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[Issue 62] Features That Once Were


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Hello tankers! If you remember any of these ancient features, you must have been a fan of this game for a long time. If not, I will help you discover the mighty past of Tanki Online - all of the past striking characteristics, great features, and undeniable beauty. Beware! This can bring unexpected nostalgia and remorseful memories of the past, all the good ol' times.

 

Without further ado, let's jump right into the list of the greatest things removed from the game.
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1. Old Maps
 
Let's start this top ten with one of my favorite features that was in the game - the old maps, especially Moon Silence. Moon Silence was exactly like Silence at that time; however, what makes that map unique is the distinct lack of gravity, meaning that you could perform long jumps and do cool parkour tricks. Jumping from the Blue base was fun, because in mid-air, since you were very slow, other people could shoot you and make you flip effortlessly. I had some hilarious moments defending in the Blue team, especially of shooting someone who tried to steal the flag and didn't make it straight on the ground.

 

Unfortunately, this map was removed due to its vulnerability to hackers that were in the game. Performing fly hack in that map could be done too easily because of the low gravity. Before it was removed for good, there was a special event where in that map, funds were doubled, 3000 crystals Gold boxes were dropped and a paint named Moonwalker was available for purchase for 3000 crystals. If you purchased it, it would've stayed in your garage forever. The person who got the most Gold Boxes during that event received an Ipad Mini as a prize (turned out to be two winners with the same number of Gold Boxes caught). I didn't have enough crystals to buy the paint at first, but got lucky by finding a gold box that allowed me access.

 

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Now let's talk about other old maps. For the most popular ones, there were the 'version maps' -- maps with version of I and II. Silence, Highland and Brest fit into this category. You can find a description of Brest II and Fort Knox II in this article. Today in the game, those maps are a combined version of the two versions that existed before.

Here is a better review of the main differences between the Silence map:
 
Silence I
 
Red base:

  • Two ramps access to the blue base
  • In the red base, there were containers instead of a camping spot.

Blue base:

  • Blue flag position in the middle of the base.
  • No wall between the highest point of the blue side and the red side, which made camping possible but escaping with flag effortless too.   

Here, I have highlighted the main differences that existed and affected gameplay:

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Silence II
 
Red base:

  • Wall behind the flag to allow defenders to hide.
  • We could camp from that little structure that was there instead of the containers in Silence I, without getting sniped by blue campers.
  • Only one ramp access to the enemy base from the left side.

Blue base:

  • The flag is deeply in the base which is harder to obtain.
  • Walls separating the platform where the flag is between the red base making blue players sniping red side impossible as well as makes the escape with the blue flag harder.
  • Potential sniping point above the tunnel.

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In the last and final version of this map, it became larger, and there were new features that were added such as:

  • The tunnels which link both bases were added but with a bunch of self destruct-zones inside.
  • The self-destruction zone became a bunch of hills instead of the floating edges, making the map look more realistic than an island hovering over emptiness.
  • Deep in the red team's base, they added a bridge that covers a whole side of the base; the map became wider and more fun to play on.

2. Crystal Boxes
 
Here come the crystal boxes, considered one of the favorite removed updates according to tankers. It had the same function as the Gold Box; it granted you money from a crate falling from the sky, but instead of 1000 crystals, it contains a small amount of only 10. Before Update 123 (Update 123: Changes in the Game Economics), crystal boxes included one crystal. Update 123 was an update that changed the game's economy. Crystals and prices were multiplied by ten (x10). This significant update gave better divisions of crystals between team members, allowing the possibility to get more rewards. Crystal boxes were dropped randomly on the ground in every battle with them enabled when the battle fund increased. Like the Gold Box, it was a possibility to disable crystal boxes in games.

