>cheating
>snaking
Is that why sometimes there will be a fucker using yoshi with baby blue small wheels that will be lightyears ahead of everyone else even though it's supposed to have piss-poor speed? I had a feeling people were finding ways to abuse the system.
The actual answer is super autistic, but another thing they should fix in MK9 (and won't).
The Yoshi (or one of the other 3 in his weight class) + Bear + Roller Combo give the best stats, but in particular has the most "boost/mini boost" stat. It powers up drift/stunt boosting in a game full of drift/stunt boosting. Makes the boosts much more powerful and on top of it, charges them quicker (for drift boosts). You might think "why doesn't everyone just build for that, sounds like the best stat"
Because it's not listed as a stat in-game, but is a "hidden" stat inside the game. The game has had the data extracted, but the equipment screen has 5 stats, but there's actually 7 stats
and Speed and Handling have 4 substats each (Speed on Ground, in Air, in Water, on Anti-Gravity wheels, Handling on same) - if you ever wondered why it feels like you're going slower while gliding, you might actually be going slower while gliding and not know it. Your character also has a complex relationship with Size and Weight, there's a chance that would have no idea. In this example, Yoshi is considered "S+" tier, but Toad is D tier. Koopa Troopa and Dry Bones are in different weight classes. There are 3 weight classes (Light, Medium, Heavy) but each weight has 5 subdivisions each (and the Piranha Plant is in his own special class). You would need to use a website like
https://mk8dxbuilder.com/ if you really wanted to play around with your meta, which most people don't do.
So building the best boost kart and then boosting every possible second you can is the current meta in online and once you get to like ~3400 rating, you're going to see a lot of it if you give a shit about Online Rating. Some matches can and will be 12 Yoshis all on Bears.
There's also track glitches, unintended shortcuts, pluggers, and even the occasional hacker that have been around since MK7.
In addition to "only some players know about the best kart" issue caused by hidden stats - here are a few other issues it creates.
- Mario Kart actually has two classes of Motorcycle. "Sport Bikes" and "Not Sport Bikes" - with Sport Bikes actually drifting
in like you'd expect a racing motorcycle to with Dirt Bikes/Choppers doing "normal" drifts. This is never explained or even notated in game.
- Mario Kart will actually let you build specific karts for specific tracks (based on the hidden stats). You can build a kart that really excels in specific tracks (like a the Fzero track that's mostly water) but the actual game never uses this.
- You can mistakenly think that two items are the same without ever being told they're drastically different.
It would be really nice if MK9 avoided some of these massive pitfalls and actually calmed down on the stats and let it be a fun kart racing game - the actual "behind the scenes" is more complex then some arcade racers for 0 discernable reason.
MK8 had like 50 characters, MK9 is (allegedly) going to have 80+ - so if they didn't actually design with these problems in mind, they're about to get a whole lot worse - because more characters means more weight classes, more kart items, etc. The only thing I've seen (and it wasn't highlighted) in any of the preview stuff is that in MK9 the Karts are just "as-is" and you no longer build them, so maybe they are trying to fix it.
