Mario Kart 8 item distribution balance

Do you guys prefer this to MKwii's item distribution?

From my experience it really seems like this is the worst balanced MK game. I thought MKWii was much better.

What abt you guys, which do you prefer?

Yup. I think that MK8's item distribution is probably the worst in the franchise.

They have a formula based on trends, distance and position. Position is obvious. Distance allows you to get good items in second place, provided that first place is *really* far ahead. Then the "trends" part is really the thing that annoys me. If you get an item, there is a high probability that the people around you will have a very similar item. For example, if you pick up a mushroom, people around you will most likely get a mushroom (or triple or gold mushrooms). This just effectively cancels things out. If I get a red shell, and everyone around me gets a red shell, then what's the point? We shoot each other and carry on as before?

The star is totally under powered. You barely go much faster. I effectively just ignore people with a star, they're hardly a threat. Mushrooms could use with a bit more speed too.

Coins as items are a waste of time. Especially when you get into first and constantly get coins. It's really boring.

Then not being able to carry a second item is questionable. Personally I think the big problem is the "trends" mechanic. But the second item could help that.

It's tough to get a right formula, no Mario Kart has ever got it right.. I don't think there will ever be a "right' formula, because MK has to be a little frustrating at times - it's somewhat part of the gameplay and fun of it all. But some MKs just get the formula down a little better than other MKs.

@trugs26: How do you know there's actually a "trends" mechanic? It seems to me that the other two parts of the formula you mentioned -- position and distance -- would pop out roughly the same chance for an item as people around you simply because the positions and distances are all pretty similar.

The major difference I've noticed in Mario Kart 8 is that you generally can't hang back at the beginning to avoid the initial chaos then get an awesome item to propel you ahead of the mayhem. However, if you come out ahead in that first skirmish and don't make any major mistakes for the first lap, you can generally keep the lead, even with a blue shell and some red shells (assuming you're not racing against a bunch of other pros).

I like it. I find myself dropping behind because of my own dumb mistakes more than because of other people, which never felt like the case in other Mario Kart games.

@JordanElek: In regards to the trends thing, I can see what he is saying. For example in one race, I was in third on the last lap. Got hit by a red shell, fell to last. Then on the final item box in the lap, I ended up getting 3 shrooms. I look at the guy in front of me (by a decent amount) and he had 3 shrooms too, and the guy in front ofhim had 3 also. That is pure BS imo. Its happened a number of times.

@Glutenbob: If you look at the items at any point in a race, though, it seems like the majority of them are mushrooms.

The item distribution is definitely different from the other games, and it does make the races feel different, but that hasn't affected the amount of fun I have at all. I still seem to be winning and losing online as much as I have been since the Wii version. Maybe the stuff they addressed with the tweaks just doesn't apply to my racing style, which is largely based on drifting, line efficiency, and defense.

@JordanElek: Thats how I play too, but when you keep getting coins or mushrooms the whole time, while your opponents get Red shells, it kinda makes it uneven. 3 red shells >>> 3 mushrooms.

I dunno, honestly if they made it so that you stopped getting coins once you have 10, or brought back double items, things could be much better.

It's not perfect but it's better than mkwii's barrage of OP items everywhere. It seems like the person in first doesn't have to be afraid anymore

Its interesting seeing such differing opinions. WHen I am in first I am ALWAYS scared. prob 90% of the time I get coins, leaving me defenseless.

Mind sharing your strategy for staying in first? Would be interesting to get another view on things.

It's pretty bad, possibly the worst. First place can barely get anything to defend themselves with due to the high ratio of getting coins however I've found that if you let it stop itself, you get better items most of the time. This is probably the most incomplete Mario Kart they've ever made, fun but definitely incomplete.

A patch needs to happen, Not DLC, to fix some of the issues that are in the game.

Trugs is correct it seems when it comes to the racers getting the same items. I've seen it too many times.

Yes the Star doesn't speed you up much at all and neither do the mushrooms.

It's alot wrong with it but it's still surprisingly fun

I still can't understand why everyone complains about the coin.

It is true you cannot hit anyone with it, but - as far as defense goes - it is not any different from the fake item box present in previous games.

