I kinda hate how dead the active playerbase is,

but at the same time, combined with most of the content here being original, I feel like that's what keeps it safe against Nintendo.

Since there at least 11K players that have accounts here (Ik this because I'm ranked 11,191st in Battle Mode, mostly because I never played it competively), you'd think there would be at least few hundred players online at a time, but recently, I'm lucky to go into a match with 4 other people, most of which have VR that outweighs mine by nearly 10k at least in some cases. I want to be able to enter a full lobby, even if the majority are just bots; but at the same time, I wonder if the very low online activity in this site is intentional by some of the community to avoid attracting the attention of Nintendo, who would probably, at best, gatekeep this game behind a paywall, or much more likely, issue a DMCA takedown to this site.

Maybe my hopes for an active community were just wishful thinking and the reality is that if the game had a very active playerbase, Nintendo would inevitably notice and DMCA this game into oblivion; or maybe I just joined 8-10 years too late to see how active the playerbase really was, and my mind is trying to cope by constructing a narrative that the low activity of the playerbase is intentional to avoid Nintendo's DMCA takedowns; but every time I log into this game, barely anyone is online, and it annoys me to no end.

To be blunt, I think that nobody ever goes online anymore because the new players don't know RD. The skill gap is so unbelievably wide, that if you suck at RD, you might as well not even get on the game. This works both ways. For example, a good player, looking for a fun time, might go on fill lobbies to race, only to find out that every race they partake in they dominate because everybody that isn't them hasn't found out about RD, and the skill required for it is enough to turn people away. Or say, a new player, completely blind to the game, might hit up online lobbies after winning most grand prixs, only again to find out that they're being annihilated and lapped on even longer tracks like waluigi pinball and ds bowsers castle, playing against who they view as hackers or cheaters (Personal experience). The skill required for this game, on both ends, has actively deteriorated and filtered down the scene and encouragement of new players trying to rise to the top level. This is why top players play lounge, and why most pros will only be seen on online once in a blue moon. [Except for a few, of course.]

Regarding the Nintendo stuff, while that could be the case, I doubt that for as long MKPC has been out, and how easy it is to find, MKPC's safety is being compromised.

Looking at this comment, and I can see a lot as to why new players don't want to play if they can't perform RD. Tbh, I think a lot of them also get the impression that MKPC's playerbase is toxic because usually when I see someone complain about reverse drifting or petition for it to be banned, almost everyone else's response is to tell the complainer to basically just "git gud."

Plus, there's also the fact that the game literally allows you to create a custom racer of your choosing, including stats, but only Daisy clones are viable online, which makes some believe that the community has cracked down on a specific meta so hard that any form of creativity beyond making just another Daisy with a different sprite is discouraged because you'll rarely, if ever, win unless the top player has an inexplicable stroke of bad RNG with the item roulette or a well timed shock.

For example, from when I joined in Feburary up until June, I was adamant that I could carve a niche out of myself by making a heavyweight racer, but once I reached the master rank, my odds of victory have become so stagnant that I had to conform to the established Daisy stats meta to even have a chance to place among the top 500 without getting halfway lapped every race.

I agree with the meta comment, daisy being the only viable character is pretty much true. Either that or really close to daisy, but either way those are the only viable types of characters (High handling). However, saying "git gud" isn't a toxic thing, it's just something toxic people say. Somebody who complains about main structural integral parts of a game and petitions for their removal deserves to be told to "git gud" because it is the undeniable truth. Because of their lack of skill, they are upset, warranting them to become better. That to me is not toxic. I do agree that some players can be toxic on here, but that's not really any sort of underlying issue in this community, I've noticed. Especially due to all the pros encouraging the use of Rd to new players to get ahead in the game. [That's how I became as good as I am currently, after all.]

I saw what you guys said about daisy clones and RD. What if you got on the official suggestions topic and said to tweak character stats to balance the game and to create separate lobbies for casual and pro. I do agree with what you both said about online with the skill differences being MASSIVE. I would, but I've already posted a bit on there recently and I would like to limit myself.

I don't think the explanation for "low activity" is just RD. Firstly, in August & September 2021, just before RD became the meta, there were very few people who played the game's worldwide mode consistently. And at off-peak times for Europeans.. forget it. You'd be lucky to see maybe 1 other person there. To my knowledge, this has not changed at all, with the exception of during the school day, where kids find this site and play online races during class (to be fair, I was one of them).

