I would've thought the priority would've been put on the HD skins, but I can imagine Ultra container skins are more profitable to invest in, so I guess this makes sense as a business decision, even if it's a little disappointing.

I picked "hardcore buyers", but the real problem is not the act of buying itself, it's what it gives them access to, specifically, ultra container-only augments. Which, as we know, are so much more powerful than regular equipment. It's always surreal when you encounter one of these players that's a one-man army and basically two leagues above a regular maxed out Mk.7 tank. I've said before what I think of giving buyers a supply boost advantage (it sucks), but at least in some cases it actually advantages me when playing against lower ranked players and I get to enjoy the imbalance being in my favor. ? Making status effects a core gameplay feature was a strange decision in my opinion, mainly because of how important they are now and how much attention has to be devoted to manage them during battles. In a way it did make EMP Gauss a bit less broken, though ironically not because it was nerfed but because now there's a lot of equally broken stuff available. Still, I think with skill and lucky container drops, it's manageable. Also I'll just say that I disagree there's an issue with "the developers' inability to want to act on genuine player feedback". They're doing what they can to make the game engaging (i.e. addictive), it's just that the intersect between that and what a nostalgic playerbase wants isn't necessarily very big. For the most part I think changes have been logical, the game has remained playable, even if it requires continual adjustments from the players.

You know what annoys me to no end about this new update? This right here: It's just an excuse. I don't care if you need people to upgrade their drones, force them to spend more crystals to be competitive, and make life harder for non-buyers. It's your god-given right as a pay-to-win game. But don't you DARE pretend this is about making it fairer for players. It can't be fair if players who can afford to upgrade a drone faster get an advantage on the rest. It just comes across feeling like a bare-faced lie. One of the last things that was the same for all players, non-buyers and buyers alike, has just been removed from the game. It's all there is to this. As a staunch non-buyer, I will take on this challenge, of course. I'll just expect to get more often the feeling one gets of fighting against 50% prots and defender drones. Fair enough. But I guess you devs just reminded me that this game was never meant for people like me.

My knowledge of your situation is obviously quite limited, and I can't imagine how hard it must be to go through all that. I think the difficult thing about being in an important position (like you are with esports and as a reporter) is that in such a context one is expected to be "professional", meaning that you can't express your emotions freely even though it would be only natural to do so. What's terrible with this is that in some work environments that could potentially lead to an environment where speaking out is equated with being unprofessional. People are more often than not immature. And so even if you try to be diplomatic and polite, that they didn't react particularly well (to say the least) is sadly not surprising. You shouldn't feel like it's your fault that you feel bad, these things are hard to take (so I hard disagree with the idea someone else expressed that you're "letting it" get to you).. It's also important to realize that it's impossible to "decide" how you feel (as I'm sure you already know) only how you deal with it. I don't know how I can help concretely, all I can say is your feelings are valid, which is cliché as heck, but I believe it's true. (sorry if I'm posting 18 hours after this topic was created, I just read it now for the first time)

One thing that bothers me with this combo is that it seems very difficult to counter with the stock vulcan. With other turrets I've learned to deal with the incendiary abomination, to the point that now it's a minor annoyance (basically kill them every time you get the chance by sacrificing the repair kit, and run from them the rest of the time), but in a vulcan 1v1 I get the impression that the incendiary will have a clear advantage. Which can be annoying considering the prevalence of this abomination, and gives the impression that using it is the only viable way to use Vulcan in the high ranks. But again, as I say outside of that particular issue at this point it no longer bothers me too much. The true evils of this world are the crisis/hopper combo and EMP Gauss (so glad I have the immunity against that one now).

Overall the two things that concern me is the ricochet mechanic that might make it more annoying than before, and the EMP and stun augments. At least the latter two are locked behind containers, but in my opinion EMP augments need to be nerfed, not standardized. I'll have to see how it behaves in a real battle.

I mean, I thought Smoky was in no need for a buff, especially with the existence of the ender of worlds that is autocannon... but okay I guess. It’s far from my favorite turret but I guess we’ll have to make do.

If Hornet's AP effect becomes directional, I'm concerned it would be very difficult to use with some turrets. I understand the interest of specifically nerfing Gauss, but I feel like it would nerf even more the other turrets. It would make it very difficult to use with Shaft for instance. And the rail-hornet format which has already been nerfed significantly by the latest rework would be nerfed even more, as it would require the user not only to be in the line of sight of the target but also facing towards it. Furthermore, if there is only one enemy with the AP effect, and you are the only person that can hit them, it seems to me it would become a lot easier for enemies to survive the AP effect; just hide from the hornet in question and voila, no one else can touch you. As I understand it, Crusader's OD is effective at having a directional AP effect because it simultaneously deals damage to the target. Here with Hornet, the player would have to 1) aim the OD right and 2) deal damage, having no other potential target to shoot at instead if they miss. Personally, I much prefer that Hornet makes an enemy tank armorless for everyone on your team. It's very interesting strategically, especially since it makes it possible to guarantee the death of a critical enemy player like the flag/ball bearer for instance. Maybe having the hornet OD affecting only a single enemy at once and having the ability to use several times in close succession could be interesting, but then I think then it should be dependent on the turret orientation, not the hull orientation.

