Way back when I was a fresh Consultant; we're talking 2014 or so. Good times.

Something else for people to essentially gamble for if the mission is "too much" and people cop out on it. Great. I'm not even gonna dive too far into how much you'd be spending on one round of containers, depending on which package you get...nobody else finds this to be a little out of hand?

I can't object to that; but I'd say there was less of an "incentive" to be a "buyer" back in the old days, really. If you played it smart, you had your M3s at Warrant officer 5 like you were supposed to, and the playing field was actually even. You didn't have to worry about Micro-upgrades, alterations, the ridiculous ODs, and so on. What determined battles back then was who eventually overpowered who. And yeah, it was a very simple and easy concept to get on board with, but now, I have to agree, it's gone. I can bet that if you showed a new player the OLD Tanki vs the "New and Improved" Tanki, plenty of them would lean towards the old one. "Simplicity is the key to brilliance." Also I'm trying to find the time to revise the original post I made that started this discussion, I'm just busy working at the moment.

I agree, the game needs to bring in a profit, but what's the cost? The playerbase? The "fun factor"? The "relaxing" gaming experience? Granted, people love to have their adrenaline pumping mid-game and things like that, but I think what the Devs need to understand is not everyone plays like that. Some people (like myself), used to just play to have a good time and just sit back, y'know? Sure I've had my share of intense battles, but it wasn't an everyday thing. Just because there a demand for that "edge" in battle, it doesn't mean that it's good. I don't believe that a game which (from what I understand) can barely get 25k people online, needs to be shooting itself in the foot by going the P2W route. There has to be another way. Yes, the playerbase is small, that should raise alarms to them that there needs to be "better" changes. Devs in general need to stop shafting their players just to get a profit, it's disgusting. They can charge however much they want for cosmetics or even Supply Kits, people will buy them and the game would at least be in a healthier atmosphere. And I mean that's just my opinion about it...you look at other "Triple A" titles that go down this same toxic route...it doesn't go over very well. If they want to monetize the game without essentially breaking it, we could've kept things like Supplies Kits around. It went downhill when Product Kits came in and you started having these pretty much "baby ranks" running around with equipment that their peers just couldn't combat against efficiently. That also plays into the match making system. Why are we allowing players that are practically "overpowered for their rank" just steamroll their peers "just because"? I play on my noob account quick is almost WO1 and it's kinda unnerving to see a player that's either WO1 for example with a Gear Score of 4200 as opposed to my measly 2100. And people may argue, "Well just find another game" or something along those lines, but my question to that is: Why does it have to be that way?

*Title has been changed, as well as poll options. I'm also going to find the time to edit the entirety of this thread.

That's a ridiculous jump. 120k to maybe 175k seems more reasonable.

To be honest with you, I wouldn't even call them skins myself, now that you say that. I'll say "hulls" instead lol.

I know this is about Hornet's OD in particular. But if you asked me, ODs in general should be either gone, or just something that the low-ranks get to play with. In terms of whacky, you've got Viking's OD. In terms of downright ridiculous, look no further than Hunter's OD...1 click of a button and boom, a freebie.

LOL as if the community as a whole has the time, patience, or energy to sit up and play to get even have a chance in Hell to get that Skin Container. Asking a bit much out of the players by asking them to activate Wasp's Overdrive 300 times for starters. Like, WHAT? What if someone (like myself) doesn't have Wasp? Then what??? Supposed to be a fun experience. Not an annoying and ridiculously OUT OF REACH/TOUCH one. Get a grip, devs. You're doing a great job by further dividing your playerbase. Yeah, we might all be in quarantine, but I'm not about to ruin my health with these sick challenges. You're taking advantage of the fact that people are off of work and at home, to try and bait them with an undoubtedly unhealthy gaming enviroment. UNACCEPTABLE and you need to be held accountable for it.

I will say one thing I do like is the "Legacy" skins, them bringing back that older look for some tanks/turrets was a good idea.

Oh they actually went back on that one...okay, well that's an improvement over what they had before. I'm not up to date on everything that's dropped since I stopped playing, so a lot of what I mentioned was from memory lol

Shouldn't have to go through a process like that, it's a waste of time. If it was set up around finding players with a Gear Score similar to yours, I'd have less to say about it.

