Why should anyone listen to you... Lieutenant? You probably don't even have two weeks in the game.

No, the "biggest mistake ever" was making pro battles non-mission. Or was it the "unified battle list"? Or was it the nerfing of Isidas? Or is it the "my-gun-doesn't-cause-any-damage" bug? Or maybe the "An error occurred" bug? Or the "you-can't-pick-that-box-up" bug? See, this thing tonight was a one-time event for a couple hours. The rest of these are bugs (or bad changes) that we're stuck with for a much longer time. It's sort of like if you lose $1,000 in a poker game. Is that the "biggest mistake ever?" Or is it the $50/month you waste every month of your life? (Over half a million dollars)? This thing tonight was a blip. That's all. If Tanki has any brains at all, they'll turn it into a positive and celebrate the anniversary of "The Gold Box Rain" every year with a few minutes of the same sort of event. I say, "IF" Tanki has any brains...

Yeah, but who cares? So you got a few guys who got LOTS of stuff. And more guys who got a bit of stuff. And they're all happy about it now. And they'll all feel cheated (rightfully so) if they don't get to keep what they've earned. If Tanki responds to THIS mistake of theirs by screwing players over, I hope Tanki dies. It would be no less than they deserve. I've sent them no fewer than 40 reports of various bugs - and they never fix them. So when I go into a game and suddenly my gun doesn't work (which has happened more than 20 times in the past 10 days), or "an error occurs" and I get booted out of a game - does Tanki swoop in and replace all the crystals I lose because I have to leave the game to reset the gun? Or the crystals I have to earn all over again because their software messed up? No. So why would Tanki penalize players NOW when the shoe is, so to speak, on the other foot? Do they just not care only when players are being cheated by their bugs? They only take action when players benefit from a Tanki screwup? To punish players for TANKI'S mistakes? Wouldn't surprise me. But it would disgust me. It would be a total lack of culture and class on the part of Tanki.

Oh dry up! Do you complain when some people get into a tournament but others don't? If Tanki has any class - any sense of fair play, any style at all, they'll just say, "oops" and let it go. And NEXT TIME they'll do something called "TESTING", which, up to now, hasn't been of much interest to them.

Ya know, when Tanki screws up and it damages players, they just shrug their shoulders and don't do a damned thing. I got screwed out of turrets/hulls when they made one mod. Did hey fix it? Hell no. This time their lack of Quality Assurance Testing created something good for players. Will Tanki screw us? Dunno. Will Tanki learn to do better QA Testing? I sure hope so! I've complained repeatedly about bugs in the program that they never bother to fix. When the boxes started falling like rain, I grabbed a few - thought they were empty, and just chalked it up to another Tanki bug. Bottom line: If they steal what people earned - they're nothing but thieves.

I've been thinking about how best to react to the Unified Battle List change. Complaining doesn't seem to help. I think quitting until it's removed sounds like a good idea. Tanki used to be a lot of fun. And some of the changes have been great. The new stryker and magnum turrets are cool. And the damage numbers are very nice - even if they sometimes show that your shot is not registering any damage on the enemy Tank (one of the many bugs that Tanki doesn't seem to care about changing). But the change to not allow missions to be completed with pro battles and the total screwup on the nerving of the repair boxes were pretty bad. But this latest change is the WORST CHANGE EVER. Every battle is crammed full of people just trying to shoot as fast as they can. There's no strategy anymore. And missions are 10x harder. I've had enough. Maybe the only way Tanki will get the message is if we all stop playing. I'm willing to do that. Like I said, Tanki used to be a lot of fun. The recent changes make it a lot more of a pain in the butt. So I'm willing to quit playing too. I just finished my last game. Taking a week or two off to see if the Unified Battle List is gone when I get back - well, there are other games, and maybe I'll like them more than Tanki. If I do - maybe I'll never come back. I've spent real money on Tanki - not a lot. I stopped sending in money when I figured out that Tanki didn't care what players thought - and vowed I would never send money in again after they messed up a credit card transaction - so the more I think about it, the less I'll probably miss this game. It was fun. Now it is not. Castor Oil is for your own good. Why don't you drink a gallon of it? See, the problem with any merchant telling you what is "for your own good" is that there's someone else out there who will give you what you actually WANT, not just what they want to give you. So, if Tanki doesn't listen to it's players - Tanki will go out of business. And that's as it should be. Tanki needs to roll back this update, get rid of the Unified Battle List and put things back as they were before. But I don't think they're smart enough to do that.

