Of course, one can half the time for stars with a cash layout for the easy pass. 18USD as I recall. Of course, one can always buy 10 containers for 14USD any day in the shop, less with a bonus card for containers. It seems to me the easy pass is an inefficient excess. Spending so much time for containers seems a bit excessive, too.

Stars, let's be optimistic and assume 2 stars per battle. Five MM battles per hour should be realistic, maybe 4.5 battles per hour average, but 5 is easy. 2 x 5 = 10 per hour, so 10 hours play (at least) for 100 stars, one container. Most players are online less than one hour per day. 100 stars is reasonable from some of those across six days, but many already have classes started. Oddly, I suspect thousands of players will make the list for the paint, many thousands for at least 10 containers. I don't know how they do it. 50 hours in six days is more than most people work in a week, even with overtime.

Just played four rugby battles. All four were spawnkill fests. I happened to be on the winning side once. MM is broke.

Screen capture here: https://ufile.io/bm4s8 I tried the image input, but it didn't load. Anyway, playing as Riconot, Freeze M2.6, Hornet M2.6, in a Red Alert TDM with same ranks, I ended up with 32 kills and the highest score, but my team lost 100 to 69. It was interesting that the winning team had a shaft with almost the same score and the same 32 kills. Thus, legenda_ander had 32% of his team's kills, and I had nearly half of ours. The players all would appear to have been involved for the full battle. (That is good. It also means it was not a factor causing the imbalance in this match.) Here is my dilemma: Despite the difference between a mid-shaft and a light-freeze, we lead our respective teams admirably. However, his team was pretty good. My team was not. Why? How did MM set legenda_ander and Riconot as such equally matched opponents, while so mismatching the rest of the team? Think if I'd been on legenda_andre's team. The battle would have been 100 to 20 and completed before the seven minute mark, maybe worse. If legenda_ander had been on my team, no telling. It might have been close, it might have been a comparable slaughter. My point is the overall team has to well match the opponent team. If that is impossible, MM should be abandoned as it is. Referencing the game of about two years ago, I remember frustrating battles where one team had no hope. Many of those were obvious raids by voice-communicating clans. Regardless, I didn't experience so much frustration back then. Frustration is mostly normal now. Fun, competitive battles that came down to the last second are rare now. Not so under the old system. And the rewards! The last place player received zero crystals. Zero. Why would he stay in the battle? Heck, with zero score and 20 deaths, I wonder that he wasn't actively making himself a target, never firing a shot. Still, 1st of winner got 868 crystals; I, 1st of loser, got 354. With that much discrepancy for equal performances between winning and losing, I wonder at much of the mechanics of this game. Crystal rewards drop fast from first place. No wonder players leave as soon as things look hopeless. MM is broke. The rewards system is not helping.

MM stuck me with my M4 Titan-Twins into blue in an assault battle. It started fine, but then red started coming. I can't guess why red had such dominance. We were all Legends. Blue being spawnkilled in assault, with all Legends, presumably all M3+ equipment. The battle lasted 5.5 minutes only because five to eight of the red team were in the blue base spawnkilling. MM just doesn't work. A losing team has no hope in 90% of cases. Knowing that makes some players bail early, making a comeback impossible. MM is broke. I don't play pro-battles. Please fix the match making system. Please add early-end if players start leaving the battle.

