What Has Happened To Tanki?

FrozenRailgun · June 23, 2020

1 hour ago, wolverine848 said:

is this the year Shaft was introduced without the laser?

Yes.

wolverine848 · June 23, 2020

2 minutes ago, FrozenRailgun said:

Yes.

Then I guess 2011 really was a banner year - FOR SHAFT.

It's amazing how stuff like that is never brought up when they reminisce.

yellowghetto · June 24, 2020

Im going to give the most honest feedback. 2016 and 2019 were probably my favorite years. In these years as a free to play who played about 1-2 hours a day, I felt that the game was pretty decent in economy. These years were obviously different. The Legend rank, ODs, Challenges. All cool, and definitely were major updates. They should've left it at there. I felt 2017 was like 2016 with less updates/boring changes. 2018 had cool alterations and such, but it was JUST a drug, shoot, repeat year; Sales were nice.

2020 was complete **** (I typed those redacted) A ton of unnecessary updates like tankoins, Drones, Ultra Containers, Gauss and Vulcan changes, terrible events, trash sales, etc like wtf.

Things that can be changed are removal/making tankoins easier to get. That is obvious. Overdrives IMO are annoying, but adds excitement to the game. They all are based on what you are equipping, not the ODs themselves.

DeathIsImminent · July 1, 2020

On 6/23/2020 at 8:22 PM, Guest said:

I played Gtanks and it was a very un-fun experience, unless you enjoy getting spawncamped by full m3 combos against your m0 smoky/wasp.

Tell that to the people who get continuously spawncamped by Mk7-20s with full supplies, max protection and fully upgraded drones at WO ranks. The systems back then was nothing, given you could choose your battles by rank and play against people at your level regardless and the upgrades were much cheaper.

On 6/23/2020 at 8:39 PM, wolverine848 said:

is this the year Shaft was introduced without the laser?

On 6/23/2020 at 10:22 PM, wolverine848 said:

Then I guess 2011 really was a banner year - FOR SHAFT.

It's amazing how stuff like that is never brought up when they reminisce.

Is this some attempt at making it sound like the game was worse then because of that? You're hilarious for brushing aside everything else I mentioned. This is what pinacle of stupidity looks like.

Edited July 1, 2020 by DeathIsImminent

CaptainMaxwell7 · July 1, 2020

What happened to Tanki?

Devs aren't listening to the players.

They pretend to by releasing old stuff and then say "See we're listening to you!".
The suggestions written by players are never seen in-game, unless they are magically already thought of by the devs. It's really a waste of time to write suggestions. Sure, there are few suggestions that seen the light of the game maybe, but look at the many good suggestions that never ever make it anywhere besides a topic in the forums.

Which update made Tanki bad?

None really. Maybe the bad ol' rebalance. The updates you mentioned are really good updates, but the execution by Alternativa is bad as usual.

Mk updates - This is actually a very good update. Made everything much cheaper to upgrade, and you can get your equipment stronger in a much faster way as opposed to M0 to M4, where sometimes a certain M upgrade is locked behind a very far rank from yours. Players are just whining in here.
Drones - Good update, but bad execution. Drones give you additional armor and firepower which I find unnecessary. Drones should only give you their own special ability, nothing else. Also Drones use batteries all the time, which is basically a way for Alternativa to squeeze money out of you. I'd either remove the batteries entirely, or just let them use batteries when their ability is activated. Also make batteries cheaper because not everyone wants/can throw money at you.
Challenges - Good update, but needs a bit of fixing. It gives you so many good rewards (I don't care about paints, they're useless as I have a good library of them that I am not using. I only use 1 or 2 paints. The rest are collecting dust.) However, it expects you to spend your entire time on the game, which is a no thanks from me. I want to live my life. Good fix would be to increase the amount of stars earned, and make it depend on how well you did in the battle. As in, if you did extraordinarily well, you can even get 10 stars. No limit to how much you can get; depends on how well you do. Also, why the battlepass price didn't get halved along with the split of challenges into 2? This is pure "we want your money" from Alternativa.
Tankioins - Very good update, but stupidly insane prices. Just look at how cheap things were in Tanki X with the X-Crystals, and look at how expensive everything in here is. Introducing a premium currency means there's a way the devs to get money from the players, which is great, but not when you make almost everything depends on it in your game.
Changes To MM - What changes?

The players just keep whining whenever a new update arrives, then they say "This game is never getting updated!" Like my god, do you guys want updates or not?

For years this game has been stuck in this loophole which seems like it's never going to get out of: Devs implement nice things but in a bad way, and players complain all the time about either bad updates or wanting the 2009 version of the game (which mind you, is very boring and empty compared to what we have now. Sure, it would been a super great game back in 2009, but right now it would be a very empty game in terms of content.)

