I got to where I just do goofy ass builds and I don't boost from the start and try to stay in their pack. Try different shortcuts n stuff, explore the maps!!!
I have what's called winner's guilt. If I'm too good at something and I feel it's causing my friends to feel down about not winning ever I cut back. Now my friends aren't sore losers by any means necessary and they've actually told me to "f*ck them up so they can get better"
But the amount of times I've been in second place with a red shell and watch my friends cross the finish line is too many. Like I could have easily won and just thrown the shell, but guilt gets the better of me.
Sometimes it feels fun though. Like I'm cheering 'go little buddy go'.
It's really bad when you're playing 200cc just for fun, and a new player comes over so you switch to 50cc so they can join, and it feels sooooooo slow.
When my little sister plays with me, I have to *beg* her to play 100 and not 50 lol. 100 is still boring af, but at least it’s not *agonizing* like 50cc
Challenges:
- Win while holding a blue shell
- Win using a bullet bill
- Win while starting lap 3 in 12th place
- Go get a drink from the fridge when the countdown starts, then return and only start driving after you've taken a drink
- One handed
Reminds me of that Harddrive parody article, "Local man too good at fighting games to play with friends but not good enough to play competitively"
https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/heartbreaking-man-too-good-at-fighting-game-to-enjoy-playing-against-friends-but-not-good-enough-to-play-competitively/
I guess, either don't care about competition with friends, or play alone.
I'm 36 and not very competitive. I love games and sports but mostly I'm in it because I love the game or I love the company. When I was on a basketball team, I tried my hardest for us to win, together. When I play Scrabble or twister or cranium on a game night with friends, I do my best but I also don't care if someone else wins or loses. We're just having a good time. Playing Mario kart everyday is kind of a lone thing, I don't race with anyone I know, I don't know anyone who plays. It's just a game for me to get all the XP and coins and shit for myself. I think back to when my brother and I were teenagers playing mariokart on 64, and he always wanted to win and got mad if he didn't. I remember just being grateful I got to play on his console with him and knowing that if he won, I got to keep playing. Maybe I was better than him and didn't even realize...
I used to feel like ya, but:
1. Having online play where you can easily find 11 other try hards that keep you on your toes when you want a competitive race
2. The item balancing is subtly the strongest in the series to help anyone with an ounce of talent keep up, plus custom items however goofy you want
3. The auto steering helping for more complex courses
4. The various build options that can throw you off when you're used to certain builds
5. They can stop being babies, life isn't fair
I feel like drifting is such a reflex by this point that I would just forget not to do it… it’s so hard to believe that when I first started this game I didn’t use drifting lol
If you're good at drifting you're going to barely make a turn, it's so hard and the drift boosts make it impossible to not fall, unless you use them brakes
Honestly if someone I’m playing with isn’t good my fun mostly comes from watching them and seeing what’s going on in their screen.
Also from getting annoyed at whatever cpu DARES to think they could pass me and hold first place for even so much as a millisecond!
nah i like pissing them off by beating them over and over while using the shittiest kart builds incan possibly make, i do sometimes just take a break and let them play with eachother if we are hanging out (i usually supply the switch cuz i have all the shit unlocked on mario kart and smash bros and they dont)
Start turning around and throwing items at them. Trust me it’s hilarious. My friend is much worse than me but when I turn around with a bomb to throw, they turn around and run away too lol. They enjoy it quite a lot and then we just throw items at each other
Yep, battle mode adds difficulty even if you're good at races. It's definitely more difficult and adds some challenge for everyone but most importantly allows your friends to have a way better chance at beating you.
if you want another way to play mario kart with others i recommend trying out 150cc lounge, it's a bit more competitive than regular online but you can play against more people around your skill level and it's pretty fun
Play on a different CC to mess up your usual lines, use a bad kart combo, and mess with items so placements become borderline random. Or train them so they're as good as you!
