Hi, I've been playing MKW competitively since 2012, and I, like many other competitive players, enjoy WWing. There are clan wars/leagues, tournaments, the mogi lounge, etc., but even though we have access to those, sometimes you just want to WW, you know?
I am aware that the VR search system is planned to undergo some tweaks, and that there's this flaw: if someone is searching and the room that fits the best for their VR is on the track selection screen, Wiimmfi will just immediately put them in another room. But overall, the general concept is that if someone wants to join a WW, they should join a room that is similar to their skill level. In an ideal world, it would be almost impossible for a 4K player to join a room with an average VR of 8K+. However, even after the aforementioned things are patched up and fixed, there's still an issue. A lot of high-VR players have openhost due to them hosting mogi/clan rooms often, or just friend rooms. So, a 4K player can easily join a room full of 9Ks by doing this.
I want to make something very clear. I have several friends in the MKW community who are nowhere near competitive-level players. I would much rather hang out with good people who are terrible at MKW than toxic people who are amazing at MKW. And a lot of the people who have super low VR are good, smart people, but they just haven't been playing MKW that long which isn't their fault. Overall, like most people, a lot of people who have super low VR are pleasant and enjoyable to be around. If this post begins to elicit any negative emotions from you, or if you're tempted to write a response that contains the word "elitist", then please refer back to this paragraph.
However, I think it would be better if low VR players were not able to join these rooms in this way. Here's what usually happens (I'm talking regular WWs, CTWWs are a bit different): somehow a good WW forms full of high VR players. It's a miracle and everyone is having lots of fun. Then, someone with super low VR joins (please remember the above paragraph!!!). The result is that it's always 100cc (I, like some others, think 100cc is fine every so often and good to have in small doses, but I and most other people also agree that if it's 100cc most of the time, it's much less enjoyable), they pick Luigi Circuit every single race, and they're half a lap behind in last spamming shocks every 40 seconds. Then, the high VR players begin to leave the WW due to this or even worse, target the sole low-VR player in an attempt to get them to leave the room. The situation I just described happens more often than you think and is far from ideal for all parties involved.
I have no idea how many of these super low VR players are joining due to them joining via Openhost rather than them being randomly placed in the WW, but again, the whole point of the system is to make it so that players are placed in WWs with others around their skill level, and a 4K player should not be able to join a WW full of 9K players. Openhost, while an an amazing feature that has benefitted us greatly and that we are all very appreciative for, has the side-effect of preventing this from happening. And again, the solution is not to tell everyone to turn off Openhost because most of the time there are people in the WW who I don't know and thus can't contact. Therefore, here is what I am proposing:
I think it would be beneficial to implement a mechanism such that if a player tries to join a WW via Openhost, they are denied from joining the WW if their VR is lower than the lowest-VR player in the room.
First off, I did talk to Leseratte and he said it would, in theory, be possible to implement such a feature as the server knows the VR of every player. I asked him if it would be possible if a message could pop up saying "Your VR is too low to join this Worldwide room. Please try searching for a Worldwide using the regular Worldwide feature", and he said that would be more difficult, though that's not necessarily a mandatory feature. This mechanism would not prevent any player from searching for a WW like you normally would. It would only prevent someone from joining a WW via Openhost if their VR is lower than everyone else's in the room.
If you talk to any competitive player who's been around for a while, they'd most likely say that they miss the days when there used to be amazingly high-level WWs all the time, but they are sad that those just don't exist anymore. Earlier today, a bunch of us in the lounge organized a WW and it was a lot of fun. Although, there was a guy with 5100 VR and his guest who were miles behind spamming shocks, and before you say it, that is NOT the motivation for me writing this post. I had most of this post written out BEFORE the WW earlier today. Anyway, here are some screenshots just to show that there's good agreement to what I've said in this post (I can dig up more but you get the idea):
I understand that this should not be a high-priority project. I know it's not the most common thing in the world; however, more people know about joining WWs via Openhost than you think, even casual players. Ultimately, like I said before, what usually happens is that when a super-low VR player joins a really good WW, either people start to leave or the super low VR player gets targetted to try to get them to leave the room. Both of these scenarios are not good for anyone. Thank you for your time.
