About the Chicken Hunter License (and suggestions)

I’m sure some of you are aware of what the Chicken Hunter License (I will abbreviate it to CHL from this point on, except in certain parts) is, and what it does, so I will not explain that part.
But if you actually don’t, go check it out in the game first.

Anyway, before we start, I would like to let you know that this WILL NOT be a short post at all. Therefore, I’ve turned them into drop-down lists.

If you’d like to read a lengthy spiel from me about the CHL, click the first drop-down.
If you’d rather cut straight to the changes I’d like to suggest, click the second drop-down.
If you’d rather just skip to the end, and miss out on completely everything… Click the third drop-down.
I won’t be disappointed… Not too disappointed, at least.

Part 1: About the CHL

Thank you for choosing to read this part, or at least skim through it. Or completely ignore it after opening the menu just because you were curious.


Anyway, in this post, I wish to talk about the CHL, and some changes I would like to propose.
There have been comments about the CHL making the game Pay to Win, Pay to Play, and stuff of the sort.

All of you should be familiar with this little tag in the store by now:
image

If you try to purchase it at the listed price without a CHL, the button is still grayed out, without the exact cost being listed.

Should you actually attempt to purchase it with enough keys, however…
…this shows up.

A screen telling you that the item is normally “only available” to CHL owners only, and that normal players can buy it as “contraband” at x2 the price.

For a few of the items, x2 isn’t that much, but when you get to the ships…
cost of a VF-76:
image
Yeeeeeeeah. You get the point already.

Now, presenting them as “Contraband” is kind of weird. Shouldn’t a normal player just be able to purchase it at a normal price instead, and a CHL user at a discounted price? Buying it as contraband just doesn’t feel right or good, especially for DOUBLE the price.


Onto the customizations.
Here’s the hardpoint slots.
image
Unlocking these slots cost 400 keys, and require a CHL. Yes, it does.

Hardpoints allow the player to customize their ships in more ways, and 99% of the time, do not really provide any advantage (Laser scopes exist), and are purely cosmetic.

There are also a couple other customization options that require a CHL:
image
Once again, purely cosmetic.

Not too much to say about this one.


Next, about the restricted missions.
The player is also unable to play Double Teams and Ironman Competitions, and for good reason, at least, due to the difficulty.

image
This is for the Ironman Competition, by the way.

Now, the Ironman Competition is BLOODY hard, which gives the restriction, justification, at least.
It’s not for the faint of heart, after all. Same applies to the Double Team missions.


For this next part, we talk about the benefits, and the cost.

The CHL costs 7 Euros. (or 6.99 Euros, if you want to be exact)
Now, for the benefits listed in the CHL’s page:


First, I would like to address the elephant in the room here:

PERPETUAL.

… Pardon me.
Anyway, as you’re aware, there has been an ongoing rumor about how “your account will be deleted by the end of early access and you require a CHL to maintain it” and stuff of the sort.
And, well… Putting that “perpetual” part in the list of benefits isn’t really helping, either.

Alright, with that out of the way, here’s the second thing i’d like to address:

The list of benefits themselves.

Quite a few things here could’ve been put together in a much more condensed way, so the screen would be less cluttered. Besides, listing so many things would make the CHL seem way better than it actually is. Or if you’d prefer: Pay-to-Play.

Now, for whether you think the CHL is worth 7 Euros or not, is completely up to you, but in Part 2, there will be a poll for how much the CHL’s price should be changed to, so stick around!


This marks the end of Part 1.


Part 2: Suggestions for the CHL (and the polls)

Whether you are here after reading part 1, or you just chose to skip to this part, or you just checked this part out of curiosity… This is the part where I propose some changes to some elements of the CHL, and other matters where the CHL is relevant.


So, I discussed with @JenningsLA about what could be changed for certain things about the CHL (or really, almost everything). Here’s what we came up with.


First off, we would like to suggest making the CHL Page more compact.
A few elements there could’ve been summed up in way less words, and probably with less clutter.
This should also *hopefully* help to make it not sound better than it actually is.

