What is achieved by removing the weekly challenges:
- Making players spend more money on the game:
a) On better equipment, in order to have better chances in clan battles. This looks like a big plan to try to tie us up in clan battle activity, in order to effect a big boost to trading on the market, and sales of crosscrown and coin packs.
b) On band and clan creation fees.
- A reduction of our weekly profits, which used to be made in more flexible ways, through the weekly challenges. So now players are also more encouraged to buy crosscrown and coin packs if they don’t want to do the clan thing.
- A hope to retain new players - because being part of a clan is hoped to make them feel obligated to keep their clans running. Which could also introduce some chaos to clans, if new player retention rate doesn’t improve. They could be quitting the game as often as before, and clan owners/officers would have to juggle free clan slots around a lot more.
And the developers could also be missing one important thing here - being engaged in an intense activity to farm resources is stressful, tiresome and emotionally draining. I’ve only played four WC battles to date, but last summer I made some 10K plastic during the Chase event, so I know how straining this kind of activity can be. And if it’s obligatory to do that every week (or every day even?), will that increase - or reduce player retention?
During one of the russian dev streams last year, he felt compelled to do some banning in the stream chat. Why would the chief developer do it? Don’t they have people assigned to that? He could’ve ignored it, or have Yuri do it. Maybe he’s that kind of person.
From watching the dev streams, I know that Alex approves every change to the game. So it was his decision to punish the playerbase for the developers’ mistake of letting some players make up to 1440 coins during one Twitch Droppings event. Because due to an error, we got extra 19 cartridges, and some chose to only craft Small Pink Lamps and salvage them all. IIRC, two Twitch Droppings events later, the crafting cost of all rewards was greatly increased, and later on, the lamps were even made unsalvageable. That’s how new players got punished for something some older players did only because of the developers’ mistake. And I believe it was Alex’s decision. It’s like I could see his Russian hand pulling the trigger on that nerf. That’s how he comes across in the dev streams.
And maybe it was his decision to now punish us for his previous decision to set up the raid challenges in two tiers, which resulted in some raiding more and getting richer, by removing those challenges altogether?
I haven’t been plaing PvP for fun since the Barrier IX nerf, but actally even since the Omni nerf (when braking by pressing any other direction key was removed - now I have to brake by pressing + holding the keys for the exact oppositely direction, so diagonally it’s two keys; and the promised fix to uphill slowdown didn’t work). Without Hans’s per for the Clarient, and with a faster Icarus VII, I had to abandon boosted Clarinet play, and with the Omni nerfed, and the BArrier IX buff reverted, using the weapon got even harder - at 11-12K PS. So I’ve mostly been raiding. Now I’m having loads of fun in Defence raids with a Heather car. After the live scoreboard was added to raids, some started to more aggressively fight for the MVP patch. So, with the increasing numbers of AC users, my Incinerator car was not only making me fewer resources, it was helping them score more points. Now, with the Heather car, it’s no more free heating for them (but also for the reset of the team 
), and I can compete with Retcher users even better than before. It’s funny seeing Retcher and Porcupine players having to scramble all over the Crater, to fight for the scraps I leave for them. Though it’s not fun doing it to everyone else (and AC players barely have to move).
So, because the weekly PvP challenges are gone now, I’ll probably just raid, and try to figure out if it’s worthwhile collecting confrontation points in PvP.
If this is true, then I’ll just do Patrol for event challenges, and the rest will be raids. Raiding with 2 Heathers is even chiller than with 2 Incinerators. No constant aiming and clicking, like with MGs or ACs. I’m like, “Hey, raiders! Eat this up! I ate it yesterday, and now it’s all for you! Ha-ha!” Then I get to relax for a few seconds, while the weapons reload. 
Plus, now that I can’t record videos showing cool Clarinet gameplay, I’ve had more time for building art. Trying to promote art built in the 180-part slot, after that update which put the exhibition stats in the player profile center - which mostly resulted in like farming in the 80-part slot. I’m hoping that the Atom would drive and break better than the Omni, so maybe I could go back to PvP, even at the cost of an extra 400 PS (from 4 Atoms).
BTW, that’s nice logic on Tard’em’s part:
- Upset a lot of players.
- Give them an atomic ball wheel.
- Hope an atomic intifada doesn’t erupt, and bissfully go to sleep, to enjoy some happy dreams about money (perhaps some reliable foreign currency). While an atomic intifada isn’t just totally brewing right this very moment.
got flung around so that’s why he’s here
