Let’s get straight into it, because every time I play online there’s at least one dumbass who shouldn’t have a karting license.
Lightning – Do not mash the item button the second you get a lightning. Look at the damn map. If you get a lightning, chances are you’re pretty far back so you need all the help you can get! Watch 1st place and use the lightning when he’s over a gap or in a difficult spot. If there’s a tunnel, use it in the FIRST half of the tunnel so they get put back before it, not after it, because that can help them. Also make sure to watch other players’ items; if someone has a star when you use the lightning, you’re practically handing them the race lead. Resist the urge for instant lightning gratification and you’ll unlock your inner karting power.
Don’t fight for scraps – This is a highly competitive yet highly balanced game and if you’re good enough to do one error free race then you’re good enough to win. Never give up and start firing items backwards, always aim AHEAD. If 1st place is blocking with a banana, shoot that shell to the side and try and get a rebound shot. It happens; think of all the rebound shots that hit YOU. Never settle for 2nd until it’s over and unleash everything you can on the leader. The best victories are the ones that seem out of reach.
Repeating tracks – I don’t care if you’ve spent all night practicing Bowser’s Castle in Time Trial. I don’t care if your WHEELS aren’t suited to underwater tracks. When your track is chosen, don’t pick it AGAIN immediately after. It’s cool to have a favourite, but there’s 32 tracks and we shouldn’t be racing on the same track twice in a row. Picking the same track 20 times in a row just shows how scared you are of losing. I can smell fear and it makes me drive faster.
Metal Mario – He’s lame and you’re lame. We get it, you unlocked him by playing a lot. You’ve picked the fastest secret character, now you have no excuse for losing. You and your 5 Metal Mario friends can enjoy sinking to the bottom of the grid in mass confusion.
Playing Single Player – It’s amazing how many people have the 3 star logo for clearing single player races a hundred times. Every second you play with single player bots you get dumber and lose your strategic edge. The mode is great for killing your awareness and leaving you vulnerable to item placement from real people.
Sore Loser – OK, you didn’t win. It’s not a big deal, nobody can win every race. Things happen; shells ricochet off walls, lightning comes at bad times (see above), bombs can drop in the perfect (worst) place. Some races just won’t go your way, that doesn’t mean you have to start driving backwards to prove a point or stop before the line; “hurp durp I should have won”. You lose all respect when you start doing that; a worthy competitor would happily cross the line in 2nd because he knows he tried his best. People notice bad behavior, so don’t be surprised if you become a target.
NOA REGGIE is watching.
I hope you use these tips to improve your experience, and mine! Happy Karting!
IS YOUR BODY READY?
Pietriots 
Hey you aren’t you in a community? Post your community code I wanna race against you. I am a GREAT Jamaican racer.
Get N or get OUT!!!
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still waiting pietriots
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Feel free to find our community. We have this place called a “web site,” and in it, there’s links.
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@ prodaisy
I want the community that he is playing… In the above article it seems that he is very good. I like to play against player who are. So I want the community that he is playing in to join. I don’t wanna search for any random community
Get N or get out!!!
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Let me guess, you use Metal Mario?
The Pietriots community is mainly for events, we race worldwide on a normal day. Leave your 3DS friend code in the Community room and i’ll add you, and i’ll be happy to race when our paths cross.
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My problem is none of the above. Because of lag, I have crap teleporting all over the place. I can’t rebound a shell if I can even be sure of your position infront of me. Hell, I have rammed people with shells to no effect.
Doesn’t matter how good of a racer you are if what you are seeing right in front of you is nonsense most of the time..
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Playing with friends + playing Mario kart where two on my favorite pastimes growing up. The thought of playing it with friends the world over and always having someone to play with would have made me crap my 1994-2004 pants. Sadly, today there’s 3 different ‘online’ MK’s on the market and I’ve spent little time with any of them, why? oohhboy hit the nail on the head.
As much as I love Nintendo and think 90% of game media and forum goers need to get off their back for things that they aren’t even doing wrong…I’m 100% on board the “Pull your heads out of your ass and give us a good online experience” train. The ONLY reason I spent more time on my 360 this gen than my Wii was online multiplayer/coop, if the Wii U gives me functional UI and good servers I’ll have little need to risk my financial stability on another FailBox product. Sadly, it still looks like a BIG if.
