Review Neo-Tanki Versus Tanki 2016 - Part I

[Viking4s 10,791]

 

Greetings, tankers! As you know Tanki Online is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary, on the 4th of June 2019. I myself, in March, celebrated an important milestone by ranking to Legend after three years of hard battling. This is the perfect opportunity to review these past years of Tanki mutating to what many players call Neo-Tanki. Follow me!

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 Introduction

 

10th anniversary! Did the co-founders of the Game, Anton Volkov (Wolf) and Alexander Karpovich (Karp), ever imagine reaching that milestone? I don’t think so.

 

Tanki Online beta (Demo Video) started off quite well in the early stage of its development applying an entrepreneurial approach of trial and error, and this experimental design development remained the norm for quite a while as the game was still trying to find itself. However, the ambition to improve the game never stopped the founders  on their journey to imagine and shape the next level; a better, faster and bigger version: Tanki 2.0 (Demo Video).

 

Unfortunately the project was stopped due to unexpected technical drawbacks putting an end to the developers dream. Nevertheless, the energy was not lost and gave birth to a second project, a little brother named Tanki X (Demo Video). While Alternativa focused all its manpower toward this newborn, it let Tanki Online wither away. But not for long, because the little brother did not grow to the developer’s expectations, and this was indeed good news for TO. Soon, Hazel-rah, admitted that the game was currently not a game but a beta demo still in development, and he confirmed that after a period of several years of neglect, Alternativa had great elaborate plans to finalise the game. The noticeable change in the wind direction was already beginning to show itself in June 2016, and, three years later, Neo-Tanki is closer than ever to being completed.

 

Since its launchs back in June 2009, many changes, updates and patches, have amended and shaped the game, all of them, up to 2015, are covered in details in the wiki page: History of the Game. Therefore this two-part review will focus primarily on the countless updates from Tanki 2016 (7th anniversary) up to Neo-Tanki (10th anniversary). In the first part, I will review several key updates of the game from Tanki’s Events to PRO-Battle, and we will look at Equipment and supplies among other topics.

 

 

 Community: Events

 

We all love events, don’t we? Developers’ mind-blowing ideas never stopped in finding new ways to entertain players, however they were either limited, or required a lot of manual work to manage (creation of temporary websites, players had to count their kills, etc.). Back in 2016, only a few options were available, like double battle funds, increased Gold Box drop rates and/or value, or in-game kill count when you bought a specific paint.

 

However, with Neo-Tanki, on top of these, we have the monthly Challenges (introduced in December 2018) and the stars system, all managed via a player-friendly and fully integrated in-game console, which provides an instantaneous report of your stars progress and challenges’ rewards. Additionally, numerous punctual events have been added in the yearly event calendar: Cosmonautics day (Mid-April), Summer (August 2017), UFO day (July 2018) and on-the-go Crazy Weekends.

 

Finally, developers created a new massive event: the WAR - the first War took place in February 2018 and the second edition, War Domination, in July 2018. Both wars increased the fun by adding a new twist on how to play the game and brought the forum community into effervescence, and the next edition is planned for the second part of this year.

 

All the events rewards and progresses are now exclusively done in Matchmaking battles and tend to be growing in length year by year.

 

 

 

 Garage: Hulls

 

From 2016, hulls have been subject to several extensive modifications, including rebalancing, micro-upgrades simplification, and the addition of Hull’s Ability (a.k.a. Overdrive).

 

In Neo-Tanki, the seven hulls are still here, however their parameters have undergone key revisions which essentially sorted them into three distinct hull classes by health point (HP): light, medium and heavy. The two extreme hulls, Mammoth and Wasp, have been harmonised, the former has seen his HP decreased to match Titan’s, the latter seen his HP matching Hornet’s, and all the medium tanks have been levelled to the same HP. Additionally, both medium and heavy classes have an increased top speed, meaning that these hulls, when speed boost is activated, are as competitive as light class hulls.

