Topic merged

I only agree with the Miner nerf. I think that the other three are somewhat balanced.

Of course, that's a very valid point. But at the end of the day, that's still hundreds of updates which introduced changes that some players requested at some point. So even though they're not implementing player ideas directly and giving them credit (there's legal reasons for this, by the way), user feedback plays a significant role in the game's development. I'll repeat what I said earlier in this thread — if Opex/Alternativa didn't care about player ideas and feedback, they wouldn't keep asking us (helpers/moderators) to look through Tanki's public communication channels, find relevant feedback and compile it into reports on a regular basis. The point I'm trying to make is that, contrary to popular belief, devs did a lot of good stuff over the years. Could they have done better? Absolutely. We can all agree that they made a number of mistakes over the years. But is Tanki following the worst possible path under Opex's leadership? You'd have to be delusional to truly believe so.

I'm somewhat confused by that comment in the patch notes. They're removing horizontal auto-aim from ricocheting shots, but it won't noticeably affect gameplay? When does it affect gameplay then? Because I don't notice any horizontal auto-aim while playing on PC.

No, it's 500 ideas that players suggested, from small fixes/adjustments to major changes, which have now been implemented in the game in one way or another. Example of a small fix: Example of a major feature: The term free-to-play was coined in the 90s. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27039/free-to-play-f2p Anyone, who's been into gaming even for just a couple years, knows by now that every full-feature F2P game will either have a ton of ads, a ton of basically forced microtransactions (a.k.a. Freemium), or both. It's not a trick or a surprise anymore. Well damn, if they don't care about feedback at all, it would be nice if they stopped constantly demanding us to make reports summarizing feedback all the time. Since it's so useless... /s Ok

That is literally Opex. There's a list of about 500 completed ideas that you can view in I&S, by the way. I suppose that's enough to count as "some"?

I'd like to invite you to read the rules. Any kind of slander against the administration, the game or developers can be punished up to blocking the account. Mind you, we're being very lenient with this thread and only hiding/editing certain posts, since we'd prefer to encourage discussion rather than shut people down. Claiming that AlternativaGames could be committing fraud is a violation of that rule. Nevertheless, the topic itself will not be hidden. What are you talking about? I never claimed that prices are low and I completely agree that TO shop items are overpriced. Tanki X has died. Tanki Online will die when the server shut down. It could be in 6 months, it would be in 10 years. People in 2013 said it will die in 2016 and they were wrong. In 2020 I thought that it would die in 2022 and I was wrong. If you're still taking about "last straws" and "nails in the coffin", you're no different than all the others from previous years who were wrong. Welcome to the club. Ok, sure. How would removing Opex-Rah fix this issue?

Yeah, I can agree with that. In the first few years, Tanki doesn't feel like it would appeal to a younger audience (<14). Small games are typically interesting to older players, who actively look for interesting new developments. It's only after a game becomes mainstream, that the kids start to come in since they see it recommended in an ad or something. I discovered Tanki in 2011 when I was 15, and indeed it was from some random website ad. Ok, I think I understand what you mean. So Tanki Online is successful as an online game and a business project, but you're saying that it failed as an MMO, because it moved away from the community aspects that made Tanki Online so popular in the beginning. Instead of the forum, pro battles and community events we got things like matchmaking, solo events, and heavy focus on individual rewards, rather than teamwork. On one hand it's sad to see this shift, but on the other hand I will repeat what I said previously — the gaming industry and people themselves are changing, and their demands are changing. In order to keep up the appeal and payer retention, Tanki Online had to adapt to the new generation, which is far less interested in community stuff and prefers playing quick games while earning as many rewards as possible. I don't know what the "real world" has to do with this. F2P and P2W are not mutually exclusive and games can be both. Tanki IS both, and is, by definition, free to play. This is, as you like to say, an UNDENIABLE FACT. @FLIPSTIKS lol By the way, kids do bring in most of the revenue. The small purchases made with pocket money far outweigh all those "Tanki millionaires", who spend thousands on the game and brag about it, yet their contribution is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, I'm not particularly invested in this conversation at this point. I just don't understand how you guys can think that Opex-Rah could still be not just an employee but THE project lead for Tanki Online if his contributions were clearly "driving the game into the ground". Kinda reminds me of the sceptics claiming Elon Musk being a detriment for his (extremely successful) companies, which is equally ridiculous. But I'd rather not open that can of worms.