Skill and equipment can offset a difference in GS to some extent, plus I always strive to use as highly upgraded equipment as I can for my rank. So I don't really care what my own GS is except as a status indicator. On the other hand, I use GS to evaluate how tough a battle will be, and how likely it is that my team will win. If the there are more than one tank on the opposite team with GS much higher than mine, then I will struggle. If in addition to that, there is no one on my team with higher GS than me, then we will most likely lose. It's just a rough indication not a surefire prediction, but I find it still useful to assess the difficulty level of a battle.

Agreed, I never played xp/bp before because it felt like such a drag to set up a game and wait for enough people to join. Having a MM system to do it is pretty convenient.

Ok I understand your position better, and yeah for the most part I think we agree. The whole pay to win is clearly fairly short term oriented, and aggressively pursued. That being said, I'm not entirely convinced that the devs have no overall "vision" for the game, as things like hovering hulls were given a convincing rationale (making the game more accessible), and I see the currently ongoing experiments as a genuine effort to find how to increase player engagement and enjoyment. I have been playing this game for barely a year, so I have a very different perspective on this game that one might call clueless and uninformed, potentially. But I wasn't there during the golden days, I didn't see the game being torn down. What I came upon was a game with two clients, one old and falling apart and the other full of potential but far from complete, and it always gave me the impression of being stuck in the middle of a transition. This made me want for this currently incomplete new game that's being carved out of the rubble of an older game to become fully fledged. It's quite possible I will be proven wrong and that the devs will keep adding things until the game crumbles under its own weight. But for now at least, I'm fine with the direction we're heading in, and I think once the game is fully emancipated from its origins, it could maybe find a new playerbase.

I just don't see how a game that's in active development with new skins, game mechanics and even hulls, is a game that's trying to wrap up its profits before it dies. There would be no point in wasting resources in game dev then. My thinking is more that Tanki's current model is likely profitable, by making more money out of less players, and they are desperately trying to maintain this balance by rolling out updates regularly, as most modern games do.

Mouse. Except if you're using rail, it's so dependent on being precisely the right angle it's too easy to lose the aim for me, and I suspect being able to maintain a given turn angle as with keyboard makes it easier.

In reaction to previous suggestions I would suggest to make tank outlines and radar optional. Clearly it throws off some Flash users, but at the same time there are players bred exclusively with html5 like me who are used to those and rely on them. I think making it possible to toggle on and off those features in the options would be an easy fix to that situation.

Is it really a bug though? I mentioned that change in this very thread a few months back when it was implemented, and I was told that's how the camera works in Flash, so I assumed it was a deliberate change. (Note that I wouldn't complain if it was reverted though, being able to move as soon as you shoot is convenient.)

Well, it's almost the end it seems. Here are my thoughts. Might be some repetitions with others as I haven’t read this thread in full. Do you think that there were less occasions when you were destroyed where you spawned and were consequently completely useless to your team? It really depends of the combo. Here’s my experience. With melee range turrets, absolutely. I have an account that mains freeze/wasp, and though I’m only warrant officer 5 so I have it a bit easier, I almost always finish number 1 and on the winning team. It’s actually insane how powerful it is, without even using any drones. Meanwhile on one of my other account that happens to be my main account (this account), originally a light capacitor shaft main, my performance has dropped dramatically. My previous tactics relied heavily on one- or two- shoting enemies, and therefore have been rendered meaningless. Now, I can only do some meek support and it’s not enough to stop a charging enemy in any case. On that given account, I survive just as long as before while being less useful. If the team is strong I can perform okay as a support and even sometimes get top 3, but otherwise I'll get swarmed by melee turrets without killing anyone. It doesn't seem possible to use light capacitor offensively anymore, so I've been using RFM more instead. Since I’m a non buyer who relies on upgrading one combo per account, so this account is stuck with this experience. I also have an account that’s a thunder/hopper main. I’m still useful with it, but it’s mostly because of the hull and its overdrive. Sometimes it genuinely feels like I’m better off not even trying to shoot, as it only attracts attention on me from people who will kill me long before I get the chance to get them. I get it that thunder is weaker at high ranks anyways, but still, kills are twice the work now, which by contrast, is not a feeling you get using a melee range turret. How did the benefit of well-timed overdrives and drones change? For overdrives, a lot. As I say above, with low dps turrets, ODs are the only way to kill someone on your own, and the only way to prevent flag captures or goals. Drone wise, the defender drone is clearly a lot more useful than before. Crysis too, all its advantages are magnified under this meta. The other drones I can’t tell, I didn’t notice them as much as these two, speaking as a player on the receiving end of the drones. How did the importance of team gameplay change? Perhaps it’s bigger. Individual responsibility is higher than before. But I'm unsure teamwork has improved as a result. All it means is you need fewer good teammates on your team to decide the outcome (since there's fewer enemies). And in general, the outcome is decided very quickly. Usually it’s obvious within 2 minutes which team will win. I think Could this experiment change your interest in the game? I don't think so. Increased hull health is a double edged sword: on one hand it’s very satisfying to move around knowing you can’t be one shot, but ironically that’s precisely what makes the game so frustrating for low dps turrets. Ultimately it’s unbalanced. Low dps turrets are incredibly weak, they are easily dispatched with limited impact on the game. Meanwhile, melee range turrets can reliably destroy enemy tanks and play the objectives. The contrast between those two categories of turrets is jarring and frankly, extremely frustrating. I heavily dislike how this meta decidedly favours camping when using long range turrets . Before it was significantly more realistic to use them offensively and that was more interesting to me. Do you have any suggestions on how to improve these changes? Increase the reload of all turrets that weren’t buffed. Right now dps is more important than anything else, and low dps turrets are way too weak on that front. Increasing the reload would help this without defeating the purpose of increasing the hull health. Regarding the removal of large maps, I think it was a good idea, though if they leave for good I hope we will get newer ones in the not too distant future to replace them. As for 5 minute battles I think I’m fine with it even if it took some time getting used to battles being decided quickly with almost no chance of a turnaround. At least when a battle becomes a one-sided beatdown we don't have to suffer too long. Overall this was an interesting test, it made it incredibly easy to play on one of my accounts with a high dps turret, while making it a bit less fun on my other accounts with low dps turrets. I hope we get back to the old meta soon so I can tell if I miss it or not. In any case, I say props to the devs for showing that they are concerned with making this game as engaging as possible and are ready to try new things to improve the experience.