 

The number of Micro-upgrades steps has been simplified from 50 down to 20, and while the overall step cost stayed the same, speed-up cost has drastically increased, which is a good thing for casual players in my opinion. Penultimately, all M3s are unlocked at Marshal rank instead of the wide spread, which makes it also fairer for all players and allow them to choose which kit they want, instead of aiming for the lower unlocked M3 kit.

 

Last but not least, Hulls have acquired a very powerful ability: Overdrive. This game-changing feature is specifically designed for each hull and must be charged during battles before activation. The powered-up hull will then unleash its magic, such as invincibility for Mammoth or a Mega bomb for Wasp. These abilities require a good understanding of the charging process and an acute strategy acumen to be used effectively as you will have only a couple of opportunities to activate them per battle.

 

 

 

 Garage: Turrets

 

Tanki has maintained the creation of new turrets with very specific mechanics since the very beginning; four to start with (Smoky, Firebird, Railgun and Twins) and then seven new ones were gradually introduced (Isida (2009), Thunder, Ricochet, Freeze (2010), Shaft (2011), Hammer (2014), Vulcan (2015)) to a total of eleven turrets to play with in 2016. Now, Neo-Tanki sports two supplementary ones: first came the rocket launchers - Striker (December 2016)-, closely followed by the artillery gun - Magnum (March 2017). Quite innovating, they both display great power with splash damage and both work a long range. Magnum is unique in it way of working as you cannot turn the barrel of gun, you can only change the vertical angle of it to aim.

 

The grand evolution for turrets is the insertion of the Alteration feature that allows players to alter drastically specific characteristic of a turret with a one-time payment. The aim of this feature is to provide players with alternative game-play option to the standard that can be equipped or unequipped whenever you want. The feature would lessen one characteristic of your turret in favour of strengthening another one. Example: Suppose you do not like your Thunder’s splash damage and wish to remove it. Then the Subcalibre Rounds Alteration is right for you: Self and Splash damage are removed, plus the impact force and the recoil are increased (+10%). As you rank up, more of them are unlocked and in the end, you have three to seven options available to purchase per turret (there are 34 alterations as of writing). They are balanced in a way that they do not perturbate the overall balance of the game, however, when mastered and used effectively, they can give extra advantages to their skilled owners.

 

 

 

 Lobby: Missions

 

They have continuously mutated since their first introduction in the game, but not as much as during the past three years. Originally “Login rewards” were given for free, you just had to log in to the game every day, and players would use the free supplies to drug until they were gone. Then around 2016, the system was replaced with “Daily Missions” with rewards, which required players to complete specific missions in the game in order to receive the rewards associated with (crystals and supplies). Once completed, you needed to wait the next day to receive a new set of missions. This move was an obvious incentive to get more tankers to play for longer, and additionally to create more battle in less used preferred battle modes, such as Team Deathmatch.

 

Since then, in Neo-Tanki, new type of daily missions has been added, such as “Finish X number of battles in a specific battle mode” or “Activate Overdrive X times”. Also, the legendary Generalissimo-only super missions were removed (e.g. 9,999 kills/99,999 xp for >100k crystals, an XT, of a wealth of supplies).

 

But most importantly, another layer called the “Weekly Missions” has been introduced. Renewed every week, these missions offer even more rewards: Blue weekly containers (assortment of crystals and supplies) and the original green containers. The latter provides you with one random reward picked among the following items: crystals (3500 to 1 million crystals), supplies (single or assortment), Gold boxes, batteries, premium days, paints, shot effects and skins. Despite the significant content increase of the rewards, they can only be completed in Matchmaking battles, and the length to complete them has sizeably increased too. Overall players are happy with these additional rewards, however, one particular weekly mission is deemed to be too difficult to complete and you can be stuck with it for a long time: “Finished 15 times in top 3 of the winning team”. For more info about container rewards, see here.

