Very insightful. i hadn't really considered the creation of soft targets for the buyers, but essentially that is what is getting created out of the low ranks now. Rank up quickly without any funds, weak equipment and you are just kill count for buyers or fully equipt/MUed players. Of course the trouble with this is that players will not continue to play through ranks where they can only be slaughtered, so they will either start a new account, quit the game, or become a buyer. I doubt that Tanki gets many "new" buyers anymore...they have lots of buyers but they are players that have been buyers previously. The actual few newbies will probably just move on to some other game after messing with Tanki as a free player for a bit, but I doubt many, if any, will invest money in this neo-tanki.

I fear that as player number keep falling, eventually (read soon) the devs will actually do this and de-fund pro battles in the hopes of driving more players into trash MM battles. They already have long wait times in off hours for RGB and Siege...many times I hit the three minute boot and have to try again. The rank brackets are already awful in the lower ranks in off hours ...like rank4 vs rank15 (I have the screenshot)...eleven steps between players. Spread like that is just plain stupid, but hey, they are Tanki devs, so... What these blind devs don't get is that if they were to stop battle funds in Pro, it wouldn't push any players to MM...only a small handful. But it would make another large chunk of players quit playing Tanki altogether. What astounds me is what a great game this used to be and still could be. It's a friggin' gold mine if they handled it better, but all they can seem to do is squeeze and squeeze for every farthing as they coerce players for every moment of their in-game time. It's a disgusting management stye.

I miss playing Tanki, but i won't play with these outrageous XP situations. I've made a couple of new accounts to play, but Tanki has ruined the low ranks now too with the crystal box crap and the XP. Players rank so quickly that there are virtually no low rank battles any more. What there are are all mostly blowouts, no actual battles. The side that starts to dominate first usually wins. The people that play lower ranks are also only playing for stars so there is huge churn in each battle with players leaving. Tanki devs just can't leave any part of the game fun...they seem to need to kill it all in every way possible.

Damn. Lost out on playing today because of the server problem. Just logged in to find I lost out on the compensation for the server problem because it has expired already. I didn't hit the 0-dark-thirty sweet spot for the very narrow 1 hour and 46 minute window to get the compensation Premium. Just doesn't seem quite right...oh well, that's very typical Tanki for ya. ....and, I see they are leaving the notice that there was compensation given (that almost no one got to take advantage of). Tanki flexing and showing what good, fair, and thoughtful company they are...always looking out for the players. They advertise their generosity that benefited almost no one because of the redemption hour. Kind of a jerky move Tanki.

OK, that sounds reasonable and a reason for Arres...I stand corrected...and informed. Thanks.

I sure hope that is true. Do we need a slow lumbering hull that floats? What will it actually bring to the game other than lag and related issues? And my biggest fear is that Ares means Flash stops as soon as it is released....which is way bad since HTML is sill awful in so many ways. And Tesla...Tanki should probably get it rolled out if it doesn't cause problems and it doesn't kill Flash before its auto-end date in Dec. They can generate some income from a new turret.

Back in business ? Servers up and running (so far)

not back yet....been a long time

I love Ares so much that if I saw it in flames across the street, I would stop and have an ice cream cone. Ares is a great motivator to do laundry. Look, Ares..

Thanks for the quick answer and topic "beam up". Although I guess it's as good a possible answer as I will ever be likely to get , it doesn't fill me with confidence that Tanki actually intends to do something about gifts in HTML...it's more an "I gots no idea, let's wait 'n see" kind of answer. Thanks for your good intentions anyway ?

So are Tanki Gifts another causality of HTML? I can't find them any where in the really terrible HTML trash interface. Will we no longer be able to buy friends gifts when Flash shuts down or are the devs intending to think about beginning to start to commence codeing HTML for Gifts...as soon as they are done designing pointless lag generating new hulls and fabulous new shrubbery (of course)?