Here’s a replica of a CHL Page to show what we would like to suggest for it. (and don’t laugh)
Please pardon the missing corona effect from the CHL itself:

The main headline was changed to be shorter. “Doubly Awesome” was moved to “Eternal Gratitude”.
“All Equipment, Full Customization, and V.I.P.” have been merged into one, and the description is changed.
“No Ads” stays as is, just slightly changed.
“Exclusive Missions”, and “More Missions” have been merged.
“Higher Limits” was reworded. The Description and icon was changed.
“Perpetual” has been removed.
“Eternal Gratitude” was added.

Before:

Whether you would like to copy the replica or not, is up to you. But we really suggest using the elements in the replica above this “before” picture.


Second, instead of Contraband for double the price, we would like to suggest a “Discount” instead.

CHL-Exclusive items in the store will no longer cost 2x (200%).
They will now cost 33% (for example: A BX-9 that costs 4,091, now costs 5,441, instead of double.) more than the original cost, and will be shown as that price.

This is where the “discount” comes in.

CHL holders will be able to purchase said items at a “Discount”, which is the original price, while normal players will have to purchase them at the shown price instead.

If a non-CHL player tries to purchase it, it brings up this page again (pardon the lack of a corona, again):


There’s supposed to actually be a discount button there, but I forgot to add it, sorry. Just imagine there’s a “discount” button there listing the “original” price, while the “Purchase” button is the more expensive option.


Lastly, this is for the “Licensed” Tag in the shop, and it’s descriptions.

The tag will be renamed to “V.I.P.”, and their descriptions will be changed to match the above changes.
image
This will be changed to
“Owners of a Chicken Hunter License are entitled to a discount on this item.”

image
And this, will be changed to
“You will receive a discount on this item, because you own a Chicken Hunter License.”


Lastly… This one is regarding the cost of the CHL.
As it stands, 7 Euros is actually quite steep, for what it gives. So, we thought about how much it should cost instead. The options are in one of the polls below, and we would like you guys to vote for a price you think is right.


Sorry, the polls were buggy. Not sure wtf happened, but they didn’t work, so I moved them out to the main post instead.

Part 3: Closing Statements

We have come to the end of the post. Or, the start of the end of the post, if you did not read the other 2 parts.

Now, if you did not read the other 2 parts… darn.
If you did, I hope you were able to understand why this post was made, and why we wanted to suggest some changes to the elements of the CHL. (good god, elements actually sounds stupid now that I think about it)

By the way, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed it yet, but I go from “I” to “we” when that part of the post involves @JenningsLA’s contribution. Thank you for helping me come up with what to change for the Chicken Hunter License.

Having said all this, this does indeed mark the end of the post. Thank you for taking time off to read/skim/ignore this post, and I hope you have a good day, afternoon, evening, or night.

also don’t forget to take a break from ciu every so often, your hands and brain serve you for more than just frying chickens


There is no part 4

dummy


Have a good day.

How much should the Chicken Hunter License Cost?
  • 7 Euros (no change)
  • 6 Euros (Large Key Pack cost)
  • 5 Euros (between Medium and Large Key Pack)

0 voters

Would you like iA to make these changes above?
  • Yes
  • Yes, but… (state what you would propose instead)
  • No (please state your reason(s)

0 voters

EDIT: A word was changed in part 2. See kokokoko’s post for which one, exactly.

10 Likes

Wait really? I thought the same applies to key purchases… right?

1 Like

I don’t think it’s even worth 5 euros currently. It misses something that would make you go “woah, I need to buy it”.

Why was 33% chosen? I agree that 2x more expensive might be too much, but honestly how many spaceships are you buying? Maybe something like 50-75% depending on models.

This needs to be reworked.
You have a “Would you like to purchase CHL?” question and the button with “purchase” actually doesn’t purchase the license.

Idk, licensed sounds better to me.

How about replacing “as” with “because”. Makes it clearer for non-native speakers since it’s way more common.

4 Likes

That’s the thing the game doesn’t tell you.

Any purchase works, but its made to look like only the CHL saves your account. Go check it out, and see where it says that the key packs would actually save the account too.

There’s no “Any purchase prevents account inactivity deletion” or anything related outside of the CHL…

1 Like

We thought it would be better incentive to get a CHL if the player felt like they were actually getting a “discount just for you”, rather than the current “contraband” stuff.
In a sense, it’s supposed to feel like special treatment, somewhat.