You are correct that the skill gap is very wide, but even if everyone magically learned RD just now, there would still be a significant skill gap. It's easy to get caught up in RD and how it can truly transform the game, but there are other significant aspects of Mario Kart: itemplay, lines, track knowledge overall strategy and teamplay (in the case of lounge). All of the previously mentioned skills are severely lacking overall, even with people who know RD. That's why it's hard to follow your example of a "good" player, because it's hard for me to say that there are many "good" players who don't know RD. That doesn't mean there can't be a good player who just doesn't know RD yet, that's obviously not the case but in my experience the people who don't know RD have other issues in their gameplay that would still hinder them even if they knew RD.

The top players play lounge because it is the best way to play this game. You can't really discuss the lounge/mogi scene on this game without mentioning the CT project lounge, which I highly recommend (only if you know RD). The main issues with the regular tracks and worldwide as a whole are:

a) The track design of the RT's suck (lounge has better, more skill based maps MADE for online play [see: CT Project multicup])
b) The item distribution is sketchy (different distribution in lounge)
c) KART BUMPS (disabled in lounge)
d) AFK players ruining the game

These are some of the main reasons why people play in the CT Project lounge right now, and lounge has historically been the most competitive, high skill way to play races in MKPC. While the people there may seem intimidating (they certainly did to me at first), they are generally willing to help you improve so long as you don't constantly complain.

About DMCA stuff, I don't think Nintendo cares about this game. People have jokingly emailed them snitching on MKPC, but unless MKPC starts making money (currently, even with ads, it barely breaks even), they'll just leave it alone. There's no interest for them to take down some 2D browser game that isn't making them lose money.

Pros can just smurf. It isn't really wise to make certain groups of players intentionally like that, because there's always gonna be people who are either curious or malicious.

See, I've never played lounge, but I'm really looking forward to it after getting a taste of the CT P Tracks. When I played, I didn't notice the difference in distribution or those things (I didn't play for that long), so I can take your word of experience for that. We both can agree though that yes, the skill gap is very large, and yes, that could be affecting the online activity and scene for new players as a whole. [We can also agree that CTP is absolutely peak.]

RD isn't everything.My friend made it to the top 100 without rd'ing a single time.

The difference in skill gap makes sense, you are right that there's a lot of other aspects that make you a good player. However, a large piece that connects it is the ability to take a line in the first place, RD is pretty much the backbone of the scene in my experience. But yes, the players who don't know Rd have other issues that hinder their skill, not entirely faulting RD for that reason, but faulting other qualities. I do agree some tracks in this game are an absolute pain, forcing certain strategies that are less than savory, and being less skill based in general.

Anything below than top 20 in time trials very easy to achieve without RD, but you will struggle to get a better place if you can't RD so that's very important to learn it if you want to get good at the game

I think there's 2 major problems with the inactivity.

Firstly, the base game is just really bad. The tracks are almost all genuine garbage (some are really hard to play without CP skipping) and kart bumps are terrible for online, especially with these anorexic base tracks. The character roster is also completely useless as Daisy is the only good character (and Bowser on rare TT occasions)

I know you can play online on custom multicups (hence why lounges are 10x as active) but people aren't going to do that if it isn't the default option.



Second, people are only here for the forums and not for the actual game, breaks my heart to see tbh. I'm also partially blaming Wargor for this as this website puts such a big emphasis on using the forums.
But it really feels like people are rather here to just fucking yap all the time rather than playing the game (Fiery is a pretty infamous example for this), even people on Discord do this despite being in multiple servers for this game.

Almost everyone on forums have relatively low online points (battle mode is fair legit who plays that lol)
It's questionable if people even get the gold cups in base game.
People don't time trial
People don't play challenges
People don't play custom tracks
Alot of custom tracks are bad, and I'm not even talking about the very low effort "I did this in 4 or less hours" ones. Some custom tracks look really good but have very terrible colissions making them not fun to play in online.

This is how it feels for me at least.

If you have more messages on the forum than comments on custom tracks and have less than 25k online points, I'd genuinely like to know what you're doing here. (Assuming you aren't a new and/or inactive member.)