I apologize for not looking at your profile before insinuating that you hadn't played Tanki before MM. The fact is you have played Tanki significantly longer than I have. You are also a highly ranked Legend at 24. I think this makes a big big difference in Pro Battles where lower rank battles are in a real turmoil and very difficult to find a decent battle. I suspect you may have even become a Legend before MM started or soon after. So for the years after you achieved Legend, built up an M4 combo, you haven't been forced to play in MM because even with one M4 (now Mk8) combo, you would be very competitive in any battle. As time goes on you built up funds and rounded out your garage to the awesome garage it is today. So you may think MM is kinda OK, because you have never really been forced to play it, Right? Maybe I am off base here...I mean no insult by this. Many players, including me, are not buyers and still low ranked (I tend to start new accounts and play in the lower ranks). We must play the MM battles and even then it is not easy to keep your equipment competitive. One answer is to send in money an buy what you want and this is a very acceptable approach and one I was about to do myself. I'm pretty sure I would have sent a couple of thousand dollars to Tanki over the years, but just as I was about to send them my first $300 they started the regime of buffing and nerfing equipment. An then the updates leading to MM started. If had paid real money to TankI would have been furious. I want what I pay for not what Tanki morphs it into. That is when I started playing alt accounts instead of the Road to Legend style of play. For the last couple of years playing in the lower ranks has been fun since the more advanced equipment like drones and high protections are not a factor. Even drugs re not as mandatory as they are in higher rank battles. But now Tanki has started to crush the fun out of that too by making you rank up so quickly and substituting the stupid crystal boxes for supply drops. The result is the large pool of players that played in the lower ranks has either quit the game (we just lost 25% to 30% of the player base since the XP update) or has decided to play through higher ranks. I'm rambling. I'm rambling because thinking about the whys of MM makes me sad from what I've lost, and am now losing in Tanki. I friggin' loved this game before MM but it has been a constant downhill ride since about a year before MM. I find a way to enjoy the game and the devs break it, I find another way it is taken away and this constant upheaval started with MM (or really the updates to accommodate MM's implementation). I hate MM because it removed almost all choice and diversity from the game. You play like Tanki wants you to play and nothing else. I used to enjoy finding battles where I could dominate. I used to love to find battles with everyone at the max rank so I could hone my skills. I used to enjoy crystal grindfest chaos on Polygon. I use to enjoy finding a losing team and coming in to turn the tide. I use to love the diversity of maps and the diversity of player count. I used to enjoy knocking out my missions in a heartbeat. I used to love how easy it was to make friends before MM and the "everybattle 16 players" no matter which map. I use to love how there was actual teamwork sometimes...now it, "I gots ta get me mi three stars". And ye that is Challenges but it started with MM and 16 players in each battle for 15 minutes...too long too many leaving...10 minute battles, too long' leaving...8 minute battles, too long, leaving...7 minutes, OK they will mostly put up with 7 minutes, only 4 or 5 players leave each game. MM trained every one to quit battles. Now they quit if they aren't going to get enough stars. MM made a very limited number of completely homogeneous bland maps. It fixed all battles at 16 players. It killed team work...no time to get to know a team or develop teamwork. It took away all choice...then Tanki forced us to play three or four times as long to complete missions in the trash MM. With no teamwork and such short battles the comradery factor that made the game once great is completely gone. Out of the dozens of friends I made within the game, every single one has now quit the game completely and the implementation of MM was the biggest factor for most of them (it was their biggest complaint anyway). OK...I made a text wall...sorry...I'll quit. I totally HATE MM and always have. For me it ruined the game, and not because I liked to cherry pick my battles. And just for interest sake, I have only left battles when I spawn in and there are only one or two minutes left. I don't think I've ever left a battle that I got in on from the beginning even if I'm getting crucified. I enjoy a good spawn slaughter so I feel I should reciprocate and sometimes be the spawn slaughtered. And as a final, I really appreciate the time you took in creating your post and thoughtfully answering mine. Cheers ?

