Hi, i am galbatorix. I am new to the forum, but i have been playing CI series for several years (I played all 5 episodes and I have ~70 tier in CIU) I played some “bullet hell” games like “raiden X” too. And as much as I love “Chicken Invaders” series, there was always (from CI3 on, actually) one thing that really bothered me. I am kind of a hardcore gamer and i find it really frustrating. I am talking about the weapon balance on higher difficulties.
You see, weapons in Chicken Invaders are really unbalanced and not really thought out. This is NOT an issue if you are playing on Trivial-Intermediate difficulties, but higher than that, it suddenly becomes a really serious problem. When playing CI3-5 on superstar hero and then CIU on Elite difficulty, I noticed how Neutron Gun and Utensil Poker seem to outperform every other gun in those games. So I decided to do some research and testing to see if my observations are correct or not. I browsed wiki, checked CIU profiles, and of course, played a lot. Unfortunately, results of my research confirmed what i was suspecting. Weapon balance in CIU is bad on so many levels, that it may be fair to call it broken. There are weapons that do not serve their intended purpose, there are some that are outperformed by others in every possible situation etc. If you search the forum for a while its easy to find ppl saying things like " having plasma rifle is a problem on itself" or “please rework ion blaster” The problem is certainly there, so let’s look at some data I have gathered.
This sheet presents comparison between lvl 0, lvl 10 and max power of weapons currently available in CIU, so you can see how big mess is the thing. From that sheet and other data i collected, I have a whole list of things that are broken and need to be fixed in one way or another.
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Utensil Poker is unarguably the best choice in 99% situations. The only other gun that can even compete with it is Neutron Gun. ~~90% of high tier players have UP as their main/only gun used.
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In terms of dps Utensil Poker outperforms Ion Blaster TWICE! There is no reason to pick Ion Blaster at all, because it offers no advantages over UP.
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Plasma Rifle and Lightning Fryer look like they are supposed to be fired automatically(hold click), but in reality they do(LF a bit, PR a lot) more damage when fired manually. Graphic design doesn’t match gameplay.
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Lightning Fryer is unacceptably weak on low power levels. (Photon Swarm outperforms it 10x on power lvl 0)
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Plasma rifle is said to overheat fast, but in fact its overheat time is one of the longest. (when fired manually, which is counted, because its the way that PR inflicts most dmg)
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Unlike any other weapon in game Laser Cannon has artificial range limit. It doesn’t inflict that much demage either and overheats extremally fast. Because of all that, atm it pretty much serves as a “Plasma Rifle wannabe”
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Positron stream is said to be really strong on early power levels, however it is matched by Utensil Poker & Corn Shotgun, and outperformed by Photon Swarm.
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Positron stream is unacceptably weak on high power levels. Because of this and 7, there is no reason to pick it over guns listed in 7. Riddler is in a similar situation.
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Photon swarm volley is the same on all power levels except max. Only thing that changes is automatic fire rate. Because of that, it is way too powerful on lvl 0-2, and its performance DOESN’T CHANGE AT ALL on power levels 0-5.
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Moron Railgun is supposed to be weaker version of Boron Railgun, but on power lvls 0-5 Moron is actually stronger.
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Boron Railgun is outperformed by Hypergun, so there is no reason to pick BR.
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Hypergun is outperformed by Vulcan Chaingun, which is the only machine gun that is KINDA viable at the moment.
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Lightning Fryer and Boron Railgun are underperforming ON ALL POWER LEVELS!
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Riddler’s manual fire rate is broken and it allows to archieve almost twice as much power as normal, when someone uses multiclick cheat. More info can be found on “Chicken Invaders Wiki”.
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For no apparent reason, Boron Railgun has 12 power levels unlike other weapons in the game that all have 11 power levels.
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Plasma Rifle and Positron Stream are unable to do anything in hard Henterprise bossfight. Picking their presents can ruin your run if you don’t have tons of special weapons.
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Presents of various wepons have different point values. It serves no purpose in CIU.
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Some weapons have useless power level transitions. For example Ion Blaster lvl2>3.
So, as you see, there are A LOT of problems here. In my opinion, game with weapons in this state should never be released. InterAction studios seems to notice this problem too. They made a decent rework of Vulcan Chaingun. But there is still a lot to do here. Weapon system has to be fixed, at least partially. As soon, as possible. And this brings me to the point of this post. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to fix the issues I listed here. And I came up with the detailed solutions for all the problems. I think that some of my ideas could really improve the gameplay of CIU and overall player experience. But my question is : Does InterAction want to see, what I have to say about fixing the problems? Such a project takes a lot of time to do, and I want to be sure, that I will be heard. I don’t want to waste so much time on making something, that nobody will care about. So please tell me in the comments.
Simplified ideas I have:
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adjusting stats(dmg, rate of fire, etc.) of following weapons: Ion Blaster, Corn Shotgun, Hypergun, Vulcan Chaingun, Laser Cannon, and all in category 2.
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reworking or adding special features to the following weapons: Boron Railgun, Riddler, Plasma Rifle, Photon Swarm, Positron Stream and Lightning Fryer.
All that with purpose to make all weapons a viable alternative for Utensil Poker and Neutron Gun.
For now, that’s all I have to say. I hope that forum users are interested in what i have to say. Especially InterAction studio themselves. I want this to become a serious debate, not a “hey lets change/add that” type of post.
Below i place links to all parts of the balance program I have created so far. New posts will be added to this list.
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 1: Ion Blaster
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 2: Neutron Gun & Utensil Poker
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 3: Plasma Rifle & Positron Stream
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 4: Photon Swarm
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 5: Laser Cannon
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 6: Riddler
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 7: Vulcan Chaingun & Hypergun
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 8: Boron & Moron Railgun
- CIU weapon balance program - Part 9: Corn Shotgun