I can concede that; it is "just a number" and it does show that the battles are indefinitely one-sided. I think it's something that I didn't give thought to because of course, before we couldn't tell, we just had to endure it lol. But now, it's made it even more obvious. And what sucks is that you can't "pick and choose" your battles anymore. Before, I knew better not to enter battles that weren't worth the time, but now it's like a game of cat and mouse; you're chasing the "perfect" scenario, and it just doesn't work. I appreciate you pointing that out! ?

I had hoped that I wouldn't be the one to make a topic about this...but I almost feel forced to. I'm finding this "Gear Score" thing to be a bit of a joke. And it's one of the many reasons why battles are so lop-sided. Maybe I'm behind the times or something, but it's kinda ridiculous that a battle is already decided when I hit "TAB" and the enemy team is full of "9999" vs my team of mixed numbers ranging between 6000-8000. I don't find any fairness in it. And I certainly don't find it to be "fun" or "entertaining" either. I don't know WHO had the idea of introducing something so ridiculously stupid, but good grief. I'm pretty sure it doesn't just hurt a "veteran" experience, as it hurts even the newer player experience. I play a lot on my alt account (which is still a First Sergeant), and generally, you find a "Gear Score" of about 2000 or somewhere in that neighborhood. Fine. But when you're talking about trying to play against another player with a score of about 5000 and he's like 1 rank away from me, that's supposedly fair in somebody's mind. Is Tanki even trying to retain a playerbase at this point? I'd assume so, but good luck with nonsense like that. All it's doing is beating down the player and making them suffer until they either: 1. Quit. Or 2. Find some way to get into the Pay2Win circle. That's a bit of a disgusting and unhealthy gaming atmosphere. I shouldn't feel like a game is so unfair to that degree. It's like the only time you have "fun" is when you beat everybody else and nobody can touch you. That's not what gaming is about. Games should be challenging, not maddening. And it's not "challenging" to be trying to kill someone who's "numbers" decide they're better than you. That rightfully makes people irritated. I know I can't be the only one having some strong feelings with this, but it's just whack how this game has deteriorated in a matter of less than 5 years. Where's the challenge? And don't try to argue that I, with a Gear Score of barely 7600, am supposed to find a challenge in going head-to-head with someone with a score of 9999. I just don't even bother fighting back, the bout's been decided for me. No skill factor involved, nothing. Just silly numbers dictating the tides of battle. Come on. The main question is: "Where's the fun?" There's other factors contributing to this as well, I feel. Without the need of having to get a PRO Battle Pass (Premium), there needs to be some changes. The number one change I'd suggest is an adjustment with what ranks can meet each other. I can't believe that this is still an issue in 2020. And even with your beloved "Match Making System" (How about Disaster Making System), this problem still persists. I shouldn't be a First Sergeant, meeting Warrant Officer 3's and 4's and 5's at the very most. How the heck is there a "Match" in that? I don't understand. Which leads me to my second point, that "Match Making System" needs to be adjusted, or just flat out removed (I'd rather see it gone). We're not in an eSports arena in front of a crowd of people, get rid of it. You want to relax? This is not the game for you, buddy. By the time you get done, you'll be needing a shower because of how much sweat's poured out of your body. Also, there needs to be a Gear Score cap/minimum for these battles. Let's face it, it's NOT FAIR (I hope you understand the word, "F-A-I-R") for people to be trying to battle it out with others who have Gear Scores exceeding theirs by 1000+. It's just simple math. 4000>1800. But with the way this game works now, there can be some middleground found when you've got players facing off and the difference in their scores is 200 or something like that. But a difference of over 1000 - 2000? Forget it boss. And coupled with the Supplies that EVERYONE is using? May as well find another battle, if you can. In order to have healthier game sessions, you can't be allowing players with exceedingly high Gear Scores to enter battles with players who don't rival it SO BADLY. I don't care if they have the same rank or not. And if you really see where I'm going on this point here, that's why that Match Making System needs to find the door. "Here's let's randomize your loss for you" in the minds of a player just trying to get the ropes of the game under their belt...and "Here let's give you this win because you're OP as anything and can walk all over people with the same rank as you" in the minds of another player who's probably used up that precious Premium time to get more/be "better". Now, I wanna stop talking and leave it up to you guys to discuss amongst yourselves about this. I have a lot of ideas that come in my mind and I often forget about them in the process, so if I missed anything, let me know. Or heck, maybe you think I'm being nonsensical about this and I need to be quiet lol that's fine too, but I wanna read everybody's thoughts about this. Even though I'm more of a World of Tanks player nowadays, THIS GAME is what kicked it off for me, and I just hate to see it becoming more and more rotten at it's core. And I feel pretty bad about fighting with some people about different aspects of this game that HAVE indeed become a problem. I don't want people to just turn the other cheek and ignore problems. They need to be addressed, and our voices need to be heard. Even if we don't agree, that's part of a community and it's part of us being people. So, have at it.