 

Although ten crystals is not a big deal, people were still rushing for them to earn more bonuses, and thus, there came the problem of mults. Players started to camp in strategic places where those boxes were dropping, leaving the game to the other players in the map. This happened frequently, especially when there was a double battle fund event, in which there were 'crystal box rains' and everyone was going for them and ignoring the battle itself. I loved picking them one by one; it was so fun thinking I would get rich. Unfortunately, they didn't really increase my crystal amount much because you have the impression that ten boxes seems like a good sum of crystals, in reality, it is only 100. *sigh*

 

Before they got removed, crystal boxes were redesigned and their amount varied from 10 to 100 crystals depending on the battle fund (Predictable Drops are now live!). Those 100 crystal boxes were literally "mini" gold boxes, so each time one dropped, a huge number of players went for them. After receiving many complaints about multing and sabotage, developers decided to retire those boxes. Crystal boxes were removed in the update (Join the experiment with crystal drops) on the 28/Nov/2014. They added an extra amount of crystals into the battle funds to make this a better game.
 
Here is an example of how much crystal boxes were dropped during double battle fund.


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3. Isida's Self-Healing Feature
 
When Tanki Online had just introduced the weapon Isida, it was the first and only weapon that could heal your teammates and destroy enemies at the same time. Most of us don't even know how powerful the weapon was at the beginning, because roughly after one week after it was introduced, the removal of a unique feature known as self-healing occured. When you were using Isida, and shooting without a nearby target, it created a small white energy ball that allowed you to repair yourself. Imagine someone going to steal a flag, with Isida and Repair Kit enabled; it was almost impossible to kill them. With that, when damaging opponents, you got back 50% of HP of the damage that you had inflicted.

 

The self-healing feature while attacking enemies remained for a long time, until a very recent update (Patch Update #441 - Changes to Isida, Hammer and Shaft, and other changes), where that was removed as well. In compensation, its damage had increased, which made Isida more powerful than all other short range weapon for a whole five seconds.

 

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4. Parkour in Battles
 
I wonder if anyone remembers when we could climb buildings in regular battles when the self-destruct zone wasn't that high. You could actually rank up on those skyscrapers or climb buildings and then catch Gold Boxes easily with a few parkour skills. Then, the parkour mode came out. The only difference with parkour mode and the normal mode when that update was released was that in parkour, there was no supply cool-down at all. The only drawback of this new mode was that the self-destruction zone were placed very low - not high enough for tankers to attempt huge tricks. 

Several weeks later developers decided to go further making SD zones on a certain relatively small height in maps as well as on almost every building in those maps to avoid hackers ruining the game as well as on almost every building. After that update, parkour in battles became impossible.

 

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5. Impact Force From Ricochet And Railgun
 
Another great feature that used to be in the game was the massive impact forces of Railgun and Ricochet. I remember the time where Ricochet users were the masters of parkour in every battle - where they could climb every building in Silence alone with Ricochet and Wasp. An example of this could be found in my French Rico guide located here. Unfortunately, this was removed after introducing the new physics to the game in Update 205 — New Physics.

 

I also remember that once, Railgun had that great amount of impact too. It was so hilarious in XP battles if you shoot right, on the top of a tank and it would flip, leaving the opposite team without a member for over 20 seconds. Today, if you want to flip someone, it is still possible but a lot harder than before.

 

Here's how:

 

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6. Score Multiplier Pass
 
A great feature, but underused. That pass allowed you to rank up faster, similar to what a past garage item that allowed you to buy experience directly. If you had good equipment and didn't want to be stuck in the middle ranks, this was perfect for you to gain experience points faster. This pass was really unpopular because most of the middle-rank players have a hard time managing their crystals and getting good equipment was pretty challenging. Ranking up faster to the higher ranks was not the best solution. After the Premium Accounts had been released on the 21st of October 2015, score multiplier passes were useless due to having the same function as the Premium. They got removed one month later on the 1st of November 2016.

 

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7. Smoky XT
 
The power of Thunder but the reload time of Smoky, a dream of every tanker. The plans of this weapon were stolen from the weapon laboratory and sold on the black market of Tanki Online for a whole week. It was released on the 14th of February 2011. Players could benefit off of this overpowered gun till February 22. But then, developers decided to add two more days to this weapon and also, increased its damage. It went from 16-36 up to 26-46 damage points (old measurement system). This was the first XT weapon released in the game and was the best one.


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Here are some statistics from this gun from before Update 123. At WO1, it costed 39 500 crystals.


 

8. No Supply Cooldowns
 
This is probably most well-remembered by all old players, especially all those people that you hated facing against because you knew you had no chance against them - those who brought fear and darkness to the game.

