Other [Issue 79] Nostalgia: 2017

[Hex 11,520]

 

 

 

 

What do we know, it seems like it was only yesterday when we were enjoying the increased rates and the wonderful snowy New Year map back in 2017. It was about time the Newspaper published another article on the game's history, and so, here it is - everything about last year.

 

 

Let's start off, it is the first of January. It was going to be a good year, filled with every sorts of events, celebrations and the thing everybody loves: sales and discounts. 

 

The New Year celebrations had just ended, and while wild Strikers were still proving to be over-powered due to the lack of protections, not everyone was feeling the Christmas vibe of the event. Most people didn't even knew how to control the new turret yet, and at the same time, it was being given out to a lucky few people in the special contest. I'm sure most of you still remember the looks of the special holiday map, right? The awesome festivities and decorations? What about discounts? Sales? Yep, those were quite wonderful - no one can regret having a nice fifty percent off to end a super long year.

 

The first update of the year focused on balance changes to Striker, which included the increase of grace period, angular velocity of its rockets and the mere reload speed. In addition, a new format was also added to the game, called XC or Hornet-Striker. If you're wondering how on Earth are the letters "X" and "C" related to the hull and the turret, well, they're simply named after the Russian translation of "Hornet" and "Striker", which is Хорнет-Страйкер. 

 

On the same day, January 11th, the Winter Tandem Tournament was announced. In it, you had to pair up with a teammate and take on other teams in Capture The Flag games. Prizes included hundreds of thousands of crystals, months of Premium Account and many Gold Boxes.

 

On January 26th, one of the most sought-after updates was finally released in the game, albeit being launched with limited functionality. It was the in-game clan system. Players could now finally create a clan inside the actual game, recruit their friends, give away roles and go into battles as a full team, recognized by a tag before their nicknames. Clan tags, despite being sold at a very expensive amount, would soon appear in each and every battle, next to everyone's names. It would be almost impossible to see a player without a clan in the future. With the release, Clan Licenses - which would be available to everyone afterwards - were given out to the top clans of the communities, those who were in Clan Championship IX. 

 

Balancing was probably one of the major problems of the previous year, as on the same day, Ricochet and Smoky went changes and were slightly buffed and nerfed respectively. Another really useful update on this day was the change made to the "Garage" button in the battle. Now, you could visit the Garage in a battle without having to leave it, something that almost everyone wanted before.

 

Oh, almost forgot... THE GAME, which was to be honest, quite easy this time, ended on January 7th and the winners were announced on the 9th. The first place was secured by the soon-to-be two-timer killjet, winning a Dream Tank and lots of other prizes.

 

Count twenty-five more days and it was February 3rd, the day Clan Licenses finally became available for purchase in the Shop. For $35, you were given the following bonuses: the in-game clan, dedicated clan chat, roles, a clan tag, a description and finally, the ability to join PRO Battles without a PRO Pass. 

 

February 1st also had a major update, Patch Update #437. On this day, in an effort to eliminate critical errors from the game, drop zones were made to be visible from all over the map - unlike before, when only the zones who were close to your tank were visible and others were transparent. This meant that the Gold Box markers would now be visible from across the map, so you could have an easier time getting those thousand crystals. Player Ratings also made a return in this update after a whopping two years. Great, another thing to brag about...

 

On February 10th, alterations for Twins and Ricochet were added, as if in a "second wave" to the alterations of other turrets.

 

Most people saw this as the day Twins got heavily nerfed, as it now dealt splash damage. To remove this problem, you had to buy and equip an alteration. 

 

On the 14th of February, you guessed it, love struck the air in Tanki. Chats were filled with romantic poems and shy tankers hinting their partners to go on a date and thousands of gifts were being to each other. It was Valentines Day. Celebrations included thematic decorations, sales ranging from 20% to 70% off and special offers in the Shop, it was quite an event.

 

February 16th was quite an interesting day. It saw some balance changes to three important weapons - Isida, Hammer and Shaft. Isida lost its self healing but gained damage, Hammer was heavily nerfed with its pellet count being reduced and the reload being increased, while Shaft on the other hand was buffed, now being able to one shot medium tanks on the same upgrade level. These changes proved to be controversial in the community, especially the alterations made to Isida, but at the same time, greatly improved game balance.