Maybe you didn't play Tanki before MM, so what you see now works fine from your perspective...good for you! Pro Battles are OK and could be very good (yes, even perfect like you suggest) if there were a much bigger pool of players playing Pro Battles. But the difficulty in finding any suitable battle (my experience is that they are far and few between) discourages me and probably many players. The confusing and difficult to decipher Pro interface is also a big deterrent. The major problem with Pro is that the pool of players playing Pro Battles is so small. Tanki has made it where most players must spend the majority or all of their time in MM to complete Missions or Challenges. Without completing Daily Missions it is impossible to stay competitive with upgraded equipment unless you are a buyer. I think most players persue the Challenges because they believe they will acquire more Tanki "wealth" by getting as far as they can with them (this erroneous concept may be starting to change now...but that is another topic). So you finish off your much too difficult Dailys and rack up a few Stars, most players quit for the day but a few still want to play. If they don't want to work on Stars, they open the battle list and are faced with a very difficult task of trying to find any kind of battle that works for them. Besides the difficult to decipher Pro Battle interface, most battles are very long...very long. You almost never get to join at the beginning. If you create, you spend lots of time just waiting around...if anyone ever joins. When you do finally get into a battle you (well me anyway) feel compelled to stay since it usually took so long to find even this battle and most of the time the battle you are stuck in isn't what you were looking for...and it still has XX minutes to run! If there were more players using Pro Battles it would be much better because there would be more battles to select from, So when there are a couple of hundred Pro Battles raging at any point during the day and there is some easy way to sort through them to find one you like, I will agree with you and start extolling the virtues of Neo-Tanki Pro Battles and leave MM behind as nothing more that just a foul memory. PS It is very possible that I am missing something about finding a decent Pro Battle. Maybe you could start a thread (or a newspaper article) and enlighten us with some of your wisdom and the ins and outs that you have found dealing with Pro Battles. I'd really like to know and I bet others would also.

There is no mystery. MM was by far the worst and most damaging to the game. MM and all the toxic updates that went into bolstering MM. I'd go into detail, but its been said thousands of times on this forum already. Almost everything that is wrong with the game can be linked back to MM. If we could use the battle list, create battles, choose maps, and have all the choices we had before MM, drones, ODs, augments wouldn't matter....they would be easy to work around. Now these magic foo-foos are all so terrible because there is no way to avoid them if you want to play Tanki since you have to complete missions to stay competitive. And please don't bring up Pro Battles since Pro Battles are in utter disarray (on purpose no doubt). Pre-MM, 130K players at peak time. Now, 12K players at peak time. The numbers say it all.

Again today the lag is so bad I give up. I've tried about five battle and it's just too frustrating. My internet connection is fine for everything but Tanki which loads sooooo slowly. Tanki, you have these events where some minor mechanic changes and it inevitably turns the game to mush. You KNOW there are going to be server issues when you change something...you've been at this FOR ELEVEN YEARS!!! Why can't you guys get it right? Inattentive at best and incompetent at worst. Get out in front of these problems when they are just potential problems. There are other things to running a business besides ringing the cash register. Shame on you greedy slackers.

I use Repair Kits very sparingly (habit from days gone by). I never use the drone so I don't really know how effective it is, but it seems to me that if you spammed Repair Kits with absolute abandon..like any possible time you might need one, I think you might use less than 40 in three matches and do even better, or at least the same as using the drone.

The lag is so bad it is not worth the bother to play. There is no way to participate in the gold drops since everything freezes up for a 1 or 2 seconds every 15 or 20 seconds. When it's not frozen, tanks move around like cockroaches, here one second and somewhere else the next. Everything is taking an eternity to load...battles, mission info, garage...just terrible. The XP is bad enough, but the lag is a complete buzz kill.

