To be completely honest, I doubt the feature will be rolled back. There are redeemable qualities in it that we believe should stay in the game, for example the fact that you can have your preferred protections in your tank, and ALSO have your preferred color/texture. This opens up more avenues for customization. I personally am HOPING (though there's no word on this yet) that as a result of this feature, players will eventually be given the opportunity to come up with their own paints, which would be an awesome feature for clans and teams. Yes, some things could have been done MUCH better, and that's what we're working on fixing. If you've been following the issue closely, you'll have noticed that a few things have been changed already, or are in the process of being fixed shortly. I know I have no right to ask you to be patient, but unfortunately certain things take time to work out. This isn't an on/off switch. There are numerous people (including the person referred to as "the community") involved, all of whom have their vision for the game, and whose point of view makes sense (at least in part). Reconciling all those points of view is a downright Herculean task. Your perspective shows you the forum side of things. But it goes deeper than that. Honestly though, I'm trying my best, and I apologize if it's not bringing results as quickly as you want it to.

As has already been said before, the issue with the kits is going to be resolved in the next batch of kits. Thanks for bringing this up. I appreciate it. What you have in your garage is none of my business. Whether your garage is empty or full, you have every right to put forward your argument. And you have every right to stand up for the community. What you seem to be forgetting is that that's exactly what I'm also trying to do. I am also trying to push the community's interests with the developers. But I don't go around accusing the developers of trying to cheat the players. That is an unfair comment, and it has no place in this discussion. That is my only quarrel with your post. It's not about sugar-coating things. It's about being capable of building a fair argument without flinging around accusations and allegations. That is the way forward. Animosity has no place here.

I was not being condescending. You're the one who took it that way. By misinformation, I mean the following post: You statements there are implying that programmers are intentionally doing this to take advantage of player. And that is misinformation. The dev team has released many updates that have been welcomed by the community, and that players enjoy. So why take one unpopular update and extend the dissatisfaction to throw dirt on everything the team has done. It's not a fair comment. I agree, there ARE things that can be improved in this update, and I'm doing my best to argue in favor of the community. But I can only do that if I'm given positive critique (as some here have provided), not statements such as "The front-line buyers complain they just wasted 500k crystals on item and the mods say #eula - in your faces suckers!" I never called him "arrogant". I appreciate fair criticism. What I don't appreciate is allegations that the team is doing something to take advantage of players, because it flies in the face of everything we've been trying to do as a team. I'm working hard to try to bring your feedback into the game. Please understand that.

Yep, I'm from Malta. Really need to organize a meetup sometime, considering all of us Maltese are 30mins max away from each other lol. I'm sorry but it doesn't work that way. You have to balance risk with return on investment, especially when you're using company money for which you need to be accountable. C'mon let's be reasonable.

Hey, if you win the lottery, I want half ok? lol Anyway, the puzzles were devised by @Adequacy and @Issho_Fujitora, so you have them to thank :) As for the prizes, they were 5k per player, with an additional 5k for every player who guessed the secret code

===V-LOG 100 Secret Contest Winners Announced=== See this post. CONGRATS and thanks for taking part and having fun with the V-LOG secret contest :)

===WINNERS OF "#tankidowntime" ANNOUNCED=== See the main post!

Haven't looked at PMs in a couple of days. Will get to them soon.

No, I am not patronizing you, so stop playing the victim. And no, I did not say that "Tanki is purposefully overpricing and overpowering". That's simply your misinterpretation of what I said, in order to justify your point of view. Of course, I can't force you to see my perspective, but I'd appreciate if you didn't keep spreading misinformation. People can read my statement and try to understand what I'm really telling them, rather than someone else's interpretation of it. Additionally, if you think the paints are too expensive, you're more than free not to buy them. Paints are simply status symbols. You'll function just as well in the arena with your standard green paint. Why not use just that?

I understand what you mean. Then again, it wouldn't make sense to organize a meetup in a city and risk nobody showing up, right?

===WINNERS ANNOUNCED=== See the main post!

