The Saturn Showdown - BladeDash's Matches

The Honey Pot hosted their 2nd Ring Racers Tournament: The Saturn Showdown, and I figured I'd make the time to make a vid of all my matches, since it would be nice to others to see what happened with me without having to go to a completely different place to check. Though I do have some thoughts regarding the whole thing, which is explained at the beginning. Hope you enjoy this sort of vod of my own haha!
THE FULL VODS -
Day 1 = • The Honey Pot Presents...
Day 2:
• The Honey Pot Presents...
FINALS:
• Crankin' the Heat to M...
The Honey Pot Discord:
/ discord
My other sites:
/ bladedash2
ko-fi.com/blad...
/ discord

[@pinkuboss]

I know that historically in tournaments run by these TOs, they've had a rule banning bagging stated as follows: "No griefing/sandbagging or otherwise being disruptive to the game". I'm guessing that their rule of "anything goes" for Saturn Showdown was to have players demonstrate any and all broken strats in vanilla ring racers. That way now we can all point to this tournament as an example of how certain power items are a bit too strong, how bagging is too successful, and just generally what top-level competitive ring racers looks like in vanilla.
I hope that Kart Krew will be able to tune these items (shrink is too good, top shouldn't be able to boost stack just from spindash) in the near future. I trust that The Honey Pot will bring back their no griefing/no bagging rule to facilitate more competitive/honest races as well.
Was great to see you race, BladeDash :)

[@SoulHero7]

"It's telling that the four people that dropped out were the ones who were just playing the game."
OOF, that is not a good look Ring Racers.

[@tyjohnson2255]

What's bagging? I'm not familiar with the more complex aspects of this game

[@eponine9198]

Bagging, when it comes to racing games, means intentionally falling behind in order to get better items.
The items that you can get from an item box change the further behind you are from first place. When you're in first place, you get items like banana peels and drop targets (mostly hazards that you can throw behind you). The bigger the distance between you and first place, the "stronger" the items get for catching up to other racers. Players far behind can get strong boost items like invincibility (star in MarioKart), the shrink power up (like lightning in MK), and even SPBs (blue shells in MK). So baggers intentionally get far behind so they can get those boost items.
You can see some players bagging throughout the second half of the video; look for players stopping quickly or drifting in a circle during the race. The white Knuckles player seemed to do it the most often.
I wanted to clarify something about bagging too. Bagging is usually considered as a 'strategy' and not as a 'problem'; you will find baggers in a lot of other kart racers as well. You can see that players who tend to bag win/get top 3 just as often as the players who don't. It really depends on how comfortable you are with the playstyle. Personally, I also think that the game does have some problems when it comes to 'competitive' play, but bagging shouldn't be included in that discussion.
Hope that helps!

[@DummyVolke]

@@eponine9198 "...but bagging shouldn't be included in that discussion" I'm sorry but after those last two matches being the anti-thesis of racing it shows that it should be included in the discussion because on what kart racer actively not racing is the best strategy? And also just because "Other games" do it doesn't mean RR shouldn't be held accountable to it, last I check Mario kart's items don't shoot you up to 1st from last nor Sonic All-stars racing Hyper take you to 1st, when the players that are actively trying to compete are the ones punished for it then it shows that the game cannot be viable for competition.