Here's an idea: Let people choose whether to use MatchMaker or not. Just set up a selection button at login with "Use MatchMaker" or "Don't use MatchMaker". Then let people choose. If MatchMaker is really an improvement, people will choose to use it. If not, they won't. I don't expect Tanki to actually do this because whoever is making the decisions apparently cannot conceive of the fact they might be wrong - that they are actually ruining the game - not making it better. Here are some problems I've found with MatchMaker so far: Of course the #1 problem is you can't choose your maps anymore. I cannot conceive of any reason why they did it. I think it's the single worst change Tanki has ever made. Even if you had MatchMaker selecting the teams, players could still select their maps. Next is that MatchMaker does a horrible job of picking "balanced" teams. I have noticed ZERO improvement in team balance since MatchMaker. I just left a game where there were only three players on the team - the other team was full. If MatchMaker was supposed to bring balance - it's a complete failure. Code instability: We've all noticed the great number of server restarts recently. Untested software will do that. If you're going to hurt your players, Tanki, choosing to give them untested software is a great way to do it. Code Instability - on the client. I've noticed a marked increase in the number of plug-in failures (two so far today) and even system crashes since the update. My system NEVER crashes - except when running Tanki. The plugin failures have gone from "rare" to a little over once per session. What did you DO, Tanki? Waiting. Nobody wants to wait. I don't know if getting into battles faster was a design goal of the MatchMaker system, but if it was, it is a colossal failure. I recently waited OVER SIX MINUTES for a game to start. Then it started to load and kicked me out (apparently because the battle was over). Please, Tanki, explain to all of us how waiting is a good thing. No serial battles: Sometimes you get into a really GOOD battle. A close game. Lots of wild plays with creative players. Whether you win or lose such a game, it leaves you with a hunger for MORE. Under the old system, such matchups might result in 2, 3, 4 or even 5 really GREAT games in a row. But not anymore. With MatchMaker, the really great games stop at 1. After that, the players are scattered about without any thought or plan. You can't even learn the tendencies of players on a team because of this crap, so every game is the same boring soup with random bits of fecal matter thrown in to make it - stink. Along with MatchMaker, Tanki has revised the scoring process. This is a step in the right direction and something I've been advocating for over a year. But the scoring isn't part of MatchMaker and could have been done without MatchMaker. I suppose it's a bit like chocolate syrup on a dog turd - it's supposed to make you like the taste - but it doesn't work. And that's the final note on MatchMaker - It doesn't work. It's an odious piece of garbage that should never have been introduced. But at the least, Tanki should give people a chance to play without it.

So in other words, to use drones costs 300 crystals per minute and for that you get different stuff... Like overdrive when you spend 150 crystals on health? Or for the assault drone - 150 worth of drugs when you spawn? In other words, you lose 150 crystals unless you die within 1 minute, but if you do, then you break even - assuming you wanted all those drugs immediately upon spawning. I don't see these drones being all that useful. They're too expensive for what they do. Mostly, they just complicate and clutter the game. I give them a big "meh"! If you want to improve the game - get rid of MatchMaker. MatchMaker SUCKS!

Nice parallel. Apparently, Tanki is inspired by Apparatchniks of the old Soviet Regime who would tell you what to like and expect you to comply. You WILL like the changes we are making!!

I wish I could say I expected better from Tanki. I can't. I don't know why Tanki can't get its act together and do what every other company in the world does: Market research. Actually ASK the players what they want to see. Then do THAT instead of pasting together shreds of excrement-befouled strips of code and declaring the resulting mess a "good" thing. Is everyone enjoying not being able to pick what battle/map you play on? Or maybe the thing you really like about the update is the way you get to wait between games? E V E R Y Game? In the few battles I've been in since MM, I've noticed they end the same way - one team gets ahead by a little bit, the other team loses a couple players and it's GAME OVER. Until Tanki starts rewarding people who hang in the game on a losing team until the bitter end, and punishing those who leave early, the problem will persist. Remind me again how this is supposed to make Tanki better? Because from where I'm sitting, if it continues it is reason enough to quit tanki. I know more than half dozen players who have not signed back in since the last time this insanity was attempted. Tanki - pull your head out.