There's no doubt about that, but Alternativa being outperformed by Wargaming does not make the former a failure. No, you don't get it. There is physically NO WAY to know whether any decision anywhere would have been better it if was done differently, simply because we do not have the technology to check alternate universes. Would Tanki Online be better if the 2012 Rebalance never happened? Would they keep more players if they removed Overdrives? Would the revenue be higher if there wasn't so much P2W content pushing players away? We can only make educated guesses. This is absolutely true - players getting bored is the #1 cause of them leaving the game. The 2015 period I mentioned above was the worst for TO because devs put all their cards into TX development and only kept a "skeleton crew" working on TO to maintain the servers. No new content meant that people got bored, and a huge number of players moved on to other games (google trends reflects this). But the method to get engagement back is where you're wrong. Like I said, the gaming industry has evolved and the new generation of players doesn't care about community stuff anymore. They don't want clans, or forums, or community events. Instead, they want new features to play with, new cosmetics, and new in-game events to keep themselves entertained. That's why Tanki Online devs phased out things like eSports, the WAR and Youtuber Battles, in favour of Battle Passes, special game modes, Tanki Funds and various "competitons", which merely require the user to buy a pass and play the game, as opposed to engaging in some kind of interaction with others. In this day and age I would not recommend Tanki Online to anyone unless they were willing to spend a lot of money to give themselves a comfortable playing experience. Tanki Online is a great game and very fun if you're a Legend with a fully upgraded garage. Don't blame it all on him. Opex may be a lead game dev, but he's not the owner. His management pushes him to make changes that will generate whatever revenue/profits they're aiming to achieve. Based on his interviews, his posts (here and on RU forum), and a couple private conversations, I can tell you quite confidently that he is well-versed in game design, and he has the desire to do cool things that players would love to experience. But due to financial and time constraints, he either doesn't have the resources to implement the things he wants the way he wants them, or he has to adapt them in a way that fits into the constrains and meets the project's revenue quotas, which often means significantly changing the core idea to the point where a potentially cool new feature gets ruined down to a crappy, rushed, P2W gimmick. This is also the reason Tanki is copying successful features from other games. When I said that Tanki is successful and still generating stable revenue, I didn't mean that they're swimming in cash like they may or may not have been around 2014. So while they had the ability to experiment and take risks a decade ago, these days I suspect that they can only make changes that are safe and proven to work in other games (matchmaking, lootboxes, battle passes...). First of all, I think we need to stop with the MMO comparisons altogether. I refer to Tanki as an MMO simply because it's convenient, but it's not an MMO in the typical sense. It's much closer to Overwatch and TF2 than it is to something like WoW or FF, so in that sense Opex is 100% correct in taking Overwatch as an example. And why do you so defiantly claim that it's not Overwatch? The similarities are uncanny — replace Heroes with Tanks and you basically have Tanki Online. Literally. Tanki may have been a unique concept in 2009, but that's no longer the case. Ok so what kind of content are you actually talking about here? In 2024, what kind of new content would you expect Tanki devs to add, which you would praise and enjoy?