They stopped the kits allowing over-rank for a while. Now, again, kits can give you higher M than your rank. Ricosck (Marshal) was in a DM with ranks from Brigadier to Legend. One of the Generals had a full M4 Thunder-Viking. Kinda surprised me. A General with equipment I'd expect of a Legend. Sure, it didn't matter in that match, but it matters to your proposal. The MM system needs to account rank, experience, equipment, M-level and microupgrades, recent performance of the player, whether the player often leaves early, and several other factors that will matter to team balance. One simply cannot compensate for team members communicating verbally. As has been recently mentioned, friends can group up to four. That is good. I sure enjoy it when I can do it (which is quite seldom). Four friends, verbally communicating in the battle, sharing turret information, target information, tactical information, coordinating runs, it isn't easy, but it is a significant advantage for that team. If two groups of four were trying to coordinate, it seems likely they'd end up in the same battle often, on the same side, often enough to matter. The system cannot account for that. A team of 8 separated individuals counting on in-battle chat simply cannot compete with a team of 8 verbally communicating live. In other words, it is hard. I think the strategy for now has to be shorter battles when they get lopsided and players on the losing side start leaving. Incentives for not leaving would help. Losing is a good teacher (assuming you care about winning). I like the saying, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Right now, there is little incentive to learn. Sure, leaving the battle early forfeits the crystal reward, but rewards on the losing side of a lopsided battle aren't much above zero. It might help if battles required a deposit, of, say, 200 crystals, forfeited for leaving the battle early, but fully refunded at the end of the battle. The forfeited deposits could be split with those who finished on the losing team. (Not overall, but just the losing side, incentivizing them to stay.) I can imagine problems with implementation, still.

Rugby seems particularly prone to imbalance. Sarek_V was dropped into a rugby with about 8 minutes to go. Obviously, players had been leaving it because it was already 3-0. After about 3 minutes of our team mostly being spawnkilled, it ended 7-0 with just over five minutes remaining. Three minutes wasn't that long to suffer, but why didn't the match just end at the 8 minute mark instead of stuffing more players into a hopeless cause?

I appreciate you speaking up for Twins. It is a workhorse. It does require skill to be effective. It can be annoying. I think Freeze is more annoying, but that is the point. (Of course, Isida just stink.) I don't bother with pro maps, even when I have premium. For the problems of MM, pro has more, or at least more problems that I'd rather not deal with. I haven't played Sandal in a very long time. (My current premium is curtesy of a couple of containers from The War.) Re: F2P, it seemed you were implying casual players. I know plenty of nonbuyers who are extremely competitive. They tend to save supplies for the more important battles, or for flag returns. They tend to maximize savings and buy only on sales. My son, Donut70, is one such. For Christmas two, well, probably three, years ago, there was a sale, and he had a double card, and I plunked in $20 for him. I think that was the only buying ever for him. I've spent a little on the game for myself, but Tanki seemed too willing to change everything after I'd worked to get it, and my purse has grown rather tight. Regardless, buying isn't key to being good, skilled, and competitive. Twins on Highways is a poor choice for DM and TDM, but it seems generally effective for the other formats. Fighting with mid (Viking) or heavy (Titan), I have either sufficient speed or durability to hold my own, especially in flags and rugby. Regarding protections, I started playing Tanki early in 2014. I took the last half of 2017 and the first half of 2018 off. All the changes were too annoying, too frustrating. The protection modules changed from sets to three spots while I was gone. Seldom did opponents have Twins protection 18 months ago. Now, I usually see a few opponents with Twins protection. I suspect the old way had twins protection when it was in the set they wanted. Now, obviously they chose Twins over a more dangerous turret. So, at least those players think it is significant. Now, every match is different. I think the delay for changing protections during battle is too long. One can have four Twins on the opposing team and switch to Twins protection, and then three of them switch to Magnum. 13 turrets, three protections. Choices are hard. If we had stats on what models players are equipping, we'd at least know which ones they thought were most significant as they fought them. Maybe the devs can look at stats like that. I know I can't.

Nitpick much? I bought it. The price doesn't show now. I didn't try to check. Most of the alterations are 100k. I guessed. The point stands, I was a twins user with hundreds of hours and loads of crystals invested in it when they took it away and gave me something that caused me to SD on my first three spawns when they changed it and didn't bother sending a note. Not to mention the fact they'd already taken away the rotation in the great leveling. There was a time when discounts were rare. It coincided. Tanki was, purportedly, hurting for funds. No discounts.