Nintendo says its the most balanced, in a sense it is, the guy in 4th, 5th and 6th all get 3 mushrooms! Yup thats balanced alright, but pointless and does nothing for them lol. The red shells are the worst, need Lightning, and Bullet Bill to be a bit more frequent and bring back items like the Giant Banana, Chain Chomp, and Giant Bowser Shell. Also make Mushrooms last an extra 1-2 seconds they got nerfed, and Starpower got nerfed to...needs to last another 3 seconds and actually speed you up like it used to, it makes you go like 5% faster now lol.

I wish we could upload entire races so I can show you guys, but apparently MKTV doesn't count coins as 'items' for them to be shown in 60 seconds.

Anyway, during a recent online race, I managed to get fiveconsecutive coins in first place before a blue shell got me. It was literally 2 laps of nothing but coins. Not gonna lie, I still had fun, but 5 coins in a row is pretty overkill. Player at 2nd place was right behind me too with shells and bananas. It could have been my luck, but coins overall are too common. I do prefer them over those obvious fake item boxes since there have been situations in which it helped me reach to maximum speed, but it'll be appreciated if they lowered the chance of getting a coin after collecting 10.

Nah, fake item boxes could be placed on ramps for shortcuts (or even better, at the landing spot). Defense is more than just protecting yourself against attacks; it's laying out your items in ways that force players behind you to lose a little ground, even if they don't actually hit the item.

The coin isn't useless, but it's close. If I have 10 coins already, I'll keep the coin in case I lose a little speed for the tiny boost it gives, but I usually end up using it immediately before the next item box. I still find myself getting a lot of bananas and green shells in first place, which are about as useful as it gets in that position. The horn is thrown in occasionally.

@JordanElek: I made a response to you yesterday... I guess glitchspot deleted it? That's annoying.

Anyway, what I said yesterday was something like this:

Yes you are right, there is no "trends" variable per se in the formula, as we don't know what the formula (it's in Nintendo's hands). It is most likely a result of distance+rank that has the effect of trends, regardless.

I find it annoying that if you get an early lead, you pretty much have the race wrapped up. This all comes back to the item distribution formula. MK8 suffers from getting "stuck in the pack". Because people get similar items to you due to trends, this effectively holds people in similar positions together. This means, if you break away from the pack, you're really difficult to catch, as the people in the middle of the pack bombard each other with items. It doesn't feel skillful, but instead, biased toward people who happen to break away from the pack due to a lucky item distribution at the early part of the race.

A lot does depend on the early moments of the race, but I haven't found it to be a matter of item distribution. For me, starting at the head of the pack usually lets me get an easy early lead, while starting at the back makes me work for it. When I play online, I'm not disappointed if I don't get first place in the first race, because those first few races are all about working my way up. Once I place high enough to start near the front, then I know that getting first place is well within my reach, and I get more disappointed when I don't place high.

To me, this feels just as skillful as any other Mario Kart. Getting a lead and increasing it still requires masterful driving. It's frustrating when you're the guy behind trying to catch up with the skillful driver in the front, but your job is to be the guy in the front, so of course it's going to be that way. You basically have to hope he makes a mistake, which means that when you're in the front, you can't make mistakes (unless you're so far ahead in the third lap that it doesn't matter, which does happen occasionally).

Sure it's to do with item distribution. If whoever is in first is difficult to catch, it isn't because they're being better than everyone else, it's because people in the midpack are holding each other back because of what items they're getting. Sure you CAN twist it in ways to look at it as a positive thing, and make it a challenge in and of itself (e.g moving through the ranks per race), but I find this to be masking the real issue of bad design - the item distribution isn't right. On an individual per race basis, you should be able to put your skills to work and get into first place, but instead, this comes down to "semi-skill players with luck" who hold out first place in the first lap, leaving the rest of the race redundant, leaving the midpack to feast upon themselves. Occasionally first place is rectified with items like blue shell, and being bombarded into the midpack, who now suffers the same problem as the others in the midpack, leaving someone else to enjoy the luxury of first place, but again, this isn't a good and skilfull way of rectifying the issue. Again, getting the formula isn't easy, and I don't have a solution, but all I can say is that other Mario Kart games do it better than MK8.

I should mention though, that I do feel MK8 requires more skill than previous games. But this is because of the track design and the kart physics, and not the item distribution (the item distribution hinders it if anything),

That's the thing. I don't think there is a solution. You can change it around all you want, and Nintendo has done plenty of that in every iteration, but they can't fix the problems people continually complain about without removing a key feature of the game -- chance.

