Crash Team Racing's online multiplayer suite is among the worst in a while.

[Silky]

Crash Team Racing NF had the grace of being a very well-packaged title at launch, and even more so today. The inclusion of every CTR track - race AND BATTLE-, AND remakes of every Nitro Kart track - also race and battle -, as well as a variety of battle mode gametypes should be applauded. Beenox did a wonderful job in creating a very feature-packed local multiplayer suite, which is really rare for high profile titles.

But as the Grand Prixes (Prixes?) come and go, there's still the glaring issue of the multiplayer component being laughably barebones. There's private races as well as matchmaking, but:

• Matchmaking is limited to single race and single battle races. There's a Veto/Voting system for the maps of those gametypes but, but that's it
• Cup races are strangely omitted out of the Matchmaking cycle despite the game actively adding MORE Cup races as Grand Prixes pass on.
• Mirror Mode is omitted from the Multiplayer component as well.
• There's no ranking/competitive system at all which leaves the Grand Prix being the only form of competitive play there is. This shocks me the most in a game that just flipped the balancing of this game around considering every character can be any vehicle class now (as well as adding a new driving class.)

There could be plenty more that could be added but I feel that Beenox and Activison -- fuckin Activision lmfao -- really dropped the ball on the multiplayer component and is to me, along with the MTX i guess{ but I don't care that much }, the biggest blemish on a very excellent game. So now as the Grand Prix goes on and I've completely the bronze tier for Nina, I don't feel any sort of way about playing more of Crash Team Racing NF until the next GP is out, to unlock that GP character. It's a far cry from Apex Legends where ranked is there, as well as LTEs, that give me a reason to continue playing.

 

[Stopdoor]

It's also pretty weird how technical the game is, letting newbies get stomped online, but it offers nothing like rankings or whatever if they were trying to cater to a hardcore audience. Like I don't think any sort of skill-based matchmaking is confirmed, right?

 

[Silky]

It's also pretty weird how technical the game is, letting newbies get stomped online, but it offers nothing like rankings or whatever if they were trying to cater to a hardcore audience. Like I don't think any sort of skill-based matchmaking is confirmed, right?

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there's probably a little bit of elo I guess but I mean yeah, it's pretty bad

 

[Ryuhza]

It's also pretty weird how technical the game is, letting newbies get stomped online, but it offers nothing like rankings or whatever if they were trying to cater to a hardcore audience. Like I don't think any sort of skill-based matchmaking is confirmed, right?

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https://www.resetera.com/threads/sk...r-testing-for-this-week.146022/#post-25297556

There are rankings for wins within GPs (only additive though, measured by quantity as much as performance), and there are also leaderboards (albeit poorly curated ones) for fastest laps.

 

[Toxi]

The time trials have leaderboards and it's a lot of fun trying to get higher on them. Unfortunately, for many courses the times are dominated by runs using major lap skip glitches.

 

[Jon Carter]

Grand Prixes (Prixes?)

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Prix is French and it's the same in singular and in plural.

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

The lack of some sort of ranking system or proper skill based matchmaking to make it friendly to all comers is the real kicker.

 

[Mirage]

The lack of some sort of ranking system or proper skill based matchmaking to make it friendly to all comers is the real kicker.

Click to shrink...

They're at least adding this now.

 

[PokémonSpears]

I mean, there's a Grand Prix every month, so I'd guess when they're done with Grand Prix's, a proper leaderboard will come. Maybe...

I'm more pissed about the insanely amount of time it takes to finally start a race that will be over in a blink, between people leaving the lobbies and just general connection issues. I agree there should be cups, so once the group is finally formed, they should be able to play at least 4 tracks relatively quicker (of course people could still disconnect in the process but it would so much less).

And yeah, the skill difference is huge. Usually when I get to play is almost around midnight - early morning, and they always kick my ass. The only times I've been able to finish 1st is whenever I have the chance to play in the morning, like 7:00 AM-ish .

It's very discouraging to play online when you know just one missile/object is enough for you to send you to 8th place to never recover, and when you don't even get to complete the 3 laps because the 1st place finished 2 minutes before anyone else.

 

[Team_Feisar]

I'm really looking forward to some sort of skill based match-making. I'm "not bad" at the game (I usually come in between 5th and 2nd place) but I have played the last 4 days without ever seeing anyone finish after the 2nd place because the first 2 players were just that far ahead.

 

[N.Domixis]

If you are new you will get demolished. Go play something less skill intense.

 

[Murlin]

As much as I love the game, it's definitely a problem that the advanced mechanics necessary to winning in multiplayer (or even finishing the final lap before the timer runs out in many cases) are never explained in the game. The mechanics of fire/blue fire, building up boost reserves, and air braking are something you have to learn about outside of the game, even though they are necessary to beat Oxide's lap times.