Mario Kart World Faces Massive Backlash After Update, Online Racing Experience Ruined
Mario Kart World Faces Massive Backlash After Update, Online Racing Experience Ruined
I'll add some context, as I actually own a Switch 2 and Mario Kart World.
The game is full of "intermission tracks", where the next race starts at the previous track and you effectively drive to the next track for the first two laps, then complete a single lap of the destination track. For example, in the Mushroom Cup, rather than start the second race at Crown City, you'd instead start at Mario Bros Circuit (the 1st track in the cup), drive to Crown City for two "laps" then complete a single lap of Crown City.
Many people voted Random in online multiplayer instead of picking one of the three interconnecting tracks, because the intermission tracks frankly suck for the most part, and are just straight-line roads. By picking Random, the game would actually pick a completely different course and you'd do a standard 3-lap race, like you would by selecting the course in Time Trial mode.
At least that's what used to happen, before the latest patch.... Now, random actually picks one of the three interconnecting courses, and no longer picks a random course.
To be honest, I think intermission tracks only really work in Free Roam and Knockout Tour. It doesn't feel innovative to effectively drive to the next racetrack when you still have to wait between race results and loading screens.
I swear to God Nintendo don't play test their games anymore. It's always something like this.
They've been on a sharp downward trajectory since WiiU for the most part. Big F for the sports games and Mario party
because the intermission tracks frankly suck for the most part, and are just straight-line roads.
It almost feels like Nintendo are punishing the old meta of high acceleration/very nimble but no speed, using drifting and boosts to keep up speed.
This explanation helps a lot. I was watching Maxamillion_Dood play online and it seemed like every other track they selected was random. And when it wasn't he clearly didn't know what lap they started on. Like the race would be over the first time they crossed the finish line. Everytime that happened Max was confused. Even to me as a viewer that seemed weird. I couldn't tell what was going on either. First time I ever watched a Mario Kart game and had a hard time telling what was going on.
Perfect explanation.
So you'll stop giving Nintendo $80...right?
It’s not even clear what changed.
At least from my experience the 'random' choice now just chooses from one of the three available choices, rather than the full list.
Not only that, the three available choices are "intermission tracks", that is the half tracks between courses. These are not full 3-lap courses, and are significantly more boring and shorter than the 3-lap courses. They're more likely to appear in the "random" selection now.
Guys, give small indie company Nintendo a break, they only just moved on from fax to dial up.
Am I the only one who loves driving between tracks? It's the most unique and fresh thing about this Mario Kart and changing / removing it out of the game would make it feel like every other Mario Kart to me.
Yup. It's flat, boring as shit nothingness that just causes win more-ing for those in the lead and causes the tracks that have an ounce of design in them to be 1 lap.
The courses themselves are dull as hell compared to 8 but the traversal reduces it down to "I don't even want to play this game" territory; so I've already stopped playing the 1 new game for my new console lol
I think it’s a cool idea but the intermission tracks are just so boring to me.
Judging by the descriptions given by another user these "between track" drives are A. Part of the race and removing actual time on the actual tracks, and B. Not optional. Those things together make for some seriously bad game design.
Is this article written by AI? Some long running, poorly phrased sentences here.
Haha, that also came to mind, it's pretty poor. Paraphrasing: "Users on Metacritic saying it "ruined" the online mode - an indicator that they are very displeased. "
You don't say? 😄
This was suggested in another repost of this article. It does really have that vibe, yes. It's giving off this uncanny valley feeling of journalism. Lots of words, that... kinda say something?, but there's a lot of like, overlap? I'm having a hard time explaining it.
Definitely pumping up the word count. The paragraph used to come around to the fact that Metacritic (not steam) is the site where SMKW is being review bombed gave me visceral feelings of anger.
Is it possible that this is ESL instead of LLM? Or maybe a mix of both? I'm getting way more ESL vibes from the first paragraph, but the generally meandering nature of the piece does point to an LLM too.
I think ESL could be a factor. Definitely LLMs have better English prose than this. I'm so used to seeing long running AI slop articles answering basic questions in 1000 words (rather than 10) and this reads similar.