The koopalings have almost as much backstory as any of those characaters.
Luigi: Mario's cowardly, outshined brother
Daisy: Princess of Sarasaland
Bowser: Mutant turtle who kidnaps Peach for no reason
Donkey Kong: Ape who loves bananas
Koopalings: Bowser's adopted children
Video games don't use human logic! Game Theory tries to put human logic into games, which does not work.
That's an opinion, so we can't really debate over that.
Luigi befriended the residents of Yoshi's Island at a young age, had two games to himself to flesh out his character, and had big roles in the RPGs and Paper Mario games. He even has pages upon pages worth of a diary in the original Paper Mario. And in Super Paper Mario, he had a dark alter-ego (Mr.L) that showed a completely different, repressed side of him. He's unarguably the most definitively fleshed out character in the entire franchise (and one of Nintendo's most fleshed out characters in general). I like Rosalina a bit more than Luigi, but even I can't deny that Luigi has had his actual character and background explored more than her.
Daisy is established as a hot blooded tomboy and was in some sort of relationship with Mario at some point. She has since gained affection for Luigi, and it is implied that they have also been together, or at the very least, Daisy idolises Luigi and wants to be with him (and if the latter is true but not the former, then it can be deduced that Daisy has a sort of overbearing, unrequited love for Luigi).
Bowser actually has affectionate feelings for Peach (yes, it's canon). But in terms of his actual character, there is a lot more to him. Again, the RPGs and such establish a lot. He's also not all bad, as in Sunshine, he is shown to genuinely care about his son, and even apologises for lying to him about what is actually a very serious issue (who Bowser Jr's mother is.
Donkey Kong has a definitive family and lineage, and is also established as holding affections for Pauline. I admittedly don't know much beyond that myself, because I have not played much of the DKC games, but it's at least not overly one dimensional.
The Koopalings are Bowser's adopted children that simply want mayhem and do his bidding. They have one-dimensional personalities as individiuals, but they differ by region, and are bare-bones. As such, their alias in European regions is "Bowser's Minions".
And video games can use human logic just fine. Entire games revolve around it. Shigeru Miyamoto even has a rather human way of rationalising the Mario franchise - he personally views the franchise's characters as actors, and their adventures as shows. This was stated in the very same interview where he confirmed that the Koopalings are Bowser's adopted children.
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And yet, if that's all you look at in a game. You've missed the point.
Going to Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed (since you've pulled it up yourself). That game has it's fair share of issues and glitches. Yet somehow it came out fine. So how come MK8 can't?
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed had patches, some being exclusive to certain versions. :V
Wait let me get this straight.
You'll yap at MK8 for being anything but perfect, yet Sonic Lost World (which you've said it yourself has flaws) get's a slap on the wrist?
If that's not utter bias. I don't know what is.
No, in fact I acknowledged that Sonic Lost World's bigger problems were still there, but they simply are too big to be patched in. They'd require an entirely different build and reprint of the game. But I was praising it for patching whatever it could. And if you still think I'm biased towards Sonic Lost World, I can't wait to send you links to each and every part of my playthrough of the game (where I call out a lot of it's bigger problems) which I just finished recording footage for today. I'll probably be uploading the first part this weekend!
But yet, referring to your "single player" post here. Shouldn't a single-player game be held with the same concerns as a multi-player game in terms of re-playability? I mean sure, multiplayer games do tend to have a longer life span, but then again, if a single-player game has little replayability, then why buy it if it's only gonna last a weekend? Wouldn't you want something to keep going back? It's just multiplayer games have it easier.
Sonic Lost World doesn't have an issue with replayability, there is actually a lot to do in that game. But multi-player games are concerned with replayability more than single-player games (and ironically, Sonic Lost World does have multiplayer components anyway, along with it's robust single-player experience).
Take Portal for example. You can beat it in less than hour if you know what you're doing, but it's still regarded as an amazing and rather revolutionary game. However, it only actually demands one playthrough. While the game has some extra filler challenges, they are only there for the die-hard players. The game is mainly about it's campaign, and how artistic it is. It just wants you with it for one short, but enlightening and highly intriguing ride.
Mario Kart 8 on the other hand, is supposed to be a multi-player/online game. It makes hardly any effort to appeal to lone gamers. But that's fine, as long as it's multi-player and online is good enough. While they have mostly done a fine job, there are some things holding it back quite a bit - but they are easy to fix.
Since multi-player games like Mario Kart generally don't have an ending, in this day and age, they are expected to receive updates if there are any small flaws they can improve upon, because the games expect us to play them for a long time to come. Single-player games often don't have that kind of expectation.
Now, I could go on and on about how it doesn't. But you see, both of us don't know the answer to this.
Why? Because the game isn't even out yet. We don't know yet if there's a reason to "patch" the game. Why? Because you're only referring to ideas. We don't know if it does until we actually sit down and see it for ourselves. Sure, we've had video content, and reviews. But this is your viewpoint we're talking about.
