Thank you all for your comments! I think a lot of the criticism I have read is completely fair. Breaking down what the main concerns seem to be: 1. The system could be used to farm currency. Yes, it could. With enough gameplay, it would be possible to buy all the equipment available at your rank. However, it does not necessarily follow that this would have a detrimental impact on the game. The satisfaction of maxing out a garage is one of the things that would incentivise experienced players to take part. Under my system however, the only environments in which they’d be able to enjoy playing with maxed-out gear would be in parkour or playing normal matchmaking … in which case they’d rank up. 2. The system could be used to farm KD. This angle hadn’t occurred to me. Yes, it probably could, though I’d imagine the number of non-legends competing for KD/efficiency leaderboards is pretty low. Splitting them into legend and non-legend streams could be one way of addressing this, if it became a real problem. 3. The system would be too complex to implement into matchmaking. Tanki already has a system for estimating a player’s power level in terms of GS. To me, a mechanism which piggybacks on that system by preventing a player with equipment over a certain GS from entering a battle does not seem that complicated to implement. My suggestion also has parallels with the old xp/bp mode, which would refuse players entry not only if they didn’t have rail/wasp/hornet equipped, but if they didn’t at least have these at m2. 4. The system could be used to farm gold boxes. Yes, it could. In terms of that being a problem because players would farm currency, I refer back to point 1. In terms of it having a negative impact on gameplay, the relative value of gold boxes has decreased so much these days that I doubt this would be a real problem. In any case, if it was golds could be exempted from the pass and continue to give xp. 5. This pass wouldn’t make any sense at legend rank. No, it wouldn’t. It would mainly be aimed at players with lower rank, alt accounts. 6. Pass users could gain an unfair advantage over other players. I have already suggested capping users’ GS to prevent this. I agree that balancing augments could be particularly problematic because some are so strong that they give an advantage, even where a player’s GS is supposedly less than their teammates. Clearly, this is something that would need to be taken into account in determining a fair level for the cap. 7. It wouldn’t be financially viable for tanki to implement this. Monetisation in games is always a sensitive topic so I won’t attempt some exhaustive analysis here. However, my main arguments are: · There are players who would buy this pass. Not everyone enjoys making alt accounts or playing at lower ranks so certainly it wouldn’t be for everyone. What I would say is that those players who DO have alt accounts tend to be pretty invested in the game. They are mainly legends who have maxed out their main account and are looking for a new challenge. · It wouldn’t disincentivise players from spending money on the game. If we were having this discussion five years ago I agree this would be a concern. However, the game has moved on from players paying money primarily to upgrade equipment. Nowadays it’s about getting augments and skins. This would be affected to the extent that the pass allowed players to complete missions, but the drop rate on anything decent is so low I doubt it would have a significant impact. At legend rank players already effectively grind containers without levelling up in a meaningful way, yet they remain the game’s main revenue stream. · Tanki gains indirect financial value by introducing it. It increases the game’s human player base at lower ranks, making them more competitive, increasing the game’s appeal to new players, thereby increasing its number of potential future customers. That leads me, finally, on to the question of what the pass should cost. I think this depends on tanki’s rationale for introducing it. If it intended it as a paid product, I agree it would need to be priced fairly aggressively, perhaps at a similar level to premium pass. If however it were seen as a tool to fulfil wider goals – i.e. improving the game’s attractiveness to new players – there is an argument that it should cost less than that to increase uptake. I have also suggested that pass users would play with a handicap. This is different to its other paid products, all of which offer direct advantages – e.g. currency gain, chances on containers, earlier equipment upgrades etc.