And with chance comes luck (which doesn't really exist when we're talking about numbers and formulas). The items are dice rolls. They're dynamic dice rolls (sometimes three-sided, sometimes six-sided, with the numbers on them changing with the situation), but they're still dice rolls. That's part of what makes Mario Kart so ridiculous and fun, and so ridiculous and frustrating. I've found that whether you experience the former or the latter is dependent on your own attitude, which you can change. We can't change the game we have at this point (or in the future, since Nintendo has always done their own thing).

The correct response to being barraged by items in Mario Kart is laughter. Maybe that's why I've enjoyed every Mario Kart despite people claiming that each one is the worst in the series. The charm and the ridiculousness is always there, no matter how they tweak the mechanics.

Oh man, I'm getting sick of Gamespot. I made a reply, and for some reason it doesn't show :(

I said something like this anyway:
Yes, chance is all part of the fun. But I can still be critical of the game and have fun. While there may not exist a formula, we can get a basic "feel" for a good item distribution formula by comparing how it felt between games. and I feel that MK8 is the worst in the franchise in this respect.

Sorry this post isn't very thoughtful, it's very difficult to be bothered to re-post something I already said a while ago, twice.

@Pierst179:

Yeh but you don't get the fake item box 8/10 items when you are in top 3. Its the frequency of the coins that sucks.

Mario Kart 64 is worse. If Nintendo were to lift the item system from that game and drop it into Mario Kart 8, it would be impossible to play. It worked well enough for four human players (and leaned heavily on cheating with one player against the AI), but it couldn't possibly work with 12 human players. Everyone who wasn't in first place would have nothing but lightning, mushrooms, and stars, and very little real driving would happen.

Now that I think about it, Nintendo tried to fix some of the item problems in Double Dash by making them less effective. You rarely come to a complete stop for anything in that game, and the only speed-burst items are the star and mushroom (and triple mushroom). If that game were 12 players online, it would probably have the same effect as Mario Kart 8, where the people who can gain an early lead will stay there as long as they drive well (though blue shells show up more often in that game than most of the others).

Nintendo relied too much on AI tweaks before online play came around to really learn how to program a good item system for all human players. I think what we've seen since the Wii version is their struggle to figure out how to keep the classic feel of Mario Kart in such an uncontrollable environment. I think they've done a great job, considering how different the game is with 12 human players than it used to be with either four human players and no AI or one human player and seven AI.

The one real complaint I have with Mario Kart 8 is the gimped star. That's such an amazing item that gives you the chance to really cause mayhem if you risk a good driving line for drilling other players, who can get out of the way if they're savvy. But the star doesn't give you enough of a speed boost to do that in this game. It's only really good for driving off-road without losing speed.

Man, I could talk about Mario Kart all day. ;p

I just did a few races to test the "Trends" debate and surely enough, EVERY SINGLE ITEM I GOT, The other racers around me got either the same thing or similar. Whenever I'd get triple Mushrooms, the other players around me would get either triple mushrooms or Infinite Mushrooms. Whenever I'd get the star, at least one other player near me would get the star. Whenever I'd get a green or red shell, other players around me got red or green shells.

This item distribution needs to be patched badly. Make the further back players get speed boosts, shells and items to help them catch up and players in the front of the pack get items to help defend themselves. It's not that hard of a problem to solve. When you're in first through 3rd, you get a better ratio of defense items, 4th-8th, you get the average ratio of good offense and defense items, 8th-12th, you get better offense items. Simple solution. This needs to be fixed badly as it makes the items you get useless.

This. I was playing yesterday and was in 10th place and got a single mushroom cos I was close to the guy in 9th place. The guy in 9th place got the Golden Mushroom cos he was further away from the guy infront of him. This was as the last item box on the last lap. I had NOOOOO chance.

Thats just plain outright bullshit. Can't wait to trade this game in towards Tropical Freeze. Honestly if they just randomized the items ppl got with each item having an equal percentage of landing, it would be more fair than what they are doing now. Instead of having to set up tournaments for frantic mode, they should provide ppl with playlists like FPS games do.