Aw! it's not a BUG! It's a FEATURE! It's the way Tanki introduces NEW EXCITEMENT! Will you get 20 kills? Will they be wiped out? Will you have wasted your time? Will this be the MISSION CHAIN BREAK you've been fearing? If Tanki can justify the Unified Battle List as a "feature", then getting bounced out in the middle of a game, having your kills eliminated - or even your entire account wiped out just makes the game BETTER. Right?

The Unified Battle List and the Match Making System are almost equally horrible. The Unified Battle list is the worst because it hasn't gone away yet. At least the Match Making System got taken down after screwing everything up for a couple days (during which I quit playing - my first-ever mission chain break). But it appears that Tanki is committed to utterly ruining the game with the latest INSANE changes to the game. Next worst is the nerfing of repair boxes. Utterly stupid and hugely shifts the balance of power in turrets to any that fire continuously or rapidly. After that, it's the mission/non-pro battles change. I haven't played a pro battle since that change. There's really no point. The paint separation thing wasn't that big a deal. Sure, it used to be better because you could tell what protections were by the paint, and the paint separation scheme is a complete mess - but it doesn't affect play that much. A better way to do paint separation would be to get rid of all the "named" protections and just let people buy packages of their OWN design. For example, instead of having to know a protection is named "Blue Whale", I can just select Magnum-Thunder-Isida as a combination. But that's a minor detail. If all Tanki changes were this low in irritation factor, the game might not fail.

This must be the ***DUMBEST*** change Tanki has ever made. Every battle is jammed full. While a chaos game is fun once in a while, having EVERY GAME turn into a "how fast can you shoot" competition is pointless. There's no longer any strategy at all. You just keep blasting. Once again, those with slower-cycling turrets are SCREWED. Tanki did that first when they changed how the repair boxes worked so if you're getting tapped by an Isida, Twins, Firebird, Freeze or Vulcan, the repair is practically useless. Now with everyone crammed into a few battles, the difference is even more stark. Of course, the supply missions are damned near impossible to complete. When you have ONE repair box and 20 players (like Tribute) and your mission calls for 3 repair boxes, it can take an hour of play to finish the mission. And it's not like you have a lot of choice. As someone above pointed out, getting into a mission is like whack-a-mole. As soon as you see one open up and try to click on it, it's already closed. The lag really sucks. Just another sign that Tanki is falling apart. And of course there's the sheer INSANITY of all the lower-ranked players who have NOWHERE TO GO... First Lieutenants forced into battles with Four Star Generals because nothing else is open. The overall effect of this change will be to create more frustration among ALL players, and especially among NEW players who will find it impossible to complete their missions. It doesn't really matter if they're a sergeant or a captain - the missions will all be 10 times harder and with the asinine approach to the mission chain, they get SCREWED if they can't complete a mission. Just watch the number of players continue to drop. If Tanki is actively trying to get rid of players - this is an excellent way to do that.

This bug is a REAL MESS! The counters for points and flags on missions are not updating. I get a mission to capture 30 points, get about 20 of them and guess what? The missions still reads ZERO! Is Tanki going to fix this and credit everyone with mission completion? After all, this bug is going to break a LOT of mission chains!

Ever since the time of the ill-fated "match-making" trial, I've been having really bad problems with Tanki "lag". Everything will run smoothly for a few seconds - then I'll get a second or two where everything stops, followed by "jumping" to a new position - then a few smooth seconds - then more "stop action" crap. When the action "jumps", sometimes the tank is repositioned as if it has just spun around in circles during the missing time. Sometimes it barely moves at all. It's sort of like the game is just taking a break, repositioning the tank at random, then starting up again. My hardware hasn't changed. My software hasn't changed. I'm not running any other applications. My ISP hasn't changed. And though I might have had this problem from time to time before, it was never like this - a constant problem in every game. It appears Tanki HAS changed and the game is almost unplayable due to lag.

What MORON came up with this crap? And what IMBECILES approved it? Tanki is getting worse and worse all the time. This... is... EXCREMENT OF THE BOVINE VARIETY!

