Topic: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

@Eric258 wheels beat all 150cc ghosts, glider 5000 coins

I do suck at MK online still. I'm generally between 7th to 10th. Got one 5th, one 3rd. I come out either in 1st or the top 3 in the first lap then I get hit by like 3 shells then bumped off the track, then a late game bullet bill ahead then hit by a mini mushroom lightening strike and end up back in 9th

@NEStalgia Oddly I normally suck and can't even get into the top 6 in the previous game but out of the 15 or so games I've played online ive only finished under 4th twice now. 3 1st places for me has probably reached my total for all the online races I did on the Wii U version already. @JaxonH would be proud to know about half of that was connected to my phone.

I've still yet to even experience a hiccup while online racing. Prefect so far!

@Spoony_Tech I could be just unlucky. Or I could just suck. MK has a way of hiding skill or lack of behind pure dumb luck

@NEStalgia Well it always seems to be a mix of both actually. Had one game where I was first place the first lap, got knocked all the way back to 12 for the second, then somehow got back to 1st for the finish. I was just trying to salvage a top 5 on that one.

@Spoony_Tech That sounds like Kart! That's the great and not so great thing about it. It's based on randomness by design and intent, so it'll never be mistaken for a serious racer, but OTOH it still seems to require a ton of skill. Something I clearly seem to lack. I can do just fine in the GP cups but man, online is a whole different thing.

My baby stirred as I was having a quick race on 200CC, forgot to pause, baby's s fine, go back, 3/4 lap behind, still comfortably won the race! Item management is seriously flawed

@NEStalgia
A lot of it is luck, honestly.

I generally place pretty high when I play online. I'm pretty bummed when I'm not in the top 3, to be honest. But it does happen every now and then, and it's usually due to a string of unlucky shells. And with two items now, I do feel the courses get more swamped with items flying around.

But if you can keep to clean drift lines and know your boost shortcuts, you can finish in the top half easily. And with some item luck, you can get higher.

On one hand I'm kind of bummed that there is so much luck involved in winning races, but I don't think I'd change it given the choice. Seeing items flying everywhere and potentially putting someone in first place all the way back to 12th is pretty chaotic in a good way, and hitting people with them is really satisfying.

@KirbyTheVampire
That's the secret sauce right there. It's skill based, but it's also random. Kinda why gambling is so addictive for some people. You never know what's gonna happen, but you can influence the outcome. Same reason Puyo Puyo is so addictive.

@JaxonH Yeah, that's true. Plus, if it were purely skill based, I would probably get slaughtered a lot more often, which wouldn't be very fun, lol.

@ZurapiiYohane Yeah the mission mode was pretty cool. It wasn't the best single player content but it was pretty good for what it was. I'd love to have something to do in mario kart when I'm not playing with others

While mission mode was cool, I'd rather they done something like Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed's World Tour mode. The only problem would be the unlocks front as for a multiplayer centric racer, you probably don't really want to have a lot of things locked behind the main single player mode.

The skill vs. luck issue is why I like 200cc so much. Since driving is actually somewhat challenging, it feels a lot less like the items are deciding everything.

It's definitely a game where it often feels like you can 'court' Lady Luck, so to speak. After nearly every calamitous streak of bad luck (getting chucked back from 1st to 12th for instance), I think, "Aah, if only I'd held onto that banana to block the red shell, which led to the green one, which then got me hit by that Bullet Bill and invincible person", or "If I hadn't messed up that corner, I wouldn't have get thrown into the belly of the pack and pulverised by its powered-up participants". The game even equips you so that you can feel bad about using your horn to get to first player rather than keeping it while you're there. It makes everything more and less frustrating feeling like you could have avoided it.

I did a bit of cycle racing a while back, and Mario Kart reminds me of that. If you're at the front; great, but you have to pay something of a winner's penalty in terms of being out on your own with little assistance. If you're at the back, you've got a whole group of people shielding you from the wind (or in MK's case, awesome items [and an actual, though un-physicsy slipstream mechanic]), which can help propel you forwards. And in you're in the middle of the pack, it probably won't be long before you and lots of other people have a nasty accident. Which is why I gave up cycle racing.

Mario Kart is a much less risky hobby. You get to watch cartoon characters get smashed about instead.

I think the game encourages a healthy mindset. You can't expect to get better at it unless you're able to lose and keep your head and even have fun while losing.

Is it just me, or is there a bit of framerate stutter in MK8D? Not all that often, but I'm sure I've had a few stuttery moments in my offline few hours with it so far.

@gcunit not a single problem registered. Loving the game so far 😍

@FGPackers Good-o. It's only something that I think I've noticed maybe 4 or 5 times in what's probably now 5-10hrs of play, and it was at least mostly during one session, so maybe my Switch was feeling a bit sluggish.

Another observation: MK8D seems to eat Switch battery like Bowser eats my dirt. I play virtually always in handheld mode and I'm sure it's losing charge quicker playing this than BotW. I'll have to do some tests.

@gcunit both really put heavy stress on battery

Finally got both 2nd and 1st online. 2nd was on Mt Wario and was earned. The 1st I think was pure dumb luck on Baby Park where I got out early, managed to get ahead of someone who hit a wall or something, and for the remainder of the 6.5 laps managed to have basically no competition challenging me, despite dealing with the back pack on the later laps. I just kind of went around in a circle alone and won

I managed to finally beat a ghost too, boy those are hard if you don't have the same vehicle configuration. And even if you do.

@gcunit If you're downloading something, updating friends lists, updating news I've noticed it takes some CPU and a game can stutter a moment here or there. It could be something like that. I haven't noticed anything specific to this game.

I haven't checked on battery usage, I've been playing mostly docked so far, I've played some handheld but only a few races here or there, online. Are you playing it offline or online? If online it would eat battery faster purely due to wifi usage!