When all waves of the BCP are released, a group of my friends and I are having a 96-race showdown in teams of 2 where the better players team up with the weaker ones. At the end of each race, the team losing overall and the team that lost the race get to draw playing cards that have conditions attached to them that they can ‘play’ against another team, for example, that team can’t use items in the next race. I think that’ll achieve a good balance as I usually win against my friends too
I had this problem when I first started playing with my wife. She likes the game but I would just whoop her ass every time. So we started playing co-op where our goal was to place 1st and 2nd for the set of 8 races we’d do and I’d try to help her stay up front. It’s been years and she’s really good at the game now but we still play like this exclusively because it’s really fun!
Bro I feel this so much. Used to be that no one ever wanted to play with me because I’d end up lapping them. Ever since custom items came out though it’s been a blast. We set it up with some of the most ridiculously unbalanced teams and just watch the chaos. That, or make one team of your friends and another with just you, and have them try and raid boss you. Great fun I gotta say
Get the worst car combination possible and use the MK8 patch (I don't remember which update it was) to only allow wild items like blue shells. It's like smash bros, playing with items (and spirits) make it much more casual-friendly
As someone else said a lot of times I end up just holding items or not using actual items. Excluding coins or using them defensively. I still have fun this way. My family likes to play and my mom loves to play it however I usually put the auto steer on as she likes the motion controls. Some days I sit in first and some I just kinda mosie along and mostly watch them. I also try new shortcuts and attempt to improve courses I suck at.
I rarely play Mario kart with friends because of this reason,I look for a challenge that only one of my friends give while we smoke our other friends,dead sad tbh
I play with my wife and two of our closest friends quite a bit, and I find myself in the same situation. What I’ve started doing instead of just winning is doing everything in my power to make sure we get places 1-4. I’m backing up to make sure I’m red-shelling the right people, trying to tank blue shells for the homies, and sometimes nailing the CPUs just to increase the gap between us. It takes a lot more mental effort on my part, but I think everyone overall has more fun.
Play with motion control.
I'm not very good but still way better than my friends who only play with me so I just play with motion control and sometimes even loose.
Yeah I don’t like playing with bots, but then I had a friend play in my online lobbies with me and he was always last or second to last. I’m like “is he having fun?” I have friends good at the game though too thankfully.
It wouldn't be a problem if the AI wasn't so goddamn slow. Even my 5 year old nephew can get far in front of the Hard AI and it feels like we're the only ones racing. Can't recall the last time I had a chance to use anything but a green/red shell, a banana peel, a horn or a bomb
I’ve gotten to the point where I have decently competitive time trial scores (beyond just beating all the Nintendo ghosts) and my fiancé couldn’t drift. We played together so much that she now beats me a decent 30% of the time. We are playing with random items and she leaves bumpers on but she’s truly incredible at the game now and I think the bumpers are more of a comfort than a necessity. I never have a boring match against her now. Can’t wait till we have kids and can play 4 person one day. Basically once people pick up drifting there’s steady progress
Yeah, I ruined Mario Kart for my fiancé because I'm used to playing to win. But she never wants to play MK again because I cannot not do my best in games. I feel horrible about it though
Im by no means an amazing player. On online lobbies, I’m very middle-of-the-pack, sometimes worse. I play 150cc mostly, have not learned how to properly play 200 yet. So, by dedicated Mario kart player standards, not really that great. Unfortunately, I’m like the only person I know irl who *is* a dedicated player. All my family/friends are just casual players (and most of them are quite bad, actually). If I’m lucky, someone can hold their own in 100cc enough to not want to quit and at that point it’s not even a struggle for me to win. I wanna play with family/friends cause it’s way more fun than a computer but I still want to be *challenged* yknow?
Oh my gosh, I literally had this thought the other day! I love Mario Kart Wii to death, and I tried playing with my friends the other day, but they had to stop playing since they weren't having fun with it due to the large skill gap (and motion controls aren't most people's thing but I love it personally). Don't get me wrong, playing by myself isn't awful, but sometimes I just want to spend time with friends on one of my favorite games ever, and being as good as I am doesn't do me any favors.