Look at Meta Knight for example, we didn't call him broken because of info or ideas. We called him broken because we played the game and saw for ourselves.
The reviews are already out, and I've gathered enough information to know about certain things that are annoying enough to want to be rid of, but could be fixed with some updates.
-GamePad should support split-screen to some capacity. If I'm playing two-player, one player should have the TV all to themselves, the other should be able to use the GamePad screen. This is a standard feature of the Wii U, it's one of it's most attractive features. Mario Kart of all things, really should have this, since it's a AAA, first party title that encourages local multi-player. Also, the two-player split screen is done particularly badly here - instead of being split horizontally, it's split vertically. Racing games should have it split horizontally, as you can see more to your left and right, without compromising your view in front. This issue is completely resolved if they just patch in the ability to use the GamePad as one of the player's screens in multi-player.
-Battle Mode is plagued with issues. The obvious one being rehashing the race tracks (not so much because it's lazy, but because their designs don't even fit Battle Mode very well). Hopefully they give us arenas eventually as DLC.
However, the other issue is the "ghost" mechanic, which causes a ton of problems. When players are knocked out, they become ghosts who are completely invisible to the other players, but can still attack players who are still in the game. This isn't as much of a problem with less players or locally (since you can screen-peak when playing locally). However, throw in 12 or so players online, and it becomes a mess. Reviewers have claimed that most of the time, it's really ghosts that finish the match. This removes all sense of real competition, since the person who scores the final hit is never identified, and the player who places second is essentially receiving a giant middle finger to the face. With 10 ghosts besides the two last standing hurling stuff at the other two players as they try to make it towards each other, one of the "living" players actually finishing the match is going to be an extreme rarity, especially considering the scale of some courses. To make matters worse, the items ghost players use are ALSO invisible to the living players. And if you were playing online with another player also playing off of your Wii U, if one of you becomes a ghost, and one of you is among the final two, the ghost player could unfairly gang up on the other living player besides you, and that player may not have a buddy playing alongside them who can help them out when they are a ghost.
In a nutshell, Battle Mode is completely broken.
They could easily patch this, by changing the rules of how ghost mode works - instead of hurting living players while in ghost mode and potentially eliminating them, hitting them should simply stun them. This way, ghosts still have something to do and can cause mayhem, but in the end, the player who wins actually has to make the final shot themselves.
-Reviewers have complained that selecting vehicle parts each time you start a new event is tedious, and I have to agree. There should be a quicker way of doing things, because when I'm playing with a bunch of friends who may not know the game as well as me, they shouldn't have to have me walk them through it. The ability to select perfectly matched up sets automatically would be really simple to add, it's as simple as adding a line of code or two. I myself have edited another person's code before to add new inputs into a game, and I can confirm that it's a piece of cake, even for a novice game designer like myself. The Mario Kart team could add this in their sleep. So there is no reason not to.
Also, being able to save custom vehicle combinations would be nice too. It would speed things up for those who have combinations they really like.
-Invite option should be available online. I really don't need to explain this (and I already have regardless).
-MKTV could do with some more worthwhile features, and a way to handle edits more directly, rather than setting generic values and letting the game do all of the work.
Those are the things I have off the top of my head. There is no reason to not make these patches. Objectively, nobody would be unhappy to see these.
The rest of the post is just really incoherent and in all fairness, you spend most of your time
trying to make digs at me, so I won't pay it any heed.
Also, let's get this straight. You're issues go in the category of "updates", not "patches".
Updates are used when they add something new to it, they make the game better. It's also called "DLC".
Patches are used when a serious glaring issue needs to be addressed. Of which none of yours go under.
...Except for this.
Patches and updates are the exact same thing. Updates are the official term, "patches" is the figurative nickname for them that just sort of caught on (as when you are updating a game to fix some issues or make it better, you are "patching it up", like how you would "patch up" a wound you receive by using a bandage). Updates/patches are automatic and are required to continue playing a game online. Updates/patches are always free.
DLC, or "Add-on Content" (DLC is just a nickname that stuck - technically, updates/patches are DLC if you interpret "DLC" literally - "Downloadable Conten"), is content you download off of an online store, often times paying for it. Where patches/updates generally only make changes or fix problems, Add-on Content literally adds new things that weren't there before.
Sometimes the two can function in tandem - a lot of Add-on Content is actually downloaded via a mandatory update, but when you actually download it on the store, you are downloading the key that unlocks the content.
Also, sometimes when developers are feeling REALLY generous, they add new content via patch, though this practice mostly only happens on Steam/PC, because patching a game on a console is a lot more expensive and more complicated for everyone but first party developers.
If you want an example of this on a console - Tekken 6 had a single-player campaign mode, but through patching, Bandai Namco added an online co-op mode for this campaign mode, and it included 10 massively tweaked levels to cater to having two human players at once.
So yeah, only good things can come from patching up Mario Kart 8 as we notice it's problems, and some are already noticeable.