Give players the option to play matchmaking without gaining xp. Why? In the early years of the game, climbing the ranks was an incredibly satisfying experience. Each rank was meaningful in terms of unlocking powerful equipment and paints and felt like its own journey. Saving up for just one turret, or clearing one rank, could take months. Today, frankly, lower ranks are a mess. You rank up super quickly, your battles are 75%+ bots who are laughably bad, while a horde of maxed-out OGs are rating for you at legend rank. Ranking up has lost much of its coherence as a “journey”. There are lots of different ways to address this problem, e.g. increase the amount of xp it takes to reach legend, or decrease the amount of xp players earn from battles. MY suggestion seeks to capitalise on another phenomenon in the current game, which is the increasing number of players with alt accounts. I think these players would enjoy playing at lower ranks, where you can max out lots of different equipment pretty quickly, most drones and protections haven’t been unlocked yet, and things are just more generally more chilled. How? Players could purchase a pass (a bit like the old PRO battle pass) that allows them to play in matchmaking battles without gaining xp. I acknowledge that this system could be vulnerable to exploitation by players with maxed-out / legacy accounts, so in addition, using the pass could cap GS at a fair level, e.g. equivalent to the GS of bots at different rank brackets currently. It could even be capped at a level LESS than that of the rank bracket. Experienced players would then be challenged to beat newer players through skill alone. Additionally, or alternatively, using the pass could prevent you receiving crystals at the end of battles. Benefits. It’s a win-win. The “invite a friend” events in the last few years indicate that tanki has been trying to attract new or returning players. My suggestion would help to improve the gameplay experience at low ranks, by spreading the player base across those ranks. At the same time, it would give existing players a new way to enjoy the game (in addition to walloping each other over and over again at legend rank).

How? Introduce the following rules to the selection algorithm: Selection is completely random, unless point (2) applies. If a player is selected who has already spawned, they auto self-destruct without losing a life. If someone has already been the juggernaut once, they cannot become juggernaut again unless the entire team has already played as juggernaut. Bots cannot become juggernauts. Why? At its height, TJR was imao by far the most interesting mode in the game. Experienced players who became the juggernaut could leverage their skill to make their team win a lot more than the other team. Moreover, the entire course of the battle could suddenly shift depending on who became the juggernaut. A losing team could recover on the back of a single player's killstreak, while even seemingly tied games could often be won if you were prepared to be opportunistic and take the right risks. However, TJR was never without its issues and at present I would say there are two main aspects which make the mode frustrating to play. Despite the selection algorithm receiving some adjustments over the years, the first issue has somehow remained since the mode's very inception: that is, that the next juggernaut on each team is selected from a pool of players who have just died. This might not seem like a big deal on the face of it, but it actually has a massive impact on gameplay. Good players don't tend to ... die, that much, or even at all sometimes. Instead, the most likely people to become the juggernaut are the weak players, atrocious K/Ds, often contributing little if anything to the team. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against weak players and I think they should be given the opportunity to play as the juggernaut so they can learn and improve. However, there is a bit of a limit to this. After all, experienced players deserve to be valued as members of the community too. Currently, the system punishes those who play well, forcing them to watch their juggernaut undergo a series of excruciatingly inept reincarnations. This isn't fun for anyone in the battle, least of all the weak player themself, who is left feeling as if they have single-handedly made their team lose. The second issue is more recent yet has substantial parallels to the first issue. Bots are, by design, essentially weak players, albeit with maxed out equipment. Allowing them to play as the juggernaut therefore once again throws all of the nuance and strategy of the mode out the window, turning it instead into a senseless slug-fest as the entire enemy team opens fire on your juggernaut who "decides" that it would be interesting to park in the middle of their base. But this is actually worse than the first issue: because the bot doesn't learn anything from the experience so the pattern simply repeats itself again and again and again and your suffering has meant nothing. Some games are won or lost solely on the basis of one side having a human juggernaut who plays sensibly and strategically, and the other side cycling through a series of kamikaze bot juggernauts and being powerless to do anything about it. The changes I have suggested are simple and should be relatively straightforward to implement. With a few targeted tweaks I think this mode will shine once more.

Devs I don't know if you'll read this, but removing/changing the tankoins economy would transform this game overnight. I appreciate the need to incentivise in-game purchases, but most successful video games manage to do this while making it realistically possible for non-buyers to compete on equal terms with buyers. Currently, tanki OBJECTIVELY does not do this. Tankoin-kits give buyers better equipment earlier in the rank system, which when MUed simply puts them on a different level entirely to those using equipment that they've just unlocked. Saying tankers can 'techinically' save sufficient tankoins for a kit is simply inaccurate. Tankoins are unlocked through xp missions- by the time someone had generated sufficient xp to save for a takoin kit... they'd be at legend rank, by which time all kits would be completely meaningless! Please change this, or at least admit this truth. Otherwise, you do a disservice to your free-to-play community. :)