[Holiday Special] Recalling 2016 in Tanki

[Zenyth 6,494]

A brand new year in our lives is almost here, ready to present itself and the new experiences it offers. 2016 is slowly beating a retreat and that calls for a flashback to a year that had a lot in store for Tanki Online. 2016 was indeed one of the biggest years in terms of change.

 

The core elements of the game remain the same but the game as a whole has unsurprisingly changed a lot over twelve months because of big and small updates and the reactions, jitters and more importantly, the enjoyment that they cause in the community. We bring you a complete month-by-month compilation of the events and happenings that defined a fascinating year playing this fascinating game.

 

January

As 2016 begun, Tanki Online thanked all its loyal players, with this

, a sweet memory of the highlights of 2015.

The first month of the year began with people still discussing the widely popular Assault Mode which was temporarily added to the game as a part of the New Year celebrations of 2015. It involved the red team taking a flag from their base and attempting to infiltrate the blue base with it; getting points if they successfully reach the blue beacon. The New Year! The map was worth playing, with its giant Christmas tree and a wonderful skybox forming an ideal holiday setup.

After the veritable success of the Christmas Tree and similar in-game gifts, several gifts were permanently added to the game to help congratulate or thank fellow tankers. They included the ones which we commonly use today - the Badge, the Teddy Bear and the others, some worth a king's ransom, like the Blue Sphere.

In one of 2016's first significant updates came the private chatting system in the lobby chat. The update meant that one-to-one conversations in the server chats were no more visible to the public. There was plenty of backlash against this development, specifically from those who used the server chat as a means of daily entertainment.

February

February featured three celebrations - Valentine's Day, Iron Days and the 'Redpool' event. Amidst the celebrations was one minor development allowing the removal of gold boxes in PRO battles. The said PRO battles were automatically compensated with a small boost to the battle fund. Barring this, though, the celebrations took up the majority of February. Valentine's Day had unique gold boxes worth three times the regular Goldbox and three limited-edition gifts including an Isida necklace.

The Redpool event, commemorating the release of the superhero film Deadpool, was announced after a brief gap following the Valentine's Day celebrations. It offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get your hands on the Red Suit paint for 115,000 crystals. All tankers above the rank of Colonel were able to buy the paint, which also had 30% Isida and 40% Vulcan protection, micro-upgradeable to 50% each.

A few days after arrived the third and last event of March, namely Iron Days. Iron Days brought a 25% sale on various garage items and 2x battle funds. To accompany these bonuses was the Iron Days parade contest, whose winners were awarded 30,000 crystals per member.

one of the winning parades.

March

March brought us daily mission chains. Doing a mission daily for a whole week now netted tankers a certain amount of crystals or supplies, doing so for four consecutive weeks and maintaining the streak maximizing the gain.

The 8th of March, 2016, internationally celebrated as Women's Day was also made special with not only a 50% discount of micro-upgrades but also a unique women-only battle which saw skilled tankeresses from the EN/DE communities confront those from the RU community in a Kungur 8v8. This '

' ended in a defeat for our EN community, but tankers got to keep the paints they bought to voice their support for the International team.

This was followed by two developments, one being an internal system that would highlight the battles that had more than one accounts from the same IP address playing in them and the other being a tweak to the server chat. Tankers now received the option to either message another tanker privately or have the message displayed publicly. This facility was also made accessible through keyboard shortcuts or simply writing ':' after the username for a private message and ';' for a public one.

As April approached steadily, the Craft-A-Tank contest was announced. The winners, many of them brandishing their wood-cutting, carving and painting precision in extravagant style, got prizes ranging from fully MUed tanks to crystals and premium passes. Finally, when everyone thought March's business was all but over, Semyon Kirov, the then CM of TO's EN community and a public favorite as far as being a V-Log presenter was concerned, announced his departure from AlternativaPlatform. He was replaced by our current community manager, Cedric Debono, who received a warm welcome.

April

The nostalgia! The April Fools celebrations were something like an April-Fools-joke-come-true, as 5x gold box drop rate coupled with gold boxes offering 5,000, 10,000 and even 50,000 crystals in one catch made Polygon and other fund-friendly maps hunting ground for gold box enthusiasts. Moreover, on rare occasions, the gold boxes carried special effects - ranging from an additional two standard golds dropping right after, premium account passes, a cluster bomb and the elusive '60 seconds of immortality'.