As the proud owner of M4 Twins-Titan, I assure you, it is not unstoppable. I often make top three, but almost never first, any map, any format. I have the experience and hours, both with and against. Heavies have significant advantages as the game exists today, but Twins gives the heavies no special advantages, nothing extra.

What sad comments. I suspect only a Shaft user could think that. Are you a hide-and-snipe Shaft user? Never on a winning team, either, are you?

Never seen twins on Highways? Not very observant, IMHO. Your assertions are overly simplistic. Twins users are generally effective in all circumstances, unlike Shaft users. Twins users catch a lot of grief for the "brick will do the trick" notion, which isn't common for experienced Twins users. Blasting away with no hope of landing balls on opponents is tactically counterproductive. I fail to see context for your assertion about F2P. Are you equating F2P to lazy, disinterested? Do you mean, by F2P, players who just don't care, players who aren't competitive, playing only as pastime, perhaps with friends? If a player has no emotional issues about self-destruct, I would recommend the Thunder as the best all around turret, or Ricochet. Both of those turrets reward skill but work well without. The casual player is likely to see less frustration with those two turrets than the others. Isida is also a choice for the casual player, as long as they like short range melee. (But, Isida stink.) Twins by default is a midrange weapon. With the stable plasma alteration, it is shortrange. Twins and light hulls are NOT compatible, not in any circumstance, but I still see it. To close, I don't mean to belittle. In my experience (over 1300 hours total on six specialized accounts), your observations are inaccurate.

I am too aggressive to have the splash. I generally contact opponents. I never pass up an opportunity to pin a tank against an obstacle and see if he or me explodes first. Plus, I had way too much playing time without splash to adapt. It was a bit of an insult that they forced me to save up 100k crystals to get it back to what I originally bought. (I used Vulcan until I could save for the alteration. Overheat, then, was much more manageable than the self-damage of splash.)

First, props. 4.5M experience and 2000 hours in the game lends considerable heft to your opinion. Myself, I'm at about 1300 hours playing on a total of six accounts with different specialties. Yes, the close range weapons need high dps. However, when Freeze can spawnkill a BP/XP before the rail can charge, something isn't balanced (and that is since the renerf of the Freeze). Isida and Firebird are stronger than Freeze. Freeze slows the opponent, which is a significant advantage to a skilled player. Firebird does afterburn, again, a very significant advantage to the skilled player, and Isida, well, it doesn't require any skill at all, does it? Requiring no skill makes it an obvious choice for the low-skill player, in itself a significant advantage. I think it is counter to good play, counter to fun, to have the short range weapons be so strong. They have significant advantages in their effects and parameters. Three protections, up to 50%, are a significant imbalance. 13 turrets, seven of which can fight effectively well beyond the range of the remainder, with only three choices for protection. At the moment, it is nearly impossible to contribute to a battle without Firebird protection. That leaves two. Shaft? Magnum? Smoky? Sure, Smoky is low dps, but a skilled and tactically wise Smoky is always to be feared. In my experience, the ubiquitous turret is Thunder. All battles include Thunder, and not wearing protection against it usually reduces the K/D quickly. My point is, in most battles, only one or two protections can be changed to respond to the current threats in that battle. Further, make a mistake in choice, and well, maybe you can correct it with two minutes left. Restating the obvious, protection modules are part of the problem. Overdrive of all supplies for all hulls is part of the problem, too.

Team balance rarely happens. The two rugby matches I thought were well matched were obviously just a fluke, just a lucky draw. Two team death match with my DH.98 Mosquito (M2.5 Rail/ M1.10 Wasp, 1LT (3-diamonds)), and my team had no chance either round. We spent half the second round being spawnkilled. No balance at all. BTW, I lead my team (finished first place) both rounds. I'm decent with the BP/XP format. 1.88 K/D on an M1 Wasp has to carry some weight. My point is, I can play that tank, and my team seemed decent, but we were totally outmatched. Rank, M-levels, equipment, modules-versus-turrets, whatever it was, it was anything but balanced. Two rugby just before with my M2 smoky-hunter account were as imbalanced as any. One of those, though, it seemed we had players that didn't have a clue, throwing the ball off the edge, and the like. I doubt it was malice, just dumb. With that sort of nonsense, it is hard to expect all matches well balanced, but 80% seem badly unbalanced, no hope for one team within the first 90 seconds. I sincerely suggest ending battles early when players start leaving the losing team.