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And before you ask, no. My internet does not consist of two soup cans and a piece of string. Sadly, even people I know with horrid internet…like cell phone cards jury rigged to a PC, can play stuff like L4D2 and Battlefield 3 with smooth gameplay and little to no lag. So when my high speed, in town, Cable connection that has a constant full signal in the middle of a thunderstorm on every other online service I use leaves me thinking my Wii games are a slideshow…it’s not my Internets fault.
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I’ve played several online matches between Grub, Bill and Pro, and I have not suffered any lag problems. What I did suffer were things Grub listed… eh.
Funny you should mention the 360 though EV, because when I took part in a recent Playbit of TMNT 1989 Arcade, the lag on that game was HORRIBLE. Shortly after that, Live decided to be an ass and not work for me at all for nearly a month, which in turn screwed over plans for a Simpsons Arcade playbit.
But yeah, Nintendo needs to improve its online gaming stuff. Thankfully the 3DS has been making major strides to change this.
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I won’t deny some games run like ass on the XBL/PSN/Steam etc. Sometimes it can occur with an older or downloadable title for whose reserved servers are probably kept in a furnace room buried under some old blankets full of spider eggs. Doom on XBLA in particular runs like a POS and it’s odd since I have few other issues on XBLA games. Another common issue is EA games since Darth Riccitello insists on using their own servers even on XBL (probably so they can pull the plug on year old sports game).
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Yet, surprisingly… Mario Kart 7 never ran like shit for me. Keep in mind I played matches with people all around the world, with Bill and Pro both in California and Grub in Australia. Same is true for the Heroes of Ruin demo, with the same three people.
I have no idea why you are having lag problems, EV. I boggles meh mind.
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Well keep in mind I haven’t played MK7 or any 3DS game online yet as I don’t have the system. So I can hope they’ve taken some big steps towards fixing that particular issue. Let’s hope UI and the many other aspects continue to be improved as well.
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I live in Jamaica and I have NO problem playing Mario Kart 7 on my 3ds. I am like the top rank jamaican player!!!! The wii online wasn’t that great i admit but the 3ds is great!!!!
Get N or get OUT!!!!!
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@EV: They did! It has a very nice UI design and there is hardly any slowdown… for me at least.
@venomjamaica: Can you please cut down on the use of exclamation marks? We get you are excited.
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lol
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I guess he doesn’t want to race the Pietriots anymore.
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Ridge Racer Vita suffers from some of these problems too. It’s frustrating having the same track every 3rd race, and my ghost data keeps driving exactly the same way.
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You forgot one (though this is more of a Mario Kart Wii point – I’ve not yet got a 3DS): cheaters. It’s no fun when you go for a random match and find there’s someone spamming infinite items. Especially when they’ve hacked the bullet bill so it travels several times faster than usual, with the result being the round ends part-way through lap 2 (MKW forces a result 30s after the winner crosses the line).
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Luckily cheating doesn’t seem to be possible in Mario Kart 7, for the moment at least.
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Agree with everything except ‘Playing Single Player’. Thanks to MK7’s lack of single player versus mode the only other offline option for racing is Grand Prix, the fuck else am I suppose to do when I don’t have access to WiFi if I want to race? And getting 3 star ranking is super easy in this game, if you’re good enough to have a 3 star rank and you don’t because you’re roo lazy, then you’re a dumbass.
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‘Too lazy’ suggests it’s a chore, I’d rather be a dumbass than waste time on something like that. You raise a good point, I guess I just play other games without WiFi.
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Lol I get the feeling this guy is instead the one “playing it wrong” and no I am not trolling. I mean repeating tracks is dumb but I can justify all of it:
The first thing you have to realize is you shouldn’t always be aiming for 1st. It’s unrealistic to think you are always going to come in first place in less you are way better than everyone else you are with, but thanks to the matchmaking system that doesn’t happen too much. Always expecting 1st place is one thing that can lead to being a sore loser. So for example, if your are in 2nd and 1st place is way ahead of you, then don’t bother; your red shells will have a small chance of hitting him thanks to distance and the fact that he’s probably holding an item or 2 to block it, and even if it does hit him it won’t really help you at this point, just try to maintain 2nd place and best of all you are (mostly) safe from blue shells. VR in this game is pretty lenient; you barely gain any more for coming in 1st than you do for 2nd or 3rd, and in less you come in 7th or 8th you always gain VR. As for your win/loss record, if you can average 2nd or 3rd every race (7 or 6 wins for 1 or 2 losses respectively) then that’s a pretty damn good record and a feat by itself.