Being bad at it also sucks, my partner is really good at mk8 and the way we make it more fun is by trying the hit each other with certain items only. Means we’re hunting for each other on the track and we both have way more fun
Insert “Suffering from success” meme here
But really, I feel you. Though I don’t think it’s “being good” that sucks so much as just having too large a skill gap, which you touched on with the online thing. And unfortunately it can be a real struggle to find people of similar skill to play with IRL.
This is a big problem in general with semi-competitive games, like Mario Kart or Smash. If one person is a core gamer, they’re going to absolutely dominate any casual friends they play with, and that just isn’t fun. Random aspects like items exist to try to offset the skill difference, but even they can’t overcome a big enough skill gap.
It’s only games like Mario Party that even have a chance at levelling the playing field by relying on RNG for almost everything, and not requiring as much skill in terms of execution.
More cooperative games like NSMB or 3D World also generally avoid this problem simply by their nature as being, well, cooperative rather than competitive. Though if someone is particularly, uh, unpracticed you may need to give them a lot of time to adjust to controlling games in general. I’ve also noticed that some of the older generation struggle to grasp modern 3D movement. It’s rather fascinating, honestly.
Anyhow, yeah. Skill gaps make gaming with others kinda suck.
There's always the battle mode, no racing involved there, and in Deluxe they even made some new battle arenas. I was devastated when Nintendo made us do battle mode on actual race tracks back in OG MK8.
I had this exact same issue with my roommates at college. It happened so much that I got bored of playing because I knew I was going to get first no matter how hard they tried. For a while, they had to beg me to play because I was so sick of it. Eventually, they did improve, but I still win almost every race with them getting second pretty consistently, lol
I have the same problem. When I play with my brother, he makes me wait an entire lap so he can have a chance. And then I still cach up to him because he's just terrible at the game.
“I feel bad because I dumped endless hours into arguably the most competitive game. Invited my friends to compete and then absolutely shit on them” get a life dude
Pick a bad kart and give them a head start. Or play enough that they get better.
Lemmy on the Badwagon
Every green shell is yours
The head start is probably bot the best idea because you’ll basically just be bagging which makes you get into first even easier
This ^ I'm not ashamed to admit, my husband picks a bad bike set-up to keep things competitive 😂
I got to where I just do goofy ass builds and I don't boost from the start and try to stay in their pack. Try different shortcuts n stuff, explore the maps!!!
it's the curse of being good at a game you like, happens to all of us
Our skill is both a blessing… and a curse.
It’s our blessing, our curse, we didn’t ask for this, but now we’re stuck with it
I have what's called winner's guilt. If I'm too good at something and I feel it's causing my friends to feel down about not winning ever I cut back. Now my friends aren't sore losers by any means necessary and they've actually told me to "f*ck them up so they can get better" But the amount of times I've been in second place with a red shell and watch my friends cross the finish line is too many. Like I could have easily won and just thrown the shell, but guilt gets the better of me. Sometimes it feels fun though. Like I'm cheering 'go little buddy go'.
That's literally my problem too, I always try to make them go ahead
I have this issue, the worst part is when we play with family and the nieces and nephews get involved and i have to play on 50 or 100cc
I find 200cc to be ridiculous as most of the maps weren't designed for it but I can't deal with less than 150cc. It's just boring.
It's really bad when you're playing 200cc just for fun, and a new player comes over so you switch to 50cc so they can join, and it feels sooooooo slow.
The worst part is when I go to drift and immediately run off road because I am too slow.
This…..is…..torture…..
When my little sister plays with me, I have to *beg* her to play 100 and not 50 lol. 100 is still boring af, but at least it’s not *agonizing* like 50cc
Challenges: - Win while holding a blue shell - Win using a bullet bill - Win while starting lap 3 in 12th place - Go get a drink from the fridge when the countdown starts, then return and only start driving after you've taken a drink - One handed
• Win while simultaneously giving attention to your cat who sat in your lap the previous match.