Another point on Isida, it should never have been allowable in deathmatch. Before Isida selfrepair was eliminated, Isida in DM was absurd. 15 minute DM was common to see isida with 65 K / 4 D, and second place at 28 K / 20 D. It was absurd! It still is, and my point: Isida has always been counter to good play in DM. Isida, let it be the healer, or get rid of it entirely. Never let it in deathmatch. I say get rid of it. On offense, it is mostly an easy-to-use combination of Firebird and Freeze. At least Firebird and Freeze require a little skill.

Average time? What does that mean now? It obviously doesn't mean arithmatic mean, median, nor mode. It seems to be a rough guess, maybe based on total number of players at the time. Regardless, actual queue time tends to be between two and four times as long.

This topic includes balance, right? Fire, Isida, and Freeze are too strong. Each can kill a spawning opponent as easily as a fully charged shaft shot, probably easier. In DM, one of these turrest is always first. These three usually take the top three or four spots, even in sniper maps. (Magnum might win in a sniper map, assuming a skilled and tactically proficent player.) Balance in DM indicates Isida and Magnum should not be equipable in DM. Both turrets are supposed to be support turrets. Both are supposed to be team weapons. Leave them out of DM. DM missions can be completed with the player's garage. As to Fire, yes, it is strongest. It is tops when used by a tactically proficient player who understands the burn mechanic. With 50% protection and wise use of supplies, Firebird is fightable, especially considering the fuel tank. Freeze is still a little too strong, but a player who understands the freezing mechanic and proficiently takes full advantage of it is unstoppable; even against 50% protection Freeze can be counted on to win a one-on-one. Isida is a different story. It is just too easy to use. People whine about Twins, but isida is practically impossible to disengage. No turret compares to isida in ease of use. It is the choice for novice and coward alike, especially at the low and mid ranks. Isida stink.

Some additional playing, and yes, freeze is still rather OP. Isida is even more so, plus, Isida stink. Fire, Isida, and Freeze are too strong (in that order). They can equivelant one-shot spawning players. That is counter to good play. Isida should not be equipable in deathmatch mode. Magnum should not be equibable in deathmatch mode. Please fix burn problem with Vulcan. Vulcan Tip = Be very aggressive with the short range turrets when starting to overheat. Just as many deaths, but less self-destructs.

Pain, yes.

MM is still giving me mostly badly balanced teams, but I just played two Rugby matches and both were competitive. The teams were nearly balanced. The team I happened to be on was dominant in both, but it was close enough I think I would not have been frustrated on the losing team. They played well, too. The matches were competitive. If you have fixed something, it may be working, improvement in the right direction. Sadly, I fear it is simply dumb luck. I just wanted to give credit if it is in line with your recent efforts toward improving balance. Overall, MM still needs a lot of work, and it needs options to limit some of the myriad parameters.