 

 

 

 Garage: Supplies

 

Ha, a very controversial subject since the start of the game, and even the addition of the cooldown prior to 2016 did not dry up the debate, only the passionate mouths. Since then, two huge live tests were organised by the developers to improve the situation, and the resulting analysis has impacted their mechanic: cooldown and time of activation. To summarise, they have evolved with a shorter cooldown and activation for all of them. Furthermore, the Speed Boost was buffed from 30% to 40% in power, while the Repair Kit was nerfed. In Neo-Tanki, using a repair kit gives you an instant 1,000 HP, and a further 3,000 over 2 seconds, which stops if you take damage in that period. Another major change is in the 1.5k Supplies Kit, which is now only available in the shop.

 

Otherwise, what’s new on the supply side? Well, Neo-Tanki sports three additional supplies: The Gold Box garage supply, the Energy drop box and the Battery garage supply. Every now and then you can see generous players dropping their own Gold Boxes by pressing the [6] key. The Gold can be either bought in the Shop, obtained for free from the Containers (bought, caught or from Weekly missions’ rewards) or from Daily Missions’ rewards.

 

The new supply, called Battery, is the fuel for the Drones, without them the little flying bot cannot work its magic. Costing 300 crystals each, and with one unit used per minute, this supply is generally considered a pay-to-win feature.

 

Finally, the Nuclear Energy supply drops only in battle in one or (rarely) two drop zones and is easily recognisable with its dirty orange colour. This supply is solely available on Matchmaking maps, and in an instant, it charges the overdrive of the tanker who picked it up to 100%.

 

 

 

 Game: Battle fund, experience and score

 

The major change in this area is the revamping of the battle scores which are now clearly separated from experience points, where these two used to be very comparable. More details are available in the Wiki, so I encourage you to have a look there.

 

The main impact is that with Neo-Tanki you gain more crystals for far less experience, when it used to be the reverse with more experience given for less crystals. At low ranks, saving crystals is easier then for players who wish both to buy more equipment or to upgrade equipment. This is good because there is more far more equipment available to choose from (e.g. turrets) and some are more expensive (e.g. protection module).The con is that in exchange the player’s progress in the game is considerately slowed down, I suppose this is the way to stack players in the mid ranks and lower the number of higher ranked players.

 

Additionally, in Neo-Tanki the battle fund management of Matchmaking battles has been reformed in two key areas. Firstly, the battles fund is not displayed anymore, so you cannot see how much fund the battle as generated. 

Secondly, the redistribution of crystals is more bonded to your battle score and less to the team scores. When we use to observe an 80/20 fund split, you would notice more of a 60/40 split between winners and losers, even in blowout battles. Among the team members, the ratio score versus crystals is the same, except for the top players who usually gets 1-2% more. The changes were introduced to motivate players to stay in battle and try harder when they are starting to lose, and to slow down progress of overpowered players and buyers alike who will get lower rewards per fund.

 

 

 

 Game: Battle modes

 

By comparison with TO 2016, Neo-Tanki sports three new Battle modes: Assault (ASL), Rugby (RGB) and Juggernaut (JGR). 

 

An early try of the Assault mode was available temporarily in one map only during the Christmas celebrations of 2015 and 2016, and then an improved version was permanently implemented into the game two years later, in December 2017. After a final fine-tuning the rules have now been frozen with the blue defending team earning one point per enemy killed and the red attacking team scoring five points per Flag capped.

 

The second new battle mode, Rugby, is a team-based gamemode, launched in January 2018. The goal of this mode is  to 'catch' a rather large Rugby ball and cap it at the opposition’s goal, while the opposite team tries to prevent you from scoring. The battles are tough as both teams focus on winning the ball which creates plenty of melee encounters and ensuing deaths, especially when played on small maps.

 

Finally, the third innovative mode, Juggernaut, was added in July 2018. It is a special deathmatch mode sporting one player driving a super tank: The Juggernaut. This powerful and massive hull, faster than wasp and with 2.5 more health points than a Mammoth, is topped with a deadly turret armed with a twin-railgun-barrel (arcade mode) and with 2 rocket launchers able to deliver a salvo of 6 rockets (aim and lock on mode). This mode is not to everybody's taste, especially tankers who are focusing on destroying the Juggernaut but get targeted and killed by other tankers playing the game as a standard deathmatch.

