The problem with coins is more like they take way too long to respawn, meaning only the very first players can get them (or the very late noobs). Which mean those players are even more rewarded even though they are not necessarily the best racers, since grabbing those coins does not take any skills (with some exceptions such as the airborne coins in Wario Shipyard).

But it wouldn't hurt to have more coins overall on the tracks as well. And considering the number of simultaneous karters and the size of the tracks (especially with the surprising number of alternative paths shown so far) this is very likely going to happen.

It was a balanced and good feature in MKDS and MK7 that made races much less random (especially in MKDS), but if only some players will be able to see items in MK8 then it'll be unbalanced

Some people prefer to use other controllers if they find them to be more comfortable

So there are still many issues on this game, I guess...

Leone wrote on 12/21/13 at 22:01:19:

I do not feel that the Pro Controller is comfortable so I guess I'm one with that huge advantage.

lelithinkthatthegamepadissecondmostcomfortablecontrollerexceptforgamecubebutthet
hingisthatdoesn'treallymatterwhenyougotoneof THESE BABIES

Except being able to see peoples' items ruined online, Nicola. There's no way you can tell me that you've never seen people just stop and wait for someone to pass them simply because they see a blue shell. I haven't even touched this game that much and I've seen it happen.

Strategy??? Let everyone at the front halt the race because they can see each others items? That isn't strategy, that's just bullshit. Strategy is predicting what people's items are, how and when they will use them, which is something that MKW had going for it. But you've never actually touched the game on a serious level, so I doubt you'd know anything about all that.

That's because there is no strategy is just stopping once someone gets a blue shell. If that's how pathetic the strategy is, then all it does is show how poorly both coins and the ability to view other people's items were implemented.

Happy new year for all your karting! MK8 coming soon
I hope you guys are all as psyched as I am :3

My opinion about mk8 so far is; it looks like a updated version of mk7 indeed, but idm tbh. I like mk7 :p
All I hope is that there will be time trail rankings. I also hope that the VR system isn't shit just like mk7.. It takes way to much time to get max vr...
Let's say +100vr for winning a race against players with 10000 more points then you instead of +45 :/

ALAKTORN wrote on 01/05/14 at 09:46:55:

Then having the highest VR would just be a matter of nolifing, which is already the case with MK7, and which I doubt is what Nintendo really support.
An ELO-like rating system would definitely be the best option competitively speaking, but let's be real: it's never going to happen. I think the main reason is because MK still is a luck based game; ie you're going to lose quite often, even while being one of the best player, which makes hierarchy quite meaningless. Such a system just can't fit to MK (at least, relatively to the gameplay the game has nowadays... with MKDS online mode / gameplay, it could have been possible xD ) because there's too much randomness.

Thus I think the current system (having a max VR) is very likely to stay.

Considering that the Wii U gamepad must be on to play the Wii U, I'm pretty sure that you'll still be able to use it to check items and still use a different controller. Also someone mentioned multi channel background returning from MKW, but I'm pretty sure its in MK7 too for underwater parts like rKC, PPS, etc. Maybe I'm just not understanding you.