Funny how I didn't get added to this list under "Former Consultant". I was a part of that team back when EddyBeGood was the admin at the time, and that's been a LONG time ago. https://tankionline.com/en/2013/04/viva-consultants/ Of course everybody should (at least I think) remember my old username: KidVegito

What I find interesting now is that this whole "Tanki isn't fun anymore" way of thinking is becoming more and more prevalent, as opposed to about 5 years ago. If you guys remember the notorious "drugs" battle we had back then, that was a voice we seldom heard. But now, the problems have grown within the different branches of the game. I've spoken about the crate system before in another thread, and some of the other problems that I personally have noticed since I started playing Tanki again...if you want to take a look at what I said, look here then (it's a bit long, so be prepared). There are some other things that have been brough to my attention since then, I've yet to add them. I may create a thread myself centered around the issue.

I can get behind that lol honestly it's funny what's happened to this game nowadays.

Honestly, they probably could have found some middle ground in the 15-20% range. But 10% was a real bad move...it just needed more time. Or even more feedback from the community. They could've ran a poll or something; you can't completely rely on the test server to give you an accurate image of how to move forward. Also, I'm questioning Gauss' place in the roster now...it's essentially an "improved" Thunder lol

Oh I'm not a big fan of Overdrives either...as a matter of fact, I'd let the lower ranks keep them, but once you hit Warrant Officer 1, they're gone. Let the "little ones" have their fun with whacky mechanics. Now if I were to reverse a single update, that's kinda hard to do. Cuz there's a lot of, subjectively or objectively, bad ones. When I stopped playing Tanki some years ago, there was already weird stuff happening, and it's just gotten worse over time. I'd start at Isida's self-heal removal. I don't believe it needed to be completely broken by removing that UNIQUE aspect it had. It could've been nerfed to the point where it just repaired your tank by a smaller number of HP points when used. I think they saw it as "overpowered" and didn't know how they could fix it, so they just gave us the lame excuse of removing it completely. Now it's just a generic, futuristic looking turret that fire a glowy laser beam of energy. How lovely. ?