Actually no, that's not the way things work. The truth is there is no real way to know whether a weapon is going to be overpowered unless you test it on the live servers. Test servers will only give you a limited view due to the fact that the size of participants is only a very small fraction of the real player pool. On the test servers, only the biggest problems become noticeable. Smaller ones slip right past the radar. But once they're on the live servers, these "smaller" problems start gaining momentum very quickly, and the problem grows exponentially. That's when the devs finally manage to see the problem. And this isn't even an incident isolated to Tanki Online. Look at any other MMO. All of them present the same pattern. Almost any new piece of equipment will undergo at least a minimum amount of tweaking. There's another thing. Every new little thing that is introduced in a game, tends to shift the balance for existing items to a greater or lesser degree. And that's something that devs need to monitor continuously. The same thing goes for pricing. Devs will pitch a specific price according to their estimates, and then might adjust according to how the economy responds. The truth is that it's safer to err towards the more expensive than the cheaper, because if you price something too cheaply, you risk ruining the item for good, whereas if you price too high, the only thing that will happen is that people won't buy, in which case all you need to do is lower the price. And in case you're wondering, no this isn't some hare-brained scheme invented by Tanki devs. This is actually the way it works in the real world.

Will suggest it to our video editor. The issue with Premium is a complicated one. Here's the thing. We always stated very clearly that all the equipment in the game can be earned by earning crystals from playing i.e. no need to buy anything. Then the Premium paint came along, and it offered +15% to buyers. And suddenly, the statement we had made became false. Suddenly, buyers had an advantage over non-buyers, because they could purchase 15% protection that non-buyers could never have access to. That is precisely why Premium had its protections removed. I know this has upset quite a few of you, and I'm sorry about that. But as it was, the mechanism went against Tanki Online's biggest promise. That said, I'm sure we'll find a way to make it up to Premium buyers.

Ehm... no. It wasn't meant to distract you from the issues at hand. It's simply a way to entertain players to celebrate the 100th episode. C'mon, you know me better than that. Gimme come credit. You of all people should KNOW I'm not into fooling around. Just have some fun with the contest already. We'll discuss the other issues in the relevant thread. That's what it's for after all.

Lol. Whiplash :D

Someone seems to be getting close...

Lol, nice catch but that's not it! You guys are looking in the wrong place :D

@Issho_Fujitora, @Adequacy, do you think anyone will notice?

Nope. But I dropped a hint... two actually :D

Hmmm... nobody has noticed yet...

This week's Video of the Week is quite challenging, isn't it?

The increase in prices was typically for paints. Paints are purely aesthetic, and you're completely free not to buy them. This isn't even a mechanic unique to TO. There are many other games (some really huge ones too) where you can buy for example a mount for 25 USD, and all it does is look pretty (or menacing, whatever). It adds nothing to your gameplay. It just says, "Hey, look at me, I can afford to buy a mount for 25 USD". That's all it is. You can easily play Tanki with the green paint you're give at the beginning of the game. You can reach gissmo with it. And it won't be a big deal either. If the paints are too expensive for you, don't buy them, and instead invest your crystals in protections and equipment. It's that simple. But please, stop calling this a "pay-to-play" game because the paints cost more than before. You do NOT need a paint to play.

As in everything in life, balance and sensibility should be the measures by which everything is done. If you enjoy something, invest in it, but not to the detriment of everything else. I love music. I've spent thousands of dollars on musical gear and guitars. But now that I'm maintaining a family, I can't just go and splurge $10k on my dream guitar. In time maybe I will, but definitely not now. There's also the issue of time. Invest time in games you enjoy, but not to the detriment of your personal life and school.

This made my day lol. No, we're not trying to get young kids to spend more money. We've simply separated those things that affect your gameplay, from those things that don't. That's being worked upon. Not really. You can still get any item in the game by playing it and earning crystals from battle. The only things you cannot buy for crystals are: crystal packages (and as already stated, you can still earn crystals by playing) premium time And we don't even restrict the amount of time you can play per day. Some games will limit the amount of actions you can make for free per day. You'll have a limited number of action points, and once you spend those, you need to buy more (for real money) or stop playing. We DO NOT do that. You can play for as long as you want in a day, as many days per week as you wish, and as many weeks per year as you wish. Yeah, we have server restarts and occasionally there's an extended downtime. But hey, when your mum washes the floor at home, you're also forbidden to go in that particular section of the house for some time. If that happens to be the toilet and you need to go, tough luck, you'll have to hold it in. So please, stop saying we're a pay-to-play game. It's not true. Actually, if you had taken the time to read through this thread and my numerous posts, you'd know that we did listen to feedback and have already made a number of changes.

===Updated=== I've changed "brand new paints" to "new paints". My apologies if the original text was misleading.