I think being in 10th place on the last item box of the race is what made you have no chance. ;)

I just played several races specifically looking for these "trends," and I just didn't see them. On the first item box of each race, there was about as much variety as you could expect. I got a red shell in third place, the guy in front of me got a coin, the guy in front of him missed the boxes completely, someone behind me shot a green shell (I was playing on the gamepad so I couldn't see what everyone got). That's pretty much the whole gamut of first-item-box weapons. In the rest of the race, I spanned from second place to about sixth and got most of the items except the super mushroom, lightning, blooper, blue shell, and boom box thing in all of the races. I got hit by lightning maybe three times total in the races I played, and got blooped at least once each, which means other players (but not everyone in a cluster) got those items at some point.

I saw one guy get a star at the same time I did, but that's the only instance I saw in five races of someone getting the same item as me (except for mushrooms, which, like I said earlier, are over represented in this game across the board).

I got bombarded in the first race a few times and still placed fourth, and I drove pretty horribly in the rest but didn't place lower than fifth.

All that to say.. I just don't see the problem. If you drive well enough, you don't NEED to rely on items to push you ahead. If you get them and can use them to change your position, then that's perfect, but you can't expect it. Driving flawlessly and using items smartly gets me a top position pretty much every race in which I can actually pull those two things off.

I was in 1st place all throughout the race, till midway through the 3rd lap. Got bombarded with red shells, fell to 10th place.

I don't see what I did wrong, and what the person in 9th place did right, for me to get a red shroom and him to get a golden shroom. If you can explain why I deserved to get the red shroom, and him the golden shroom that would be nice.

I personally think its a bunch of bullshit, esp when they reward ppl in first place (who take the time to make as many shortcuts as possible and as sharp a turn as possible) with coin after coin. Occasionally there will be a race when they give me nothing but good-amazing items, and then the next 10 races are me getting garbage items most of the time.

I just want to understand how Nintendo picks what time of items you draw so I can take advantage. Is it on a race by race basis? or does your 'luck' carry over from game to game

Nobody deserves anything. It's mostly random. What did the other eight people do to deserve getting ahead of you two? One (all?) of them took you out and they zoomed by. The only way to avoid that is to be far enough ahead that any bombardment won't kill your ranking, which isn't always possible, but it's more possible in Mario Kart 8 than any other game in the series.

If you want the game to always give you what you need to get ahead or stay ahead, then that rule needs to apply to everyone, and it wouldn't accomplish anything. It could work if you're racing against all AI, but it can't work with all human players (which is why it's so easy to beat the AI in Mario Kart 64, by the way).

It's random. Sure there's a formula, but it's still random. The game isn't screwing you or helping you or favoring other players. It's just being random.

Yeh makes sense. It seems like you have to look at this game a whole other way. I used to take it seriously, and get mad when I lost, but looking at it from this perspective, makes it ok.

I'd still rather have MKwiis item distribution, but thats just me. I win more in this game than MKwii, but I rage much more too lol.

lol, so do I, but more at myself than at anything else. Screwing up in this game makes such a huge difference... Even glancing off a wall or going off-road for a half-second might put you back a few places.

I'd rather be mad at myself, though, because at least I can change that.

Did Nintendo just put out a patch or something?

I've been played for the past 4 hours and each and every game had me getting an equal distribution of items. This game became fun again. It was a strange feeling.....

....coming from, you know, getting coins 80% of the time and single green sheels or shrooms the other 20% of the time....

Im seriously hoping it was a patch and not just me getting lucky. Don't want things to go back to the way they were. :(

From my experience, Mario Kart Wii had the absolute worst distribution of items the franchise has ever known. The game was disgustingly unfair for those who actually had any ounce of skill. Mario Kart 8 may have the strongest distribution of items in the franchise yet. It feels like what I do in a race actually matters.

I also very much like that the effect items have on you have been nerfed.

i say it is terribly optimised in favor of casuals, for MK9. maybe we should have a option in all SP and MP modes, to disable position handicap, making it much fairer for 1st place to stay 1st

@Glutenbob: MK8 nerfed items in general. And the coins in first place keeps the gameplay tense. You don't always need an item to defend yourself from red shells. If you can powerslide your butt against a wall, for example. So there's room for high level play thanks to the coins. Mushrooms are now less about the speed boost and more about cutting off track.