Game Modes

 are a features that modify the way in which the player interacts with its enviroment, other players, as well as the entities which spawn in the room. There are currently eight game modes in Diep.io. These are in order: FFA, Survival, 2 Teams, 4 Teams, Domination, Tag, Maze, and Sandbox.

You can switch game modes before you enter a room by clicking their respective buttons. In the past, the only way to switch gamemodes was by pressing the tab key.

FFA (Free For All):
You spawn into the arena at level 1 like in every other game mode, a Basic Tank ready to explore and work your way to the top. You are blue and your Bullets are blue. All enemy tanks are shown as red with red Bullets. There are no teams in FFA, but you can side with and betray anyone you want. Just remember they can do the same to you.

The only goal in a Free-For-All is to work your way to the top of the Scoreboard by any means necessary. To get experience, kill any enemy tanks or Polygons. This was the first and only game mode in Diep.io for a while, before TDM was introduced.

Survival:
In the beginning, if there are not enough players to start the game, everyone will need to wait for people to join the server (at least 10 players). When there are enough players, a ten second countdown will start. Other players can still join while the countdown is taking place. When the countdown is over, everyone will spawn and nobody will be able to join the server anymore. Once a player dies, the player will not be able to respawn on the same server. Instead, the player will be redirected to another server. The last player wins, and if there is 1 player left, the arena closes. As the players are killed, the arena shrinks. Leveling up in this game mode is quicker, as XP gain has been multiplied by 3 and there is a passive gain of XP to speed up the game.

2 Teams:
As the title states, players are split into 2 separate teams. Your level one basic tank spawns as either a red or blue tank in a designated area of the map. You gain points the same way as in FFA, but you can’t destroy tanks of your same color. Only red tanks can destroy blue, and vice versa. Wandering too close to the enemy’s spawn area will alert the base Protectors who will swarm and kill any nearby enemy on sight. Any Bullets that travel into the opponent’s base will disappear. These two factors prevent spawn killing, unlike in FFA.

Also unlike FFA, the scoreboard displays what team color each player is. The main goal of 2 Teams is to have everyone on the scoreboard be on your team. After a team has filled the scoreboard for a certain amount of time, the arena will be closed. On September 18th, the now-defunct Team DM was split into two separate game modes: 2 Teams and 4 Teams. Teams are chosen depending on the amount of players in a team. Usually, you will spawn on the team with the least players.

4 Teams:
A game mode similar to 2 Teams, except all players are split into 4 separate teams now. Your tank will spawn either in the red, blue, purple, or green (formerly brown) team. Otherwise, gameplay is exactly the same as 2 Teams, with the added complexity of two additional teams bearing onto yours. The end goal is the same - have everyone on the scoreboard belong on your team. This game mode was split from Team DM on September 18th, 2016. Much like 2 Teams, teams are chosen depending on the amount of players in a team.

Domination:
In Domination, you and your teammates work together to capture four Dominators located on the map, while also competing with the opposite team for control.

Dominators are very powerful, stationary turrets, and can quickly destroy any tanks careless enough to venture too close. To capture the Dominators, players have to deal damage to them until their health bars are depleted. When a Dominator is captured, it takes on the color of the tank that dealt the last blow, and will attack all tanks of the opposite color. Until it is captured, a Dominator remains yellow, signifying that it is neutral, and will attack all tanks. Neutral Dominators need to be killed only once to be captured, but enemy Dominators must be destroyed twice to capture it for your team.

Once a Dominator is captured for your team, you can control it by pressing H, but only if there is not already a player controlling it.

Once a team claims all four Dominators, the game ends and Arena Closers spawn to shut down the server. Leveling up in this game mode is quicker, as XP gain has been doubled to speed up the game.

Tag:
Tag is a game mode similar to Team Deathmatch. Your level one tank spawns at a random place on either the Red, Green, Blue or Purple Team and try to destroy other players to capture, or "tag" them into your team. Unlike other team modes, there are no established bases. If another player kills you, you will respawn on the team that killed you. However, if you die because of a polygon, you will stay on your team’s color. The leaderboard shows the number of players each team has. As time elapses, the arena itself shrinks, at around a rate with 12-13 seconds, in order to speed up the game.

