact.