Knowing how games normally work helps to understand what it is that Cloud Imperium are doing differently... and why.

You mention "other games have option for that". How do other games work? They have scripted NPC's in the main, even those games with apparently complex 'follower' behaviours are scripted. The more involved the behaviour of the NPC the 'heavier' the scripting needs to be. Scripting an NPC (usually in Boolean code language) is laborious and takes time. Someone has to sit down and code for any behaviour they want an NPC to exhibit that hasn't already been coded for another NPC, otherwise they use the same script over and over again for each NPC. Scripted NPC's also have the limitation that they cannot break from their scripted behaviours, given certain stimuli they will always react the same way.

The approach Cloud Imperium take to this brute force manual labour in bulk that is standard for games is to write tools that make it possible to automagically create variation without the need for all that manual (expensive) bums on seats developer time stuff. Example, one guy creates a river in the game, it takes him many months to put one river onto one planet, but while he is doing that he is making a tool the level designers can use to put dozens of rivers and lakes of many types onto a planet in a mater of a few hours. The guy who made the tool is an expensive highly trained developer, however the team trained to use the tool he created can be day one school leavers on their first job by the dozen.. so now you have the ability to have dozens x dozens of lakes and rivers created in a few hours. The same with planets, moons, and space stations.

Cloud Imperium are doing the exact same thing with NPC production, but they aren't as simple as level designed environments they have many dependencies and because of that the toolset has to be more complex since it touches many other features and mechanics in the game such as:

The UI.

Animation.

AI (this is the 'universe awareness' and behavioural choice that CI are aiming for).

Scripting (yes even this game has scripting for certain AI behaviours), behaviours such as eating, drinking, going to the toilet showering as well as any specific behaviours they have enabled.

Character creation - clothing / armour styles etc

DNA - to allow every single game character to be a unique individual. "There are no background characters in Star Citizen."

Player useable dialogue interaction with NPC's

On demand facial animation to match the NPC's output dialogue.

This isn't even close to a full list of requirements. Other games have NPC's that perform a single function and have a fixed set of responses, example in GTA most pedestrians crouch and hold their hands up if there is violence nearby (this behaviour is seen in the current Star Citizen game since it comes standard with CryEngine, but it is only placeholder), this is not how NPC's will be in the game when they have all the systems ready for an NPC population. If you watch Tony Zurovec's presentations over the years you'll see Star Citizen's NPC's are going to be far more sophisticated. They will have personalities, they will have personal attachments - friends and family, they will have their own form of persistence (memory) and awareness of what is happening in the universe around them, they can make choices based upon their own preferences and experiences, they can migrate and take other types of work instead of just those they are scripted to do.

In short: The NPC population that is coming to Star Citizen is way more complex than you will find in other games, that is why it is taking so long to bring them into the game. They need persistence, they need the complex UI, they need the background services like Quanta and Quasar - to name but a few. We're going to see NPC's do things we've never seen before in any other game and the relationship the players have with those NPC's will be unlike any found in other games.

Star Citizen won't have 'gunners', barista's, bartenders, or baggage handlers, or door guards - it will have AI people doing those jobs - but those AI people will have a life away from those jobs. Just like any crew you can hire for your ship.

This is why Star Citizen has to be funded by real players and not men in suits looking to make a quick profit from investing in a product that will be old and forgotten the next time they want to push a new profit making product.