Guide [Issue 8] Tanki In-Game Chat

[SakuraVisions 120]

Tanki Online Lobby Chat




Where would the Tanki community be without communication? The truth is, nowhere. Communication is an essential aspect of any game- at least, one that wants to have a successful playerbase and a healthy community. The game offers many means of communication: Chat in the game (that comes in two forums), forum, external related sites (like the Tanki Facebook page or Twitter), a separate platform for communication (such as Skype) that players can connect with after catching up through one of the above means, and many, many more options. For this article, I’ll be starting from the ground up with the basics of the basis, the chat residing in the server lobbies and in battle.

Basics

Chances are that near everyone reading this knows this portion: When you enter a server you start with viewing the battle option screen, which has a nice little gadget on the left side called the lobby chat (it can also be accessed through the garage). To send a message, it’s as easy as clicking the box to chat if you haven’t already highlighted it, typing your wonderful message, and pressing the “enter” or perhaps “return” key on your computer, or even simply pressing the send button to the right of the message. Assuming you’re not banned (more on that later), your nice, fancy message will pop up in the chat for all to see.

You can send a message indirectly by just doing the above, or you can directly send it to another user by clicking on their name, or writing their name before your message (with correct capitalization/punctuation/spelling) with a colon and a space before the message you want to send. Generally, people prefer to be addressed individually, it’s common practice and considered more polite in conversations. It also lets others know something is directed at them especially if you’re asking a question.

Also in chat, next to the person talking (and the optional recipient) it displays their rank in the game. This is one way of telling the game experience of a player, but don’t let it influence your opinion of them too much, there are plenty of low ranked skilled players, as many as there are inexperienced higher ranked players. However, that’s not all to chat, there’s a lot more to it, but that should be enough to get you started. Get out there and start chatting, there are some loquacious people out there!

Battle Links

So you found the perfect battle, right? Only problem is, your friend is on the other team, and you can’t join it because autobalance is enabled and more players are needed to fill empty spots. Perhaps you found a great battle for two and need to point out the game to a friend so you two can work together. Maybe, you’re about to have an intense duel with the English rail wasp champion of server seventeen and need to have him be able to join the private battle you created. How can all of these problems be solved? Well, luckily for us, some mastermind developer at Tanki headquarters got a bright idea, and we know it as battle links.

First step is getting the link to your battle. There are two ways to do this. Firstly, you can view the battle details of the match you want to join, and hit the “copy link” button (on the far right, below the ranks allowed for the game and above the scores for the blue team in team games or kills in deathmatches) to copy the link or web address for your battle to your computer’s clipboard. Secondly, while highlighting the game you want to join you can look up in the address bar of your browser and copy the link.

At this point, you can take your copied link and do a number of things with it. Obviously, you can paste it into the lobby chat to the general public or your friends so they can join, or that one player you’re about to duel. If you’d rather send it privately, a good choice would be an external chat program like Skype or perhaps through forum personal messaging, and from there you can enjoy your game! A battle link posted in the lobby chat will conveniently display a link with the text dictating the name of the battle rather than the address, which is useful and neat. Also, know that not every link posted in the chat will be suitable for your rank, so it’s not always the best way to search for a game by yourself, but it can be a great asset in playing with the Tanki community.

Chat Commands

In addition to the actual messages of the chat, there are some useful commands useable in the lobby and battle chat. If you have some other gaming experience or perhaps programming, you should know that the forward slash button / initiates a command sequence, which can have other complex things like objects and arguments that I won’t go into since Tanki’s commands are relatively straightforward. Firstly, blocking other players. If someone is really getting on your nerves, being inappropriate and abusive, or breaking the rules (be sure to take a picture for the last two so you can report them to a moderator!), you can use the block command to block them, and from then on you won’t see any further messages from their account. Simply type /block [player name] where the player name inside the brackets is simply the name of the player you want to block, spelled, capitalized, and punctuated correctly (make sure not to actually type out the brackets nor the text “player name”). This command can also be used in the heat of battle.

The negative, “undo” function for that is the unblock command, simply performed by typing /unblock [player name] for the desired player that you’ve already blocked to be liberated to message you. Also, a third command that has a larger effect is unblocking everyone on your blocklist. Typing /unblockall will clear your blocklist and allow all players on it to message you freely in the chat. To check your blocklist in the lobby to see who’s on it, if anyone, type /blocklist to view it. The block and unblock commands can be used anywhere in the lobby or game chat, while the unblockall and blocklist commands will only work in the server lobby chat.

