It was an accident, I didn't mean it

That just sounds like mammoth with a different shape. Anyway, I don't mean to crap all over your idea. I actually had the same thought when I first saw that banner — it's weird that the art team made this cool-looking new hull for a banner, yet there are no plans to actually implement it in the game. I just don't think it offers anything unique beyond looking weird.

But what game mode is it? Like, ok — let's say devs add a monowheel tank hull like the ones in the banner. Other than looks, how will it be different from existing hulls? And what does it have to do with a new game mode? What's the actual gameplay like?

No one ever said that reporting violators deserves additional rewards. it's enough of a reward to know that the player who annoyed you has been punished. You think that reporting violators is a service you do for Tanki. However, the reality is opposite — forum violation reports is a service provided to you as a privilege. It takes battle moderators significantly more time to review evidence in forum reports compared to responding to in-game reports in real time and issuing punishments immediately, as opposed to after the damage has already been done. The moderation system would actually become more efficient if forum reports were completely removed, yet they remain available because otherwise old players would get upset, I guess. Additionally, giving any additional rewards for reports would not only take up more of battle mods' time, but the extra time would also be wasted due to the increased number of false reports, since players will be reporting any minor annoyance they see in hopes of getting the reward. Good job

Didn't the "early access" approach first appear with Hopper in 2019?

Yeah it's been planned for years. The only improvement they made so far is that when playing on client, the ratings page opens in a window inside the game, as opposed to in a browser. Hardly an improvement, tbh.

Damn, I literally had no idea this was a thing. ol' Maf is getting behind on tanki news....

This feels like the opposite of a QoL update... Also, I don't understand the profile privacy change. Right now, the few players that do end up clicking "Profile" are met with a 2018-era page that doesn't load properly half the time, hasn't had its design aligned with the rest of the game, and is missing a bunch of crucial features. After the update, opening this page will just show a hidden profile most of the time. Why even keep the ratings site alive at all then? Either do a proper feature update or shut the whole thing down.

Seems suboptimal

Come on, you can't use an image like that and not have it be an actual thing in the game

I have an idea to bring back old hopper rico for my birthday. Pls tell Opex, thanks.

Umm ackhchyually it's supposed to be referred to as Climate Change now

Yeah pretty much. Wanna come check out my minecraft world?

Balanced teams and balanced MM battles are two separate and non-exclusive conditions. You can have two evenly matched teams (balanced battle), but both teams have a large range of GS, with weak players struggling to compete and gain score on each team (unbalanced teams).

smh admins hate fun

Apples to oranges comparison. Chess didn't come about as an online game that needs to compete with other forms of online entertainment to stay relevant. How can you say that Tanki is playing any sort of "short money game" if the game has stayed active for over 15 years? I'm not sure what your point is here, but to me it seems that a generic P2W game doesn't require battles to be unbalanced. You could have battles where the teams are equal by GS, but within the team itself, there's a massive range of GS, so that the low GS players suffer and will be incentivised to spend money to become more competitive. But the overall battle would be balanced. So that's why I'm saying that I don't see how a skewed MM that intentionally makes "blowout" battles would help generate more revenue.

There's this theory that Opex talked about in a livestream a while ago (and I paraphrased his words in another thread) which claims that 100% balanced battles are actually bad for player retention. So while it may seem extremely counter-intuitive at first, studies show* that if every single game was an even match, then people would play less overall. And if you think about it, it makes sense. If I have non-stop interesting, close matches in a row, which require my full concentration the whole time, then it's going to take much less time for me to become a) mentally fatigued and b) satisfied with my play session, which will result in me closing the game sooner. On the other hand, if only 1 in 3 battles is a close and balanced match, then my session will consist of short periods of concentration interspersed by skewed games where the win or loss is obvious from the start, so they become a casual exercise in shooting tanks and scoring points. This way it will take me longer before I'm tired and had enough "good" games to be satisfied with the session, so I'm more likely to play longer. That's a potential other reason for intentionally bad matchmaking, besides "make money". In fact, I don't even see how making money is a valid reason for bad MM, since if you're a buyer with maxed out equipment who's been given a trash team, then I don't see how playing a game like that would make you want to spend more. *I could find the actual study, but this is just a forum post so I don't really care. You're gonna have to make do with source: trust me bro.

Rank progression and matchmaking game balance are separate things, in my opinion. You can have a game that still heavily relies on P2W but at the same time has balanced games. It just needs to have an accurate assessment of each player's skill level and split the teams evenly. One team could have a huge range of players with different ranks, GS and skill levels, but the battle would hypothetically still be balanced if the other team has an equally different range of players that adds up to the same power overall. But I said it before and I'll say it again — genuine perfect game balance is impossible in both real life and video games, because various external/random factors can influence how people perform from game to game even if all conditions are kept the same.

Yes, it puts players against higher ranks, which in turn encourages players to spend real money on getting in-game currency to upgrade equipment. Like I said, it's part of the game's balance. The economic balance, that is.

Those are some of the most useless questions you could have asked, so Nikman correctly "dumped" them into here, since they're not worth having in a separate topic, or wherever they were before. The reputation points are way to high, why is this... For balance purposes, to ensure players progress through the ranks fast enough. why do you insist on XP gained for every mission, why do you do this. To prevent people farming missions on multiple accounts and accumulating rewards without ranking. Should be pretty obvious for someone like you, who has been in the game for years.

Old lightweight hopper-rico pls

Pretty cool! Why though? Just to see if you could do it?

Punishment for bots is irrelevant, since a program has no concept of moral wrongdoing and rehabilitation. Also, there are no individual bot "accounts". Every bot is just a single-use entity with a random name that exists for one battle only. If bots are "breaking game rules", then the only solution is to improve their software with a patch.

Wait, the barrel isn't attached? That looks... weird

Madlad actually boosted the fund to 12 million for me specifically. I knew I could count on you!