Tanki X was somewhat an escape of this loophole, as it had a somewhat completely different dev team and community. There was interaction between the 2 sides. Community Manager Artcore, the devs, the staff and mod team interacted with the players much more than Tanki Online ever did. Tanki X had so many things in it that didn't let you feel like you're locked under the dictator control of Tanki Online team (from staff, to mods, to devs, and everyone that have the slightest bit of control)

But of course, Tanki X was under the control of AlternativaGames. That meant sooner or later it would see p2w slipped into it, and that's what happened in 2017 I believe. Slowly from there the game died until it closed in 2020.

wolverine848 · July 1, 2020

7 hours ago, DeathIsImminent said:

Tell that to the people who get continuously spawncamped by Mk7-20s with full supplies, max protection and fully upgraded drones at WO ranks. The systems back then was nothing, given you could choose your battles by rank and play against people at your level regardless and the upgrades were much cheaper.

Is this some attempt at making it sound like the game was worse then because of that? You're hilarious for brushing aside everything else I mentioned. This is what pinacle of stupidity looks like.

I was pointing out one of the major issues back then - it was not all roses as some would like to believe.

And as for mk7s at WO - that is temporary - what about that do you not understand?

Russty · July 2, 2020

The fact that there's no teamwork or communication in battles upsets me. I used to love the days when we could talk to our teammates and create a plan. Nowadays it's rare to see a player who actually speaks English. Most players are Russian or are silent. Also, the battles are only 7 minutes! 2 minutes usually fly by because of the MM waiting time etc. That leaves the battles to be 5 minutes (sometimes 6). Tanki should create a RU server and an EN server. That way we'd at least be able to find players who speak english. I know battles take place on their own server but it'd be nice if they could separate the RU players from the EN players once again. The lack of communication isn't a huge issue but it does suck some of the fun out of battles.

Edited July 2, 2020 by Russty

E_polypterus · July 2, 2020

39 minutes ago, Russty said:

The fact that there's no teamwork or communication in battles upsets me. I used to love the days when we could talk to our teammates and create a plan. Nowadays it's rare to see a player who actually speaks English. Most players are Russian or are silent. Also, the battles are only 7 minutes! 2 minutes usually fly by because of the MM waiting time etc. That leaves the battles to be 5 minutes (sometimes 6). Tanki should create a RU server and an EN server. That way we'd at least be able to find players who speak english. I know battles take place on their own server but it'd be nice if they could separate the RU players from the EN players once again. The lack of communication isn't a huge issue but it does suck some of the fun out of battles.

Even a majority of English speaking players don’t chat much in MM- all they’ve got in their minds is ‘grind-grind-grind’.

Benefactor · July 2, 2020

1 hour ago, E_polypterus said:

Even a majority of English speaking players don’t chat much in MM- all they’ve got in their minds is ‘grind-grind-grind’.

Maybe they graduated to or from college and have other responsibilities that take up most of their time so their play is short.

DeathIsImminent · July 4, 2020

On 7/1/2020 at 11:00 AM, CaptainMaxwell7 said:

Which update made Tanki bad?

None really. Maybe the bad ol' rebalance. The updates you mentioned are really good updates, but the execution by Alternativa is bad as usual.

Mk updates - This is actually a very good update. Made everything much cheaper to upgrade, and you can get your equipment stronger in a much faster way as opposed to M0 to M4, where sometimes a certain M upgrade is locked behind a very far rank from yours. Players are just whining in here.

Read below, you have no idea what this update did to the game.

Also drones don't need to exist. They are not there to make gameplay much different. They are an inherent pay to win tactic employed by the developers. Batteries drain quickly with no way to stop it other than unequipping the drone in the garage completely and you lose them faster than you can gain them.

On 7/1/2020 at 4:46 PM, wolverine848 said:

I was pointing out one of the major issues back then - it was not all roses as some would like to believe.

And as for mk7s at WO - that is temporary - what about that do you not understand?

Looks to me you're the one who doesn't understand. Rebalance made the entire garage, without adding anything new to it around x3 as expensive. Get the same stuff you got before, only for tripple the price. Sure, you can now use the first 3 weapons and hulls you couldn't use before at max ranks, but tripling the price of the garage for that? Sleazy as hell, if you ask me. Not to mention that without microupgrades the upgrade power level shenanigans and just general imbalance made certain other weapons and hulls less impractical to use, but that's besides the point and I've already mentioned this the previous post. Exonomic's change cut funds in half, which was then brought up to 80%. Still a total 20% loss, they admitted these changes, but still got praise for "raising the funds by 60%" lmao. That has stayed constant in the game as far as I can recall. We are already at high costs and low funds. In the middle of all of this, they gave the option to skip upgrades, which made everything half the price at the higher ranks as you get M3s and such, not counting micro-upgrades. But then Mk update happened...

