You can Mushroom dodge Blue Shells in Mario Kart 8! <(^_^<)

[HylianSwordsman]

famousringo said:

HylianSwordsman said:
Mushroom dodging too? First they create an item that destroys them, now you can dodge them? Slowly but surely, they're getting the balance with blue shells right. Blue shells are a very needed item, and I hope they never totally get rid of them, but having some defenses against them leaves little room to complain. Where as before there was no strategy involved, just the luck of staying in first place long enough to finish before you're blue shelled, now there's strategy, with a fairly common item in the horn that provides a great defense, and a very common item in the mushroom that provides a good defense, so you just need to find one of those and save the item. Items add another layer of strategy to the game, and are a huge part of what makes me like Mario Kart over other racing games.

While your point that item strategy becomes more important is valid, staying in the lead isn't about luck. It's about being skilled enough to use all the advantages of being first to pile on more lead time while everybody else fights amongst themselves. The best players can build up enough of a lead that it takes a streak of blue shells to dethrone them.

@Einsam

If the blue shell is essential for balance as one of the few weapons that can attack the leader, I don't see how nerfing that weapon's effect on the leader and adding it as yet another hazard for everybody else improves balance. Getting into second or third is almost always one or two lucky items away. It's the leader who can build an insurmountable lead.

Reviews are of course complaining about too many blue shells now, because the only balanced responses to a weaker blue shell is to either add more weapons that target the leader (which would only get vilified as much as the blue shell), nullify some of the leader's many advantages, or simply make the blue shell more common.

I will agree that there was no reason to make blue shells attack other people on the way. I hope it's nothing more than an incidental hit, as opposed to it targeting everyone it can, and that it only causes a small spinout to anyone that isn't the first place target. I also think blue shells should be most common among the middle ranks, since attacking first place should be the least of last place's concerns, and wouldn't help them much at all. It should be proportionately more common the farther up you get, being most common in second place. After all, stars are more common in last place, where they're needed most, so blue shells should be most common where they're needed most too. 1st place should get mostly booby traps like the false block and banana peel, and the occassional defense item, because that's what they need. Another leader targeting weapon might be good, but only if it found a good way to differentiate itself from the blue shell, which I'm not sure they could do. Perhaps a better idea would be to have first place specific hazards, where certain hazards spawn based on the position of the person in first place, so as to be most likely to affect them specifically. Would negate some of the "first place is the easiest place to be" without the "oh come on, they just got lucky" aspect of the leader targeting item.