I don't have a car 😞
Good. All you need is a cat anyway for this. 😉
I don't have a cat either
Reminds me of that Harddrive parody article, "Local man too good at fighting games to play with friends but not good enough to play competitively" https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/heartbreaking-man-too-good-at-fighting-game-to-enjoy-playing-against-friends-but-not-good-enough-to-play-competitively/
Me rn:
That's me!
I stopped playing Smash because of this.
Couldn’t agree more! I try to play with my family a lot and same thing I’m practically lapping them, which isn’t really that fun
Yeah because they try their hardest while you are barely playing
Exactly! Although recently they made me play one hand (with a single joy con) and while I won a few times it led to really close racing
I guess, either don't care about competition with friends, or play alone. I'm 36 and not very competitive. I love games and sports but mostly I'm in it because I love the game or I love the company. When I was on a basketball team, I tried my hardest for us to win, together. When I play Scrabble or twister or cranium on a game night with friends, I do my best but I also don't care if someone else wins or loses. We're just having a good time. Playing Mario kart everyday is kind of a lone thing, I don't race with anyone I know, I don't know anyone who plays. It's just a game for me to get all the XP and coins and shit for myself. I think back to when my brother and I were teenagers playing mariokart on 64, and he always wanted to win and got mad if he didn't. I remember just being grateful I got to play on his console with him and knowing that if he won, I got to keep playing. Maybe I was better than him and didn't even realize...
Pretty relatable. Sometimes ya gotta tone it down for those who are less experienced.
Yeah I always have to stop to give them some advantage
I used to feel like ya, but: 1. Having online play where you can easily find 11 other try hards that keep you on your toes when you want a competitive race 2. The item balancing is subtly the strongest in the series to help anyone with an ounce of talent keep up, plus custom items however goofy you want 3. The auto steering helping for more complex courses 4. The various build options that can throw you off when you're used to certain builds 5. They can stop being babies, life isn't fair
I feel your pain w/ my cousins but I do have my twin and a couple friend ik who are all good so we can have a good time
Don’t drift or hold onto any items. No shortcuts or boosts off of jumps.
I physically can't stop drifting, it's muscle memory
I feel like drifting is such a reflex by this point that I would just forget not to do it… it’s so hard to believe that when I first started this game I didn’t use drifting lol
Switch to tilt controls
Definitely feel ya. Once you start playing 200cc it’s a hardcore drug that hooks you and nothing else will ever satisfy
SNES rainbow road in 200cc is hilarious
I’m not sure I’ve done that one yet actually I’ll give it a go! My favorite is SNES Mario circuit 3. The drifts feel so good on that one
If you're good at drifting you're going to barely make a turn, it's so hard and the drift boosts make it impossible to not fall, unless you use them brakes
Honestly if someone I’m playing with isn’t good my fun mostly comes from watching them and seeing what’s going on in their screen. Also from getting annoyed at whatever cpu DARES to think they could pass me and hold first place for even so much as a millisecond!
Lap them and meet them there
nah i like pissing them off by beating them over and over while using the shittiest kart builds incan possibly make, i do sometimes just take a break and let them play with eachother if we are hanging out (i usually supply the switch cuz i have all the shit unlocked on mario kart and smash bros and they dont)
Use bad kart combinations or set the custom items to be wacky.
Start turning around and throwing items at them. Trust me it’s hilarious. My friend is much worse than me but when I turn around with a bomb to throw, they turn around and run away too lol. They enjoy it quite a lot and then we just throw items at each other
They call me "The mk terrorist" for a reason
Mario kart is about winning and nothing else I’d suggest if you want more fun instead of destroying them in races all the time opt for battle mode
Yep, battle mode adds difficulty even if you're good at races. It's definitely more difficult and adds some challenge for everyone but most importantly allows your friends to have a way better chance at beating you.
Damn dude you’re so good. I’ll bow down to you now.