There is one more command for players that can only be used in battle, and that is the vote command. If a player is breaking the rules, or hacking/cheating in anyway, stop what you’re doing and type /vote [player name] to report them to a moderator for them to come check the supposed illegal activity. The battle name will appear in yellow and go to the top of the battle list regardless of ranks for moderators so they know that there is a complaint. For an administrator (not mod) to be directly notified of an offender, at least 25% of the player in the battle must report the player. Unfortunately, not enough players know of this feature, and it may be advisable to share the good word in game and tell others how to vote an offending malicious player. Should the amount be satisfactory and a mod comes to examine the situation, the player will either be banned or kicked, or nothing will happen if there is no evidence. Either way, in the chat will appear something along the lines of the text “analysis of complaints has been completed”.

Before I write the next paragraph let me make it clear (since I always get personal messages asking for the test server code) that I don’t have the test server code, and that nobody does with the exception of Devs and Russian testers. The test servers are occasionally open to the public to play on. There are two useful commands there to get you the contents you need to be able to have your desired amount of experience points for rank and your desired amount of crystals to buy stuff. Also, this is important: It’s a ban-able offense to try and use the following commands on the real Tanki servers. Don’t try it, you’ll regret it, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. These commands are for the test server only.

To add unlimited experience points and gain rank on the test server, type /addscore [amount] where the amount is your desired amount of experience points. You need 1,400,000 to be Generalissimo, the final rank which unlocks everything in the garage. To add unlimited crystals type /addcry [amount] again where the amount is your desired number of crystals. A few hundred thousand and you should be set. A cool feature is that you can actually remove score and crystals on the test by using a negative valued amount in the command, which is pretty neat. That’s all for commands, and remember, only use the test commands on the test server, and that some other commands only work in lobby chat or battle chat and not both.

Tanki Site Links

In addition to the commands I displayed heretofore, there are some other cool little links you can send to help others by using the # key followed by a name. Currently there are ten of them, and there is one that was recently added to the game. #forum takes you to the English community forum, which is a helpful start for a newbie to find information. #rules takes you to the rules page, and is also a link that will commonly appear for bans. #faq takes you directly to the FAQ section of the forum, a center of community knowledge and helpful guides for everyone to read. #ranks takes you to a page displaying all the ranks in the game, and #clans takes you to the Clans & Teams section of the forum, which is useful for recruiting new members who want to see your clan topic to see if they are interested before joining.

After those five, #theft is a link to a helpful guide on what to do if your account was hacked (for prevention measures I wrote a helpful article last issue of the newspaper). #updates is a useful link to the patch notes thread, which is typically updated consistently with the game patches and features. #plans leads players to the “in development” page from the main Tanki site, which is currently not updated to everything happening through development of the game, but hopefully will be soon. #feedback takes you to the feedback site for Tanki ideas, suggestions, and thoughts for improvement that you can share with others and the developers of the game. Rather than posting suggestions on the forum, the feedback page is where they are supposed to go. People can support ideas and that is one way bugs are squashed and improvements to the game are made. Finally, #wiki is the newest link and takes you to the Tanki Online official Wiki. Although it’s in Russian, you can use a simple translator to change the page into readable English for you.

What are these links useful for? Well, lots of things, depending on the viewpoint and perspective of it. If you’re a moderator, the rules link is very helpful so that those who are banned can read the rules and see what they did wrong. Consultants can use these links to help explain things better or show players what to do in certain situations or how to do something. Regular players can use them all the time to show other users something, for example their new clan in the English section of the game. If someone is begging for common and answered information, shoot them a link to the FAQ section and they’ll thank you for it. Remember, the search bar on the forum is your best friend before asking for help, be independent! Hopefully, players can use these chat links to their advantage as currently there are a lot of players that may not know about them.

Bans

All users for any game, even Tanki, must inevitably face the consequences of their actions. Consequences can be good. Unfortunately, breaking the rules and being banned is not good, but very bad. Bans come in different shapes and sizes, and for many different reasons. Bans can last for different lengths of time. The different time lengths are five minutes, a hour, a day, a week, a month, and... wait for it... forever. Obviously the longer bans are for more serious offenses and also for more serious offenses. Only admins have permissions to ban players forever, and it’s a pretty rare sight. Typically it is used only for things like insults to administration and severe hacking or scam. I’ve seen it happen before, and it’s definitely not pretty. Chat moderators can ban for up to a month, and consultants can issue five minute bans to keep chat clean. Also lesser, more forgivable breaches of the rules can result in a warning for the offender, which isn’t a ban but is still kept in ban records and player karma.