Dude, seriously — where's the disaster? There's dozens (hundreds?) of similar games out there, which were created and then shut down because they struggles to compete, often due to developers making poor decisions. Very few games from the 2000s managed to retain at least some of their audience and survive for over a decade. Some of the titles include TF2, WoW and Minecraft, so even if you're simply comparing Tanki Online to them, it's automatically an acknowledgement of Alternativa's success. Tanki Online followed a natural curve of a successful MMO, where it peaked after a few years and then slowly dwindled in popularity until becoming stable again. You can see this on Google Trends, where I compared Tanki Online to World of Tanks — a similar game in concept. WoT did a little better than TO, but the shape of the graph is strikingly similar. There's no way to know whether the changes and additions that devs made in TO over the years would have been better or worse for audience retention, so claims like "if devs didn't do X, then there would be more players now" are baseless. The game is still intended for children. Always had been, and children have always been the biggest demographic in Tanki. And, spoiler alert, children don't go on the forum to complain about updates. They open Tanki on their phone, play a few quick battles, and click on whatever shiny things developers show them. This is why even when the whole forum thread is filled with complaints, it still doesn't reflect the actual opinion of the whole player base, because the forum is used by a tiny portion of users. A lot of the updates you hate were designed for (and are effective on) the demographic that doesn't share its feedback, so the feedback that actually reflects an update's reception is in the numerical data collected from people using the game. Can you give some examples? I'm genuinely curious which games you consider to be similar to Tanki, but more successfully managed by their developers. Not really. Advertising is just a calculation of return investment. If the return diminishes, then you either change your advertising method or you stop it completely. Starladder was a similar situation — the partnership was extremely expensive, and it was done with the goal of generating profits after the financial success of eSports in DotA. Not every game is suitable for creating an engaging eSports community, and so Tanki Online's eSports was not as popular as devs had hoped. So yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but Tanki Online Starladder was created to generate income as the main motivation, as opposed to to strengthening the player community (which was just a side bonus). It didn't work as well as devs had hoped and was therefore cancelled. You're completely mixing up different things here. Tanki Online is an in-browser game, and that's its main selling point. Tanki X was meant to be a replacement for TO, just built on a completely different, more capable game engine. The game was more than halfway through development when most of the big web browser developers announced that they will no longer support Unity within their browsers. That immediately killed Tanki X (as it became a client-only game), but devs fell for the sunk cost fallacy and finished development anyway, hoping that the the game would succeed despite this disadvantage. It didn't, and was eventually shut down. It has absolutely nothing to do with decisions made in Tanki Online. In fact, a lot of features from Tanki X have already been implemented in Tanki Online, because they were actually good design decisions. That's how game development works for a typical indie game studio. You make a bunch of games and some/most of them will inevitably flop. Especially if they're mobile games (which have about a 0.2% success rate). Tanki Online is Alternativa's flagship project, so those other games were an attempt to diversify income and plan for the future while Tanki Online provided enough profits that could be reinvested into development of new games. I don't know how you quantify success, but if I'm running a business and its income has been able to pay all of my expenses, employees' salaries, and my own spending needs for 15 years, I'd consider it successful. Anyway, neither of us have the data of Alternativa's financial performance, so this is a pointless argument. A few more points: "The Tragic History of Tanki Online" is nothing but a view-farming meme compilation (of course, made to be just over 10 minutes for that sweet extra ad revenue). It's not an actual analysis and its target audience is children, not game developers. The vast majority of players who proudly proclaim that they're "leaving the game because of bad updates" don't actually leave. It's hilariously ironic, but true. Many illegal clones of Tanki were created to appeal to the old players and give them the "Old Tanki experience". All of them are dying or have died, despite trying to implement changes based on player feedback and not repeating the same mistakes Tanki made. people simply don't want to play old, outdated garbage. Opex is not the owner of AlternativaGames. If his leadership was harming the project, he'd be fired years ago. Is it possible that the forum experts are wrong? We'll never know... Lastly, I want to note that I do agree with you on the game's development being far from perfect. Two things I strongly dislike, which the game seems to consistently fail on: Game balance The constant addition of obviously OP items and then taking an absurdly long time to nerf them. From EMP Gauss, to Helios, to Booster, to Blunderbuss, and now Miner-Saboteur combo. It seems insane that some features get added to the game without the obvious implication that they will destroy game balance. This happens time and time again and I find it extremely frustrating. Lack of QoL updates There are some features missing that I simply don't understand why devs can't dedicate some resources to implement them. Biggest one for me — ability to buy items as gifts for other players. Why is this not a thing? It's literally PROFIT! But no, instead if I want to buy something for a friend with real money, I have to ask them for a payment link, which is a terrible idea for them to give me that link because it can be used to block their game account via payment refund (fraud). There are multiple other features which have been suggested years ago and are still missing for some unknown reason.

The videos appear to be showing a battle in parkour mode. Reports of game violations (including hacking) from parkour mode are not considered. For game violations anywhere else, please report them on the Russian forum: https://ru.tankiforum.com/forum/39/ Closed

Planned Completed The latest vlog revealed that new players will soon be able to build their own tank when creating a new account, which includes selecting turret, hull and paint.

Planned The latest vlog revealed that new players will soon be able to build their own tank when creating a new account, which includes selecting turret, hull and paint.

I think it's not that big of a deal to spend any time changing it. 99% of people opening containers care only about the items they get from containers, and not whether the opening animation is accurate or not. As long as 15 keys give you 15 items, it's fine.

