You should easily be able to have an M4 combination by legend along with at least three 40% or higher protection modules. A drone as well, although granted tanki likes to starve players of batteries. As long as you don't pay full price for anything, including upgrades, which is not hard to do since Tanki has sales basically every month for sure, you should easily be able to have M4's by L1. Probably not long after marshal actually. If the game has moved along and you have not, you only have yourself to blame.

...I have also been playing for about 5 years (check my forum profile creation date) yet you only have about 500 hours on record and your rank barely reaches the m3 playing fields. Once you reach the rank of legend, which is where about half if not more of the tanki community is at, there is no more "P2W" since everyone now has M3+ or M4's. That's the highest modification, so now everyone is at an equal level of playing. The only perks buyers have a this point is XT's and cool paints, which give you no actual advantage in battle. Yes, buyers have a big advantage over non buyers in the lower ranks, but you shouldn't be spending 5 years in those ranks either... Besides, no one would buy if they didn't receive an advantage for it. Unless your hiding an alt account that's at the rank of legend, that you also didn't frivolously waste away crystals on meaning you actually have M4 gear and decent protection modules on, you should know this and my arguments are valid. As far as how much the active player count has dropped, that's because Tanki was marketed to a certain generation of players 5-10 years ago and now they have all grown up and moved along from this game. The issue is tanki is not marketing itself to the younger generations which have more free time to play a game like tanki.

Vulcan just needs to be reworked. Instead of just giving it a minor buff every balance update, completely rework the turret. - the turret right now has way more cons than pros - damage should not decrease over distance - either remove the ability for vulcan to go overtime or remove the damage penalty for going overtime. this is the most unattractive thing about vulcan. their is already a penalty for going overtime and thats the overheating effect. the damage decrease was not necessary. - bring back the gyroscope thingy. why was it even removed in the first place? Dictators overdrive was purely supportive and it was effective that way. I bought dictator because I love playing support. but now you have decreased its effective range significantly and added this awkward and out of place defensive attribute instead, freezing enemy's around you. This wasn't a buff to dictator, just some awkward mix of support/defense that will easily be negated by other hulls overdrives.

ive been having an issue where if you have more than one mission completed, and claim them both at the same time, for your weekly missions it only counts 1 of them. I have to enter a battle or restart game every time i want to claim a daily mission reward.

does anyone else remember, although this was awhile ago now, they tested this thing where if you bought it, you would have unlimited supplies for however long the duration was. similar to a pro battle pass. I kinda liked that concept.

have the devs forgotten that other hulls exist besides viking and hornet?

It addressed all your points. Please reread.

I already know a nerf is incoming, thanks to the not so great timing of cosmonaut event and the release of overdrives, consequently making mammoths overdrive looking more OP than what it really is, im just hoping the nerf isn't too terrible and they just make its overdrive able to be cancelled by hunters overdrive or something, or make the cooldown in between uses just slightly longer Firebird, Freeze, and Striker all got at least a good month of being OP before being nerfed, which is all i ask for for mammoth

omg everyone is absolutely shredding apart mammoth in this forum, look, think about how underrated and underpowered mammoth has always been in tanki... finally...finally after like literally 10 years of being either overshadowed by titan or getting the short end of the stick by hull balance updates, its finally been brought back to life thanks to overdrives. as a mammoth main, I just hope developers take their time before they nerf it, since the community is absolutely demanding it right now. Just give me like a solid month or two to actually know what its like to be genuinely feared.

omg everyone is absolutely shredding apart mammoth in this forum, look, think about how underrated and underpowered mammoth has always been in tanki... finally...finally after like literally 10 years of being either overshadowed by titan or getting the short end of the stick by hull balance updates, its finally been brought back to life thanks to overdrives. as a mammoth main, I just hope developers take their time before they nerf it, since the community is absolutely demanding it right now. Just give me like a solid month or two to actually know what its like to be genuinely feared.

Im actually glad were mostly on the same page, you don't instantly judge based on a players respective build, even I am somewhat guilty of that, and we seem to come from a common background of using underrated combinations. granted popularity maybe a sign of how significantly more useful the item is, but its can also be interpreted as to how easy something is to be successful with, my point being how noob and cancerous the turret is, especially when they flood every battle and make up like 50% of the players in battle. Im looking at thunder, firebird, and railgun occasionally, for the most part. I still stand with my original statement. you would still target the nanobot isida because you know its gotta go first before you can take out anyone else. and not at all because of how much damage it does, proving my point that damage is not always top priority.