The upgrade discrepancy issue is some-what temporary. It is one big issue they should have handled differently, but didn't. But temporary higher upgrades for certain players isn't the only issue. It's all of this:

* Players that didn't micro-upgrade prior, had nothing to go off of and as a result the split between who gets max upgrades at around Lieutenant ranks is unfair. It's like some sort of stock investment, where if you maxed you microupgrades at M2 prior, you get to keep way too powerful equipment later, and if you didn't, you can't even get an upgrade 2 upgrades down to what some others can. Refunding should have been the solution. They've done this kind of crap twice now, remember the conjoining of micro-upgrade parameters? The effects are temporary, but the cost is permanent.

* You can no longer skip upgrades normally (need a confirmation on whether you can skip them via kits though). This makes everything you buy at higher ranks at least TWICE as expensive when buying stuff separately.

* Kits themselves now only have like 10% - 20% discounts, as opposed to 30% - 70% discount ratio. And there are no paints or protections included.

I do agree that the idea of having x2 the amount of upgrades as before is a good idea, but they did it in the worst way possible, one that they have already done before and upset a lot of players with.

Stuff keeps getting more expensive and you get rewarded less in the game itself. It will keep happening until it goes bust at this rate. Any problem you might find, they'll "fix" and put an even bigger price tag on it in some shape or form.

Edited July 4, 2020 by DeathIsImminent

cosmic666 · July 4, 2020

On 7/1/2020 at 11:00 AM, CaptainMaxwell7 said:

What happened to Tanki?

Devs aren't listening to the players.

They pretend to by releasing old stuff and then say "See we're listening to you!".

The suggestions written by players are never seen in-game, unless they are magically already thought of by the devs. It's really a waste of time to write suggestions. Sure, there are few suggestions that seen the light of the game maybe, but look at the many good suggestions that never ever make it anywhere besides a topic in the forums.

Which update made Tanki bad?

None really. Maybe the bad ol' rebalance. The updates you mentioned are really good updates, but the execution by Alternativa is bad as usual.

Mk updates - This is actually a very good update. Made everything much cheaper to upgrade, and you can get your equipment stronger in a much faster way as opposed to M0 to M4, where sometimes a certain M upgrade is locked behind a very far rank from yours. Players are just whining in here.

Drones - Good update, but bad execution. Drones give you additional armor and firepower which I find unnecessary. Drones should only give you their own special ability, nothing else. Also Drones use batteries all the time, which is basically a way for Alternativa to squeeze money out of you. I'd either remove the batteries entirely, or just let them use batteries when their ability is activated. Also make batteries cheaper because not everyone wants/can throw money at you.

Challenges - Good update, but needs a bit of fixing. It gives you so many good rewards (I don't care about paints, they're useless as I have a good library of them that I am not using. I only use 1 or 2 paints. The rest are collecting dust.) However, it expects you to spend your entire time on the game, which is a no thanks from me. I want to live my life. Good fix would be to increase the amount of stars earned, and make it depend on how well you did in the battle. As in, if you did extraordinarily well, you can even get 10 stars. No limit to how much you can get; depends on how well you do. Also, why the battlepass price didn't get halved along with the split of challenges into 2? This is pure "we want your money" from Alternativa.

Tankioins - Very good update, but stupidly insane prices. Just look at how cheap things were in Tanki X with the X-Crystals, and look at how expensive everything in here is. Introducing a premium currency means there's a way the devs to get money from the players, which is great, but not when you make almost everything depends on it in your game.

Changes To MM - What changes?

The players just keep whining whenever a new update arrives, then they say "This game is never getting updated!" Like my god, do you guys want updates or not?

For years this game has been stuck in this loophole which seems like it's never going to get out of: Devs implement nice things but in a bad way, and players complain all the time about either bad updates or wanting the 2009 version of the game (which mind you, is very boring and empty compared to what we have now. Sure, it would been a super great game back in 2009, but right now it would be a very empty game in terms of content.)

Tanki X was somewhat an escape of this loophole, as it had a somewhat completely different dev team and community. There was interaction between the 2 sides. Community Manager Artcore, the devs, the staff and mod team interacted with the players much more than Tanki Online ever did. Tanki X had so many things in it that didn't let you feel like you're locked under the dictator control of Tanki Online team (from staff, to mods, to devs, and everyone that have the slightest bit of control)

But of course, Tanki X was under the control of AlternativaGames. That meant sooner or later it would see p2w slipped into it, and that's what happened in 2017 I believe. Slowly from there the game died until it closed in 2020.

You have made some good points and been way off the mark with others. I will keep it short,MK update was a good idea but it did not do what most of us thought it was intended for, to separate the ranks in battle, it has now given those who were fortunate enough to have maxed out combos a very big advantage in battle, especially at their own ranks give or take 2 ranks either way. I agree with you on drones (to a point). The challenge is a good idea but leads to players multing are blocking their own teammates in the hope they get killed, and then can cap the flag themselves. Tankoins, just another way to earn cash from players (very bad update.) MM, along with overdrives extremely unbalanced and one of the worst updates ever. I could go on for at least another hr, but i said it would be short and it is.

