It’s a gambling simulator where you pretend to drive but the final result is almost already predetermined according to how much time/money you spent on gear. Maybe you can get 1-3 positions higher than expected by timing the activation of power ups at the right time, or manually drifting, but the kart drives automatically, for the first levels you can even win without input.
The most exciting part of the game is shooting the firework from the pipe to open the loot box.
Once you take out the loot box system and you take out the pay to win subscription and you unlock all the gear, then where is the “fun” in the “game”? There’s no single player mode to preserve.
And ps: IMHO the “online racing” part is simulated and it didn’t wasn’t real multiplayer. I played “online” on a severely throttled WiFi connection (so slow that is unusable) and it didn’t bat an eye. It just downloads a list of usernames to pretend the computer-driven karts are real players, then uploads the lap times for ranking after the “race”.
Yeah, I went from being kind of excited to be able to play some Mario Kart on my phone (with a bit of hope that maybe quality games will come to phones after-all), to being completely disinterested in about 3 minutes.
I forgot to explain why they can’t just leave it alone and just continue milking whales their subscription/coin purchases: every 3-4 weeks they change the courses with new “events” and SURPRISE! Your expensive gear now here is useless. You grinded for days and/or spent $1000s to have level 8 “beach costume Luigi” that requires to literally find ONE HUNDRED duplicates in the loot boxes? Sorry, those new courses unlock the max points multiplier only with the new “Pizza baking Luigi costume”, go back to level 0 and climb the ladder again with the loot boxes, thanks for playing. Ah and the “Pizza baking Luigi costume” is a limited event, please find all the 100 duplicates in the loot boxes before the end of this month, or you will be never be able to level it again, thanks.
So Nintendo needs to pay a couple employees to think and create the new monthly events with all the new gear, takes a lot of effort, that’s why they can’t just abandon it and continue to just rake in the money from whales
The better the gear you have, the harder your opponents will be. What changes with how much you pay is how many points you get.
Points determine how many stars you get per race, but clearing up all stars in the tour is easy. The only part where the score really matters is on the weekly ranked Cups (the sets of 3 races) which groups 20 players and the top 3 best scorers get promoted to a higher level and 5-20 get sent one level down. There is also a “friends ranking” which doesn’t give any prize but it’s a nice way to get some friendly competition between your friends.
I played the game years ago.
It’s a gambling simulator where you pretend to drive but the final result is almost already predetermined according to how much time/money you spent on gear. Maybe you can get 1-3 positions higher than expected by timing the activation of power ups at the right time, or manually drifting, but the kart drives automatically, for the first levels you can even win without input.
The most exciting part of the game is shooting the firework from the pipe to open the loot box.
Once you take out the loot box system and you take out the pay to win subscription and you unlock all the gear, then where is the “fun” in the “game”? There’s no single player mode to preserve.
And ps: IMHO the “online racing” part is simulated and it didn’t wasn’t real multiplayer. I played “online” on a severely throttled WiFi connection (so slow that is unusable) and it didn’t bat an eye. It just downloads a list of usernames to pretend the computer-driven karts are real players, then uploads the lap times for ranking after the “race”.
Wow, holy shit.
Imagine somebody playing Overwatch or CS:GO and they made a bunch of bots pretend that they are real players. Fans would skewer them from day one.
Yeah, I went from being kind of excited to be able to play some Mario Kart on my phone (with a bit of hope that maybe quality games will come to phones after-all), to being completely disinterested in about 3 minutes.
I forgot to explain why they can’t just leave it alone and just continue milking whales their subscription/coin purchases: every 3-4 weeks they change the courses with new “events” and SURPRISE! Your expensive gear now here is useless. You grinded for days and/or spent $1000s to have level 8 “beach costume Luigi” that requires to literally find ONE HUNDRED duplicates in the loot boxes? Sorry, those new courses unlock the max points multiplier only with the new “Pizza baking Luigi costume”, go back to level 0 and climb the ladder again with the loot boxes, thanks for playing. Ah and the “Pizza baking Luigi costume” is a limited event, please find all the 100 duplicates in the loot boxes before the end of this month, or you will be never be able to level it again, thanks.
So Nintendo needs to pay a couple employees to think and create the new monthly events with all the new gear, takes a lot of effort, that’s why they can’t just abandon it and continue to just rake in the money from whales
The better the gear you have, the harder your opponents will be. What changes with how much you pay is how many points you get.
Points determine how many stars you get per race, but clearing up all stars in the tour is easy. The only part where the score really matters is on the weekly ranked Cups (the sets of 3 races) which groups 20 players and the top 3 best scorers get promoted to a higher level and 5-20 get sent one level down. There is also a “friends ranking” which doesn’t give any prize but it’s a nice way to get some friendly competition between your friends.