The crazy gold-hunting season demanded a contest, and there was one - Fool's Gold. Participants were required to shoot videos of their tank getting the invincibility gold box or the explosive gold box.

April's developments included the nickname database update. This update allowed inactive account nicknames to be claimed based on factors like the account's purchasing history, rank and more.

May

The month of May began with another set of celebrations, a feature of 2016. The seventh celebration of 2016 hung around for nine days, with gradually increasing fund boosts and 25% sales on various tank gear. Themed gifts also accompanied the celebrations.

May also marked the beginning of an extensive series of weekly quizzes and puzzles, titled the 'Tanki Thinking Challenge'. The weekly series turned out to be a successful venture as many tankers started participating in a bid to win crystals and/or gold box supplies. This buoyant response meant that the TTC kept going for more than six months.

June

Along came the seventh birthday of Tanki Online, bringing with itself 50% sales on garage equipment and a 2x gold box drop rate. Naturally, we had exclusive gifts accompanying, as well as the traditional THE GAME puzzle. This time's five clues were based on art and music, and the winner of the coveted 'Dream Tank' prize turned out to be a WO5 by the name of mucTep_Kpabs.

 

June also had two major contests - the 2016 Football Frenzy and the Welcome Tanki contest. The Football Frenzy contest in the EN community was two-pronged, with one involving buying paints to show your support for one of the semifinalists of the UEFA Euro 2016 and getting a 10,000 crystal profit, up to 3 days of premium and supplies.

The other contest was active right from the group stages. It awarded tankers with varying amounts of crystals based on how far their team progressed. The contest received an extraordinary amount of entries, thanks to the generous prize pool. 49% of the entrants voted for Germany. Coinciding with these contests was a unique community event. This event involved Hammers playing football with a frail Wasp playing the role of a ball. It was streamed on YouTube and was an interesting concept, to say the least.

 

 

Tanki Online held the 'Welcome Tanki' contest in June, too. Participants had to form groups and invite Tanki's team to their city. The city of Tbilisi in Georgia was chosen as the winner later on, while Yerevan, Armenia won the RU version of this contest. The actual events were held in August in the respective cities, where Kasim, Nikolay, and Cedric were to engage the crowd in live Q&A sessions and various giveaways.

 

Furthermore, we had a lengthy period of eSports activity starting from mid-June, owing to the beginning of the Tanki Online Fighting (TOF) Dream Team competition. Winners were to receive crystals, XT equipment and the Acid paint. The tournament followed a unique two group stage and subsequent playoff structure.

 

July

 

Everything was going fine in July. As the sun rose over Perm, Russia on the 11th, things went haywire. Tragedy struck in the form of a deadly 'Tankopocalypse', or so they said. Reportedly, it was an opportunistic dormant bug that had been in hiding among the maze of server codes. On the 11th, it made itself public, disrupting daily life in the RU1 and RU2 servers, seizing PRO passes and DCCs, only to be nabbed after a marathon 13 hours of tracking and stabbing by the devs.

 

As tankers worldwide were barely getting back to their routine, another tremor shook them. The title "Paint Disintegration Update" initially confused many. The update brushed off the former idea of a 'paint', dividing what was a paint into a protection module and a visual-only paint job. It introduced the starting set of protective modules, named Name - S/D/T - A/B/C.. - M0/1/2/3, for example, Orka D-B M2 had two types of protections (duo), and provided 25% resistance against Ricochet and Vulcan. The protective parts of what were formerly called 'paints' were permanently removed from the garage, but stayed in the garages of those who had purchased the 'paints'. These modules were hereafter called 'legacy (LGC) modules'. 

 

 

This paint separation update also bought one additional key into play - the R/V key which would show the protections and MUs of enemy tanks. In addition to this, the game now showed the amount of protection a certain tank has against the turret in use, by default, besides the username. Also worth noting was the removal of protections from the Premium paint and the changes in prices of the purely visual paints.

 

The DM tournaments feature started in July, with a stress test conducted with Generalissimos expanding to include all ranks from WO1. The feature allowed access to special Deathmatch battles conducted at certain times by paying a moderately high fee. Performing well in these battles gained you substantial profits and improved your 'DM Rating'. The feature was suspended later on. Along with this, a new supply was added to the game. Activated with the '6' key and acquired through the shop or daily missions, the gold box supply dramatically metamorphosed the idea of a gold box falling - making it an excellent way to gift friends, cause chaos in battle, stage 'gold rains' or just have fun. To empty the truckload of July updates, eight new paints, including ones like Night and Pixel Heart.

