Mario Kart World Fails Hard Online — What Happens When You Don't Reward Skill
June 13, 2025
After spending a solid amount of time now with Mario Kart World, the game's biggest strengths and weaknesses have become fairly apparent. And while Mario Kart World, overall, does a lot more good than bad, World has one particular issue that has become increasingly hard to overlook: the online race experience is absolutely miserable. It's a frustrating, broken mess.
Item Balance Is Non-Existent In Mario Kart World
It may sound silly to criticize a Mario Kart game for having its races depend too much on items, but this is legitimately what is ruining the Mario Kart World experience. Mario Kart World is super fun, don't get me wrong. It's a great game to play with family and friends, because you don't need to take it that seriously. But if you have any semblance of a competitive spirit, then the online race experience feels pretty terrible. Mario Kart World just fundamentally isn't rewarding enough. If anything, it's unfairly punishing.
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In Mario Kart World, there is virtually no advantage to being a more skilled driver. As long as there are others who surpass a general skill floor, the results of a race can just about go any way. You could know every single time-save on every course, and it won't matter most of the time. There are just too many items that will stop you from ever maintaining a strong lead. Frontrunning is nigh impossible in Mario Kart World.
Holding a strong position, in general, poses too many risks. There is no way for players to adequately counter the chaos happening behind them. The biggest issue is that it's way too easy to drop a bunch of placements. You could go from 3rd to 16th within a matter of seconds, and that just really isn't fair. In previous entries, that would be a funny Mario Kart moment. Here in World, that's just what you can expect to see in every race. That kind of chaos makes sense for Knockout Tour, but it's too much for a regular versus race.
How Can Mario Kart World's Online Races Be Improved?
The only way to properly address the game balance in Mario Kart World is to allow for strict 12-player lobbies and maybe even 8-player lobbies. There really isn't much else that can be done to drastically improve the average experience. Racing against 23 other players just doesn't allow for anyone's skills to shine. When the best strategy is to consistently race from behind, in order to avoid getting hit by stray items, something is deeply wrong with the system. Having the option to play with less racers could really go a long way.
Could the items be better balanced, though? Yes, I think so. Spiny Shells, for one, need to be a lot rarer. Players in first place deserve to feel more safe. Lightning would be a slightly better item to push as the main equalizer. The fact that it also forces players to drop their items is a nice plus. When you make it to the middle of the pack, it's nice to have room to breathe — instead of having to deal with danger from all sides. The triple items are mainly at fault there, and should also be slightly less common. It's weird how they feel pretty underwhelming to pull, and yet cause so many accidents by simply taking up so much space.
Nintendo isn't exactly known for catering to their more "hardcore" audience, but the problems mentioned here are universally experienced. Versus races just feel brutal. That's not how any Mario Kart game should feel. Mario Kart World is still a fundamentally fun game, but it could be so much better with a bit of tweaking.