SporkZilla · July 4, 2020

1 hour ago, DeathIsImminent said:

need a confirmation on whether you can skip them via kits though

You can, which means that you're better off buying equipment for the first time as kits.

So something I'm considering at my rank is the Mk6 Hornet + Striker + Striker module kit (kits include modules) for 253,300 crystals.

Buying those things separately from Mk1 would cost 667,400 crystals, so buying the kit is like buying a hull and turret in a 50% sale and getting the module for free.

The only equipment I'm buying at the moment (and only in 50% sales) is modules for turrets that I'm never going to use, anything else will be kits.

(but with the daft XP experiment making the time between ranks so much shorter for everyone, it might not be worth buying kits below Mk7 any more)

I thought the Mk update was a good idea in theory, but I've no idea why they compounded the problem (instead of solving it) of overpowered-for-their-rank players by converting M1/10s and M2/10s to Mk6 and Mk7 instead of Mk5/10 or Mk6/10, same for my 30% modules on this account (now all 34%) that got converted to Mk6 instead of Mk5/5.

(I voted for challenges / stars because they reward players for scoring the most points instead of winning the battle, why care about losing when you can walk away with 3 stars?)

Edited July 4, 2020 by SporkZilla

cosmic666 · July 4, 2020

On 6/15/2020 at 10:16 PM, Wasp-Isada said:

You're adding updates that people don't ask for.

I don't really mind the mk update, balances the difference between players but the price differential is too great between mk's.

Drones are just too expensive to manage if you don't spend money on the game or grind 24/7 meaning buyers get a nasty advantage.

The original 2000 star challenge was the best, provided nice rewards for buyers and non buyers. 100 of each in silver tier was good.

Updating the shop to put kits in there for money was just a way to grab more money and unbalancing the game further since guess what? Buyers can also spend money on tankoins and not only crystals which was your original reason for removing them.

Original overdrives were great, balanced since none of the overdrives had an advantage over the other.

Receiving 18 tankoins per week from containers is pathetic, also 1000 stars for 100 tankoins? That should be atleast increased to 250 so at the end of a month if both challenges are completed a player could buy a battle pass. And if they are changed back to 2000 stars then it obviously should be 500 tankoins so it truly rewards the players that grinded.

2016 was the last year before the downfall of tanki, before you started introducing more p2w methods. You really need to revise your business plan before flash is gone, otherwise tanki will be gone with it.

Have a nice day.

Agree with the original overdrives, they were fine compared to the overpowered game changers now infesting the game.

cosmic666 · July 4, 2020

On 6/15/2020 at 11:37 PM, ERADICATIONNATION said:

For me, it's a close call between Overdrives and Matchmaking in terms of which update gets the title of "Worst Update in Tanki History", but I do think the Overdrives update is the more offensive of the two. A few users here have said that Overdrives make the game more interesting and that they somehow take skill to use. I don't understand how getting killed instantly by a wasp bomb or spawn-camped by a bunch of enemies under a titan dome in my base is supposed to be fun (see pic related). I find events like these frustrating to put up with. And skill? How is hitting a single key at the right time supposed to involve a high amount of skill? If anything, all Overdrives do is enable poor gameplay. Titans can just sit out in the open and spam fire at enemies thanks to their domes of invincibility (I know it's not technically invincibility, but it might as well be), Hunters can just take away an enemy's ability to even put up a fight, and even the worst Wasp players who don't even know how to turn their turrets can get scores of cheap kills by simply rushing into an enemy base and dropping a bomb. Matchmaking does indeed suck, and I very much despise it as well, but at least it's not a cancer on Tanki's core gameplay like Overdrives are. Removing them or reverting them to how they worked before would already make the game much more enjoyable for me.

Reveal hidden contents

As for the last good year in Tanki, it's difficult for me to say because I didn't play much between 2015 - 2017. The drop-off point for quite a few players seems to fall in that gap, so I can't agree for sure. I've been here since spring 2013, and I'd say the first really questionable update I saw was the very first round of product kits that was introduced later that year in the fall. To elaborate, these kits allowed buyers to access equipment that they otherwise wouldn't be able to for another few ranks. These kits also gave them a large amount of drugs, and so players with these kits almost always dominated battles with other players at their rank. So yes, even back in 2013, Tanki was willing to introduce obviously p2w elements, and I remember there being quite a large amount of backlash in the forum against it. Since then, I think the game has very gradually declined in quality; there really aren't many large updates that I can think of that I would consider outstanding. Things like dynamic lighting and damage numbers are nice, but they don't mitigate some of the more questionable changes like the paint separation update, which increased the prices of many paints in the garage while taking away their utility, or the new focus on monthly challenges, which don't really offer worthwhile rewards for the massive amount of grinding it takes to reach them. Missions used to offer better rewards, too. There are a few other things that I think have made the game less enjoyable, from the simplification of many of the game's maps to a few alterations lacking balance (Incendiary Band + Heat Immunity is an abomination). Overall, I guess the game was still more fun back in the 2013-2015 years, being without trash like Overdrives and Matchmaking and what not, but I think it's been a gradual descent rather than a hard drop-off for Tanki.