 

Just a few days later, on February 23rd, Tanki Online celebrated Iron Days with a bang - heavy sales, themed items, paints, you name it. There were also special Daily Missions with increased rewards and above all, increased drop rate for Gold Boxes. Two big events in one month? Good Tanki, good.

 

28th February marked the day when Tanki Online partnered with a payments service provider BoaCompra, in order to give more people around the day more and secure options to purchase in-game items.

 

The next two months were filled with updates, news and events up to the brim - it was almost like having a balloon that's filled with so much air, it is going to burst any second. So let's continue with March.

 

March 3rd marked a big day for Tanki Online. It was the day when Tanki officially partnered with Steam - yes, the gaming giant. This partnership would soon prove to be very effective in increasing the game's audience.

 

On March 7th, Women's Day came to Tanki Online. There were sales and discounts, themed items, special offers and a very exciting contest: the Postcard Contest. In it, you had to do make or design a postcard for Women's Day; and the best entries would win awesome prizes including crystals and Gold Boxes. The overall winner of the contest was the player with the nickname 289656, and here's their entry.

 

March 16th saw another Patch Update, #449. It was quite a big update, as almost all modifications of turrets and hulls went balance and analytic changes, including but not limited to rank of availability, price, micro-upgrades, discount and probably the most joyful of them all, renting alterations no longer costed real money. Instead, they being sold for five thousand crystals for 24h. However, product kits also underwent some changes. The bonus supplies in them were removed, discounts no longer applied to them and the descriptions that described them in the garage were simplified.

 

Seven days later, probably one of the most hated turrets in the game right now was officially released. Oh come on, you already know what I'm talking about... It's this bad boy: 

 

Upon release, Magnum was able to one shot medium hulls and take out tens of people in the same shot, thanks to its huge splash radius. Magnum was also the first turret ever to be only rotatable in vertical degrees, not horizontal. This ability of Magnum would change Tanki's gameplay forever. A special contest was held to give away 7x Magnums to different lucky people, along with the Griffon T-F module and Gold Boxes.

 

And... On 29th March, Patch Update #451 was released. Just saying the number of that update has sent chills down my spine, I must be careful with my words here. Nah, I'm just kidding... Thing is, on this dreaded day, Daily Missions were made to only be able to completed in, in... non-PRO battles. There, I said it, now let's see what more happened. There were changes to micro-upgrades, including the reduction of steps and unification of full-MU and next tier prices, increase of Daily Mission rewards, changes to auto-completion system - which, at this point, the notification to which had already changed color a billion times from green to orange to gold (yes, it gave some of the players heart attacks) and back to orange again. Oh, and critical errors were completely disabled from the game.

 

Sadly, April did not bring joy and laughter with it this time, due to the Kemerovo Tragedy. If you're unaware of what happened, or simply didn't know, you can learn more about it here, and watch Tanki Online's condolences here. May the victims rest in peace.

 

Due to the incident, all events and news were postponed for a couple of days. April Fools day came to Tanki full of sales, laughs, discounts, special paints, holiday decorations and much more. What people didn't knew that just a few days later, a big event was on it's way...

 

Cosmonautics Day! On April 12th, the legendary Moon Silence map made a return, the one thing most old tankers remember from the beginning years from Tanki. As per usual, there were special paints, daily missions, sales and discounts, the lot. Again, the developers were still hiding a secret from us the entire time, read on to see what it was!

 

Also, on April 7th, a small update was done, which changed some probabilities in daily missions, reduced prices of the kits in the Shop and some server optimizations. 

 

Later that day, on April 12th, a surprise announcement was made in the News and Announcements section in the forum. Space mode would now stay in the game forever! The developers had finally managed to update the anti-cheat software, and so, the low gravity mode could no longer make a false-positive mistake. It was one of the best announcements ever made in the history of Tanki Online, as seen by the number of likes on the topic, which are relatively very high compared to other updates.

 

On April 13th, the Communicator panel was added to the lobby - the interface was now much simpler, easy to use and extremely helpful than before. Players could now talk in dedicated chats, for example, one general chat, one for looking for games, one for eSports and so on. The News section would now store all recent news, unlike before. This update was also one of the most useful ones of all time.

 

The next day, a giveaway was held in which you had to reach some specific kill tiers to receive items. Rewards included protection modules, crystals and Gold Boxes.

