A small patch with big consequences — the online chaos behind Mario Kart World’s update 1.1.2.
People who liked Mario Kart hoped that Mario Kart World would be a true next-gen version of Nintendo’s famous kart racer. It was marketed as a bold, always-online Mario Kart experience with cross-play goals and regular content updates. It was meant to be the best multiplayer game in the series.
Instead, we’ve got a roller coaster of good mechanics wrapped in sometimes annoying online choices. The most recent change, update 1.1.2, has made things very confusing for fans. This isn’t a huge drop in content or a rework that changes the game. It’s just another patch. There is, however, a small change in that changelog that has made a huge difference in how people experience online races, and not for the better.
Many Mario Kart World players didn’t notice anything was wrong when they first started up their game after the patch. When they started to choose tracks for online races using the normal Random vote, though, it was clear right away that something had changed.
Previously, choosing Random would usually lead to a standard three-lap track, which players have trained on and gotten better at by learning how to use shortcuts, time their drifts, and use items. But now, Random votes much more often give you intermission tracks. These are a newer type of course that was added in Mario Kart World and have long straightaways followed by a single-lap finale.
These tracks are made for faster, less serious play, and they’re often used in modes like Knockout Tour, where players are eliminated over time. However, the fact that they excel in standard Versus races has angered competitive players.
Fans have spoken out against it on social media sites like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter). A well-liked Reddit post with over 2,100 votes said: “The most recent patch makes it so that choosing Random will force people into tracks during breaks.” Now, the only ways to play track laps are to play Versus Mode against bots or join a Mario Kart lobby for competitive play.
Several users have said that the problem is caused by what seems to be a reweighting of the random selection algorithm. Even if most players choose Random, the game seems to now prioritize intermission tracks more often than it did before, which goes against what players want. This change has changed how online dating works. Players who want consistent, skill-based races are now constantly sucked into one-lap battles that value luck and random item use over strategy.
The problem is made worse by the fact that the game lacks customization or matchmaking options. At the moment, Mario Kart World doesn’t let players sort races by track type, lap count, or whether or not they include breaks. It’s unclear how to avoid these shorter races; users would have to play against bots or create private lobbies, which is a complicated workaround for a game whose whole point is to make online competition smooth.
Even setting up a multiplayer game with friends can be harder than it needs to be. In Knockout mode, for example, you can’t invite people to a party, and in a normal Grand Prix, players have to go into the lobby and hope their friends can join in the middle of the session.
Many fans believe that these restrictions are unacceptable for a game that costs $80 in 2025. People thought that Mario Kart World, as a live service game, would have more configuration options since it focuses on long-term engagement and regular content drops.
Some players think that the change was made on purpose, maybe because Random was being used so much to skip the less popular intermission tracks. Before the update, when players joined online lobbies, they saw that almost every vote square was marked “Random,” which suggested that most people liked the old-school way of racing.
Nintendo may have changed the selection odds to push players toward less-used content after noticing that intermission tracks were being ignored a lot. It’s not clear if this was done to add variety, make better use of Knockout Tour designs, or fix a problem in the backend, but a lot of players are unhappy with the result.
As of right now, Nintendo has not officially responded to the feedback. There are now a lot of people in the community who want more control over matchmaking instead of a full rollback. The players want to be able to:
- You can choose to play or not play the intermission tracks.
- Sort by type of lap.
- Make lobbies with race rules that are clear and consistent.
- Bring friends right into any game mode.
These features are common in modern racing games, but they’re not in Mario Kart World at all. The game’s polished graphics, strong sound design, and responsive kart controls are all great, but the fact that players can’t enjoy its content in certain ways takes away from its overall quality.
Even with all the controversy, Mario Kart World is still doing well in terms of the number of active players and the frequency of new content. Nintendo has announced that it will release regular updates and new game modes throughout the year. Future patches might give them a chance to fix the problems that update 1.1.2 caused.