At the end of the day I'm still not really angry at anyone over at Tanki's development team. I understand it's a difficult task to keep a long-running game interesting, well-balanced, and profitable all at the same time. I almost feel bad for slamming virtually everything they've come up with in the last five or so years. At the same time, though, it's pretty clear that the devs have brought along a number of large changes that nobody asked for and that a large amount of players still do not support.

OH MY i could say shed loads about your comments, but the 1 that sticks out for me (MM OVERDRIVES) notwithstanding,(i despise them both) is the feel sorry for the devs for SLAMMING them. Why should we, when they are systematically, knowingly, doing their best to rip off players as much as they can, as fast as they can,and without any remorse for the greedy, diabolical, underhanded (sly patch notes) way they go about it. So no, i for one feel no empathy towards those that would exploit their in game power to the detriment of the majority of players. I think TO is a great game, but how much better could it be if they just actually made an effort in the best interests of the players, instead of trying to bleed every player dry who has a bit of spare cash to acquire a much needed bit of kit. I could on but i will leave it there.

wolverine848 · July 4, 2020

1 hour ago, DeathIsImminent said:

Read below, you have no idea what this update did to the game.

Also drones don't need to exist. They are not there to make gameplay much different. They are an inherent pay to win tactic employed by the developers. Batteries drain quickly with no way to stop it other than unequipping the drone in the garage completely and you lose them faster than you can gain them.

Looks to me you're the one who doesn't understand. Rebalance made the entire garage, without adding anything new to it around x3 as expensive. Get the same stuff you got before, only for tripple the price. Sure, you can now use the first 3 weapons and hulls you couldn't use before at max ranks, but tripling the price of the garage for that? Sleazy as hell, if you ask me. Not to mention that without microupgrades the upgrade power level shenanigans and just general imbalance made certain other weapons and hulls less impractical to use, but that's besides the point and I've already mentioned this the previous post. Exonomic's change cut funds in half, which was then brought up to 80%. Still a total 20% loss, they admitted these changes, but still got praise for "raising the funds by 60%" lmao. That has stayed constant in the game as far as I can recall. We are already at high costs and low funds. In the middle of all of this, they gave the option to skip upgrades, which made everything half the price at the higher ranks as you get M3s and such, not counting micro-upgrades. But then Mk update happened...

The upgrade discrepancy issue is some-what temporary. It is one big issue they should have handled differently, but didn't. But temporary higher upgrades for certain players isn't the only issue. It's all of this:

* Players that didn't micro-upgrade prior, had nothing to go off of and as a result the split between who gets max upgrades at around Lieutenant ranks is unfair. It's like some sort of stock investment, where if you maxed you microupgrades at M2 prior, you get to keep way too powerful equipment later, and if you didn't, you can't even get an upgrade 2 upgrades down to what some others can. Refunding should have been the solution. They've done this kind of crap twice now, remember the conjoining of micro-upgrade parameters? The effects are temporary, but the cost is permanent.

* You can no longer skip upgrades normally (need a confirmation on whether you can skip them via kits though). This makes everything you buy at higher ranks at least TWICE as expensive when buying stuff separately.

* Kits themselves now only have like 10% - 20% discounts, as opposed to 30% - 70% discount ratio. And there are no paints or protections included.

I do agree that the idea of having x2 the amount of upgrades as before is a good idea, but they did it in the worst way possible, one that they have already done before and upset a lot of players with.

Stuff keeps getting more expensive and you get rewarded less in the game itself. It will keep happening until it goes bust at this rate. Any problem you might find, they'll "fix" and put an even bigger price tag on it in some shape or form.

There IS a lot of things wrong with TO today - they definitely are not going in the right direction. Overdrives and Challenges and drones are some of the big issues. And a broken MM.

But "back in the day" there were issues too - like the shaft no-laser, and supplies. Buyers had access to supplies and I was running around with 2 or 3 RKs in my garage saving them for a crucial moment. Supplies have been evened out - well - except for batteries...

Joeguy · July 7, 2020

There is no mystery. MM was by far the worst and most damaging to the game. MM and all the toxic updates that went into bolstering MM. I'd go into detail, but its been said thousands of times on this forum already. Almost everything that is wrong with the game can be linked back to MM. If we could use the battle list, create battles, choose maps, and have all the choices we had before MM, drones, ODs, augments wouldn't matter....they would be easy to work around. Now these magic foo-foos are all so terrible because there is no way to avoid them if you want to play Tanki since you have to complete missions to stay competitive. And please don't bring up Pro Battles since Pro Battles are in utter disarray (on purpose no doubt). Pre-MM, 130K players at peak time. Now, 12K players at peak time. The numbers say it all.