Also, 33% was chosen as the price difference, so it actually does feel like a more reasonable price. Besides, it’ll be (almost) exactly 25% off if you buy them with a CHL, which feels like the right amount.

I know, but I think it might be better for us to start slow first. I don’t think lowering it TOO much right off the bat would be a very good idea (too abrupt), so let’s start with Large Key Pack’s price as a base, first.

“License” should already be clear enough for that. Also, wow, didn’t think someone would try to make such a correlation… no seriously, what’s wrong with “purchase”? it could mean just about anything anyway, why’s it gotta be so specific

I didn’t want to put “Contraband” there, since that would be a little… demeaning(?) to the non-CHL players. So I changed it to “Purchase” so it seems more like they’re just buying it as per normal instead.

The change was made in tandem with the one on the CHL Page. Also, Licensed would sound like it actually requires a License to be purchased anyway. (In hindsight, so does V.I.P., actually…)

okay then

There’s also no mention that getting idea and bug medals does the same.

Well, it isn’t.

That’s like basic common sense when it comes to UI (or UX bleugh). Now, even the version that IA uses currently isn’t that much better (3 actions for one dialog shouldn’t be used), but this form needs to be re-worded (and did you actually want to put 4th button there?).
Pardon my ass painting:
dialmock
You ask something and give basic choices: yes or no. Usually exactly in the same layout, but with more specific wording.
I added the “/ no” to the cancel because sometimes the question in fact is “Do you want to cancel subscription?” with choices given “Yes” “Cancel” and this is horrible.

Here some first results about confirmation windows:
Confirmations - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn
Designing Confirmation. Best practices and the future of… | by Andrew Coyle | Medium
5 Essential UX Rules for Dialog Design | by Nick Babich | UX Planet

Noted. I still think licensed sounds better, but it makes sense (excluding the fact that VIP - Very Important Person).

Well they don’t do the same. Or am I missing something?

There was a reply from IA that said something along those lines:
“fine, there are like what 30 of you?”

I remember it because I really really didn’t want to buy CHL just to keep my progress. And so the idea to keep progress of contributors to which IA replied. Now I can’t find that, I browsed all EA topics from 01 to 45 and it wasn’t there. Maybe it was in off-topic category and is now hidden forever.

Huh. I don’t recall that, but there is a chance I missed it since I had a long period of inactivity at some point. I never see it mentioned anywhere by anyone tho, which is why I doubted that.

This would be cool about the pay to win thing
Btw IA needs money, developing the game is his job, 5 Euros is too few for him (You should note that this game is not very famous in the world)

We all need money, what is this argument.

Then make the CHL worthy of paying more than 5 euro.

1 Like

We know, but…

…it has to be worth the money too, yes?

Paying for games is truly never worth it. :face_with_monocle:

1 Like

Ouch. That’s far from true.

2 Likes

you don’t want no pay, nobody is punishing you. I personally know that it does not give too much, but I bought it anyway to support the creators, but as I see in your case it is alien to you. it’s best to play for free and criticize that it costs too much something that is not necessary to play.

1 Like

You see, regular players, especially in case of mobile games, don’t care about who develops the game. The only thing they do is playing it, and CHL should be worth it for them in order to increase the profit.

4 Likes

I know this is late but

This post is not me shitting on the CHL
I’m just saying it really needs to be more worth it considering rn it costs like 7 euros and doesn’t really do that much in return

No need for perks like “extra daily stipend” or “extra keys earned”, that just amps up the “Pay to Play/Win” factor

That, and the game could at least be a little more friendly-sounding towards the non-chl users

3 Likes

As of right now, the amount of incentive for buying the CHL is next to none

Double Team and Ironman are one incentive, but…
The “Licensed” equipment is a very artificial incentive. The Hardpoint Slots and Customizations being CHL locked is fine, considering these don’t really affect gameplay, but making certain items cost DOUBLE the amount because the lack of a 7 euro item, is just ridiculous for the non-CHL users.
20% or 33% is already quite expensive enough for some of them, even

3 Likes

(thank god the licensed equipment aren’t actually locked to CHL users only, though. that would’ve been disastrous)

3 Likes

also hi starbrockle

3 Likes