What can someone get banned for? To be honest, a lot of things, but if you’re a good person and behave well, you shouldn’t have to be too worried with rules aside from knowing what you’re not allowed to do. By actually playing the game, you are accepting the terms of the Tanki End User License Agreement (EULA), and if you don’t agree to the terms you can’t play the game. Players must be aware of the rules, but some newbies and even some experienced players still aren’t familiar with all of them, especially the chat ones. Some commonly broken chat rules are flood and spam of battle link. For those, don’t post a message or battle link more than once. Also, don’t post three or more messages in rapid succession (within a second or two of each other) or you might be automatically banned even if what you say is legitimate. The more you get banned for this, the longer the bans will be. If you’re experiencing lag and your messages don’t send, don’t send more or else once the lag ends your messages will flow into the server all at the same second usually resulting in an automatic ban.

Also, profanity is strictly prohibited. Younger kids play Tanki too, and it’s important we keep a friendly environment for all to enjoy in the game. For spam reasons you’re forbidden to use too many caps (or for just typing with caps lock on) so be careful you don’t have that enabled. Links to external sites can be ban-able offenses especially if it’s bad stuff. Insult and offensive behavior is obviously against the rules. Cyberbullying is becoming more and more of an issue as the Internet grows and it’s important to stand against that kind of negative action. People can be really hurt by the opinions of others, and it is crucial to be unbiased to inexperienced people and younger players too, because you can’t judge who they are and severely hurt them for it over a silly conversation. If you’re banned for insult you got what you deserved.

Moving on, scam is a big issue and it can cause you to lose your account (again, more information on that in my previous article). Don’t trust any fake promises or websites asking for account information. Scam usually results in at least a month ban. Asking for passwords or account information in the chat is also obviously banned, as it’s against the rules to share accounts (also, you’d have to be pretty crazy to share your account with some random stranger that you don’t really know). It’s also against the rules to discuss the work of moderators, and that is only so that a controversial issue doesn’t get out of hand in the chat and people get wrong ideas based on the actions of a moderator. That goes for the forum as well. If you believe a moderator made a mistake or intentionally banned you falsely, send an email to help@tankionline.com with evidence (a picture should generally be enough) and a description of your situation. If that doesn’t work, you’ll just have to wait out the ban and not make the same mistake next time. Remember, a mod didn’t ban you, you banned you through the mistakes you made and the rules you broke.

Conclusion

Well, that’s all I have on the server chat aspects and related topics. The chat is a great way to make new friends in the game and also to find cool people with to help you in battle, and maybe even get some new knowledge on the game or anything. People can chat about almost any topic and it’s a popular game so there is always sure to be someone to talk to. You might even be able to join a clan or recruit people for your existing one. I hope you enjoyed this article, stay clean everyone, have a great time chatting, and I’ll see you in the battle!

Thanks for reading,
ShadowVisions

Edited September 26, 2017 by Hexed

[FederalBureauFBI 2,881]

[MONKBLOB 33]

+1

[r_assasain0 0]

hey y did u banned me and its deadmarine y did u!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

[TAIMARVEL1 0]

:ph34r:

[mateilaur 0]

Test core code's have been disactivated?

[DanTheKiller1 2,889]

Test core code's have been disactivated?

Yep,for test 4

Edited May 15, 2013 by DanTheKiller1

[abhijitrocks 6]

+1

P.S great job ShadowVision

[BoRn.To.Be.WiLd 29]

Nice job!

[SharpRaZzor2 34]

nice shadow :D

[r_flae90 28]

+1

+1

P.S great job ShadowVision

Nice job!

nice shadow :D

What they said ^ :D

[SDDanmark 1]

I just read this and I dont know where to put this:

*Posting chat violations could get you banned!.

Edited December 22, 2013 by JL6H

[FederalBureauFBI 2,881]

^Get that thing off the forum or you'll be banned.

 

2 - It's forbidden to post screenshots of chat violations

This rule applies to swearing, profanity, bad language, advertisements, links to third part softwares/sites

Such screenshots must be sent to the Chat Moderators with a PM. Make sure that your picture shows the whole screen, it must have no edits of any kind and it must show the whole chat conversation (ENTER key hold)

[Songheestyles 0]

-_-

[Fun_Dip1 0]

I really need help guys. When i try to do the /vote  the name it does not work? it sayes chat command failed? how come? what do i do plz help me :( and thx :D 

 

 

 

[Fun_Dip1 0]

-_-

:blush:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:  :excl:

[7_Smart 0]

plz make 30 minute battles and 60 minute battles back again

[asifmehmood 1,576]

plz make 30 minute battles and 60 minute battles back again

hh mult. 

[TTK_229 1,080]

ShadowVisions?

[beaku 2,656]

ShadowVisions?

I wonder, I wonder... Who could have possibly written an article having 'Issue 8' in title and then moved to Newspaper Archive... :huh:... Perhaps a chat moderator?