I also want Diddie, Dixie, Cranky and Funky Kong tbh. :p And King K Rool... HIm the most, he'd stand out so much.

I also want Diddie, Dixie, Cranky and Funky Kong tbh. :p And King K Rool... HIm the most, he'd stand out so much.

I really don't know why we have 3 Peach clones but not one of these... Ditch all the baby characters except Mario & Luigi. Get rid of Metal Mario and Pinkgold Peach as well. 

Totally forgot E. Gadd has been in Mario Kart before. They should bring him and the Kongs back; that would offer a lot more diversity in the lineup.

I'll never truly understand why they thought it was a good idea to give us so many Peach and Mario clones. They're so random. All was forgiven when they announced Link and Villager, though.

For some reason I was thinking about how he was supposed to be a character in Mario Kart DS but he was replaced by Dry Bones, lol. That reminds me, I'd like to see Dry Bones come back also. 

Was just playing a couple of levels of Super Mario 3D World with them in it lol. I hate their constant respawning. 

I'll never truly understand why they thought it was a good idea to give us so many Peach and Mario clones. 

I didn't say MK8 has more battle mode content than previous entries, just that the mode is still present and has a decent amount of variety, so you need not laugh on my account.

Looking exclusively at what's on disc would be folly, since the game has received a couple of completely free updates in the year since its release, most notably adding 200cc. Additionally, the paid DLC is priced so low it can't be ignored. Even if one of those packs was on-disc and the other cost the full $12, it would be a very attractive price for what you'd get. The game costs $72. For that you get an overabundance of content compared to previous entries.

Pray tell, who are these "staple characters" who didn't make the cut? No character who had appeared in three or more of the seven previous console entries has been left out of the fun. I hope you're not referring to King Boo or Birdo as "staples" just because they were in Double Dash and MK Wii, and to bemoan the absence of Bowser Jr while complaining that the roster "lacks variety" would be pretty silly, considering the Koopalings. The only regrettable cut here is Diddy. Anyway, as I said before, the characters themselves are fairly irrelevant. Unlike Smash Bros where even clones have slight differences to make them unique in some way, the characters in Mario Kart are just masks worn by a handful of weight classes. There's plenty of variety in MK8 for that.

I think your statement that MK8 sans DLC has the "same number of tracks" as previous entries is funny. MK8 comes with 32 tracks. Super Mario Kart had only 20; MK64 had 16. Super Circuit had 40 tracks, but 20 of them were recycled from the SNES original with almost no changes at all, in stark contrast to the completely redone retro stages of MK8. These three games had only four battle tracks apiece and only one 'mode' to play on them, so they lacked the depth of that mode you wish for in MK8, and I find your assertion that MK8's battle mode is the worst in the history of the series to be a gross exaggeration. Back to business, Double Dash had only 16 tracks, same as MK64.

Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 7 have the full 32 tracks that MK8 has on-disc, but both of these games were also criticized for their disappointing battle modes. The only Mario Kart game in the series that has what you're asking for -- the full 32 tracks plus a broad variety of battle mode (and other extra) content is Mario Kart DS.

That's the game we should be comparing Mario Kart 8 to, then. Now look at what 8 loses from DS in battle modes, and what it gains in additional characters, items, the entire kart customization system, 200cc, and online functionality. Compare the work that went into the retro tracks on DS -- several of which were actually scaled down from 64 or Double Dash tracks -- to the effort bleeding out of the remasters in Mario Kart 8, many of which are completely unrecognizable next to their original appearances and which are for all intents and purposes entirely new tracks.

Is it even close? Sure, if you heavily prioritize extra modes and single-player content over the traditional Grand Prix and VS modes. But from a different perspective one could just as easily see this other content in MKDS as an attempt to compensate for its badly gimped online features.

True. I'm not as mad as some people though, considering I'm more concerned about the tracks and most of the characters that I like to play as are included anyways. 

I do wish they would've added a different character than Dry Bowser for the DLC though. I guess Villager and Isabelle make up for that.