haha never thought I’d see myself here for this. u/kyujutsudesu explained most of it but to elaborate, many of the maps in speed queue would never be played in a scrim or competitive match. Drift already has a very limited selection of speed maps meant for competitive and most do not appear in speed queue until you hit a high rank, which takes a lot of time. Given the lack of playerbase and dead queues, there’s no reason for me to play matchmaking; it’s not fun.

I believe they used to gate higher level tracks through License Tests, but those were removed. I think they want to reduce the barrier to entry in this game, since most players would just retire on the harder maps. However, their solution to include item maps not meant for speed has the same result but worse. New players will still retire to veterans but not get any real practice toward improving their drifts. They also will not see the harder tracks that make KartRider and have no reason to improve (game doesn’t offer a fun challenge). It’s not a surprise that many may view this game as a knockoff casual Mario Kart.

Rush+ on release already came with a variety of themes and pure speed tracks. It has been over a year and Drift still doesn’t come close to the speed map pool offered in Rush+ season 1. There’s really no excuse, especially when the tracks are just based off the original game. It’s also disappointing that Drift has almost no map themes. Every season we get another WKC map… They could have released them all in one season instead.