Tanki should revise the scoring in games to match reality. Currently, CTF games go to 10, and TDM and CP games go to 100. But because of the way Tanki just allows players to leave games without penalty, in the vast majority of the games, the team with the greater number of players wins. This means that players often have to fight for longer periods of time against hopeless odds only to lose anyway. In recognition of this fact, I propose that victory conditions be changed in the following ways: 1) CTF games should end any time one team has 2 flags more than the other. 2) TDM games should end whenever one team has 5 kills more than the other. 3) CP games should end whenever one team has 6 captures more than the other. 4) ASL and RGB games should end as soon as one team scores. 5) ALL games should end immediately when one team has an advantage in number of players exceeding 12%. So a match with 10 v 9 would end the instant a player drops from the weaker team (10 v. 8) This would also mean that in any game with fewer than 8 players per game, the game would end instantly when one team has 1 player more than the other. At first this might seem inconvenient - because no game could increase beyond a single player (1-0 is an overwhelming advantage) but as players begin to understand the fact that Tanki is no longer about skill, or equipment, or strategy or tactics, or even how much money you spend buying stuff, but is purely about HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU HAVE ON YOUR TEAM, they will come to understand that this is a big time saver. As soon as you start a game - you win. No need to wait for two other people to join and be down by 50%, or build up teams of 10 v 10, only to fall behind by a point and have others defect from the team making it so weak there's no way to win. Just - start a game - you win! If people miss the explosions and sound effects and paints and stuff, you could have a 2-second show at the end of each game before starting the next game. In fact, you could make everyone a winner the instant they start a game. And isn't that what people really want, to be winners? I mean, if they wanted competition they wouldn't be playing Tanki anymore, would they? I'm sure all veteran players will recognize that this is the logical extension of Tanki's policy to encourage people to leave games as soon as they think their team is losing, which betrays the rest of their team. But mostly, it will save lots of time.

Except with just two players, it's MUCH longer between gold drops. So, 20 guys playing ina a game, maybe 20 golds drop. 2 guys playing? You get maybe 1. The reason it's even less in a 2 player game is because when you destroy the other tank, he's reconstituted far from you. All that time is wasted. The only way it comes close is if one guy lets himself get shot all the time. But even at that, there's no target until he comes back. Two-player like that is just a waste of time.

no MUs? :angry:

Be nice if the counters updated at the end of each battle. And why the HELL doesn't Tanki just display the number of kills instead of that "<400" B.S.?

The whole idea of having to go to the "garage" to change equipment is an outmoded leftover from ancient times. Should be a drop down box that you click, drag, done! Players should be able to configure various tanks - hull, turret, paint, protection - and name them. Then just select one. But Tanki is too busy changing things that don't need changing - so this will never happen. Is this a change that anyone actually ASKED for? Or is it just another one of those "we got drunk and thought it would be funny to screw things up" changes Tanki so often makes? If devs had any consideration for players - or brains - they'd let users select the interface they want instead of just arbitrarily changing things around. Someone should go out to all the dev's cars, rip out the steering wheels and put them on the other side of the car - just so they know how it feels.

This appears to be a conflict with the prior information. Just to make sure I understand correctly: If I have two containers that have 3 days of premium each, and I open all containers, I get SIX days of premium. Is that correct? Can I get someone from Tanki to VERIFY this? The alternative - you open all containers and get just THREE days, would be a complete rip-off, but it wouldn't be the first time! And why doesn't Tanki have some sort of indicator of how many days (hours? minutes?) of premium remain?

Frankly, almost everything of value in the world was created by men. To celebrate women but not men is like celebrating a kitchen match - but not the sun. If celebrations were proportional to accomplishments, women's "day" would be followed by men's MILLENNIUM! So, I repeat the question: WHEN IS THE MEN'S DAY HOLIDAY?

That strikes me as incredibly stupid. It means that if you have premium, and you get a container (any container) you shouldn't open it until premium has expired. Say, for example, in the 56 "War" containers, you got five 3-day premiums. If you "open all containers", you only get ONE 3-day premium. You are actually cheated out of 12 days of premium! It's like finding out that 4 of your containers are EMPTY! Since there's 2500 crystals per day and 10 of each supply (except green box - 3) per premium day, that works out to be a LOSS of 57,600 crystals worth of supplies and crystals! What a rip off!

WHEN IS THE MEN'S DAY HOLIDAY?

There is no logical, rational, technical reason that Tanki cannot update the counters as soon as someone exits a battle. But Tanki does it Tanki's way, so that's why the code is never tested, there are always bugs and the solutions are always substandard. With regard to containers, I note that "3 Days of Premium" is an option. I'd like to know - if one select "open all containers" and there are multiple "3 Days of Premium" (for example 4 of them), does the player get 12 days of premium? Or just 3? (Do they run consecutively? Or concurrently?)