I am aware that the VR search system is planned to undergo some tweaks, and that there's this flaw: if someone is searching and the room that fits the best for their VR is on the track selection screen, Wiimmfi will just immediately put them in another room. But overall, the general concept is that if someone wants to join a WW, they should join a room that is similar to their skill level. In an ideal world, it would be almost impossible for a 4K player to join a room with an average VR of 8K+. However, even after the aforementioned things are patched up and fixed, there's still an issue. A lot of high-VR players have openhost due to them hosting mogi/clan rooms often, or just friend rooms. So, a 4K player can easily join a room full of 9Ks by doing this.
I want to make something very clear. I have several friends in the MKW community who are nowhere near competitive-level players. I would much rather hang out with good people who are terrible at MKW than toxic people who are amazing at MKW. And a lot of the people who have super low VR are good, smart people, but they just haven't been playing MKW that long which isn't their fault. Overall, like most people, a lot of people who have super low VR are pleasant and enjoyable to be around. If this post begins to elicit any negative emotions from you, or if you're tempted to write a response that contains the word "elitist", then please refer back to this paragraph.
However, I think it would be better if low VR players were not able to join these rooms in this way. Here's what usually happens (I'm talking regular WWs, CTWWs are a bit different): somehow a good WW forms full of high VR players. It's a miracle and everyone is having lots of fun. Then, someone with super low VR joins (please remember the above paragraph!!!). The result is that it's always 100cc (I, like some others, think 100cc is fine every so often and good to have in small doses, but I and most other people also agree that if it's 100cc most of the time, it's much less enjoyable), they pick Luigi Circuit every single race, and they're half a lap behind in last spamming shocks every 40 seconds. Then, the high VR players begin to leave the WW due to this or even worse, target the sole low-VR player in an attempt to get them to leave the room. The situation I just described happens more often than you think and is far from ideal for all parties involved.
I have no idea how many of these super low VR players are joining due to them joining via Openhost rather than them being randomly placed in the WW, but again, the whole point of the system is to make it so that players are placed in WWs with others around their skill level, and a 4K player should not be able to join a WW full of 9K players. Openhost, while an an amazing feature that has benefitted us greatly and that we are all very appreciative for, has the side-effect of preventing this from happening. And again, the solution is not to tell everyone to turn off Openhost because most of the time there are people in the WW who I don't know and thus can't contact. Therefore, here is what I am proposing:
I think it would be beneficial to implement a mechanism such that if a player tries to join a WW via Openhost, they are denied from joining the WW if their VR is lower than the lowest-VR player in the room.
First off, I did talk to Leseratte and he said it would, in theory, be possible to implement such a feature as the server knows the VR of every player. I asked him if it would be possible if a message could pop up saying "Your VR is too low to join this Worldwide room. Please try searching for a Worldwide using the regular Worldwide feature", and he said that would be more difficult, though that's not necessarily a mandatory feature. This mechanism would not prevent any player from searching for a WW like you normally would. It would only prevent someone from joining a WW via Openhost if their VR is lower than everyone else's in the room.
If you talk to any competitive player who's been around for a while, they'd most likely say that they miss the days when there used to be amazingly high-level WWs all the time, but they are sad that those just don't exist anymore. Earlier today, a bunch of us in the lounge organized a WW and it was a lot of fun. Although, there was a guy with 5100 VR and his guest who were miles behind spamming shocks, and before you say it, that is NOT the motivation for me writing this post. I had most of this post written out BEFORE the WW earlier today. Anyway, here are some screenshots just to show that there's good agreement to what I've said in this post (I can dig up more but you get the idea):
I understand that this should not be a high-priority project. I know it's not the most common thing in the world; however, more people know about joining WWs via Openhost than you think, even casual players. Ultimately, like I said before, what usually happens is that when a super-low VR player joins a really good WW, either people start to leave or the super low VR player gets targetted to try to get them to leave the room. Both of these scenarios are not good for anyone. Thank you for your time.