@RIDDLER_8 Oh i agree, the graphics of this game as they are are very outdated. But it’s just that the way this community tends to be so obsessed with the past, I’m thinking a bit of the whining could be avoided by giving players the option to keep using the old skins, in other words the same as with the current legacy skins but for free. It wouldn’t affect the gameplay and shouldn’t be very hard to implement, so why not do it.

I haven’t read all the comments so I might be repeating somebody, but my suggestion is, re-add the bad quality original M3 skins as optional, free skins in the garage, because you can be certain some people will complain. edited for clarity

It's true that in general near the end of the battle players that were passive for most of the battle start being more aggressive and going for the objectives. So maybe decreasing the battle time might promote that behaviour, is that the logic behind this test? This is really intriguing, there's so many things changing I can't guess how the balance is going to change. This is going to be huge, I think.

I mean I was expecting them to lower the prizes since the challenges are now so much easier to complete (and more enjoyable too don't get me wrong)... So I'm happy it hasn't changed.

Honestly, I like the new Hornet overdrive. It's easier to dodge, and it's more interesting to use. It's more strategic and team based since you can make key players easier to kill for your team, and also it's one of the few overdrives whose effect is instantaneous. I also think the idea of putting a "curse" on players just because they were in your line of sight is kind of cool. It also barely affects my playing style, because I used to use it with Shaft like a power boost, and that hasn't changed. The only thing is that I'm going to hate whoever has AP immunity on. It's probably the most powerful hull augment by far now. The only people who will suffer from this retooling of Hornet are those that used it to go berserk and kill a dozen player in a row, and frankly I won't miss that, because I was neither good enough to do it reliably myself, nor very keen on facing people who were doing it.

If I understand this well, Hornet's OD now makes enemy tanks vulnerable to shots from everyone on said Hornet's team? This means that if a Hornet activates its OD when it has a view on all the enemy tanks, the entire enemy team will instantly become sitting ducks, correct? This might completely change how Siege works for instance. I guess that's interesting strategy-wise, but not sure how more balanced it is compared to the old one. Will have to see for myself. Kind of the same thoughts on the new augments, at face value they seem fair, but I'm not so sure they really are. Because they are locked behind containers they will necessarily be rare and in the hands of buyers who combine them with other powerful equipment. Probably there will be only one or two players per game that have one of those augments, and it will massively skew the battle in favor of that team. Basically the same that's already happening with Gauss' EMP augment.

Are you considering adding a ranked battle mode, and if so how high is it on your priority list? Having a ranked matchmaking mode could make battles more interesting for tryhards like me who'd rather be paired with other tryhards, and might be a good way to address the perception of carrying a team and losing anyways because I was the only one playing the objective. (To be clear I'm not talking about ranks as defined in tanki, I'm talking about actual competitive ranks like we see in some other games).

I use mouse with wasd, it was more intuitive for me that way. It's also really convenient how mouse controls enable to look around myself very quickly without having to wait for the turret to turn. I can see how keyboard controls have some advantages though, specifically more ease to keep a specific aiming position, which I assume helps with long range railgun shots.

Sometimes I feel lucky that I never used the Flash client ever ?