I'd be a lot more "excited" (in a positive way) if Tanki were fixing the BUGS in the game or if Tanki would stop screwing around with trying to "balance" everything. That's just INSANITY. Every hull and turret has some advantages/disadvantages. Players learn to exploit advantages and avoid disadvantages. But all "balancing" does is cheat the people who have learned how to play the game well. In other words, it screws over those who play the most. With the most recent change, anyone who has actually paid for supplies should demand a refund. They're no longer getting what they paid for. It's a CHEAT by Tanki. Meanwhile, I still get into games where the gun doesn't work, or the turret won't turn or where the game just craps out with "an error occurred". Ya think? Tanki can't even seem to fix the simple bugs. Go to any server. Select any game type. Go down the list. See a game that IS NOT of the type you selected? That's a bug! So if you're trying to play a CTF game, you set your filter for that and see "Brest" and decide to play, how long before you realize that the mission you're trying to complete (CTF) is not the mission you selected (TDM)? What a PITA! Simple fix. It would take a competent programmer less than 15 minutes. But instead of that, Tanki brings us noisy and colorful "Unifcorn Farts". Stupid.

Another stupid contest to try to win back players who are disgusted by the latest stupid update. Fix the bugs. Add some maps. Keep the new turrets coming. Stop messing with everything else.

I want to see an overdrive option to DISABLE BUGS! You know, you roll up on that double damage box and your tank won't pick it up? OVERDRIVE TO THE RESCUE!!! Push the button and your tank starts working properly!

I have a great idea for OVERDRIVE! FIX THE BUGS!

Actually, this is pretty simple. It's a direct result of the crystal missions. Since players on a LOSING team only get about HALF as many crystals for the same score as someone on the WINNING team, if it looks like your team is going to lose, you may be better off quitting the game and joining a winning team in some other game. As an example, if the two teams are equal in number, but the (flag) score is 3-1 with the other team ahead, if you're only a couple minutes into the game, you're looking at playing 13 minutes for half the crystals - OR - sacrificing the two minutes, joining a winning team in some other game, and getting double the crystals (to complete your crystal mission). Of course, as soon as you leave, your team is at an even GREATER disadvantage, and no one will join it if they have a crystal mission because it's a waste of time. This leads to large numerical differences, which results in lops-sided games. Tanki has always had a built-in motivation to quit a losing game. The addition of crystal missions just makes it much more sensible to bail on games you don't think you can win. Even if you're a great player, and might otherwise stick around to help out some noobs, if you have a crystal mission - you're a fool to waste your time. One other element that leads to instability: Because of the missions update prohibiting completion of missions in pro battles, players quite often aren't even in a game to play the game - but to complete some mission. So if I need speed boxes to extend my "4 week" streak, I don't really care if I get a flag, kill an enemy or get killed. I just drive around, pick up the speed boxes and as soon as I'm done, I leave. I'm probably forced by the missions update to play in a game I don't want to play in on a map I don't want to play on just to complete my mission. Why would I stick around? Of course, this whole mess just undermines Tanki. How many times have you joined a battle just to have the guys on your side (or the other side) grab one flag, or a couple boxes and just leave? Well, that's the new Tanki for you!

With the new rank expansion forcing lower ranks to compete against a much wider range of higher ranks (and more potent weaponry) thus making the use of drugs MANDATORY to have any chance of winning, With the missions change to force everyone to complete daily missions in a drug-heavy environment, With drugs being doled out on a daily basis to anyone paying for premium account With the new (crystal) missions being based more on how your TEAM did than on how you did, Is it now official Tanki policy that players must PAY TO WIN? Or is this just a sad consequence of bad decisions by Tanki?

What do I think of the May celebrations? That's easy. None of it makes up for the way Tanki screwed up the game with the missions update and the rank expansion. The "crystal" missions and the changes to premium are just a way to make the game "pay to win". Compared to all those negatives, the May celebrations are nothing. Of course, you can't complete your MISSIONS in pro battles, so either way, Tanki has screwed you.