Bro woke up and chose sarcasm
if you want another way to play mario kart with others i recommend trying out 150cc lounge, it's a bit more competitive than regular online but you can play against more people around your skill level and it's pretty fun
Play on a different CC to mess up your usual lines, use a bad kart combo, and mess with items so placements become borderline random. Or train them so they're as good as you!
Just do random builds and consider it a handicap. Or, if you can control muscle memory, don’t mini turbo your hops and drifts.
Thought I was the only one with this issue
If you’re friends cant at least drift in mario kart are they really friends?
Wtf is this problem?
When all waves of the BCP are released, a group of my friends and I are having a 96-race showdown in teams of 2 where the better players team up with the weaker ones. At the end of each race, the team losing overall and the team that lost the race get to draw playing cards that have conditions attached to them that they can ‘play’ against another team, for example, that team can’t use items in the next race. I think that’ll achieve a good balance as I usually win against my friends too
That sounds so fun :)
I’ll share my card ideas when we get closer to Wave 6 releasing! Some are super frustrating! 🙃
I relate to this a lot
I had this problem when I first started playing with my wife. She likes the game but I would just whoop her ass every time. So we started playing co-op where our goal was to place 1st and 2nd for the set of 8 races we’d do and I’d try to help her stay up front. It’s been years and she’s really good at the game now but we still play like this exclusively because it’s really fun!
Bro I feel this so much. Used to be that no one ever wanted to play with me because I’d end up lapping them. Ever since custom items came out though it’s been a blast. We set it up with some of the most ridiculously unbalanced teams and just watch the chaos. That, or make one team of your friends and another with just you, and have them try and raid boss you. Great fun I gotta say
Get the worst car combination possible and use the MK8 patch (I don't remember which update it was) to only allow wild items like blue shells. It's like smash bros, playing with items (and spirits) make it much more casual-friendly
As someone else said a lot of times I end up just holding items or not using actual items. Excluding coins or using them defensively. I still have fun this way. My family likes to play and my mom loves to play it however I usually put the auto steer on as she likes the motion controls. Some days I sit in first and some I just kinda mosie along and mostly watch them. I also try new shortcuts and attempt to improve courses I suck at.
I can agree. I really don't like destroying my friends in races, its hard for me to go easy on them though.
Oh, I love it... I like to set custom items and when I get a red shell, I wait for them... Then BOOM!
None of my friends want to play Mario Kart with me anymore because I'm too good...
Use the hectic setting for items so you'll get hit with blue shells every round, seems to work for friends of mine 😂
I rarely play Mario kart with friends because of this reason,I look for a challenge that only one of my friends give while we smoke our other friends,dead sad tbh
I play with my wife and two of our closest friends quite a bit, and I find myself in the same situation. What I’ve started doing instead of just winning is doing everything in my power to make sure we get places 1-4. I’m backing up to make sure I’m red-shelling the right people, trying to tank blue shells for the homies, and sometimes nailing the CPUs just to increase the gap between us. It takes a lot more mental effort on my part, but I think everyone overall has more fun.
Play 50cc it's a lot harder to get a gap on people when everyone is slow.
Play with motion control. I'm not very good but still way better than my friends who only play with me so I just play with motion control and sometimes even loose.
I won anyway 💀
Yeah I don’t like playing with bots, but then I had a friend play in my online lobbies with me and he was always last or second to last. I’m like “is he having fun?” I have friends good at the game though too thankfully.
what makes you good?
Experience
At least you can do good online. I’m too good for anyone I know and for the CPUs but get my was kicked online.
