One should absolutely never do Bronze contracts ever! While they are free, they require 5x the amount of time and supplies that you would use for the paid Silver contract and still only giving you 1 roll which is absolutely abysmal. At that rate you will be spending more currency on supplies in MM than actual benefit getting from rewards of the event. The only time you should ever activate Bronze contract is when you capture the Gingerbread gold boxes and you are missing a small amount for one roll e.g you have 8 currency so you activate Bronze contract to get those 2 remaining for one roll. If you dont have the crystals to push significant amount of Silver Contracts, it is smarter to rather skip the event. Bronze contracts are mostly just a marketing placebo that is meant to give an illusion for noobs that there exists a "free" way to do this event.

Wow, actually won on 1 acc and it took only like 10+ tries

Given how much they nerfed basically every single f2p rewards from containers, to passes, to removing f2p advent calendar and how incredibly expensive all these events are for f2p I dont really think it is asking too much, especially if we talk about crystals and relatively small ruby compensations. If you would receive 50k crystals as a compensation for 1 item it would hardly make a dent in a game economy that asks for hundreds of thousands if not millions of crystals for upgrades and f2p crystal progress in some of the events. I dont think they would give rubys though, giving even 50 rubys would be asking for miracles, but all in all I dont think compensations are irrational, especially when entry itself has become more expensive over the years. Ofc, I dont think this will become reality, given the trends of them removing as much f2p rewards as possible without any explanation.

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Nobody is using Healing Emitters anymore. Its more of a rarity after the nerfs to healing score. Most people these days will use either Rapid Fire, or Stelarrator. Nanotech is still the most used Healing augment from what I saw, although its usage has dropped a bit as well.

The freezing effect in general should receive a nerf, its incredibly busted that it debuffs DD while also slowing down movement and for some reason they just keep on buffing it (disabeling Camper and hitting through Paladin polarization). At least the DD debuff should be lowered.

Ngl, its weird that even after years of various events, you still havent clarified your announcements to include some sort of timeline for distributing the prizes. 'Prizes will be distributed within a day/48h/72h a week/ insert whatever time period you are comfortable with.' The general panic of newbies not receiving their prizes after a server restart is a bit funny, but it gets a bit old :)

In reality they should actually do less of that and be more careful with what they say and how they phrase it in their Vlogs and official statements, especially with their track record of promising stuff and then not deliviring the promise (like that laughable statement about delivering Tanki Classic this year xD). And as for patch notes they should not be about teasing stuff, but about actually implementing changes. If you want teasers watch the Vlogs or check the Wiki page for development plans.

Ah yeah, no balance changes, because what would those be needed for..

Well, I would agree with you that the first couple of instalments (those that had -5 rolls) were defo not for f2p. I think last years was made for endgame f2ps and those that saved millions of crystals very specifically for sales or events. So that was the charm of it for some like me. You did not have to spend 25k rubies or spend rubies/tankoins at all and go full crystal grind. Heck, they even gave a f2p event mode in CP Firebird/Wasp without supplies which made the grind even easier and saved your drugs for regular MM. You just had to run in the middle and got hundreds of points for free. I spend somewhere between 4.5-5 mill crystals on last Halloween, but got 6 skins, shot effect, and bunch of supplies, crystals and nades from the individual tiles. Those end game players who saw the value got a godsend of event where they could use the otherwise pointless crystal banks on some of the best skins in the game. Its just that some people missed the value because the system changed from free progress locked to second or third checkpoint to contract system that gave possibility to go further but was conditioned by spending crystals/tankoins/your time on contracts. You are right though, if we consider the regular f2ps with very limited resources which make the majority of the playerbase, this event was never made for them and actually got worse with last years instalment. I also agree with you when we look from the perspective of going just full Gold Contracts. If you are going completely 'buyer' mode this event got much cheaper, so if the prizes are good for you, its still a win despite the contract progression and -2s with the UCs, grenades, Excelsior and Boxer as the main prizes to set ones eyes on. I think a lot of buyers can actually call it a day on fourth checkpoint if they arent invested on the prizes on individual tiles after this checkpoint given that Isida Pulsar is an old augment, legendary key is useless for many buyers with all skins and new DC is for turret that many players stopped playing after recent updates.

Depends on what event you are comparing it with. Some other event from this year or last Trick or treat event? If we compare it with last years event: Last year Rewards: Paint, 4 DC skins, 2 Legendary keys, Rare Shot effect, Module Slot, 30 Nuclear Energies, and 15 of each container This year Rewards: Paint, 1 DC skins, 1 Legendary key, 3 augments, 10 Pumpkin and Tsar Grenades, and 15 of each container Comparatibly, I believe last year there were more rewards with more focus on cosmetics while this year there is less rewards with more focus on augments (Excelsior and Boxer will likely be kind of a cancer as expected, Pulsar Isida probably wont be anything incredibly toxic). I am not surprised they changed the skins for augments in this year's installement as last year they leaned too much into cosmetics making all of the existing DCs available at the same time either from UCs, Elite pass or Minigame. I believe they were hesitant to repeat DC skins again in fear of disinteresting the buyer playerbase, given that a lot of endgame nolifers and buyes probably got all or majority of the existing skins last year. Personally, I think they should have taken some middle road, making at least 1 or 2 old DC skins available in minigame, replacing others with something new to motivate buyers to spend like new cool shot effect and some new augments, and make the rest of old DCs available later in Day of the Dead and/ or Black Friday UCs. As for whether this minigame is better or worse than last year's, the only thing that positively changed is the much cheaper Golden Contract going from 990 to 290, which is significant for sure, making it far more available for buyers and better for f2ps who somehow saved some rubies. However, we must also account for the fact that "Islands of fortune" or whatever they are called now, were only -1 last year while this year they are -2, possibly making progression harder and thus more expensive. And the contract progression itself has been significantly nerfed going from 3 000 to crazy 5 000 points. This also significantly lowers the ammount of contracts you can finish and puts a strain on your other ingame resources like supplies as well as your personal time. Also for pure f2p (just Silver contracts) nothing positive happened. The price is the same, but progression is slower and much more dependent on the islands of fortune coin drop. The other factors like prizes for individual islands, ammount of islands of fortune and the total length of the minigame (103 jumps) seems to be the same as last year. All in all for f2p, its completely nerfed minigame. For buyers it depends whether that GC prize is worth all the negatives (5k exp contracts, -2 islands and questionable prizes for each lap)

Stellarators, Excaliburs, Nemesis, Boxers seem balanced. Please nerf Railgun Scout instead!

So glad I grinded Silver contracts and got all the DC skins last year xD. I was so sure they will nerf this minigame this year given how relatively 'easy' it was to nolife it last year xD Two first checkpoints are basically nothing. Excelsior is okay, but you will probs do just as good with Solenoid Cooling. Boxer Rico sounds like it might be a pain like the infamous Hammer augment of that same name, but we will see once its unlocked by some Youtuber or buyer. Genuinely, I have no idea why fifth checkpoint is a thousand year old augment like Pulsar, and on top of that on Isida, because who even cares about that ravaged turret. Legendary key is an absolute hit or miss. If you havent unlocked all the crap skins there, then good luck actually pulling out something decent looking. And the final DC skin looks just okay and not to mention its on Isida, one of the most disliked turrets right now thanks to your updates. What a way to shoot yourself in a leg. Also where did all the old skins disappear? I wont even go into the 5k contracts. Last year, the 3k ones were pain, but more manageable to grind as an end game f2p, but have fun wasting your life on grinding 5 000 exp points.