Hello. As promised I’m making a topic dedicated to collecting old info and adding new about potential DLCs for CIU.
note:
DON’T TREAT FURTHER POSTS AS A CONFIRMATION THAT THIS WILL COME TO CIU
First topic that ever mentioned DLCs for CIU:
Here are some old IA posts about this matter. Now like I said don’t treat this as a certain confirmation. We had many written goals before that were changed so be calm and don’t annoy IA otherwise we might not see it at all:
So, as you can see it’s definitely not a new idea and it wasn’t outright deemed as impossible by the developer… It was occasionally made few times by different people. Now some arguments and questions:
Arguments for episode DLCs
good microtransaction
It lasts longer than key packs and for some it can be even better than CHL. It could help to reduce the number of people saying mtx in CIU are worthless (there were some cases of that, I also think that)
episodes on android
Having episode DLCs in CIU which was probably maybe confimed (we don’t know for sure, but there are plans) for android release in the future
not that much work
Ok, I don’t know how CIU missions are written and also wouldn’t know how to do it myself since I don’t develop in C++, but IA does and making a hard-coded mission with hand picked waves isn’t supposed to be anything near hard especially since randomized missions are possible right now.
episodes remake
Believe it or not (I certainly have hard time believing it since I launched CI4 few weeks ago and I just thought “man, I’d like to play daily mission in CIU”). Waves from episodes play much better in CIU than in the episodes themselves. Yes, they lack the flow that episodes had where it went continuously harder, but in terms of gameplay CIU wins. If we had episode DLCs in CIU we could easily play with new spaceship, reworked weapons, new satellites (in the future), new special weapons and much more. Also this way you can leave the originals without any content changes so they can be preserved.
saved space on device
note: not always.
Imagine this situation: You have every episode of CI games installed (CI1 also but it doesn’t weight too much). right now if we look at Steam we get: 67.85MB + 155.57MB + 238.23MB + 232.66MB which equals to 694.31MB. Currently CIU takes 422.06MB of space on Steam. CIU only misses few enemies from CI2, CI3 and all the planetary missions from CI5. There’s also CI2 final boss. However I don’t see them amounting to 272.25MB of difference. And that’s only normal editions. I don’t know if CIU currently stores the xmas skins in current version, but if it does then we save much much more space.
shared progress
Have you ever played another edition of CI episode? Imagine this if you didn’t: You have an original version of CI4. You have unlocked considerably big number of unlockables for keys that you have collected ingame. You decide to buy the easter edition. Upon installing you discover that you have to start from scratch there since it uses a different profile and none of your unlocks can carry over. That’s a BS.
And I don’t mean just shared progress in between different editions of episodes. In CIU you could just use keys from your main account to unlock those pesky unlockables. Of course they’d probably need to be rebalanced since earning keys in CIU is way way way more easier than in episodes ([spoiler]see here for details: https://forum.chickeninvaders.com/t/rant-about-unlockables-and-keys-grinding/20482[/spoiler])
new leaderboards
Did you know that episodes have leaderboards? If you played on Steam or anwyhere else than IA’s site you might missed that detail. Having episodes in CIU could allow making new leaderboards that would store shared records between platforms and it would bring new people.
new episodes?
This is just a speculation and my wishful thinking, but I really think that a new episode could be made directly in CIU as a DLC. Unless IA wants to make a new episode with a much upgraded engine and having a different form than old episodes then it just doesn’t make sense to not use CIU as a framework for new stories. This way IA can just work on the CIU (and they need to anyway since it’s online only and it needs near constant maintenance) and have the results instantly available in all episodes.
possible offline mode?
Now this doesn’t exactly match the “shared progress” with main CIU, but maybe it could just go one way only. Anyway first things first. Episode DLCs could be a potential offline mode in CIU. If we separate the progress in such a way that you don’t earn anything in CIU DLCs then the game wouldn’t need to report any progress into the server which would in turn remove the need to have online connection to play it. IA said before in my “CIU offline mode” topic that any offline mode would basically just be an arcade mission and it would need to have some business incentive in making it available. Paid DLCs that are basically a hardcoded mission meet the requirements in my opinion.
Questions and Answers:
Do i really have to buy episodes once more?
No, ideally you wouldn’t have to buy the episode once more. It could just be given to you as an activation key in your purchase from IA’s site. You would then redeem it inside the game and enjoy the reworked episode.
What about Steam? Can it be verified there?
This is a tricky question to answer. I don’t it would be plausible to make IA verify it themselves if someone really has bought the games on Steam and then give the key for CIU version. But I recall seeing coupons given for owning another game when a new game dropped. Not speaking about CI games, but many other games made that. Maybe episodes on Steam could be bundled with coupon for -100% coupon for DLC in CIU and then it would be problem solved?
Is there any profit if we just give keys to people who bought episodes?
At first no, it won’t by profitable that much. But soon enough all the people that bought episodes will redeem their keys and only new players will remain. I think it could be seen most in android because there are no episodes there and it would be the only way to play them there. Plus mobile market is huge, there are many mobile users that don’t have Steam or even any laptops or PCs, but also it could steer people to buy episodes on desktop platforms. Just make a note below the purchase that says you can get this DLC as a bonus when you buy normal episodes on Steam or IA’s site.
Currently missing from CIU that were available in episodes:
Waves
- planetary waves from CI5
- bonus wave from CI2
- waves from CI3 that have enemies not available in CIU
Bosses
- all the planetary bosses from CI5 (four of them)
- mother hen ship from CI2
Enemies
- eggships from CI3
- bonus ufo from CI2?
Features
- co-op mode (local)
- hen-solo assist from CI4 (can be replaced, but may have an impact on story)
- cutscenes from all episodes
- planetary missions
(I’m not making it a wiki post because I want to confirm all the info myself, but contributions are welcome in the replies)
And for the end everybody’s favorite: POLL
- Yes
- Yes, but… (reply)
- I dON’t CaRE
- No