 

Finally, a big Patch Update was released on April 21st, #456. It included balancing changes to a lot of turrets, including Firebird, Magnum, Hammer, Smoky etc., addition of extra bonuses for Premium account users, new daily mission types, changes to the Communicator system and last but not least, new flags for Capture The Flag mode and bug fixes.

 

May started off with the usual May Holidays celebrations, with double Gold Box drop rates, themed decorations, sales and for the first time, two separate days for sales on micro-upgrades and speed-ups. There were special holidays paints, available both in the Shop and the Garage which you could purchase, and keep forever.

 

In 2017, one of the most interesting things Tanki started doing were weekend giveaways. As you already know, these require you to reach some specific kill goal in order to receive cool prizes, including crystals, Gold Boxes, Premium Account time, containers and sometimes even legendary paints! On May 12th, another one of these events was held in the game, with the shop paint "Liquid Metal" up for grabs for reaching a hefty 1200+ kills.

 

Finally, on May 26th, something called Bonus and Discount Cards were released. These give you special deals and discounts in the Shop, provided that you are lucky enough to get one. On this day, the popularly known Double Crystal Card, or DCC, officially became Bonus Crystal Card, BCC. Some others include discount cards for kits, paints, Gold Boxes etc.

 

June began with an exciting opportunity for eSports fans, the launch of Domination Series Season II. Players from around the world in different clans participated in the tournament. In the final, it all came down to two teams, the powerful Synergy and the deadly All Kind, after which Synergy took the title.

 

On June 4th, the community celebrated Tanki's 8th Birthday. Not only there were huge sales and promotions this time, but also the return of Overdrive in the game, which was then known as "Zero Supply". This feature was still new back then, holding mixed thoughts and critiques. Nevertheless, it was one of the best celebrations of the year, so people could care less to complain. Let's not forget THE GAME, in which, for the first time ever in Tanki history, the same player won two consecutive GAME's and become a two-time champion: killjet.

 

On 20th June, it was announced that Tanki Online had partnered with a payment services provider knows as Trustly, to extend services in some European countries, including Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Finland and Poland. June ended with yet another Crazy Weekend, and this time, the prize was a chance to win a Dream Tank!

 

July was indeed an incredible month for Tanki Online - many new updates and features were added to the game with lots of contests. First up, promotional codes - an incredibly useful in-game system which allows you to receive rewards from the Administration (like contests, promotions etc.) and also players (giveaways, videos etc.). Promotional codes often drop in official livestreams, and now, thanks to the YouTuber TO program, also appear in videos of selected channels on YouTube. These were added to the game on July 6th, as part of Patch Update #467.

 

Then, on July 7th, a special item was added to the game - the first ever animated paint, called Flow. Since it was the first time the developers had ever made a paint like that, it took a lot of players by surprise and so, the update received positive critique, with many hoping to buy it or obtain it through the special giveaway. 

 

Three days later, on the 10th, the Commentator Contest was launched again. Many players took part, each one with their own style of commentating, but in the end, only the best entries won and some of them were asked for further collaboration to eventually become official commentators.

 

July 12th came and brought with it a returning mechanic, Overdrive! It was now finally in the game, permanently. Nobody disliked having full supplies for free, and along with that, also extending their effects to your teammates. The release was part of a very big patch update, which also included changes to supplies, sound cues for supply cooldown and activation, changes to protection in format battles and much more.

 

On 14th July, another giveaway was held with the top prizes being Gold Boxes, Shark T-B module and a chance to win Dream Tanks or the legendary Flow paint.

 

July ended with the Wikimania Contest 2017 - a Wiki-based contest in which players had to write guides for certain maps in order to win big prizes. What was the grand prize? One chance to get your article featured in the Wiki in it's own, dedicated map guide page!

 

August was full of events of contests - a literal win for anyone with some crystals to spend. The month began with the "Goodbye Cedric" meme contest, in which players had to wish their goodbyes to Cedric using a meme. There were numerous entries, but prizes were sent to the most-liked and best ones only.

 

The next day, on August 5th, the first Parkour Survival contest launched. Teams had to complete weekly challenges, and if a team failed to do so, it was eliminated from the contest. Around a hundred and twenty teams took part, but only seven made it through and got to keep the Sky paint forever.