I gotta say, I agree with the fact that this game isn't as fun as it used to be...personally, I always saw Tanki as a "chill" and "laidback" game. You didn't feel the need always be SUPER competitive and just dominate every single game you played in. In my opinion, what was wrong with the game that called for a matchmaking system? Granted, I've been gone for some years now and I'm just coming back, I see all these changes that are, for a lack of better words, odd. The crate system...I almost wanted to give it a pass, but the option to buy them is a bad practice that many games have fallen into. It's essentially a slot machine. While there are "guaranteed" rewards, it's still a manipulative system to implement. You can't tell me there's nothing wrong with having "rare" items thrown into a crate that you've gotta take chances for in order to get. I'd much rather have them behind a paywall of x-amount of crystals. I'm surprised the devs haven't seen what's happened to other games that have this kind of system in place. It's horrid, and it preys on the addictive tendencies that a player(s) may have. All it takes is for one "bad" roll and someone may be urged to spend money to buy those "Koins" to get some crates. That's why this crate system is essentially illegal/banned in many places, because of the consequence it has. It's something that effects everyone; the adults and sadly, the children that play this game. Next, the battle pass program. If that doesn't look P2W, I don't know what to tell you. It's become a common trend across many games in the industry and I've yet to see anyone get it right. I won't go into too much detail, but the fact that I need to essentially pay to get better rewards is absolutely mad. There's even a bundle in the SHOP for 8 bucks that gives you 100 stars, Premium time, and Koins if I'm not mistaken. RIDICULOUS. Up next, the missions. Now, I can't beat this up a whole lot because I think there is some good to it (like being able to work towards crates), but I personally believe the old mission system would've worked a lot better, especially in the crystal department. It's kinda lame when you drag yourself through pretty bad games just to get thrown a mediocre amount. And if you're a F2P player (unless you're saving those crystals and just working through the struggle with what you have), it can be a quite demoralizing. Maybe if it was a little more forgiving, it'd work better? I do wanna touch on alterations a little bit...and mainly the cost and what they do. While I do like the idea of doing other things with your turret, I think it kinda phases out some other turrets in the game. Like for example, a Smoky can easily replace a Freeze or even a Firebird...and Freeze, I feel, has already lost it's place in the turret department...let's phase it out even further, shall we? And with regards to Firebird, you don't even have to get close if you've got a Smoky outfitted to burn your opponent from a distance. That's just a scratch at the surface. And about turrets in general...there's a few turrets that I've noticed, that have kinda "fallen from grace" over time. Thunder, Freeze, and Isida. I'll start with Isida. This turret pretty much died back when they removed it's ability to heal the player who decides to use it. It's lost it's unique quality and joined the junkyard. It doesn't do anything special but heal teammates. You can probably argue that it was "overpowered", and I'd agree with you BUT, let's be honest. All it needed was a good enough nerf and that problem would've been eliminated. It didn't "NEED" to essentially be destroyed and just turned into something fire fires a little laser beam that can heal opponents lol. Freeze, I kinda covered in my point about alterations, but to push it even further, how often to find a Freeze in a battle? You rarely do, at least from what I'm seeing now. The meta in this game is so ranged now, a Freeze (or even a Firebird or Isida) get taken down before they can even get into effective range. There needs to be some sort of balancing between all of these guns. It can't just be everything at range works, but nothing works in CQC. Thunder has always been a target for people to eliminate, and I've seen this years ago. Thunder's main problem was that everyone ran to paints that protected against it. And now that protection can be purchased separately from the paints, that problem has further blown up. Thunder is essentially useless once you get to a certain place. Imagine trying to kill someone that's running 50% Thunder protection and Double Armor? You're not doing anything to them lol even if you decided to use a Double Power, you're gonna get what? 100-200 damage? Which isn't really a whole lot at all. Of course you could opt for alterations to mitigate some of these issues, but should you really have to??? This was a bit of an exhausting thing to type, but I think it was needed. There's probably plenty of other stuff that I missed, but like I said before, I've only been back for a short time. So if anybody wants to add to what I've said, or correct me, feel free.

I think I can actually get behind this myself; being that I've ran with Thunder for YEARS. All I can do is go into a battle and see that Thunder doesn't perform. Everyone sports protection against it for one thing, that's been a "staple" if you will for the longest. Even with the alterations...you gotta think about what people (at least in my experience) get Thunder for: The splash damage characteristic. But even that becomes of minimal use once people start getting far away, and when they get close, you have to worry about potentially damaging/killing yourself to get out of a tight spot if you get bum rushed. So Thunder's a very "situational" turret. You'd be better off with a Smoky, where you can just pummel the enemy to death with very little drawback, and the critical hits make it all the more "terrifying" for somebody to be trying to contest. But I don't know, I think Thunder is one of those turrets that had it's era and now other turrets are outdoing it. Freeze is another one of those turrets too that's just fallen out of the circle at this point...doesn't Smoky have an alteration where the rounds basically do Freeze's work? And how often do you even see a Freeze in those "top" ranking games? Almost none. Even Isida has taken a blow I feel, ever since they removed the ability to self-heal (which was part of it's specialty), you saw less and less of it. But back to the main point - Thunder has a lot stacked against it...I've seen multiple battles in the short time I've been back playing this game where I might be the only Thunder and the entire enemy team is running 50% Thunder protection...it almost doesn't make any sense. All they need to do next is slap on a Double Armor and you'll be seeing 0's all day long lol it gets to be redundant and boring to see on repeat. This game wants "variety", but the current way things are going? I don't see it, and haven't seen it for a long time.