 

August

 

The month of August marked the beginning of daily community events of various kinds, like Minehunt, Kill the King, Mammoth Rush and many more. Since then, a calendar listing down a month's quota of events is released every month. One can enter an event by reading its rules and watching out for the battle link on TO's Facebook page at the appropriate time. Winner(s) of events are rewarded with crystals.

 

 

The traditional Mister and Miss Tanki Online contest was also held in August, inviting people from across the community to showcase their talent through a video and claim several goodies including a Xiaomi smartphone and a branded T-shirt if they win. The theme for this year's contest was sport, and these were the winners.

 

September

 

In the biggest development that graced the month of September, TO officially launched a downloadable client for a game. The client brought a 'Download' button to give the regular 'Play' some company, and had a good response in general, with many people reporting improved performance. Later on, the F5 key was added to the client's controls to refresh the game with a single tap.

 

Starting with an announcement on the V-Log, the developers started work on implementing the widely-discussed 'Alterations' feature into the game. This feature was to allow tankers to adapt to different playing styles with the same turret. All turrets were to have M0, M1, M2 and M3 alterations, some of them affecting the turret's parameters and the others giving the turret a visual modification. Lightweight Ordinance Autoloader, Broadband Emitter, Plasma-Core Accelerators, Minus-field Stabilization... I sure loved the names.

 

 

The Tanker's Day did not break its long-drawn tradition too. The game witnessed the always-welcome 50% sales on garage equipment to commemorate it. Besides these celebrations, a minor move made the product kits available in the shop and relocated all the supplies kits except the 100-supplies kit to the shop as well.

 

October

 

October marked the return of eSports in the EN community with the inauguration of the Domination Series. This tournament had both Junior and Elite categories and involved formats like XP/BP, Plasma (Twins and Ricochet), DR (which was officially introduced a little before) and more. The series ended in December, with Vavilon winning the Acid paint and Spectrum M-B module, and runners-up Chicago and Junior champs Hell Girls receiving the Gladiator paint.

 

 

Of course, there were the Halloween celebrations. An impressive 48 hours of 5x gold box drop rate on the spooky Halloween map, drop zones galore amidst the central tombstones. To top that, we also had 31% sales on gear, a limited-edition 'Zombie' paint and a contest to win with your trick-or-treating costumes.

 

November

 

November proved to be arguably one of the busiest months, jam-packed with developments. The most important (and also one of the most debated) of them all was undoubtedly the rebalance. It nearly sent the community into a tizzy for a few days; the changes causing widespread effects in daily battles. I'd prefer not to write about it again, so here you go - a neat summary of what changed due to the said update.

 

 

It was closely followed by a development that was requested multiple times, the addition of ranks beyond Generalissimo to have something more to play for. The new 'Legend' ranks had the same emblem but extended up to infinity experience points, each step being of 200,000 exp. This also meant that the major league actually started from Lt.Col. now.

 

 

In three other updates, a few new shop-exclusive paints and the 'Battle' button were introduced and the 'create battle' function was disabled for tankers with no PRO pass (which was made cheaper for lower ranks). The 'Battle' button takes you a random battle on any server. An increase in map diversity has been observed ever since these two changes came into being. 

 

December

 

The latest reincarnations of the three maps - Magadan, Deck 9 and Canyon were added to the group of active maps in early December. However, there was a twist, the new-old maps were only accessible to PRO pass holders. Despite the restriction, there were loads of battles on these maps for the first few days. To push up December's activity-meter even more, the MoP final round was live streamed on the 17th. The Flying Parkourists won with a lead of more than 45 points, followed by team Fight & Flight and German Tanki Tutorials in a faceoff relying on skill, timing, and creativity.

 

 

This brings us to the 23rd of December. Today, the rocket launcher-inspired 'Striker' turret is going to be unveiled, along with modules protecting against it. Furthermore, we'll be seeing the new set of alterations, seemingly opening up new avenues in the usage of the respective turrets. We probably have a few surprises waiting in the very near future. Hopefully, the rest of this year and the whole of 2017 will be as happening and as enjoyable as 2016 has been.

 

 

I hope I gave you a sweet summary of everything that made 2016 a great year for Tanki Online. Now let's gather our screenshots, collect memories and bid adieu to 2016!

 

[BLASTER872 1,892]

2016's events were sweet, the updates not so much.