Russty · July 7, 2020

I wish we could have the original Overdrives back. They were simple and fair. Nowadays, some Overdrives are OP and some are... useless. People are begging the devs to nerf Hornet's OD since it's clearly causing issues and unbalance. This obviously wouldn't happen with the old Overdrives.

I hate the new Overdrives but I do admire how they make hulls more interesting and distinct.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Russty

von_Cronberg · July 8, 2020

11 hours ago, Joeguy said:

Pro Battles are in utter disarray

Disagree. I have always played about half my Tanki time in PRO battles (and currently play them almost exclusively, until that disgraceful "experience boost" nonsense in MMS is over), have much fun there. What exactly is your problem? PRO battles perfectly fit everything you wish for. Yes, there are issues, not least the team composition processes. But these issues were the issues of all Tanki battles before MMS, and if you find these issues so terrible, you might want to reconsider your inappropriate romantic glamorization of pre-MMS days.

Joeguy · July 8, 2020

3 hours ago, von_Cronberg said:

Disagree. I have always played about half my Tanki time in PRO battles (and currently play them almost exclusively, until that disgraceful "experience boost" nonsense in MMS is over), have much fun there. What exactly is your problem? PRO battles perfectly fit everything you wish for. Yes, there are issues, not least the team composition processes. But these issues were the issues of all Tanki battles before MMS, and if you find these issues so terrible, you might want to reconsider your inappropriate romantic glamorization of pre-MMS days.

Maybe you didn't play Tanki before MM, so what you see now works fine from your perspective...good for you!

Pro Battles are OK and could be very good (yes, even perfect like you suggest) if there were a much bigger pool of players playing Pro Battles. But the difficulty in finding any suitable battle (my experience is that they are far and few between) discourages me and probably many players. The confusing and difficult to decipher Pro interface is also a big deterrent.

The major problem with Pro is that the pool of players playing Pro Battles is so small. Tanki has made it where most players must spend the majority or all of their time in MM to complete Missions or Challenges. Without completing Daily Missions it is impossible to stay competitive with upgraded equipment unless you are a buyer. I think most players persue the Challenges because they believe they will acquire more Tanki "wealth" by getting as far as they can with them (this erroneous concept may be starting to change now...but that is another topic).

So you finish off your much too difficult Dailys and rack up a few Stars, most players quit for the day but a few still want to play. If they don't want to work on Stars, they open the battle list and are faced with a very difficult task of trying to find any kind of battle that works for them. Besides the difficult to decipher Pro Battle interface, most battles are very long...very long. You almost never get to join at the beginning. If you create, you spend lots of time just waiting around...if anyone ever joins. When you do finally get into a battle you (well me anyway) feel compelled to stay since it usually took so long to find even this battle and most of the time the battle you are stuck in isn't what you were looking for...and it still has XX minutes to run! If there were more players using Pro Battles it would be much better because there would be more battles to select from,

So when there are a couple of hundred Pro Battles raging at any point during the day and there is some easy way to sort through them to find one you like, I will agree with you and start extolling the virtues of Neo-Tanki Pro Battles and leave MM behind as nothing more that just a foul memory.

PS It is very possible that I am missing something about finding a decent Pro Battle. Maybe you could start a thread (or a newspaper article) and enlighten us with some of your wisdom and the ins and outs that you have found dealing with Pro Battles. I'd really like to know and I bet others would also.

Edited July 8, 2020 by Joeguy

von_Cronberg · July 8, 2020

5 hours ago, Joeguy said:

Maybe you didn't play Tanki before MM

I play this game for seven years, sometimes intensely, sometimes taking breaks for months. As I said above, about half of my Tanki time in regular battles and about half of it in no-drug PRO battes. For further context, I have spent a good one thousand Euros on the game over those years.

5 hours ago, Joeguy said:

if there were a much bigger pool of players playing Pro Battles (...) The confusing and difficult to decipher Pro interface is also a big deterrent

I do agree that a larger pool of players playing PRO battles would be desirable. From this comes my motivation to take the time for a lengthy answer to your comment. And I might add, with a view on moderators or even developers reading here (yes, I know they do), that if the playerbase of PRO battles were to be drained further by removing battle funds, I would probably be done with this game. I do also agree that the battle list of PRO battles in the HTML5 version, which does not display map names and requires the user to learn the battle titles in cyrillic letters, amounts to active sabotage of Tanki. As a humourous remark, if game development had battle mods like Tanki battles do, they would most likely remove developers from the job because of sabotage of their own team for this.

5 hours ago, Joeguy said:

enlighten us with some of your wisdom and the ins and outs that you have found dealing with Pro Battles

As people seek very different things in Tanki in general, and in PRO battles in particular, there is no receipe for fun that fits all. But I will happily tell you about me.

