While I certainly agree that defeating higher ranked opponents should give you more points, and losing to lower skill opponents should make you lose a lot of points, I can't really reason through why you would ever lose points for coming in 1st place after all heats are said and done. Even if you screw up one heat, you're still the best player in the lobby at the end of the day if you get first, and shouldn't ever lose points.
Second, I think that the difficulty of tracks should be bumped up one level. There's a very good chance I just stop playing multiplayer because, in gold, I'm only getting the choice between 3 Easy tracks 3/4ths of the time. First of all, it's just not fun at all and I get much more enjoyment out of just playing singleplayer and grinding hard/extreme tracks there. The ranked rewards aren't good enough to warrant me being hyper bored for hours. On top of this, when you have gold players racing on an easy track, nobody faults, everybody takes a good line, and a single tiny optimization becomes the difference between whether you gain 100 points at the end or lose 100 points. I get it, I didn't lean perfectly over one obstacle, the top 2-3 players in my lobby did it better, I lost, I should lose points. But I shouldn't lose 100 points for getting an A- when the top 2 players get A's. If I could play hard tracks in multiplayer, I'd be happy. As it stands, I've seen one out of my 6 games (18 heats).
And another thing: Why aren't there any more infos about the enemies? I see my own medal that i got (which still includes the +5 seconds for mistakes; you don't get the 5 secs in real time on top but it counts towards your medal), and you cannot see your own time, the enemy times, the enemy medals etc.
Not to mention them lags and looooong loading times...
Yeah i lost my first round, lost some points, all normal i thought. Then i lost the second one too, but i got points instead, more than the amount i lost earlier. Calculated, i thought. Third match, i came first, easily i admit and right when i was waiting to see how many points i will get.. bam, lost a whole bunch of them.
Regarding the outfit reward, to be honest, it should be given around there in the middle so everyone has a chance on getting it, even the bad players. And just reward people with extra coins or maybe acorns for the tier they reached.
I played only a couple of rounds though, since i decided to wait for the next patch, hoping it will take care at least of the most important issues surround this game.
Update: While it is possible under certain circumstances to lose points when winning, we are seeing reports from players that are not in line with the expected behavior for the system. The team is currently investigating potential causes for these point losses. Thank you to everyone who has provided screenshots or information on their multiplayer match results. These reports have already been very helpful in our investigation. We will provide further updates when more information is available.
Played some matches again today, same random behavior as expected. Yeah going back to waiting i guess, it just doesn't make sense how it is now. Won a match, got a bunch of points, less than 10 if i remember correct. Came second at the next match, lost about 200 points. Third match went totally bad, i even missed a round for talking on the phone aka bronze, lost just 11 points.