I would assume they have done their calculations in Perm and figured out that the game runs at its most economical when nobody plays.

The latest patch has changed everything, I would assume. I find it hard to believe that the earnings your get from playing F2P will make up at all for the gain in XP.

Or, as WOPR in the movie "War Games" so aptly put it: "Strange Game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

Does that mean as of tomorrow we will not be able to draw premium from the previously collected daily containers we currently have in our garage? Or does that only affect the daily containers from tomorrow onward?

What do you guys mean "really mean"? Is that supposed to imply my name has not been chosen to be transparent and obvious?

I am not entirely happy here. Should I just wait it out?

Sure. It's Homer Simpson's birthday on May 12th.

According to my search, we haven't had that request yet, but could the new supply be named "nucular energy" on every May 12th?

Dear @DestrotankAI9, thanks for pointing out that patch to me - I thought I had noticed something with the MUP prices in the garage, but I wasn't quite sure . I will most certainly follow your advice! It also seems that the duration of individual upgrades has decreased. And unless the developers' next move is going to be to introduce battery consumption for Brutus, too, now that all the F2Ps have upgraded it, I think the patch looks like the nicest thing.

Dear @PirateSpider and @wolverine848, I am somewhat sad so say that I have formed a very similar outlook on the game, too. The level of discipline it takes to avoid ending up as cannon fodder is rather frustrating. As I understand it, I am already behaving in the way @Iron_Man and @DestrotankAI9 have sketched out (and have done so for quite a while). I just thought I am missing something here, and I'm just not gamewise enough to figure out what I am doing wrong. I thought I was just growing tired. But I am inclined to believe that the subjective feeling of "this is a tough regime it takes just to survive in a game that used to be lots of fun" is firmly rooted in the management's decisions to ... hmmm ... penalize "parasitical" F2P players. Having stayed with the game for a long time already, I will most likely not give up, but still drag along for a while. Mostly using the above strategies of careful play and avoidance of premature ranking. But it's becoming harder to conceive of the game as a game rather than an exercise in anger management and resilience training.

I have tried to wrap my head around this one for quite a while, but I just can't see how to play Tanki as an F2P-person. It seems to me that the only way is to make a new account every now and then and drop out again around the warrant officer ranks. The rank spread in MM games and the ever increasing advantages that well-invested players have, seem to create a threshold level around that rank above which you're basically cannon fodder. Third Lieutenants tend to be thrown in with really powerful ranks here. It may just be that my imagination is just too limited to find a good strategy, i.e. one where I can still be a valuable player in battles but not spend money that I frankly don't have. I know I cannot expect to "compete" with buyers, but it doesn't seem to make sense that free players should have to leave the game completely after a certain level. Or is the game really that attractive for wealthy people to whom it makes no difference whether they have to buy the 20,000 tankoins every now and then? Surely there ought to be a working strategy for F2Pers, too, who want to slowpoke their way around, but not end up as useless tanki trash all the time - and I just haven't found it yet?

As for myself, I end up playing in a way that increases my XP. As this is totally to my own disadvantage as a free player, I regularly scold myself for being so stupid.

Only a legend can say so. With ranks like mine it's a totally different story.

I second that. For small to medium ranks, this would be just marvellous ?

This only goes for ranks such as yours where the punishment you get for a gain in XP doesn't count anymore. For ranks such as mine, the threat of doing the new weekly missions instead of the cumulative ones we had before has become a major threat. Of course I know this is exactly what was intended.

I think you have captured the essence here for many players. Developers should build on that strength which imho made for the initial success of the game in its start-up phase.

This would work, too, but under two conditions that the game does not meet in its present form: a) keep the game generally attractive b) make everything available through playing for crystals, too That way, the non-buyer would have to play the game intensively, while the buyer can have his advantage (save time, invest money), benefiting from a large number of eager F2P players who try to battle it out for crystals. It's simple browser game developer wisdom from the early 2000s . Still holds true though.

To my mind, the different experimental settings have their appeal. It's just that unless you have a full garage at your disposal, you are usually limited to a combo you can play well. Now if all of a sudden you need a turret and hull for close combat and you are wasp/smoky how is that going to end in anything but frustration? And I am talking from the perspective of a notorious F2Per ... I can't imagine what I'd feel if I had even spent money on a machine that is never running stable. In a manner of speaking.

I beg to differ. The game is going to suffocate under the constant fiddling and "invention" of new ways of "disabling" and "counter-disabling" and "counter-counter-counter-disabling" features that us players are supposed to buy for real money. Dear tanki, if players do not invest it's not because you haven't set your money traps properly. It's because there is not enough appeal from a game that has never gotten beyond its "great startup" status.

It was great for medium accounts with melee turrets, that is for sure. I kinda liked it better, too.

? that is what it has come down to for me, too. Even on my major account ? But honestly it has been like that for a while.

It was rhetorical.

Why are there so many completely useless skins (except for people falling prey to the deadly sin of vanity, of course)? It reduces the chance of getting something more useful from the containers drastically.

If that is the case I'll stop complaining.

Because those who earn their XPs and make wise buying choices should be at an advantage over those earning their XPs and making less wise choices.