I think the churn of balance is one of the ways they make actual money. The buyers can afford the turret, hull, or augment "de jour". I understand that Tanki needs to sell stuff to stay in business, but what goes against all logic is that they keep nerfing things. It is horrendous stupidity to take things away from someone if you are trying to keep them happy or as a customer. It is a has a very negative effect when you downgrade someone's hard earned equipment. What they should be doing is buffing equipment to promote buyers trying to buy the best, not buyers and freebies having to change equipment because a nerf just trashed it. A regime of buffing could accomplish about the same result as they have now, but it would make players less frustrated. Big difference between "Damn that X turret is gonna be a killer now with that buff...maybe I'll buy one" versus "Damn it, I worked like a dog to buy this equipment and now they just ruined it..I'l have to change over now and do it all again....I quit"

Twins’s «Stable plasma» augment: Removed recoil increase; Added decrease of shots speed by 15%. This is on top of the last nerf that turned Twins into virtual scrap. Now the Stable Plasma augment is rendered useless. The slow projectile makes Twins only fit as a melee type of turret. It's mid-range capabilities were gutted by the original turret nerf about a year ago and now the augment that made Twins like it was originally (no self damage) has an even larger speed penalty. Twins using Stable Plasma is now the very slowest projectile of all the turrets. I wonder why the devs hate Twins so much and don't seem to want it being used in the game?

I predicted a drop off in player numbers at peak times because of this 3X XP foolishness, but it has dropped a pretty dramatic 35% since the start of this thread and the foolish update! 18,200 players at peak on a weekend down to a low of 11,200 players yesterday (Saturday/weekend) and an average of about 12,500 players at peak overall since the 3X XP. The rank brackets are getting outrageous for hours around restart. If I'm not trying to get into a TDM on off hours, I am getting timed out at least once almost every game...even TDM can take a minute or two for good 'ole MM to generate a battle. I only guessed a 30% drop, but if they keep the 3X XP, I bet we lose 50% from pre-update player counts...so like 8000-9000 players at peak. I think that is kind of getting into the critical zone if that should actually happen. If they let it slip that low, I smell doom in the air. Good Job Tanki! ?

If you weren't', I humbly apologize.

Please don't troll. It is unbecoming and needless. Post about Twiggy if you must, but please don't purposely provoke other posters. Thanks

There will be a large but temporary surge when Ares is released. Tanki can easily boost numbers with gold box events, but the overall trend is decisively downward with nothing in the foreseeable future to reverse this three year trend. MM was the stake through the heart that is causing Tanki to bleed to death. They have tricked themselves by increasing their profits/bottom line with aggressive sales tactics, but it has only been temporary. The careless updates to coerce players into buying have degraded the game into a wreck and just a shadow of its former self. If you offer an inferior product, eventually you will lose your clientele. Luckily there is no real competition for this game or Tanki would already be just a memory. Tanki is dying a much slower death through sheer attrition of players getting fed up, frustrated to the point of quitting, or just plain bored with the game. I think Tanki will be able to hang on for a couple more years. They have already trimmed much of the company fat, The Latin servers are history. The RU and EN server were combined a few years ago. Tank-X died and was buried a couple of months ago. I don't know about staff lay-offs, but my guess is that the company payroll is smaller today than it was last year and will continue to shrink as Tanki starts to feel the inevitable pressure of a slowly disintegration player base. My one hope is that when they feel they have bled the cow almost dry, they will try reversing this MM fiasco and revert the game back to a more user friendly time when player numbers were 10X what they are now and the game kept consistently growing.

Sorry to see you go. I understand the frustration with the road Tanki has taken. I keep finding ways to enjoy the game and then the devs update something that fouls up what i was focusing on. I imagine I will eventually be joining you in Un-Tanki. Most of my posts are complaints because there is so very much to complain about. I will miss your support, comments, criticisms, and insights on the forum. I hope you plan to check in from time to time. Who knows, you may even decide to start another account someday...they are still free...at least for now ? Best of luck in all your endeavors.

OK, thanks...got it.