[Tanki Theory] Buyers, Supplies, Drones and Game Balance

[TakeAShower 300]

This is my theory: The developers add a new p2w (pay to win) mechanic, and then, after their profits have shot up, they make it freely available (to a certain extent). Think about it. Supplies used to be the number one enemy of non-buyers. Now, anyone can get loads of supplies from 3x mission chains and Overdrives. Containers were an incredibly OP shop-only item that you can now get from mission chains, Youtubing, or even Weekend Giveaways. Premium was only for the biggest of the biggest buyers, now you can get it from containers (which as I previously mentioned) are quite easy to come by. MUs were added, and their prices were later lowered, and the steps were reduced to 10 (fewer speed-ups). What about Drones and Batteries? I think that once all the mega buyer youtubers have spent all their cash on them, their Battery consumption will be lowered or even entirely removed. Or, there will be another way to easily get a lot of Batteries.
 
Why are they doing this? I think they do it so that Youtubers spend all their cash on a new mechanic, only for it to become free or relatively cheap not much later.
 

So.. what do you think? Discuss below.

Edited May 27, 2018 by TakeAShower

[GuidoFawkes 2,361]

it's just your imagination  ;)

[Maf 32,300]

Makes perfect sense. People are willing to pay a lot of money for something that's a new feature that will make them stand out because they'll be the first to own it. I disagree about this being the case with supplies, but it definitely applies to things like XT items, animated paints, Premium accounts, containers, gold box supplies and a few other thing which don't affect game balance all that much (or not at all).

Supplies were probably made to be P2W in the first place, but I don't think there was intention of ever making them easily available for free players. But changes in the game over the past few years allowed devs to rely less on revenue from supply sales and thus make them more easily obtainable.

We don't know what will happen with drones, but it seems like batteries will be available from missions and chains from the start, while many players will already have hundreds (thousands?) of batteries after the update.

[lordmostafa 3,821]

Actually that's not a "theory", that's just economics. For an example from outside Tanki, the game Warframe that I used to play, had "prime" versions of frames (basically hulls) that they release. Everytime a new prime is released, the market price spikes up considerably (the game had an in-player trading system). As soon as the prime is released it's price is around 800-1000 platinum (similar to X crystals in TX) due to scarcity of it since a lot of people are trying to obtain it, but after a while when there are more product in the market the price drops down (to 200-300, depending on demand). Similarly, after an update that releases some new item has been released for a while, people eventually loose interest and spend less crystals on it, so game balance has to be adjusted by providing ways to keep the product rolling in the game, or else it will fail.

[Hex 11,520]

Actually that's not a "theory", that's just economics. For an example from outside Tanki, the game Warframe that I used to play, had "prime" versions of frames (basically hulls) that they release. Everytime a new prime is released, the market price spikes up considerably (the game had an in-player trading system). As soon as the prime is released it's price is around 800-1000 platinum (similar to X crystals in TX) due to scarcity of it since a lot of people are trying to obtain it, but after a while when there are more product in the market the price drops down (to 200-300, depending on demand). Similarly, after an update that releases some new item has been released for a while, people eventually loose interest and spend less crystals on it, so game balance has to be adjusted by providing ways to keep the product rolling in the game, or else it will fail.

Exactly, take the case of Rocket League. Whenever a new Battle Car (equivalent to turret, hull) comes out in that game (and by the way you can only obtain cars in that game by opening crates, again, similar to containers), everyone is trying to obtain it, and so it's price is very high for a normal car, around 5-10 keys, even 10+ keys in some cases (RL also has an in-game trading system). Afterwards, when more and more people start obtaining the car, the market price drops and now almost everyone can afford it by just paying 1-2 keys for it and not wasting money on crates. After a few days, people loose interest in the new car and they will even give it to you for some expendable quality items.

[Guest]

Makes sense.

[austen_pierce 1,948]

^I like the idea of a trading system. If it works in that other game, I wonder if a trading system could ever come to TO...

[Potdindy 866]

Like Maf said, this is the way it should be. Dev probably intend features to be available to everyone, but early on they can have a few ppl spend money to gain these features. THis not only helps fund the game, lets those players be all stars for a while, but also lets them test these features on a smaller scale. Supplies have been balance well I think, so now pretty much everyone can use them

[GorgoBlesk 831]

What about completely removing these noob supplies (drugs) from Tanki?