I like aggressive close combat. In a match, I want to make you hate me even if I don't kill you. I figured that out early on, and found the twins suited my style and proclivity. I've been playing since the beginning of 2014. I took last year off because the changes got too frustrating. I'm back, and the twins is not as effective as I remember it. I suspect I lost some skill. I'm getting it back, but I've used the twins for over 500 hours of combat. It is in the middle of turrets. It is NOT over powered. If you think it is, you probably just suffer from some of the frustration I (and other twins users) intend. The twins is the persistent pummeler. Stay clear, or kill it. If you recall the great leveling of several months ago, where all the parms of everything were made much more alike, you might know what I mean when I say the Twins-Viking was a fearsome combination. I was only averaging a 1.7 K/D even then, but I could count on jumping three, sometimes four, opponents (when I had full supplies and an available repair kit) and driving off. The turning and reversing of the hull and turret both were so responsive that I was able to build my skills to the point of being able to keep all of them off me long enough to win. It isn't possible anymore. Now, twins is just the pummeler. Twins does well if it can keep balls on a target. Twins used to have significantly more impact. Twins used to have enough recoil to control ones jumps and falls. Not any more. What makes you think twins is OP when it has been so long since it was improved while multiple other turrets have had improvements? Twins is fine the way it is (well, with the expensive alteration they forced me to buy). I have been seeing more twins lately. I don't know why. Some say because it is simple. I doubt it. I suspect it is because recent beefs of the short range turrets have caused frustration, and people fall back to their next best option. Vulcan overheat problem is probably a factor. Vulcan is somewhat of a cross between twins and shaft, a slow motion shaft, and a weapon that requires constant tracking of opponents like twins. Vulcan players have likely shifted to their next best turret, and that might be twins. Twins protection used to be very uncommon. Now, it is somewhat common. Further, I have five alt accounts. Rico-dic, smoky-hunter, freeze-hornet, rail-wasp, and Vulcan-Viking. Ricosck is practically M4 now, but the others are low, M1s and M2s. I have a good feel across a broad background. I stand by the assessment I gave. Twins is in the middle, not OP. Vulcan really sucks, and I wouldn't play it, but the V-V was a dedicated account made when Vulcan was first introduced. It has no options. To keep the chain up, I play it. It dies a lot now. Loss of gyro made it much less effective (and more frustrating). Overheat results in poor K/D. (The Mosquito dies a lot too, not being able to protect against most turrets, but the rail is still quite effective. Some matches, it does quite well; others are rather embarrassing.) As to freeze, it was dominant with the beef. With the nerf, it is not dominant, but quite effective. It dies a lot too, but kills so much one hardly notices. Skill with freeze and fire make them exceptionally hard to deal with while they are so strong. Opponents beware. To close on a positive note, isida stink! Fair enough.

No, striker is just fine.

Freeze protection is a problem. A freeze with any experience just takes longer to kill you if you have 50% protection. I can never justify dropping a more effective protection to make the freeze take longer to kill me. (Well, if it is a close battle (which never happens) and the opponent team has more than two freezes, then it might be worth it.) Rail is still quite effective (and protection module is indispensable against expert rail gunners). Striker has the advantage of being hard to use, so unpopular. Most players don't equip Striker protection. Many have never bought it for their garage. Finally, CTF is not the place for snipers, and it is especially ill-suited for defense. CTF = Attack Or Lose You may be useful if you are good at what you describe, but if all players take such an attitude in CTF, you always lose.

Suggestions for changing twins are silly. Twins is very much the middle turret. I don't know why Twins use seems to be up, but it does, two or more twins in every battle now, sometimes 3 or 4 per side. I don't understand it. It just isn't that good. I use it because it suites my preference for close-in aggressive combat. Vulcan, however, is sad. It lost its uniqueness when you took away the gyro. (What is left is meaningless. A ricochet can knock off its aim.) Vulcan is absolutely the weakest turret, and now with the overheat problem, it is counterproductive to play with. If it is well supported, it can get adaquate kill ratio, but in DM it is useless. I use M1 Vulcan on secondary account. It is good when playing against only M1 equipment, but it still needs support, and I self-destruct from overheat about once each three minutes of play, whereas I used to self-destruct from overheat about once per 12 matches. With my M3.17 Vulcan on a full M3+ Titan, it is hardly supportive of teamplay. I have to be too careful of the overheat, and the damage-per-second is just too low. It plays like a weak, slow-motion Shaft. Anyone with even a few percent protection against it can pay it little heed. Vulcan primarily needs the overheat change fixed. It also needs the damage-per-second increased. It is simply too weak. It is a ridiculous waste of crystals now, a theft on your part, as I see it at the moment.