 

You covered pretty much everything, though I'm not sure DS was on October.

 

Nice article!

[Guest Maserati]

Excellent Article ^_^

[sre123 595]

Well formated and well written article! :) +1.

[Zenyth 6,494]

2016's events were sweet, the updates not so much.

 

You covered pretty much everything, though I'm not sure DS was on October.

 

Nice article!

Pretty sure DS was announced in October. Playoffs were in November.

Thanks!

[Pigeon-king 25]

Thks fr th mmrs 

(Not everyone will get this joke)

[GeeVuh 1,647]

Noice :d

[Guanlong999 22]

WOW! A 2016 recall that had nothing to do with Donald Trump! This is amazing! 

[Uglee 24]

updates of 2016...meh  <_<

[Lankbouv 6,347]

No mention of eSports ?

[TTK_229 1,080]

it was called Happy New Year! not New Year!. k nug

[I.Hax.I 128]

Very well written.

[Zenyth 6,494]

No mention of eSports ?

I've mentioned TOF and DS.

[Lankbouv 6,347]

I've mentioned TOF and DS.

TOF and DS are insignificant compared to MOS and CC9

[Guest Maserati]

TOF and DS are insignificant compared to MOS and CC9

EN Community mate, you went to the wrong section ;)

---

if you don't undertand, it means that those tournaments did not significantly include us

Edited December 26, 2016 by Lord.Shadow

[Mr.Latvian 3,597]

EN Community mate, you went to the wrong section ;)

---

if you don't undertand, it means that those tournaments did not significantly include us

Actually no, he has a point - they were international tournaments not just Russian. (Yes, maybe they had topics on RU only, but so did TOF)

[MiZ0o0 1,863]

Actually no, he has a point - they were international tournaments not just Russian. (Yes, maybe they had topics on RU only, but so did TOF)

no TOF had topics here in EN and DE forums :) EN ( Click here ) - DE ( click here ) 

but MOS or CC9 there wasn't any announcement about them in EN forum by an Official E-sports mods or admin like TOF , even if it was an international tournaments ( not just 4 Russian clans )

[Mr.Latvian 3,597]

no TOF had topics here in EN and DE forums :) EN ( Click here ) - DE ( click here ) 

but MOS or CC9 there wasn't any announcement about them in EN forum by an Official E-sports mods or admin like TOF , even if it was an international tournaments ( not just 4 Russian clans )

Lets look into organization team of TOF - here - and lets take a look where scores had to be sent - here 

MoS was allowed to be played by all communities (but other communities did not want to take part in it)

CC9 is the same tournament as CC8 and all ones before it - Clan Championship and they all were announced on EN before.(here and here) 

 

I dont want to insult EN eSport team, but before Domination Series they were a bit lazy. 

[Jwimmer 2,835]

I thought the Rebalance was mid-october? Actually, I know it was. The article says it was early Novemeber. Otherwise, nice article. Waves of nostalgia...

[MiZ0o0 1,863]

Lets look into organization team of TOF - here - and lets take a look where scores had to be sent - here 

MoS was allowed to be played by all communities (but other communities did not want to take part in it)

CC9 is the same tournament as CC8 and all ones before it - Clan Championship and they all were announced on EN before.(here and here) 

 

I dont want to insult EN eSport team, but before Domination Series they were a bit lazy. 

MOS or CC9 there wasn't any announcement about them in EN forum by an Official E-sports mods or admin like TOF , even if it was an international tournaments

i didn't say anything about organization , Referees or where we sent the scores )) 

and about the score they said that players must send the scores in RU forum after the first battle in group stage ( here )   

[Guest Maserati]

Actually no, he has a point - they were international tournaments not just Russian. (Yes, maybe they had topics on RU only, but so did TOF)

You should expand on what you mean by international, if you mean that clans from other communities were freely allowed to participate, then that does not mean much. Or do you mean there was cooperation from all sides of the communities, from the players and the officials of each side. And did that happen?

International does not mean much, unless there is a major influence of other communities...

[bryanchua 33]

isnt international woman's day 8th of March?

[Zenyth 6,494]

isnt international woman's day 8th of March?

:ph34r: 

[Lankbouv 6,347]

Err, the point I was making is the prize of the tournaments, Champion etc.  Also, it is significant that AK won Silver in MOS, which was the most significant achievement in EN esports ever: but no mention here :D

[CabbageRoll 3,018]

thank god updates went back to good after october