I like the authentic purity of no-drug (and usually also no-overdrive) gameplay, so I do exclusively choose battles with that setting. To other settings I am rather indifferent, though I prefer augments on. I like the straightforwardness of radical maps/modes, so I usually play the most intelligent (Rio CTF, or as a second choice Serpuchov CTF) and sometimes the most brute (Polygon CP). For no-drug Serpuchov CTF, as well as for Polygon CP, there are always several battles available, even during off hours, and diverse enough in details to fit every taste. To find a no-drug Rio CTF, though, has become a rather rare gem, which is a pity, because it is not only the most intelligent map/mode that Tanki has to offer, but also the central meeting point for interesting people in Tanki (the coolest and the hottest alike), and the place where pretty much every personal contact I cherish ingame, and in some case even beyond, has started.

One more point: PRO battles work for me although I do, as a principle, in general not join battles with a player on my friends' list in the opposing team. This principle removes a considerable amount of available battles from consideration for me at any time. So if someone would not follow that principle, or if someone has no or few PRO battle regulars in their friends' list, the choice of battles for them would even be greater.

6 hours ago, Joeguy said:

you spend lots of time

Yes, PRO battles require more liberty and flexibility in the player's time budget than MMS. But this was the case for all battles in pre-MMS days. Only since the invention of the MMS, it is possible to be certain that one can log into Tanki knowing that one can without any hussle play a battle for 10 minutes and be done.

And one final remark. I have seen enough years of Tanki to understand the one reason why someone might "legitimately" hate the MMS and its automatized team composition process: If this someone has with much effort developed skills primarily not in playing the game, but in knowing how to join the side of a battle which is more likely to win, and now finds this "skill" rendered inapplicable in the MMS. The folk for which this is true is the same folk that habitually quits battles if they find their team in trouble, both in MMS and PRO battles, or in the latter even might quit their team and join the opposing one. I do deeply despise this folk (and whenever I care to identify them, take pleasure in punishing them for years), because they fundamentally violate the sense of chivalry I cherish both in human conduct in general and in this game. And I like the MMS for the exact reason for which they hate it.

Joeguy · July 8, 2020

I apologize for not looking at your profile before insinuating that you hadn't played Tanki before MM. The fact is you have played Tanki significantly longer than I have. You are also a highly ranked Legend at 24. I think this makes a big big difference in Pro Battles where lower rank battles are in a real turmoil and very difficult to find a decent battle. I suspect you may have even become a Legend before MM started or soon after. So for the years after you achieved Legend, built up an M4 combo, you haven't been forced to play in MM because even with one M4 (now Mk8) combo, you would be very competitive in any battle. As time goes on you built up funds and rounded out your garage to the awesome garage it is today. So you may think MM is kinda OK, because you have never really been forced to play it, Right? Maybe I am off base here...I mean no insult by this. Many players, including me, are not buyers and still low ranked (I tend to start new accounts and play in the lower ranks). We must play the MM battles and even then it is not easy to keep your equipment competitive.

One answer is to send in money an buy what you want and this is a very acceptable approach and one I was about to do myself. I'm pretty sure I would have sent a couple of thousand dollars to Tanki over the years, but just as I was about to send them my first $300 they started the regime of buffing and nerfing equipment. An then the updates leading to MM started. If had paid real money to TankI would have been furious. I want what I pay for not what Tanki morphs it into. That is when I started playing alt accounts instead of the Road to Legend style of play. For the last couple of years playing in the lower ranks has been fun since the more advanced equipment like drones and high protections are not a factor. Even drugs re not as mandatory as they are in higher rank battles. But now Tanki has started to crush the fun out of that too by making you rank up so quickly and substituting the stupid crystal boxes for supply drops. The result is the large pool of players that played in the lower ranks has either quit the game (we just lost 25% to 30% of the player base since the XP update) or has decided to play through higher ranks.

I'm rambling. I'm rambling because thinking about the whys of MM makes me sad from what I've lost, and am now losing in Tanki. I friggin' loved this game before MM but it has been a constant downhill ride since about a year before MM. I find a way to enjoy the game and the devs break it, I find another way it is taken away and this constant upheaval started with MM (or really the updates to accommodate MM's implementation).

I hate MM because it removed almost all choice and diversity from the game. You play like Tanki wants you to play and nothing else. I used to enjoy finding battles where I could dominate. I used to love to find battles with everyone at the max rank so I could hone my skills. I used to enjoy crystal grindfest chaos on Polygon. I use to enjoy finding a losing team and coming in to turn the tide. I use to love the diversity of maps and the diversity of player count. I used to enjoy knocking out my missions in a heartbeat. I used to love how easy it was to make friends before MM and the "everybattle 16 players" no matter which map. I use to love how there was actual teamwork sometimes...now it, "I gots ta get me mi three stars". And ye that is Challenges but it started with MM and 16 players in each battle for 15 minutes...too long too many leaving...10 minute battles, too long' leaving...8 minute battles, too long, leaving...7 minutes, OK they will mostly put up with 7 minutes, only 4 or 5 players leave each game. MM trained every one to quit battles. Now they quit if they aren't going to get enough stars.