HILARIOUS! Tanki has a long history of cranking out crap that doesn't work and never testing anything. "WAR" is no different. For their next event, I'll be giving odds and taking bets on whether they release bug-ridden code. The starting line is 100 to 1 that they will! The unfortunate thing is that whatever time it would have taken them to do it RIGHT, multiply that by tens of thousands for the number of hours of player time they waste!

Why tell him to "calm down"? His English isn't perfect, but his reasoning is.

What you're describing is a case where you've already made an investment in a game before it became a losing game. But unless you thought you could win, you would already have left the game. Cases where winning teams get beat in the last couple minutes are relatively rare. They really only happen when the game has been close throughout, or where there's a substantial change in the number of players on one of the teams. The GENERAL case is that a team that is ahead after the first two minutes will continue to extend its lead. That's why I leave games where the other team is 2 flags ahead, or 10 points in CP after the first two minutes. Tanki has made this the best approach to getting the greatest reward. Of course, if my team is behind by 2 flags, and I leave, odds are they will lose even faster. Not only are they behind (so no one will join), but they're also at a numerical disadvantage. Sucks to be them.

The latest Tanki stupidity? The "finish in the top three on the winning team" mission. Stupid. Stupid! STUPID! Here's why: There's already a huge bias against joining a team that's behind. You get fewer crystals on a losing team. Your progress on crystal missions is slower. It's more FUN to be on the winning team. Even if you join a losing team, you can count on other people leaving. You'll almost always be at a numerical disadvantage, which for team battles, completely swamps out any advantage in ability or equipment. I talked about all that above - but if you're not on a winning team, you cannot even make any progress towards a "top 3 winning team" mission. It's worse than the crystal missions. So once again, I urge anyone with a mission - never, ever, EVER join a losing team. It's just not worth it. Of course, the games will get shorter and shorter and less and less fun and Tanki will start losing players and revenue - but that's okay, because it's the only time Tanki ever listens to anyone. When the average CTF game ends after the first flag, when the average TDM game ends when one team goes ahead by 3 kills - maybe Tanki will wise up. When the clock never gets past 13 minutes on its way down from 15, and most of the server overhead is spend checking people into and out of games - MAYBE they'll get a clue. But I doubt it.

I've suggested that before. But in Tanki's mind-numbing indifference to things players actually find useful, I've received no reply.

The reason you're finding the missions so difficult is probably a combination of things: You may be at a "break point" in the rank window for games. That is, if you can't find any games where your rank is near the "top", then basically everyone you play against has better equipment. Not only does this make missions more difficult, it makes advancing more difficult too. I moved to Marshal not long ago. Since then, I have NEVER seen a game where the top rank is "Marshal". The vast majority of games have "Legend" as the top rank - which is 4-ranks ahead of me. You probably have the same problem - you're not playing against other WO-1s. Tanki may be jamming you in with 1Lts and Captains who FAR outclass you in equipment. There are too many players in the game. Ever since Tanki's ungodly stupid creation of the "unified battle list", every battle has been crammed with people. So if you have a mission to pick up 5 DD boxes, instead of competing against 4-5 players per team (8-10 total), you're now competing against 19-20... or more. If there are only 3-4 sites for DD boxes, you're practically guaranteed that someone else will be closer to the drop site. You lose. In the same way, all of the missions are more difficult because Tanki has taken the skill out of the game and replaced it with "how fast can you shoot"? Even the repair boxes were screwed up - now a HUGE advantage is with turrets that fire continuously or rapidly because they interrupt the repair cycle. So if you're using thunder, magnum, striker, rail, etc. - you're screwed. I don't know if Tanki gave any thought at all to that, but it sort of makes a joke of the whole idea of "rebalancing". It's like throwing a 1000-kilo weight on a gram scale. Your choice in maps is limited. Some maps are better for certain types of missions than others. But Tanki has basically taken away your choice. By cramming so many people into so few maps, finding an open map can be like playing whack-a-mole. Worse, the only open games may be ones that don't match well with your missions. Those are just some of the reasons that come easily to mind. There are probably others, based on what equipment you use and which games you join. But the bottom line is that Tanki has really taken the skill and fun out of the game to a large extent - replacing strategy and planning with a brick on the space bar and a cesspool full of scrambling tankers. It really is getting worse on an on-going basis.

Speed Boxes. 5 gold boxes (which I dropped all at the same time in a single game). Nothing useful. (I already had 8000+ speed boxes).