let the light of my text of truth blind the nonbelievers

"""dAMaGE iS EveRYtHInG""" oh my god, just read my above post im not gonna explain myself again

im just going to assume that by "stock vulcan" your referring to vulcan with no alterations. I do have vulcan with speed regulator on alt accounts (why would you even bring up the fact I dont own a vulcan on this account when you dont have it either???) and I have played around with incinerator bands on test servers. stop equating popularity to subjective usefulness. Yes, many vulcan users use incinary bands, but they mount it on a heavy hull with high firebird protection and sit somewhere open in the map and just set everyone on fire. Although it is rather fun, and a popular strategy with vulcan, Its not always because its good, but because thats easy to do, and rather nubby. using shooting regulators on a MEDIUM HULL (Wow! now your argument of "players will just hide" is invalid because i can chase them!!!) and now I can use others protections besides firebird if necessary, because there is no reason to go overtime, which means I have a higher chance of surviving one on one confrontations. also, you can take advantage of the fact that nobody uses vulcan protection anymore in MM because firebird protection is the new vulcan protection thanks too incendiary rounds alt. If you're SO concerned about "muh 20% damage gone" look at it this way, all of your enemy's are now wearing 20% vulcan protection. thats really not that bad right? considering firebird users have to go up against everyone using 35%+ protection against them. also, get through your thick skull that initial damage is not everything. If it was, why are you even using vulcan? go use smoky with autocannon, or uranium striker. Look at nanobots for isida. thats -50% damage, yet you would target that player first on the other team if you could, right? stop belittling other peoples builds because they arnt popular or dont do the most damage per second. on my alt acc with SSR on my hunter and the right protections, easy first place in MM. Yes, it is a rather expensive build, and yes, I have not seen others take advantage of it, but no, that does mean its invalid or your better off using standard vulcan.

...yes it is. see, i can also quote people out of nowhere and state random opinions that stand alone with nothing to back them up

you dont go overtime, you gain an extra 50% more time too shoot lol that makes up for the minor 20% damage loss

and they are, vulcan too. vulcan with shooting speed regulator pairs beautifully on medium/light hulls.

why do the devs have a really weird obsession with trying to force players to use vulcan on medium/light hulls?

using shaft I knocked off a teammates railgun aim while he was in the middle of charging up the shot, to shoot 4 players dead, including the one with the flag. Idk what he was originally aiming at. He was mad at me later but i was like uhh i gave you 4 kills buddy lol

God I cant wait until all the "Muh Nostalgia" players finally just leave for fortnite or whatever the normie game is. This game really needs fresh new community members that arn't biased because "2015 wAs WheN TaNkI pEAkeD"

your main problem right now, is actually one I also have. your 2 best turrets are rico and twins. neither of those are particularly good in MM at the moment, and are rather situational. (especially without alterations) like others suggested, play non drug pro battles to farm some crystals, and invest in a new turret. freeze and firebird are pretty good right now, striker is ok also, but you basically need uranium, since its still op even after they nerfed it twice. also striker takes a while to get used too. smoky is also extremely underrated, and no one bothers with buying decent protection against it. honestly you can do well in MM without drones, and in the situation you're currently in I wouldnt bother with drones until you have a nice combination you feel comfortable with and know what drone you want that would compliment that combination well. (examples, shaft and mammoth with camper drone, any turret with wasp and life saver)

when the overdrive update comes out, dictator will have one of the more "least situational" overdrive, meaning its hard to use it at a bad time, which is nice. Dictator will also become in important hull to have in any team based formatted game modes, which is all of them except death match and juggernaut lol

I doubt the game will actually completely die out like you guys keep suggesting. Theirs always a group of players who will play the game consistently, no matter what updates the developers throw at the game. These players, are just, simply addicted. They are the bedrock player group and as long as their are enough of them the game can survive. A lot of games have already reached this point, examples; Realm of the Mad God, Town of Salem. (both are also mmo's) Often, these games make a massive comeback if they can stick around for long enough. look at runescape, and minecraft. (minecraft though is on a much more massive scale) both of these games share a similar history. Popular at first, started to lose player base for whatever reasons, became a joke, nobody took those games seriously, then, suddenly, they become cool again. a lot of the times it has to do with nostalgia, but if it works, what so wrong about that?

I kind of understand why some players enjoyed the game before all the recent updates, but why are they so persistent in bringing back the "2011 tanki experience"? They comment on every single media platform that Tanki has a page on and relentlessly comment stuff like this... Why is it so hard for them to move on? Was the old tanki really so much fun thats it's worth constantly commenting on every single vlog and every single facebook post in an attempt (and very unlikely) to bring back this "Old Tanki"?

I understand why everyone uses viking. but with your logic however (which i dont disagree with) their should be about an even balance between people who use hunter and people who use viking, but this is not the case, they dont care what turret they are using, they mount it on a viking.