 

Yes, druggers.

 

A long, long time ago, they dominated the battlefield, in a more oppresive way than people believe they do today. By pressing the keys 2, 3 and 4, they would get ridiculously tougher to beat; dealing more damage and speeding up faster than anyone could. I remember the good old times: the drugs wars between friends and the power of the supplies. This terror lasted for years, until one day the developers decided to do something against it - and thus, smart cooldowns were created. The option to use all the supplies at once was removed on the 29th of September, 2014. As compensation, they doubled the amount of drugs that we had in our garage and we had a weekly bonus of increased amount of supplies in daily gifts. Cooldown-lacking battles still remain today, but can only be created by using a Pro battle pass. Those battles were played by a few tankers, and it is still very unpopular to find any of them today.

 

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9. Micro Upgrades Options
 
A number of parameters that allowed you to upgrade your hulls, weapons, and paints to your exact specifications. At the beginning, the system was not designed like the current one at all. When it first came out, we had the option to choose which parameter to upgrade. As an example, we could upgrade only a turret's damage or a hull's armor, which were reasonably the most popular choices. Tankers often ignored the rotation speed of a gun or the turning speed of a tank because it seemed useless to them. 

 

To solve the lack of attention to those statistics, the developers merged all the upgrade parameters into one so that each step would increase every parameter of the selected item. Some lucky tankers (like me), who had already MU'd some steps on their weapons, got the remaining features added to that level. If you had upgraded a hull's armor 10 steps, all the other parameters of that hull would have been automatically upgraded to 10 steps. So if you had one maxed out parameter, your weapon became fully M4. The new system is more expensive to get it maxed out but fits as a better game balance to all.

 

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10. Old Battle Creation System

 

Creating a battle without having to buy a Pro Battle Pass was such a great system to many tankers. We had many choices such as: making the battle private, choose its length, choosing the number of players and so on. My favorite feature was creating a battle with personalized names; players who were invited knew what the battle was about (rank ups, fire/wasp, etc.). The problem with battle names was when players created battles with swearing or any other profanity words. Moderators were always needed to keep an eye on those. It was way too much work for them, so the only solution was to remove customizable battle names.

 

Pro Battles allowed you to disable bonus boxes, supplies, crystal boxes, auto-balance, micro-upgrades and friendly fire. Those were considered ''advanced'' options, and are generally played only by high ranked players.

 

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In later updates, a private battle, battle length, team size and score limit option were added as Pro Battle features.

 

In a recent update in November 2016 (Changes in the battle creation system), making battles were reserved only to Pro Battle Pass and Premium users. The Pro Pass price is now proportional to ranks making it affordable for lowers ranks to enjoy this feature. This made the game better for newcomers as they could find a battle quickly instead of creating a bunch of them with no one in it.

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I hope you enjoyed reading my article, as therein lay my best memories of the game; those which are graved into my heart forever as well as many other tankers'. If I missed something, please leave your opinion on any other great ancient features. Let's turn our back to the past and look to the near future for the upcoming updates.

 

Until then, see ya!

 

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Edited by Yisroel.Rabin
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You get "the Bermuda Triangle Award" because you forgot to mention that TO has REDUCED speed of all tanks ... and now they all drive like snails, which makes game boring, Also WASP has the same top speed now as HORNET which is stupid, since Hornet has more HP. What's the sense to keep Wasp (despite it has better turning angle, but only marignally).    Boooo TO,   shame on you TO !!!

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I miss Moon Silence... I remember how sad everyone was for the removal of the beloved map...

I missed that map too :(, just bought some memories with this article.

 

Yes! First Comment

Congrats :)

 

You get "the Bermuda Triangle Award" because you forgot to mention that TO has REDUCED speed of all tanks

I don't remember any updates on that.

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I may not seem an old player but when i played tanki for the first time, its loading bar was the one with moving bullets and i also played on moon silence. name of my that account consisted of random alphabets. On my this account i have seen features 2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10 as listed above.

