Guard Frequency Episode 039 | LTIWTF
Greetings Citizens and Civilians, and welcome to episode 39 of Guard Frequency, the universe’s premier Star Citizen podcast recorded on 20th September 2014 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday 23rd September 2014 at GuardFrequency.com [Download this episode]
The thrilling threesome known as Tony, Geoff and Lennon are back in the hangar once again to bring you up to speed on everything Star Citizen, but first in this week’s Squawk Box we’re going to Mars (along with everyone else)! In CIG News we talk about the latest Letter from the Chairman for $53m, and the stretch goals for $55m; the plans for the sale of future Concept ships; and the new model Hornet that we here at Guard Frequency are dying to get our hands on. A small admin error mighta-sorta occurred this week, so in Nuggets for Nuggets we tell you all we know about the Herald from Drake Interplanetary before finally bringing her in to land as we tune into the Feedback Loop and let you join in on the conversation.
Topics Discussed
- Mars Invasion gets underway | The Mars Curse
- Letter From The Chairman ($53m)
- Future Concept Sales
- Support the Lego Hornet | Official LEGO Ideas voting page
This Week’s Community Questions
- Are we on a better path with CIG’s latest changes to their development funding, or did we just go further off track?
Let us know your thoughts by commenting below!
View our post for the episode on the RSI forums.
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Bonus link
Tales From The Front – Contains a story by Chivalrybean
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Thanks to Ronald Jenkees for his permission to use his music in our show. Visit www.ronaldjenkees.com for more of his work! Enjoy the show!
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Comments (5)
Dillek
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Another Gem! Is it just me, or is the podcast getting longer! Anyways, awesome show, very informative and very entertaining. BTWm Lennon, long live the LTI!
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Justin Lowmaster
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SHHHHH! Don’t tell Lennon it’s getting longer, he’ll make it shorter! He’s such a chronocurmdgin! -Chiv
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seannewboy
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Wonderful show everyone. I like the stretch goal ideas recently put out, i agree that at this point more systems are not needed.
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Ostron
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Wonderful show as usual gentlemen.
I agree with you that too much has been and is being made of LTI; I think it will be funny if the PU starts up and hull insurance ends up being something like 5 credits per month per ship. That said, I’m not sure if there is a correct way for them to act on ship sales. Despite the results of the Mustang survey, when there is a dearth of new things to buy, the community starts bitching. Let that get loud enough and it translates to bad press. I think CIG is very stuck right now; they don’t want to reveal anything about the FPS module or about S42, and it sounds like the lions’ share of their resources are being focused on those projects and on maintaining Arena Commander. None of those provide a lot of opportunities for pledgable ships (since S42 is going to be full of ships that will only be player-useable if captured), and the existing ships only get further developed if they factor into those modules. However, most of the concept art for those projects sounds like it’s already done, so their artists would be free to concept new ships players could buy. I think they’re facing a choice of either releasing those concepts for sale, or going all the way through the Christmas season or longer with nothing new for sale (even assuming FPS gets debuted at PAX Austrailia, there aren’t a lot of items that would be for sale as a result). Branching off of the discussion from 3 or so shows back, selling concepts is equally risky because of the heavily variable stats and the fact that some backers still haven’t sussed the “in-development” part of this whole gig. I think the LTI and other perks are a way help diffuse that rage before it manifests.
Like I said, maybe not the best way to go, but I think CIG is facing a slew of bad choices from a marketing perspective right now.
P.S. I don’t know if the recording is getting cut off or if you guys are just that good, but there seem to be less and less bloopers at the end of the shows.
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Ostron
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Great show as usual gentlemen.
I don’t know if CIG’s concept sale policy is the right way to go, but I do think, at the moment, it is the lesser of the evils they’re faced with. To my mind, they’ve painted themselves into a corner; despite the Mustang release poll, when the backers don’t have shiny new things to buy and distract them they get cranky, and cranky can translate to bad press, particularly since the only new thing for AC lately (racing) currently has issues with accessability; you’re not competitive without a 350r or an M50. With most of their designers and modelers busy working on either the FPS module (which probably has no ships and very little gear to buy at this point) or on S42 (where the ships left to design and build are ones that players can’t own in the game), I think it’s going to be a long time before a brand new ship would be ready to go for the hangar – probably well into next year. On top of that, the FPS module, if it actually debuts at PAX Australia, will probably be a double-edged sword. Very few people “know” how a modern space sim game is supposed to work, but there are legions of gamers who “know” how FPS games are supposed to work – we’re in for a ragefest if only because CIG isn’t primarily building and balancing an FPS game. Given all of that, I imagine CIG is looking for a reliable way to put positive reinforcement out there – shiny new ships usually work, and the concept artists are probably the only ones not totally focused on the aforementioned projects. The extra bonuses are likely an attempt to mitigate the whining of people who haven’t sussed out the whole “in development means stats change” thing.
Like I said, possibly not the best way to do things, but I really think they’re facing an uphill climb with marketing going into the next two quarters.
P.S. I don’t know if the recording is getting cut off or if you guys are just that damn good, but there seem to be fewer bloopers in the past few weeks.
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