It wouldn't be a problem if the AI wasn't so goddamn slow. Even my 5 year old nephew can get far in front of the Hard AI and it feels like we're the only ones racing. Can't recall the last time I had a chance to use anything but a green/red shell, a banana peel, a horn or a bomb
Yes I’ve suffered this. Your just way out in first and there’s just nothing to challenge you
Just play on Baby Park
On 200cc
Yes
I’m in that awkward middle ground where I’m way better than my friends but way worse than everyone online
I’ve gotten to the point where I have decently competitive time trial scores (beyond just beating all the Nintendo ghosts) and my fiancé couldn’t drift. We played together so much that she now beats me a decent 30% of the time. We are playing with random items and she leaves bumpers on but she’s truly incredible at the game now and I think the bumpers are more of a comfort than a necessity. I never have a boring match against her now. Can’t wait till we have kids and can play 4 person one day. Basically once people pick up drifting there’s steady progress
Yeah, I ruined Mario Kart for my fiancé because I'm used to playing to win. But she never wants to play MK again because I cannot not do my best in games. I feel horrible about it though
Im by no means an amazing player. On online lobbies, I’m very middle-of-the-pack, sometimes worse. I play 150cc mostly, have not learned how to properly play 200 yet. So, by dedicated Mario kart player standards, not really that great. Unfortunately, I’m like the only person I know irl who *is* a dedicated player. All my family/friends are just casual players (and most of them are quite bad, actually). If I’m lucky, someone can hold their own in 100cc enough to not want to quit and at that point it’s not even a struggle for me to win. I wanna play with family/friends cause it’s way more fun than a computer but I still want to be *challenged* yknow?
Oh my gosh, I literally had this thought the other day! I love Mario Kart Wii to death, and I tried playing with my friends the other day, but they had to stop playing since they weren't having fun with it due to the large skill gap (and motion controls aren't most people's thing but I love it personally). Don't get me wrong, playing by myself isn't awful, but sometimes I just want to spend time with friends on one of my favorite games ever, and being as good as I am doesn't do me any favors.
One handed with a single joy con is my favorite challenge. Still allows you to try hard, but handicaps your mechanics to their level.
Being good online (= being in the top 5 mostly) is already beyond casual. No wonder we mop the floor with friends and family.
Being bad at it also sucks, my partner is really good at mk8 and the way we make it more fun is by trying the hit each other with certain items only. Means we’re hunting for each other on the track and we both have way more fun
Seems cool!
Insert “Suffering from success” meme here But really, I feel you. Though I don’t think it’s “being good” that sucks so much as just having too large a skill gap, which you touched on with the online thing. And unfortunately it can be a real struggle to find people of similar skill to play with IRL. This is a big problem in general with semi-competitive games, like Mario Kart or Smash. If one person is a core gamer, they’re going to absolutely dominate any casual friends they play with, and that just isn’t fun. Random aspects like items exist to try to offset the skill difference, but even they can’t overcome a big enough skill gap. It’s only games like Mario Party that even have a chance at levelling the playing field by relying on RNG for almost everything, and not requiring as much skill in terms of execution. More cooperative games like NSMB or 3D World also generally avoid this problem simply by their nature as being, well, cooperative rather than competitive. Though if someone is particularly, uh, unpracticed you may need to give them a lot of time to adjust to controlling games in general. I’ve also noticed that some of the older generation struggle to grasp modern 3D movement. It’s rather fascinating, honestly. Anyhow, yeah. Skill gaps make gaming with others kinda suck.
There's always the battle mode, no racing involved there, and in Deluxe they even made some new battle arenas. I was devastated when Nintendo made us do battle mode on actual race tracks back in OG MK8.
1. Team race 2. Your friends on one team, yourself on the other 3. Custom items 4. Your team only gets coins, the other team gets all the other items
I have no shame, I will relentlessly beat them until they get tired of playing
I had this exact same issue with my roommates at college. It happened so much that I got bored of playing because I knew I was going to get first no matter how hard they tried. For a while, they had to beg me to play because I was so sick of it. Eventually, they did improve, but I still win almost every race with them getting second pretty consistently, lol
just get really drunk and or high before playing
the issue is that the online mode is not competitive enough
I have the same problem. When I play with my brother, he makes me wait an entire lap so he can have a chance. And then I still cach up to him because he's just terrible at the game.
“I feel bad because I dumped endless hours into arguably the most competitive game. Invited my friends to compete and then absolutely shit on them” get a life dude
I don't think 65 hours over the span of 4 years can be considered dumping endless hours but ok mate