The crystal missions are accelerating the death of Tanki. Here's why: When trying to complete a crystal mission, the crystal reward depends mostly on whether your team wins or loses. Therefore, the MOST important thing when trying to complete a crystal mission is to be on the winning team. Rewards for players on winning teams can easily exceed five times what players on losing teams get. As players join winning teams, or abandon losing teams, the losing team is at an ever greater numerical disadvantage, which accelerates the speed at which they lose, prompting even players who are not pursuing crystal missions to abandon the "blowout". This results in much shorter games - and much more time spent "shopping" for winning games. Unfortunately, Tanki has structured the game to make this worthwhile. Why would anyone play an HOUR in losing games when they can get a greater reward for 5 minutes of scouting for a winning game plus 15 minutes of play? Of course, LOOKING for a winning game isn't fun - so players enjoy the game less, and eventually lose interest. And being on the wrong end of a blowout isn't any fun either - but Tanki is promoting this imbalance. I challenge the Tanki devs to actually track game trends and publish the number of non-pro games that end after each minute of duration together with the score and the number of players on each team. Teams with numerical advantages have huge tactical advantage. Even a 4v5 or 8 v 10 team is operating at a 25% disadvantage. I suspect that the overwhelming trend will be for games to end in a shorter period of time with increasingly disparate team strength and scores... that is - Tanki's poor structuring of rewards is contributing to an increase in blowout games... and crystal missions are just the latest element that accelerates this trend.

Tanki has decided to cater to the worst players on line. The revamping of the maps had a common theme - make room for more tanks, make traversing a map easier, make the game less challenging - turn it into a "game" where all you do is shoot as fast as you can and strategy, tactics, skill mean little to nothing. It's approaching the point where flipping a coin might be of comparable entertainment value because with so much ordnance flying around in random directions, it's just a game of chance. We saw that begin when repair boxes were nerfed by allowing isida, firebird, freeze, twins and vulcan to effectively eliminate the repair effect, when so many turrets were nerfed, when the "unified battle list" started cramming everyone into the smallest possible number of maps. You can't concentrate on a single opponent anymore. There is no planning. All you can do is shoot at the avalanche of noobs washing over the battlefield and hope you kill something before you get killed. Tanki is collapsing under a whole host of poor decisions. The fact that you basically can't play a team battle without getting cheated is just an indicator of a deeper problem.