 

 

 

 Lobby: PRO-battles

 

In Neo-Tanki, customisable player-created battles, or PRO-battles, have now been completely separated from the normal battles which are created via the Matchmaking system (MMS). Since the merging of all the servers, the PRO-battles are listed in one unique list which you can access freely, unlike the hidden and protected MMS battles. When creating PRO-battles, players can: customise the name once again, select a map from a wider range of maps (Old maps and MM maps), and choose between different themes (including Night theme), with or without the new Space mode (a.k.a. Moon Silence's low gravity). All battle modes except for Juggernaut can be created as PRO-battles. The two special modes, Rugby and Assault, are selectable but only if you select MM maps.

 

Overall, the PRO-battles have kept most of the flavour from 2016 Tanki, with the same scoring system, the same battle fund growth and distribution rules, the freedom to join and leave at any time, but without the perks from events and daily missions. Additionally, many anti-powerlevelling updates have been implemented ,which reduce score and experience points if battle actions have been executed too quickly.

 

On the negative side, we can deplore the disappearance of the auto-finish battle rule and the removal of the listing of Pro-battles by alphabetical order which makes it now a real pain to navigate through the list. These changes are, for me, synonyms of the death of non-formatted battle, as finding a good XP/BP battle is now an horrendous ordeal.

 

To finish, the PRO-battle pass is now less expensive, yeah! While it used to be 5000 crystals for all ranks, the cost is now proportional to your rank: the higher the rank the more expensive it becomes. However, the Pass is only available from Warrant Officer 1 , costing 2000 crystals, up to 5000 crystals for Legend . Players can join PRO-battles if they are a member of an in-game clan, but only the owner of a clan licence can create PRO-battles. We are still waiting for a free access to the PRO-battle, I hope it will happen, this would be good for formatted battles and parkour enthusiasts.

 

 

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That’s is all for this part. Please don’t feel like you need to comment because I’m always right (no this isn't reverse psychology (or is it?)).

In the second part, I will cover further topics, including some controversial ones like Matchmaking and Drones. So stay tuned.

 

 

See you later laggers.

VKG4s

[VKG4s]2019

Edited June 9, 2019 by Viking4s

[Flexoo 6,980]

Hello tankers. With Tanki's ten year milestone being just a week away, we bring you this interesting review of its existence and development. Enjoy and stay tuned for part two coming on TO's birthday.

[r_Given6 859]

Nice one. You can put the link to your article about Overdrives for those who are may be new to the system.

[Person_Random 4,991]

Hello tankers. With Tanki's ten year milestone being just a week away, we bring you this interesting review of it's existence and development. Enjoy and stay tuned for part two coming on TO's birthday.

Do you mean its (without apostrophe)? I think it would make more sense as the word 'it's' literally translates to it is...

[Guest]

Do I get title credit? :X

[Person_Random 4,991]

Do I get title credit? :X

Does Grammarly get credit for fixing comma errors?

[Viking4s 10,791]

The text is of higher quality than the one I actually wrote and submitted initially, so credit must be given to the mysterious editor(s), Thanks guys (?Flexoobot?). Also thanks to @Person_Random who helped for the first draft review.

Edited May 29, 2019 by Viking4s

[Guest]

Does Grammarly get credit for fixing comma errors?

Do you use grammatly? (Asking the real question here lol)

 

Psst it has some typos, not my post but vik's post.

Edited May 29, 2019 by Quasar

[Viking4s 10,791]

Do you use grammatly? (Asking the real question here lol)

Psst it has some typos, not my post but vik's post.

My posts are honey pots for exacting grammar weirdos...

Edited May 29, 2019 by Viking4s

[Guest winner110]

OM gosh that is so awesome even Tanki X looks like a huge improvment CAN'T WAIT. :o  :D  ;) 

Hello tankers. With Tanki's ten year milestone being just a week away, we bring you this interesting review of its existence and development. Enjoy and stay tuned for part two coming on TO's birthday.

is Tanki X still comeing out soon? :huh:

[r_Given6 859]

OM gosh that is so awesome even Tanki X looks like a huge improvment CAN'T WAIT. :o :D ;)

 

is Tanki X still comeing out soon? :huh:

It's already out there and been ruined by silly updates.