These "upgrades" are nothing more (or less) than attempts to turn every Tanki player into a "buyer". Consider the new daily allotment of supplies for Premium users. In light of the recent "Missions" update (may it rot in hell forever and those who created it develop boils on their private parts), everyone is virtually required to use supplies to compete because "no drug" pro battles cannot be used for missions. So free drugs for Premium players is a HUGE advantage. But wait. It gets better (worse). The new missions introduced all appear to be of the "earn crystals while doing X" variety. Did it escape your notice that Premium players accrue crystals at TWICE the rate of non-Premium players? Score another "advantage" for people who BUY their Tanki wins. And while we're at it, have you noticed that the new kits are only available for PURCHASE? You can't get them in the garage. Tanki has decided to make people pay for their daily "drug" fix, and to punish non-premium players by making them work twice as hard to complete their daily missions after first taking away the only option for a non-drug battle to complete a mission (pro pass). Oh - and while they were trying to manipulate everyone into forking over cash, they introduced a new bug. I'd give details, but Tanki never fixes bugs anyway, so what's the point? You'll encounter it soon enough. Tanki used to be fun. No so much any more. Ah! But only HALF as long if you BUY the Premium Pass... which is the entire point of all this.

I'd trade it all just to be able to use pro battles for daily missions. Why? Because on any given server at any given time, there are more pro battles than non-pro. In some cases, the disparity is HUGE, as in when there are 100 battles, only 10 of them are non-pro, only two are of the type you need, one of those two is full and the other one is nearly full... of players with 5 levels of rank on you. How many of you majors think you can get 3 flags in a battle that consists of 8 Lt Generals and 7 Brigadiers? Well, that's what Tanki has done to the game... and you. Any of you 3Lts tired of trying to get 30 kills by fighting Lt. Cols? How about you WO-3s? You like having to capture points from a team of 3Lts? It would be easy to blame the rank-range expansion for this problem - but if Tanki hadn't done THAT, there might not be ANY non-pro battles you can fight in. Actually, that's often the case anyway. There might be a dozen pro battles, 2 non-pro, and NONE of the type you need for your mission. Take a look, Tanki. How many TDM missions are completed compared to the rest? Damn few because there aren't any non-pro battles for that category! I wonder how many fewer pro passes Tanki is selling? I'm sure not buying any. Mine expired and I'm not renewing. Why would I? I have to spend time in non-pro battles for my missions - why would I waste crystals buying a pass that will only cost me? If I have to spend all my time in non-pro battles to finish missions, why would I need a pro pass? Tanki - don't drag this out like you did the MU fix. Don't make us wait. Don't lose more customers or try to jolly us along with these "celebrations". Fix the problem you created. Get rid of the pro-mission restriction for daily missions.

Thought I'd let everyone know a specific case of how the Tanki missions update is forking players over. I had a DM mission today. I searched all seven EN servers for battles. Not being able to use PRO missions meant my choices were SEVERELY limited. In fact, on all seven servers, there were just two non-pro battles I could even enter. BOTH were dominated by players who were SEVEN RANK LEVELS ABOVE ME. Thanks, Tanki, for making my "daily" missions IM-FORKING-POSSIBLE.

The problem is more than just this incredibly stupid change to daily missions. There is a pattern here. The Tanki developers get a stupid idea, inflict it on their customers, then see how many of them scream (or quit). Their model for development is: Ready Fire Aim Get a clue, Tanki, YOU ARE NOT ATTRACTING ANY NEW PEOPLE WITH THESE MODIFICATIONS. No one is saying, "Ah! I see Tanki just added a limitation that makes it all-but-impossible for lower ranks to accomplish their missions. I think I'll join! " BUT CURRENT USERS ARE LEAVING. I'll stick around a little while to see if you pull your heads out, but if not, I'm done. And the number of people I will recommend try Tanki? That would be ZERO. The only word-of-mouth advertising you'll get will be negative, as in "don't waste your time on Tanki. It used to be fun, but now it's just a PITA." If you had any idea what you were doing, you would come up with new ideas (or let users come up with them) and let users vote on which ones they like and which ones they don't. Of course, you have to make money, so business interests would come first. But such sheer stupidity as the latest mission change would never happen and you wouldn't have so many angry customers.

I can think of lots of things the devs could do to improve the game. More maps. More kits. A mission reward that lets you have TIME OFF from missions without losing the extra reward for continuity. Automated super tank options for pro games - that show up at random and can't be destroyed by less than a half dozen players acting together. Maps with different goals - like assault. An option to rotate supply drops to RANDOM locations. With magnum, it's really tough to see what you're hitting on long shots - how about a recon drone? Instead, Tanki has landed on one of the dumbest changes I've even heard proposed - the new "no pro battle mission" feature. It SUCKS Tanki.