 

The popular "Mister and Miss Tanki Online" contest began on August 18th, and finally, the month ended with the "Goodbye Summer 2017" event, with 5x Gold Boxes, big discounts and special missions!

 

September was an interesting month for Tanki Online. Tanker's Day was imminent, but the month started off with quite a bang: a new Community Manager! Cedric Debono retired from the position with the meme contest, and Sergei Balabanov soon took hold of his new position. 

 

On September 1st, Crazy Weekend 4 was launched and and the main prize included Gold Boxes, Griffon T-G module and the Dream Tanks. People spent their two days blazing into battles and blasting off with victories.

 

September 9th came soon after, and Tanker's Day was in full swing! This time, the celebrations were extremely enthusiastic, with five times the Gold drops, new holidays and premium paints, three new gifts, holiday missions, huge sales and brand new paints and gifts.

 

The Tanki Thinking Challenge was revived by @Marc (with help from [member=ninja]) on the 21st of September; and many people were quite happy to see the return of a great contest. It now had four major quiz categories and gave away tons of prizes to the people of the community every week.

 

On 27th September, one of my ideas finally got implemented in the game - oh yes, self-advertising for the win. It was the Rename Pass! Unfortunately, due to unavoidable circumstances, I had to migrate to a different planet to dodge incoming things. 

 

Two days later, the Deja Vu contest was announced. In it, you had to take a picture of a structure, building or anything that looked exactly like the one in the game. Being sponsored by Genesis, the prizes of the contest included awesome gaming keyboards and mouses. It was one hell of an event!

 

October, for once, remained quiet, with the exception of the massive Halloween event. It started off with the Unified Battle List update on October 12th. Essentially, all the server battles were merged into one big list so that finding a battle would be easier. The Communicator panel breathed into life as dedicated chat channels were now a thing.

 

October 13th came, brought with it a Crazy Weekend and went by quick. On the same day, Masters of Parkour 2017 was announced and this time, the paint featured a pink theme with dashes of white across it. 

 

In November, only three major events took place: a community event, Tankiball; Battle of the Social Networks and last but not least, Black Friday on the 16th, 15th and 23rd of the month respectively. Tankiball was an original event in which teams had to play football on the Stadium map in space gravity, it was both funny and interesting to watch since players were having a hard time coping with the extra impact from most weapons. Flips and spins were the least of their concerns, so to say. The OK vs. VK event, was more of a general in-game event in which players could buy either of the side's paints and maintain high kills with lower deaths. On Black Friday, the Spectrum paint was released along with Black Boxes, currently known as containers. On that day, due to a glitch, these were dropping every few seconds and people got hundreds in no time - these were removed soon after and the players were compensated with a day of Premium.

 

December was a great month, filled with every sort of events and contests you can imagine to the brim. Let's start off with the friends list and reporting changes on 7th December - now you could only have a maximum of three hundred friends and no more than fifty active incoming requests. This change intended to reduce load on the servers to improve battles. On this day, protection against jump hacking was also introduced into the game.

 

On 8th December, yet another Crazy Weekend ran with the maximum prizes being the usual, two Dream Tanks. Three days later, on the 11th, the popular "15 Seconds to New Years" contest was launched. In it, people had to make a fifteen second video related to both, the incoming celebration and Tanki Online for a chance to win great prizes!

 

December 22nd was indeed a great day, for the annual New Years celebrations finally begun. I'm talking about a whole new map, new paints, new decorations and gifts, huge discounts and the overall festive vibe of the event in the game. Fun fact, this time around, the map was loosely based on the Forest map. Some say this could be asked in a random quiz in the future... On the same day, Frost Weekend, the same event with a modified name ran and this time, players who reached the maximum tier also won the Kodiak T-A module.

 

On December 28th, three major changes were made in the game. One, the blue team in Assault mode could now gain points by simply killing enemy tanks, with each kill being one point. Two, rarity effects in containers - yep, the green, blue, purple etc. colors that pop up and get the suspense going. Three, mission chains now gave three times the rewards!

 

While all these events were happening, a VLOG Codes Contest was also underway, from VLOGs 154 to 157. Winners were rewarded with days of Premium time based on their positions in the contest.

