Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has introduced two new mechanisms in order to aid newcomers. These are smart steering and auto-accelerate. Smart steering makes the car steer itself while auto-accelerate makes the kart accelerate without having to push the a button. I only use auto-accelerate. I think it's a pretty cool option for the lower difficulties since I never let go of the a button there. It also prolongs the life of my a button. I had to buy a New 3DS last year cause my b button stopped working correctly and I don't want my Switch to suffer the same fate (it was out of warranty, too). When I reach 150cc, I'll likely stop using auto-accelerate.

What about you?

Nope!

I accidentally used Smart Steering for the first few races I played. I had no idea that it defaulted to ON.

It took me a while to figure out how to turn it off, and now I shall never speak of it again.

Well, not until my three year old tries playing sometime down the road.

I voted No.

No way, no sir!

No way. It took me a while to figure out how to turn them off.

The track lines I take forced the 'steering assist' to try and push me back towards the middle of the track. Very annoying. Like any good race car driver, you know your track lines and don't want any interference!

Not on purpose. I did for my first races since some were turned on by default...they're great for my daughter, but not so much for me.

I thought about maybe turning on auto accelerate to make it less annoying to brake in 200cc when taking those tight turns. Especially with the joycon's tiny buttons, I find that pressing 2 face buttons at the same time is a bit uncomfortable at times.

Auto-acceleration, natch. But I don't think of it as an assist.

By the way, my Mazda has adaptive cruise control, which automatically matches the speed of the car in front of you while you're on the highway. That is kind of an assist. And it's awesome! It might even surpass heated seats and the auxiliary audio jack as my favorite feature ever.

Pretty sure I forgot that auto-acceleration was an option and I might try it out in the future, but I answered no. Like Ploot I didn't realize that ON was the default, and even though I could tell something was off I thought I just had to get used to steering with the joycon or something until we played Toad's Turnpike. Every time I tried to use the boost truck things it would steer me away from the vehicle. That was annoying!

Mostly no, but I'll probably turn auto accelerate on when I play in handheld mode. It started to bug my hand after a couple races with normal acceleration

Nope!

@Anand Better than going way faster than all of the other cars in the middle of a super rainy stormy day AMIRITE.

Enjoying the auto-accelerate.

@Zero
Haha, have I done that with you in the car? Refresh my memory!

I DID drive a rented car at, like, 220kph on a curvy mountain road leading from Spain to Italy... All of my passengers were going into cardiac arrest. But that's so slow, compared to F-Zero!

I've used auto accelerate to give my thumb a rest for a race or two since Nintendo won't let us just use the trigger for it like every other racing game. Unless I'm trying to play with a broken hand or something, I'll never use smart steering.

Auto-accelerate has been useful. My right thumb gets super bored, though.

Nope.

As GDG said in another thread, it seems weird to NOT hold down the accelerate button and everything else is unnecessary.