What sucks most about Tanki today? I think it's that everything encourages players joining a game to join the winning side - or, if they're on a losing team, to abandon the game. The reason is that a difference in player count is HUGE. It's bigger than any difference between turrets! If two teams have 10 players, and one leaves, that's an 11% advantage to the bigger team. If one team has 5 and the other 4, that's 25%!! So why do players join winning teams, and why do they skip out the second their team falls behind? 1) The crystal award to the winning team is MUCH greater than to the losing team. I just played a game where I was on the losing team. I had the same score as someone on the winning team - but they got nearly 4 TIMES as many crystals. That's right - my play was on par with one of their better players, but I got less than their worst player. How is that fair? So I've learned. If my team is losing - get out of the game and go join a winning team. The problem with that is that then the team I've left is even weaker and it loses even more and more people leave - and that's it. Of course, it's not MY problem anymore. It's the problem of the suckers (one of which used to be me) who stick around and try to fight while waiting for reinforcements... that never come. I see games that are over in the first 2 minutes. They happen when one team starts out with a numerical advantage. Suppose 3 players are on one side and 4 on the other. That's a 33% advantage! As soon as it becomes clear that no one is going to immediately join the weaker team, someone leaves - and then the stronger team has a 100% advantage. My game-theory advice to you is this: If you find yourself in that situation - leave immediately! Of course, that's no fun for the people leaving. And it's really no fun for the "winning" team. Most people don't want to play games that last less than 3 minutes. But Tanki hasn't shown any interest in making Tanki more fun. I guess they're just trying to drive players away. Of course, people might not be fixated on crystals (yeah, right), but even if they weren't before, they are now because Tanki made the game worse by adding... 2) Crystal Missions. This is almost as stupid as changing Isida's healing characteristics, the "unified battle list", cramming all available players into the least possible number of games, the recent map alterations (okay, one or maybe two aren't horrible), eliminating "pro" missions. Did I say "almost"? Actually, it could be worse than most of those. Why? Because the main SKILL that completing crystal missions relies upon is - JOINING WINNING TEAMS. That's right, people. You can be the best player in Tanki, but if you wind up on losing teams, even if you outscore everyone else in the game, your crystal reward will SUCK and you will have to play more games to complete it than the very mediocre player on the winning team who had less than half your score. Of course, if you're a crappy player, you should immediately join the winning team. That way, you can get a bigger reward for jumping on the bandwagon than playing well. Eventually, this will kill Tanki because it will all become about initial impression. (Well, not all by itself - but in conjunction with other Tanki dumbness.) Will Tanki fix this problem? Don't hold your breath. In the meantime, try really hard to join ONLY winning teams, and immediately leave any team that looks like it's going to lose. That way you will maximize your crystals per game and help ruin Tanki... as the developers apparently intended. At this point, until the Tanki devs do something to give me a REASON to join a losing team, I vow never To join a team that is behind, and has a numerical disadvantage, and, To leave any game where my team does not have a numerical advantage and is behind by 20% in the first 8 minutes. How is this working? In the past 5 minutes, I've left three games. In each case, the team I left was down by at least two players after I left. That means that, in addition to a higher score, the other team ALSO had a 25% advantage in the number of players. I'm sure the losing teams got slaughtered. Good job, Tanki! Update: Just observed that the team that was down THREE players with 10 minutes to go lost CTF 10-0. Predictable. Update: Just left 4 more games. All teams I left: 1) Got no replacement players, and 2) Lost. Again, predictable. Update: Yep! That's the way to rack up the crystals. Just finished a game where the highest score on the other side was higher than mine - but I got more than three times as many crystals as he did! Until Tanki fixes this, beating up the losing teams is the best way to rack up crystals. Every team I've left has lost. Every team that was ahead when I joined has won. Every team that had a numerical majority and an even game won. In more than half of the games after I left, other people did too. In a couple games, people on the losing team left before I did, as soon as that happened, the team fell behind. Once the deficit was 20%, I left. And the team lost. So remember, if your team is losing - quit. If your team doesn't have as many players, unless you're ahead with a short time to go, or WAY ahead - quit. If you see a team that's ahead, but is one player short - join that team. If you see a team that's ahead but has the same number of players as the other team - join that team. Forget sportsmanship. Forget helping the weaker players. Tanki doesn't want competitive games. Tanki wants to reward people who can figure out which teams will win - and join them. So if you want crystals - that's how you get them. Remember, the GAME is NOT about fighting other tanks. The GAME is about figuring out which team will win - and getting on that team!

Better yet, just get rid of the rather stupid practice of NAMING mostly random collections of protection modules and just let users "roll their own". QUIZ Quick, what does a Kodiak TK protect against? Don't remember? Don't want to sift through a long list of irrelevant names to find out? How about if I told you it was an FR-ST-MA module? Could you guess FReeze-STriker-MAgnum? Of course, this can be improved upon by always listing the turrets in alphabetical order, so really a FR-MA-ST module. Okay, let's try again. How about a Grizzly TC Module? Got it? No? Still looking? How about if you knew it as: HA-IS-VU? Come on now. That's right. Nothing to look up. No list to sort through. It's... you've got it... HAmmer-ISida-VUlcan. Easy, right? MUCH easier than the naming baloney. Suddenly you're an EXPERT on protection modules! So okay, let's try it the other way. Which module protects against Smoky, Twins and Shaft? If you said "Shark TD"... well, you're wrong. It's Ursa TA, which would be SH-SM-TW. But you wouldn't know an Ursa from a Shark without sifting through the long list of named modules. One more chance: What's the module name for Magnum, Ricochet and Striker? I'll wait while you go find it. Still looking? No, not the MA-RI-ST module. That's too EASY! The old stupid name BEFORE Tanki got smart and adopted a rational system. Come on now, it's been 10 minutes and you STILL haven't found it? TRICK QUESTION! THERE IS NO SUCH THING. See, when you have 13 different turrets, and up to 3 protections per module, that's 13*13*13 combinations which works out to be more than 2000 combinations!! Even TANKI isn't stupid enough to try to name THAT many modules (but they did give nonsense names to about 100 modules). So why not just let players build their OWN combinations and get rid of all the naming crap? Let users buy any 1, 2, or 3 protection module for the current rate. Add in 4 and 5 protection modules for suitable prices (say 750,000 / 1.5 million). Heck, you could even have 13-protection modules for around eleventy-bajillion crystals. But that's another discussion. How about it Tanki? You ready to get smart on protection modules?