 

Finally, the Tanki Awards were held for the first time in the community. Players could vote in many categories, including "Artist of the Year", "Videomaker of the Year" and even "Player of the Year". Clans and clubs which showed exceptional performances throughout the year were also praised, Synergy and Fight & Flight being the winners of the respective categories. Ghost_Animators, a videomaker from the EN Community, won in three of the four total categories, and that's impressive. Along with this, a group of tireless, exceptional and dedicated helpers were also announced and congratulated, and received the title of "Best Helper of the Year - 2017".

 

[Hex 11,520]

CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES OF EVENTS - 2017:

 

 

 

 

January:

• Introduction of Hornet/Striker mode in the game

• Winter Tandem Tournament

• Clan system was introduced

• THE GAME

February:

• Launch of Clan Licenses

• Valentine’s Day

• Iron Days

• Player ratings back in the game

• Balance changes + New alterations for Twins and Ricochet

• Payment through BoaCompra

March:

• Women’s Day celebrations

• Tanki Online is on Steam

• Balance changes to Isida, Hammer and Shaft (Isida lost self-healing)

• Balance changes and Rental Alterations

• Magnum Turret Released

• Changes to MUs, Daily Missions, Auto-Completion system

• Women’s Day Postcard Contest

• 7 Magnums Giveaway

April:

• April Fools’ Day Celebrations

• Cosmonautics Day

• Changes to Rank limits and Daily Missions

• New Communicator Panel

• Crazy Weekend giveaway

• Space mode will stay in the game

• Balance changes and Premium bonuses

May:

• May Holidays

• New Discount cards and Bonus cards

• Premium, Golds, Liquid Metal, and Dream Tanks Giveaway

June:

• Domination series Season II

• Tanki’s 8 Birthday

• New payment method - Trustly

• THE GAME

• Crazy Weekend Giveaway 2

July:

• Promo codes to claim prizes and gifts

• <<Overdrive>> added to the game

• Flow - The first animated paint in the game

• Crazy Weekend Giveaway 3

• Commentator Contest

• Wikimania Contest

August:

• Goodbye Summer event

• Parkour Survival

• “Goodbye Cedric” Meme Contest

• Mister and Miss Tanki Online Contest

• Parkour Survival 2017

September:

• New Community Manager - Nives

• Tanker’s Day celebrations

• Rename Pass

• Crazy Weekend Giveaway 4

• Deja Vu contest

• Tanki Thinking Challenge

October:

• Unified Battle List and Chat channels

• Masters of Parkour

• HallowMINE contest

• Crazy Weekend 5

• Halloween

• New Lobby screen

November:

• Community Event - Tankiball

• Battle of Social Networks

• Black Friday

December:

• Changes to Friends List

• Crazy Weekend

• Frosty Weekend

• Christmas and New Year Celebrations

• Assault Mode and Containers

• 15 Seconds to New Year

• Codes Contest

• Tanki Awards 2017

 

 

[Total_SkiIl 1,983]

Nice read.

[Thunder-Bear 44]

 

 

Sadly, April did not bring joy and laughter with it this time, due to the Kemerovo Tragedy. If you're unaware of what happened, or simply didn't know, you can learn more about it here, and watch Tanki Online's condolences here. May the victims rest in peace.

 

Due to the incident, all events and news were postponed for a couple of days. April Fools day came to Tanki full of sales, laughs, discounts, special paints, holiday decorations and much more. What people didn't knew that just a few days later, a big event was on it's way...

 

That was this year. Not in 2017 right? I thought it was about 2017. Anyways nice article! I really enjoyed!

[cryptor 589]

Oh old memories of 2k17 master of parkour, nice Issue!  :)

Edited September 19, 2018 by cryptor

[Pyre 3,485]

Text... Wall... Eyes.... Burning...

 

Nice article. It all seems so long ago...

 

[kaisdf 3,320]

Text... Wall... Eyes.... Burning..

And I had to proofread it :blink:

[TriNitroToIuene 4,765]

I'm being burtally honest - I joined the game way-back-when because it advertised itself as a game that was so simple to pick up that you could grasp the nuances within minutes. Now, there' just too much to wrap my head around, and playing is longer fun (oh, and not to mention the horribly disguised pay-to-win revenue model). My playing days are officially over.

 

(There, I said it lol).

[Person_Random 4,991]

Wishes for images.

[Aether_Thanatos 18]

I didn't read it because I knew what you'll post is just gonna make me feel more nostalgic :lol: