The standard gameplay mode of World of Tanks is the 15 vs. 15 random battle. But over the years many other modes have been offered, some only for a limited time in events. For example this year for one week every month you can play a game mode called Frontline, which borrow heavily from MOBA games: Battle takes place in three lanes, and if you die, you respawn. Starting today and going on for 3 weeks is another new game mode called Steel Hunter, or as I like to call it, Tanknite: It borrows heavily from Fortnite in that it is a battle royal type of game in which you try to be the last tank standing on a shrinking map.

Now these new game modes are a bit of hit-and-miss. The recent Homefront PvE game mode was unfortunately terribly repetitive and boring. The fundamental problem is often that the new game modes do not integrate very well with the overall progress system of World of Tanks. Random battles give you immediate rewards in terms of credits and experience points for your tech trees. The new modes all have some separate system, in which your battle successes give you some new sort of points and ranks, and at the end those ranks translate into a reward which is usable for the main game. And these new point and rank and reward systems tend to have strongly diminishing returns: If you play the new game mode a bit, you get some minor reward with little effort; but to get the top reward of the event, you need to grind quite a bit.

I will play Tanknite for the first time this evening. I'll see how it goes, and what rank I would need to achieve for what reward. But I am already pretty sure that my casual "play 2 hours of World of Tanks after coming home from work" style will not be compatible with the requirements for the top rewards. So I'll see whether there is something nice to get at some intermediate level. Otherwise I'll just play it as long as the new game mode is new and fun. There is only one map, and only three different tanks to try on that map. I'll have to see how fast that gets boring.