Guard Frequency Episode 460 | Monopulize the Parketing Department

Cits and Civs, Captains and Commanders, you’re tuned to episode 460 of Guard Frequency — the best damn space game podcast ever! This episode was recorded on Friday, September 22 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at GuardFrequency.com

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This Week’s Schedule

• Flight Deck
  • Elite: Dangerous
  • Star Citizen
  • Cyberpunk 2077
  • Spoiler-lite Starfield
  • A little game engine called Unity
• Guard Frequency Origins, where the mall cops have struck back and might do some more striking, maybe.
• Feedback Loop

Links & The Like

Elite: Dangerous

Elite Dangerous Update 17 will be released on October 16, barring any last minute delays, which we will assume will happen. So, on or around October 23, we’ll get some sort of new Thargoid ground base and some scary things that will pop out of the ground. Probably Humagoids. The monthly-ish Frameshift Live show did little else to tease what was coming in the Update, which likely indicates that it will be mostly narrative content. Which, again, is FINE, but we’d also like to know about the delivery of a feature overhaul which was scheduled for “early” 2023, but then downgraded to an investigation of a feature overhaul, which would be done in “late” 2023. Also, some other folks around the intertubes had some discussions about the Beginning of the End of Elite Dangerous, so we’ll take a minute about that.

Star Citizen

Star Citizen released Early Access Pre-Alpha Release Candidate Prototype Experimental Test Build 3.20 to the LIVE server, and it lasted almost 24 hours before it needed to be rebooted. And then, it lasted almost another whole day… before it went sideways again. But they’ve got a patch on the PTU, and the server things and the audio things and the inventory things are all going to be better by next week. But don’t let anyone tell you that 3.20 was rushed to the Live Server to meet some arbitrary deadline set by the marketing department. No, no, no. It was pushed to the Live Server so that the QA team could get started on Patch 3.20.1… which will contain all the stuff the marketing department wants to sell at CitizenCon. So, as you can see, the marketing department has nothing to do with decisions about patch releases. OBVIOUSLY. Speaking of the marketing department, there’s a problem with the new MISC Hull C commercial. It turns out that it is showing off gameplay and features from an entirely different game! Boy, do they have some explaining to do.

The Rest

Unity is trying to walk back their disastrous terms of service changes. Well, it’s not so much a “walkback” as a clumsy and stumbling retreat, while begging for forgiveness and bowing and scraping and crouching. Also, Cyberpunk 2077 released the 2.0 patch this week which upgraded the systems and graphics, but did not add the Phantom Liberty content yet. But Tony spent a little time with the changes and will have some thoughts. And Starfield continues to exist and monopolize time and attention and imaginations throughout the gaming world and so we’ll spend some more time on it this week. Warning: this will be the last “spoiler lite” discussion. Next week we’re gonna talk about story things.

Community Questions

• Pretend FDev actually wanted to make money from Elite Dangerous, how would you tell them to earn some guineaquids?
• What’s the most unique or interesting item or character you’ve found in Starfield so far? Bugs, weird mods, or intentional quirkiness, everything counts.

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