Yeah I agree, it looks really sus and I haven't seen lag do that before. But I still think it's this ^

I still think it's lag, since you only just went behind cover when you got hit. But has there ever been a situation where you stayed fully behind cover without exposing yourself for a few seconds and still got hit? If there's a hack that makes shots ignore walls (i.e. map elements), then it would allow the other player to hit you regardless of the thickness and number of obstacles between you and them, and the hack would be a lot more obvious.

It definitely won't happen next week, but perhaps in the future.

That kinda checks out. Early 2020 was when the first truly P2W elements appeared, starting with the EMP augment for Gauss (which was insanely OP at the time). That addition marked the beginning of the transition from a model where every player could gradually save up crystals by playing and gradually obtain all the items they wanted, to the current model where you either buy paid bundles with OP items, or hope to get insanely lucky with containers.

"People" being the typical gamers? Because I'm fairly certain that any self-respecting game dev has been taking notes from an indie game studio that managed to create an F2P MMO which is still (presumably) profitable after 15 years since release. This makes no sense whatsoever. If the game stayed mostly the same as it was in, say, 2013, then the game would die. The "meta" for gaming is constantly changing, so the new players have different expectations depending on the year they discovered the game. A new player joining in 2024 will have drastically different things that interest them compared to a new player in 2018, and even more different from a new player in 2013. Therefore, games like Tanki Online have to adapt and change in drastic ways if they want to stay relevant and be interesting to new players. I'll remind you that the absolute worst time period for Tanki Online was in 2015, when a huge number of players left because there were no major updates (due to most resources going into Tanki X). People leave because they get bored of lack of new content, and not because "ew this new thing made the game too different". In the last few years devs made a number of changes to the early game process specifically to counter this problem. Instead of immediately being thrown into all-in Legend battles, new players are gradually introduced to mechanics like overdrives, supplies, drones, protection modules. "Why play a tank game that features alien tanks?" Because it's cool as hell. Tanki never claimed to be a realistic tank battle simulator. It's a sci-fi arcade game, so anything goes. Maybe in the first few months in 2009? With the exception of Smoky, Firebird and Thunder, most of the early turrets were already very much sci-fi. This part I agree with. Some of the new augments are overpowered to such an extent that they may as well be hacks. It's ridiculous. Lol no. That's not how it works, especially not for a game that counts its annual revenue in millions. Anyone who says "I spent [insert amount] on this game and therefore my opinion is more important" needs to get off their high horse. Listening to the player base and doing exactly what the player base demands are two very different things. Devs listen and collect feedback all the time, but the changes that are actually implemented are also driven by current industry trends, budget constraints, and actual numerical data. As someone who's been on the forum since 2011, I can tell you that the stuff people post on the forum does not reflect the actual needs of the player base, and some of the suggestions I've seen are outright ridiculous. For the most part, the players themselves don't know what they actually want. I've seen this statement once every few weeks starting from... around 2014. In fact, I even made that statement myself back in 2020, saying that the game will likely shut down by 2022, yet I was proven wrong. But hey, surely this time it will actually happen? As said above, the game still generates stable income after 15 years. In the gaming industry, that's about as far from failure as it gets.

Topic merged

Sure, though it doesn't change the fact that devs don't plan to add more modes.

All three augments already got nerfed in the past, to a point where even on large maps they are merely above-average now. My point is that the traditional thinking that long range turrets are the only way to camp is no longer applicable due to the vast number of augments turning short-medium range turrets into long range.

Sounds like my interpretation (and the idea of Tail Tag) is quite similar to your idea. The only difference is that in my version, the player simply needs to kill the flag holder to become the new flag holder, while in your version, the player needs to kill the flag holder and then actually pick up the dropped flag. Still very similar. That's cute. Let me just get my Hunter Hammer, Helios Rico and Hyperspeed Thunder. Also you forgot that Scorpion exists.

That just sounds like an alternate version of Siege. Would be more interesting if it was like Tail Tag from Fall Guys (if anyone remembers), where you have a limited number of objects on the map (less than the number of players), and you get points for every second while holding one of the objects, but if you get killed, the object goes to the player that killed you. At the end, the player with most points wins. But this works best as a solo game mode, so it might work for a special event mode. Anyway, devs don't plan to add any more core game modes besides Deliver The Payload (maybe, eventually).

Mans fell into a coma in 2021 and just woke up