Yep, I would too. That's the word I was looking for, lol I had a lot of ideas in my head at the time of my post, I backspaced a whole lot on stuff. But either way, people want an actually level playing field. I hate to be comparing this game to World of Tanks, but they're very similar with their P2W aspects. The community begs for balance and all we get served is stuff in the game that's beneficial to those who wanna throw hundreds of dollars into it, overpowered/unbalanced tanks, broken mechanics, etc. And even when we do get cosmetics, they're locked behind awful grinds that take up WAY too much time, unfit for the "unskilled" of players, or you need to essentially pay to get the boost you need, or worse yet, they get put into loot crates and people end up gambling for it. It's a pretty disgusting process underneath the surface.

Nobody's asking for the game to be completely F2P; they have to monetize this game in some way, that's totally understood. The problem lies in monetizing the game to give people the most advantages possible in-game. World of Tanks does the same thing; and I play that ALOT. They release tanks/mechanics into the game that break the matchmaking system, make it hard for the "less experienced" to combat, their "Battle Pass" system is fixed to where if you spend your money, you get better rewards/advantages over the others. The point is that all of this stuff ensures a game's decline in players. Nobody wants to deal with "wallet warriors"; people who've PAID for an advantage over you. It's insane. And don't come around here trying to dictate whether people should "cry" about this and "go play bingo or something". These are people who love this game just like you, and just because they're not enjoying the current state of the game and realize the impact it's having, they shouldn't voice that? What sense does that make?___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On another note, I think Tanki would've been better off trying to monetize this game in a far different way. All of these paintjobs we have in the game; why not offer them at a convenient price? I've found that people will jump at the opportunity to make their tanks look good/draw attention. The way it was before worked perfectly, in my mind. The Mission system was a lot more "forgiving" to everyone. If you wanted to spend money to get some extra crystals for that paint you've been drooling over, you could do that, no problem. It started going bad once product kits came into the picture and you started seeing essentially "baby ranks" running around with "grown people" setups lol. The matchmaking system could've seen more work too, but that's another topic because of all the other factors that went into that as well. Point I'm trying to get across is that the environment of this game would've been a lot more healthier if some things were given more consideration. You've got a game where I'd say 25-30% will give you their money. Granted, I'm not saying they shouldn't or can't; I used to. Yes, there should be some incentive to spending a couple of dollars, but it doesn't have to equate to you being a "God" in the game, and everyone is scared to play with you because they know they can't beat you because you've paid for all of your advantages; you didn't go through the sweat and tears of working of your behind off. You took the easy way out. And that's just weak, to me. Spend your money as you may, but you won't convince me that you're the "better" player by mopping the floor clean of "competition" because of your credit card.

Makes some sense.

I've just gotten back into playing Tanki a little bit (I'm a fairly old player mind you, my forum acc is having some merge problems) and I'm noticing a trend. "Underpowered" players vs the "9999" crew. The mm system might be to blame as well, I can't say for certain. But WHY in the world do I, with a Gear Score (I hate that concept btw...literally telling me I can't defeat a player because of a Gear Score difference of 1300 or even worse LOL what a joke) of barely 7700, need to be paired up against or even with teams of 9999? I mean seriously, you've got no chance against odds like that. I'm pretty sure players like myself are dealing with the same issue, and I strongly believe it's unfair. Apparently it's only "fun" when you whip out that mighty credit card and pay up. I get it, make your money devs, but I can almost guarantee there's a hemorrhage of players because not everybody has that luxury of paying to "get good". And it's set up to where if you don't have the money to spend, you fail, bottom line. And it sucks. I have to stoop down to my 2nd account to even remotely have a decent gaming period, and even that can be hit or miss. Also another laugh, I need to have a reason to edit a comment...aye this game is a shadow of it's former self in many ways.