Mario Kart Tour’s multiplayer beta test was open to all players earlier this week, and it was very clear that a lot of work needs to be done.
Mario Kart Tour was released four months ago and its players still can’t compete against one another. Multiplayer is coming, though. In fact, a beta for the feature ran earlier this week and all players could take part. Our takeaway from the test? Nintendo has a lot of work to do before it rolls out the permanent version of Tour’s multiplayer mode.
The wait time while the game searched for seven other players to join the lobby was a long one, as was the wait between races. Since the game is searching for players around the world, wait times shouldn’t be as long as they are. Nintendo will certainly want to improve the matchmaking algorithm prior to an official release.
Some console and PC games attempt to match players up with those who have a similar connection speed, for obvious reasons. We understand that is harder, if not impossible to do on mobile, since some are connected to WiFi and others to mobile signals. The latency issues need to be addressed, though. Between players skipping across the track and items not landing, this part of the beta got real old, real fast.
Although Nintendo did include an option to play with nearby friends, this mode still fell victim to the same latency issues mentioned above. Of course, Nintendo is probably aware of the issue by now and is hard at working fixing its network.
Last but not least, the fanfare. There was none of it. No reward or recognition for completing or even winning a race. This is a feature we don’t have much faith in Nintendo to fix. Mario Kart 8’s online points system has bothered us for years. We accumulate points, but what for? If Nintendo wants Mario Kart Tour to take off, it needs to implement a proper ranking system in Tour where players can see how they compare to everyone else around the world.
As it stands now, the multiplayer is looking nowhere near viable. Hopefully, Nintendo will implement some very needed changes before releasing it for good.