When you get lightning in/near last there may not be time to catch up to first place (seriously, get real), and you want to use it before you pass another row of item blocks. Again, getting into first place is not your priority right now; it’s minimizing your damage by getting out of last place and hopefully EVENTUALLY catching up to the leaders. Alternatively, use it when MOST of the pack is going through the first half of a jump.
People get the 3 star logo for the same reasons they get Metal Mario; to show off and to be completionists. Metal Mario is also cool and has sort of become a symbol of greatness (among CERTAIN Mario Kart players anyway). You don’t have to be apart of it but don’t bash on others who want to do so while creating some form of unity.
As for playing against bots, any good player knows that racing against bots is way different than racing against human players, although it still helps you “practice” the basics of Mario Kart. At least the bots are smarter in this game than previous ones on higher engines classes. Again, don’t bash on others for sometimes choosing to play single player instead of online.
I haven’t really had a problem with sore losers aside from maybe having lots of people repeatedly choose Maka Wuhu when the glitch was still possible, and who knows exactly why people repick courses (they could have forgotten to change it because most of the time you are just repeatedly waiting for your course to get picked). It’s hard to tell for sure but I think people target you the most for either being a good racer and just staying with the same group for awhile. Either way if you do something to become a target you don’t really have to worry after you leave the room since your” rarely if ever see those people again. I should mention that a lot of the methods for trolling have been fixed; people can’t just sit at an item box anymore and target a specific player when they drive by. If you stay still or drive backwards for just a few seconds you’ll be disconnected (I actually find that a bit TOO harsh, especially for when you need to back up from a wall or something). But the biggest reason people “target” you is just because they are all in it for themselves; they are just hitting anyone in their path to win and such is the result of a “demolition derby”.
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my community is 43-2632-2984-1730 and it’s called gold farming i’ll be on at 8:15
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sorry i mean evryday
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So don’t play the single player that you paid for, don’t use unlocked items you worked hard for, and don’t knock out the guy contesting your place. Got ya. Lol. =P
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The author of this article thinks he’s an elitist or something. Basically he thinks that his way is the only way, also known as a Scrub or a “Stop Having Fun” guy.
Oh and people also choose Metal Mario because he’s slightly harder to hit than other heavyweight characters. More specifically, his kart size is the same as a medium weight character.
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I don’t care about your precious VR points. You are ruining races and killing excitement by purposefully holding on to 2nd place or giving up on the fight for victory. This mindset is the only thing that lets people create big, easy leads. This article is very old and I have changed a bit, but still maintain that core point that in a videogame you should be trying to have as much fun as possible.
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Of course you don’t care about other peoples’ VR points, but you do seem to care about winning yourself since you always want a shot at getting first place. But if you want to focus on having as much fun as possible, then you shouldn’t be worrying about what 2nd place is doing to 1st place. Other racers aren’t your allies or entertainers; they play for themselves and if they think holding on to 2nd place or otherwise playing defensively is the best bet for them, then that’s what they’re going to do. Just like getting 1st place may be fun for you, consistently getting good placement (but not necessarily 1st place) and VR is fun for others.
Anyway it’s often the blue shell that has the best or only chance of shortening 1st place’s lead, and the people who get blue shells are like 5th place and lower, not 2nd place. 2nd place is often the safest place to be in because not only are you ahead of most of the pack, but blue shells don’t lock on to you. Maybe 2nd place can catch up to 1st place near the end of the race thanks to blue shells, which is another reason to play defensively at least until then.
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Fair enough, I still think 1st is the best place to be. In 2nd you are prone to triple reds and the much larger mid-field chaos that 1st place is immune to. No amount of defending will stop a stampede of stars and bombs. If you stay stationary and defend you’re mostly gonna stay there. In fact that’s why this writeup was born in the first place, I was salty from being in 2nd and people not doing anything about 1st place who generally has an easy race in MK7. (Mario Kart 8 is a lot different in this regard) It has been a while since I’ve played though.
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Well it does depend on how close the race is. In a close race, even in 1st place your aren’t safe from stars, bombs, green shells etc. on top of blue shells. But in a not so close race where even 2nd place has a respectable lead over 3rd place, 2nd place is safe from all that stuff. Of course in those races 1st place often has a large lead over 2nd place where even a blue shell might not be enough to catch up. It’s those races where 2nd place might as well play conservatively to block red shells from 3rd place, and catch up to 1st if they’re lucky. 3rd place usually doesn’t have triple reds, and if they do then they can only hit you once if you have 2 items (or not even, if you get a 3rd item before the 3rd one gets to you).
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