[Viking4s 10,791]

OM gosh that is so awesome even Tanki X looks like a huge improvment CAN'T WAIT. :o  :D  ;)

is Tanki X still comeing out soon? :huh:

Here you go: https://tankix.com/en/   ;)

Edited May 29, 2019 by Viking4s

[Tekken8 5]

How about MAIN missions... for what reason it is there ?

[Viking4s 10,791]

How about MAIN missions... for what reason it is there ?

We don't know. It is still a mystery.

[Guest winner110]

Here you go: https://tankix.com/en/Neo-Tanki Versus Tanki 2016 - Part I   ;)

 

It's already out there and been ruined by silly updates.

how? the video looks good

[Person_Random 4,991]

Do you use grammatly? (Asking the real question here lol)

 

Psst it has some typos, not my post but vik's post.

I use it for my english essays because my teacher tells me to and occasionally on my 150 page novel so I can spam some word count, but otherwise, not really.

[Viking4s 10,791]

how? the video looks good

It doesn't matter for you as you will be a new player, so you won't know how it was before. Have a try, if you don't like it then, remove it from your PC.

[Guest]

how? the video looks good

Let's just say it's not an ideal situation there :p. Feel free to have a try and judge on your own. 

[Viking4s 10,791]

Let's just say it's not an ideal situation there :P. Feel free to have a try and judge on your own. 

Hello Beaku! you are alive! Awsome.

[pancratium 0]

What 10-year celebration are you talking about ???

 

Tanki is long gone, dead and the corpse is cold already .... today's parody is nothing close to the original intense atmosphere and fascination ... once an intriguing and captivating one, (for some reason) the game has been deliberately downgraded, noob-ized and completely gone thrash couple of years ago ...

What we have now is just a brainless kids' shooter with no gameplay, no sane content and cartoonish graphics !

 

Alas, there is Nothing to celebrate now !

[Guest]

I use it for my english essays because my teacher tells me to and occasionally on my 150 page novel so I can spam some word count, but otherwise, not really.

Nice. 

 

Let's just say it's not an ideal situation there :P. Feel free to have a try and judge on your own. 

HEYYYY You are here, good to see youuuuu!!

 

What 10-year celebration are you talking about ???

 

Tanki is long gone, dead and the corpse is cold already .... today's parody is nothing close to the original intense atmosphere and fascination ... once an intriguing and captivating one, (for some reason) the game has been deliberately downgraded, noob-ized and completely gone thrash couple of years ago ...

What we have now is just a brainless kids' shooter with no gameplay, no sane content and cartoonish graphics !

 

Alas, there is Nothing to celebrate now !

This guy sure uses grammarly.. :D

[Guest winner110]

It doesn't matter for you as you will be a new player, so you won't know how it was before. Have a try, if you don't like it then, remove it from your PC.

ok what do you not like about it?

[FrozenRailgun 1,771]

Tanki is long gone, dead and the corpse is cold already .... today's parody is nothing close to the original intense atmosphere and fascination ... once an intriguing and captivating one, (for some reason) the game has been deliberately downgraded, noob-ized and completely gone thrash couple of years ago ...

 

Alas, there is Nothing to celebrate now !

Why you said the game has been downgraded? How the game get noob-ized? You need to elaborate further than that.

 

Nothing to celebrate? I find there is something to celebrate. This game has been alive for almost 10 years! Not a lot of games last that long, even Minecraft is still alive (but more players than Tanki sadly at this moment).

[sebseb2222 4]

Anybody remembers when Tanki occasionally dropped small boxes of 10 crystals, just like supplies?

[milkchoclate901 0]

I can't believe how long I've been playing this game. Since this is a post dedicated to the history, I would like to shed some attention to moon silence which was my favorite game type at the time. RIP

Anybody remembers when Tanki occasionally dropped small boxes of 10 crystals, just like supplies?

Ah yes! I miss those.  :(