MM made a very limited number of completely homogeneous bland maps. It fixed all battles at 16 players. It killed team work...no time to get to know a team or develop teamwork. It took away all choice...then Tanki forced us to play three or four times as long to complete missions in the trash MM. With no teamwork and such short battles the comradery factor that made the game once great is completely gone. Out of the dozens of friends I made within the game, every single one has now quit the game completely and the implementation of MM was the biggest factor for most of them (it was their biggest complaint anyway).

OK...I made a text wall...sorry...I'll quit. I totally HATE MM and always have. For me it ruined the game, and not because I liked to cherry pick my battles. And just for interest sake, I have only left battles when I spawn in and there are only one or two minutes left. I don't think I've ever left a battle that I got in on from the beginning even if I'm getting crucified. I enjoy a good spawn slaughter so I feel I should reciprocate and sometimes be the spawn slaughtered.

And as a final, I really appreciate the time you took in creating your post and thoughtfully answering mine. Cheers

Russty · July 8, 2020

I always get thrown into maps I've played in several times. It's really annoying. Tanki needs to add more maps to MM or to change the frequency of us getting certain maps. Yesterday, I got the chance to play in Rio and I was really happy because I love that map and I rarely get to play on it. I joined, destroyed a tank, and then the battle ended. I was thrown into a battle which had only a few mere seconds left! I know you can't really solve this issue but it's definitely an issue all caused by MM.

The two issues I've mentioned above are big problems with the MM system. One can be solved, one can't.

Blutaar · July 8, 2020

3 hours ago, Russty said:

I always get thrown into maps I've played in several times. It's really annoying. Tanki needs to add more maps to MM or to change the frequency of us getting certain maps. Yesterday, I got the chance to play in Rio and I was really happy because I love that map and I rarely get to play on it. I joined, destroyed a tank, and then the battle ended. I was thrown into a battle which had only a few mere seconds left! I know you can't really solve this issue but it's definitely an issue all caused by MM.

The two issues I've mentioned above are big problems with the MM system. One can be solved, one can't.

Being thrown in half-consumed matches is another issue on its own, but adding more maps to MM would make gameplay a lot more fun

wolverine848 · July 8, 2020

12 hours ago, von_Cronberg said:

I have seen enough years of Tanki to understand the one reason why someone might "legitimately" hate the MMS and its automatized team composition process: If this someone has with much effort developed skills primarily not in playing the game, but in knowing how to join the side of a battle which is more likely to win, and now finds this "skill" rendered inapplicable in the MMS.

Might be a small proportion of players, but I don't believe it so for majority of players.

MM has a LOT of issues that should be worked on instead of the crappy bells-and-whistles they focus on. MM has basically been the same since after the beta-test with no improvements

And yet...

- I keep getting the same maps over and over and over. They are not randomizing the entire pool - they are rotating it in smaller groups. Hate that.

- Battle starts for some players before others - and one side caps a flag in under 1 minute due to no opposition.

- I get placed in battles that are half over with score 3 or 4 - 0. No thanks.

- Rank spreads are often way, way too wide. Players should not be expected to compete against players 8 (or more!?!) ranks higher than them

- There are groups vs none-groups - which causes a huge imbalance in the teams.

- If one side loses players, often they get no replacement players, even when battle is close - has nothing to do with players joining and leaving - MM just does not fill the slots.

- There are still mults in MM - this is not isolated to MM - but still there none-the-less

The above are just some of the issues with MM that leads to increasing frustration among player-base.

MM could have been a useful tool for TO. But it was implemented very poorly.

cosmic666 · July 9, 2020

1 hour ago, wolverine848 said:

Might be a small proportion of players, but I don't believe it so for majority of players.

MM has a LOT of issues that should be worked on instead of the crappy bells-and-whistles they focus on. MM has basically been the same since after the beta-test with no improvements

And yet...

- I keep getting the same maps over and over and over. They are not randomizing the entire pool - they are rotating it in smaller groups. Hate that.

- Battle starts for some players before others - and one side caps a flag in under 1 minute due to no opposition.

- I get placed in battles that are half over with score 3 or 4 - 0. No thanks.

- Rank spreads are often way, way too wide. Players should not be expected to compete against players 8 (or more!?!) ranks higher than them

- There are groups vs none-groups - which causes a huge imbalance in the teams.

- If one side loses players, often they get no replacement players, even when battle is close - has nothing to do with players joining and leaving - MM just does not fill the slots.

- There are still mults in MM - this is not isolated to MM - but still there none-the-less

The above are just some of the issues with MM that leads to increasing frustration among player-base.

MM could have been a useful tool for TO. But it was implemented very poorly.

Gotta say totally agree with everything you said, i could as usual add even more to what you have said, but i have said everything i could possibly say about MM,OVERDRIVES,ALTS, etc, etc and why they are so unbalanced for the majority of players at almost every rank, (legend) being the least affected.

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