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"A long, long time ago, they dominated the battlefield, in a more oppresive way than people believe they do today. By pressing the keys 2, 3 and 4, they would get ridiculously tougher to beat; dealing more damage and speeding up faster than anyone could. I remember the good old times: the drugs wars between friends and the power of the supplies. This terror lasted for years, until one day the developers decided to do something against it - and thus, smart cooldowns were created. "

 

FAKE NEWS.

Not at all how it happened.

After the event of RUSTY BARRELS II developers gave away "by mistake" much more supplies to players, leading them to over use those supplies. Only then did drugging prevailed and created the need to be dealt with.

In my honest opinion, that "mistake" was no mistake at all but the way to make people ask for a means they already had ready: SCD.

(the so called update that put an end in drugging, only it didn't it just spread the use of supplies to every player)

 

Some of us do remember, you know.. :)

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"A long, long time ago, they dominated the battlefield, in a more oppresive way than people believe they do today. By pressing the keys 2, 3 and 4, they would get ridiculously tougher to beat; dealing more damage and speeding up faster than anyone could. I remember the good old times: the drugs wars between friends and the power of the supplies. This terror lasted for years, until one day the developers decided to do something against it - and thus, smart cooldowns were created. "

 

FAKE NEWS.

Not at all how it happened.

After the event of RUSTY BARRELS II developers gave away "by mistake" much more supplies to players, leading them to over use those supplies. Only then did drugging prevailed and created the need to be dealt with.

In my honest opinion, that "mistake" was no mistake at all but the way to make people ask for a means they already had ready: SCD.

(the so called update that put an end in drugging, only it didn't it just spread the use of supplies to every player)

 

Some of us do remember, you know.. :)

Actually that was during Star Series. Anyone who bought the 'Noobest' paint (Which meant you supported that clan) got hundreds of extra supplies. This was because there was a mistake when handing out prizes. I think it totaled at nearly 300 of each more than it should have. 

 

And for the record what Stanzhang said about the SCD wasn't fake. Garage supplies were doubled can we were given extra bigger gifts of supplies for about 7 days. About the druggers? There were plenty of them before that. I really have no idea what you're talking about. 

 

Some of us do remember the truth, you know. :)

 

EDIT:  Great article! Certainly bought those memories back. :D

Edited by lukey0
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^ Even the developers themselves admitted after some time that they intended to make supplies a basic element in every battle.. so why bother insisting in things that do not stand a chance against facts?

 

(never mind, I will not continue this, endless arguments are so unproductive.. each to each own opinion. Cheers)

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i remmember when "issmo rank (the highest at that point) could play with smaller ranks( WO1, WO2.) and they  play fully  drugged against them ( me was in lowest rank). When Prodigy paint  was bought in Kits(update 186`s kits) next to sandstone emerald  , viking m2 and  thunder m2. And for that u get 50 of each supplyes.  Memmories ... Nice one Stanzhang

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i remmember when "issmo rank (the highest at that point) could play with smaller ranks( WO1, WO2.) and they  play fully  drugged against them ( me was in lowest rank). When Prodigy paint  was bought in Kits(update 186`s kits) next to sandstone emerald  , viking m2 and  thunder m2. And for that u get 50 of each supplyes.  Memmories ... Nice one Stanzhang

Oh yes, I remember those kits! I bought one kit which was available at the time of the kit that you mentioned, it made me op from Brigadier; I was running with Hornet and railgun m3. ^_^ Later on, I bought the mammoth twins kit, so I unlocked Mammoth m3 way before Generalissimo. :lol:

Generalissimos were able to play  WO5 at that time^, m3 vs m1/m0 totally unfair :P

w4wNuOC.pngThis was a gold just before my rank up :wub:  old design.

 

 

EDIT:  Great article! Certainly bought those memories back. :D

 

Nice one Stanzhang

 

Thanks for those compliments :rolleyes:

Edited by stanzhang
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Ah, the good ol' times.

 

Too bad doing anything decent in this game costs money now.

What decent things didn't cost money before? :huh:

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I miss PRO games. I know they are still there, but since I now play much less than before, I do not have time to play PRO games since I have to do the missions in drug wars, and I never use drugs.

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I miss PRO games. I know they are still there, but since I now play much less than before, I do not have time to play PRO games since I have to do the missions in drug wars, and I never use drugs.

I rarely see pro battles other than xp/bp now.

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