The aim of the game is to capture every single player into your team. Once a team has "tagged" every player in the map, the game ends and Arena Closers come in to restart the match.

Maze:
Maze mode is essentially FFA but with a caveat: random walls litter the map, making survival much more difficult, as it is easy to get lost, cornered, and trapped. Maze walls are completely solid, and cannot be penetrated by tanks or their Bullets; only Crashers and Arena Closer Bullets can pass through them. These walls have friction, so grinding against them will slow the tank down. The walls also have a lot of bounciness, causing any speeding tanks to rebound off them (but without inflicting any damage to the tanks).

The Pentagon Nest along with its Crashers still exist in this game mode, though they might be entrapped in the walls (however, as stated before, Crashers can move through walls).

Unlike in other game modes, Bosses do not spawn in Maze.

Every 5 hours, the battle is reset.

Sandbox:
A game mode for testing classes and builds. It is possible to invite other players to the room by pressing the “Copy party link” button and sharing the link with friends. The arena’s size along with the amount of shapes that spawn in it, varies depending on the number of players connected to it.

Controls:
- level up once. Maximum level is 45, even for special classes. Holding K will level you up quickly.

(Or other keys, possibly depending on what keyboard you have) - Switch between all available classes (including all types of Dominators, the Mothership, and the Arena Closer)

- Suicide

- Enable/Disable God Mode (may not work on some keyboards)

All tanks start out small, even Tier 4 classes and special tanks (Dominators, Mothership, etc) but, as normal, grow in size as you gain levels. Dominators are mobile in Sandbox, unlike in their namesake game mode. This is the only game mode in which Arena Closers and Motherships are playable.

Bosses still spawn in Sandbox, given 50-60 minutes have passed.

Mothership:
A game mode similar to Team DM and Domination, but both teams piloted Motherships, and there were no more than 2 teams. Motherships were massive hexadecagons, with 1 spawner per side, controlled by players, and switched off the person in control every 5 minutes. The aim of the game was to destroy the enemy Mothership, while defending your own. Leveling up in this game mode was very quick, as XP gain had been tripled to speed up the game.

Just like Domination, if one of the teams won, the Arena Closers came in, destroyed the players and surviving Mothership, and started a new server.

Team Deathmatch:
Team Deathmatch, TDM or Team DM, was a game mode in Diep.io, where players randomly spawned in  either two or four team servers while  working together. This game mode required more EXP to level up as compared to Domination or Mothership. This gamemode has now been split into 2 Teams and 4 Teams.

History

 * Maze was added on September 22, 2016, replacing Mothership.
 * Mothership existed since June 15th, 2016.
 * Before September 18th 2016, 2 Teams and 4 Teams existed as a single game mode, the now-removed Team DM. Whether you were placed into 2 Team or 4 Team battles was random.
 * Team DM existed since May 29th, 2016.
 * Also on September 18, it has been confirmed in the Changelog that Mothership mode will be removed soon, so those servers can be used for a new game mode.
 * Sandbox was added on September 3, 2016.
 * Before September 3rd 2016, you had to press the tab key to switch Game Modes, this was changed to buttons as players didn't know how to switch Game Modes.
 * After Tag was removed due to lag issues, the developer decided to bring it back 15th of August.
 * In the old Tag, you kept all your upgrades if you died.
 * In older updates, you would be taken to an entirely new server at the end of a game of Domination or Mothership, but as of an update in late June or early July the server is just reset by Arena Closers, and the map is renewed.
 * As of July 20th, you are blue and everyone else is red in FFA.
 * Domination was added on June 2nd, 2016. It is the first game mode with a win condition.

Trivia

 * The locations of bases in Domination change within each server.
 * Domination and Tag do not have true scoreboards.
 * For a very short time, Tag featured a dominator in the center of the arena.

Bugs
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Unpatched Bugs
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 * The web page is sometimes unable to load the font of the game, resulting in various texts like those in Game Modes and “Copy party link” buttons not showing up, though they can still be clicked and are fully functional.
 * Another symptom of this issue is how the name input box uses the browser’s default font rather than the game’s.
 * This bug is local, possibly due to browser issues, and it will not be experienced by everyone. Refreshing cache or waiting for a while would fix the issue.