Since the mid 2000s, I've been putting thousands of hours into Monster Hunter releases. I began with MHFU on PSP, but was only truly hooked after playing Tri on Wii (which then inspired me to return to G-Rank in FU). For years, I was one of those people who aggressively defended every mechanic on message boards, no matter how archaic or aggravating I actually thought they were. MH was my Dark Souls before Dark Souls, and I wasn't about to tolerate talks of "casualizing" it in any way.
Flash forward to MHW's release, long after my interest in the franchise had waned, and I was back in 2000%. Capcom had taken chances, including implementing immense quality of life changes that stripped away most of the nonsense I had previously spent hours defending (lo and behold, I haven't missed a single one of those mechanics in over 1500 hours of World).
I'm now left thinking of ways that the formula could be refined further, and this is what I've come up with. Some of it feels significant, it makes me think "Oh, they couldn't do that!" in the same way I used to when arguing for the value of paintballing on Gamefaqs circa 2010, but I still feel that each of these would be a substantial improvement for a franchise that's stronger than ever and needs to maintain its momentum:
Combat
Pivoting During Attacks: This is a huge one for me. The inability to turn while mid-combo feels like a relic of the series' PS2 roots, and it never feels good to whiff an important opening because the monster got nudged a foot to the left of your strongest attack with no way to adjust. Of course greatswords shouldn't be able to turn mid-swing, but there's no reason why they can't change direction while charging, or why every other weapon outside of S&S is largely locked in place during basic triangle and circle combos.
Consequential Part Breaking: The effects of breaking parts of monsters' bodies isn't noticeable enough, and I've felt this way since my first game in the series. Just like cutting off Rathian's tail immediately removes her most devastating attack, we need more tangible incentive to break/cut parts strategically. Breaking heads should make ranged attacks inaccurate, breaking chests and backs should reduce running speed/distance and breath attack duration, breaking wings should make it much more difficult for flying monsters to escape and greatly reduce the amount of time they stay airborne (which also solves flash pods being so necessary for fighting them), etc.
Fewer Stuns: A large part of many monster attacks is taking control away from the player. Roars make you flinch, tremors knock you to the ground for an extended period, wind blasts from their wings stagger you, and each of these animations can last a second or more. Sometimes these can get chained together, or are followed up with attacks that knock you down, leading to some periods of 5 seconds or more where you cannot effect your own movement. I get that there are decorations to negate this, but it's still just an aggravating mechanic for an action game in 2019. I'm not sure how to fix this, outside of a general "It feels bad, find an alternative that feels less bad."
Mission Stucture
A Diverse Endgame: The limitations of Monster Hunter World's relatively small roster were made worse by the fact that the endgame was mostly about hunting the same handful of tempered elders ad nauseam. Drop rates for desirable decorations and streamstones was meager across the board, and everything that wasn't a tier-2 or tier-3 tempered monster wasn't worth fighting more than once. The game needed to include all monsters in the endgame loop somehow, and have each tier offer important components for crafting the best gear. World is far from the first MH game to have this issue, but that doesn't mean the problem isn't worth solving.
Permanent Events: Piggybacking off of that lack of diversity, event quests need to be permanent additions instead of weekly rotations. Anything that can give players a reprieve from the ceaseless farming of T2 and T3 investigations needs to be available at all times to avoid burning people out. The fact that most of these events were pretty lackluster is another problem, but one that lacks a clear solution.
Misc
Fewer "Routines": Every serious hunt begins the same way for me. I pop a demondrug, might seed, demonpowder, max potion and armorskin, eat a meal, then embark on my hunt. This initial minute really adds nothing to the experience, and should really be trimmed down by the time players reach the endgame grind. My solution would be craftable, permanent versions of these buffs that are stored in your inventory, similar to existing talons and charms. Something like 20 Demondrug + 10 Mega Demondrug = Demon Charm, which grants the same buff as Mega Demondrug, but also makes consumable demondrug unusable. Obviously the temporary buffs like powders and seeds would still exist and never become obsolete.
Consistent Food Buffs: A simple one. If you've gone out of your way to collect every possible ingredient (a somewhat obscure and arduous task), your reward should be +50/+50 buffs for every meal option. It's silly that you have to rely on RNG or items to get proper food buffs in the endgame.
Drop the Time Limit: Look, you almost never need to put anywhere close to 50 minutes into any given hunt. Those you do, if you last that long, you probably deserve to see through to the end. I could understand the "skill check" argument if fights were shorter, like 20 minutes, or if most monsters only needed to be beaten once like traditional bosses in other games, but taking 51 minutes to beat a superboss that you're probably going to need to beat again anyway doesn't seem like a big deal. Furthermore, Capcom really only uses this mechanic to troll, as they did with Behemoth (the hardest fight in the game gets a truncated time limit of 35 minutes, because fuck you!). It should go.
Better Weapon Designs: One of the most common complaints from MHW was the radically different approach to weapon design philosophy that seriously toned down the creativity of previous games in favor of realism. While it's true that some weapons looked a bit silly in past games, most of World's armory is generic. Worse still, some of the coolest designs have been spent on weapons with underwhelming stats, such as the Vice glaive and every Daora weapon.
Prowlers: Playing as a cat was the most fun way to get through Gen and GU, in my opinion. Strong, mobile and low-maintenance. Bring them back.
What are your thoughts?
(Note: While Iceborne will be making some cool additions to MHW, I doubt it will have any of these alterations. This thread is more about what we'd like to see in the follow-up to World than in IB.)
Flash forward to MHW's release, long after my interest in the franchise had waned, and I was back in 2000%. Capcom had taken chances, including implementing immense quality of life changes that stripped away most of the nonsense I had previously spent hours defending (lo and behold, I haven't missed a single one of those mechanics in over 1500 hours of World).
I'm now left thinking of ways that the formula could be refined further, and this is what I've come up with. Some of it feels significant, it makes me think "Oh, they couldn't do that!" in the same way I used to when arguing for the value of paintballing on Gamefaqs circa 2010, but I still feel that each of these would be a substantial improvement for a franchise that's stronger than ever and needs to maintain its momentum:
Combat
Pivoting During Attacks: This is a huge one for me. The inability to turn while mid-combo feels like a relic of the series' PS2 roots, and it never feels good to whiff an important opening because the monster got nudged a foot to the left of your strongest attack with no way to adjust. Of course greatswords shouldn't be able to turn mid-swing, but there's no reason why they can't change direction while charging, or why every other weapon outside of S&S is largely locked in place during basic triangle and circle combos.
Consequential Part Breaking: The effects of breaking parts of monsters' bodies isn't noticeable enough, and I've felt this way since my first game in the series. Just like cutting off Rathian's tail immediately removes her most devastating attack, we need more tangible incentive to break/cut parts strategically. Breaking heads should make ranged attacks inaccurate, breaking chests and backs should reduce running speed/distance and breath attack duration, breaking wings should make it much more difficult for flying monsters to escape and greatly reduce the amount of time they stay airborne (which also solves flash pods being so necessary for fighting them), etc.
Fewer Stuns: A large part of many monster attacks is taking control away from the player. Roars make you flinch, tremors knock you to the ground for an extended period, wind blasts from their wings stagger you, and each of these animations can last a second or more. Sometimes these can get chained together, or are followed up with attacks that knock you down, leading to some periods of 5 seconds or more where you cannot effect your own movement. I get that there are decorations to negate this, but it's still just an aggravating mechanic for an action game in 2019. I'm not sure how to fix this, outside of a general "It feels bad, find an alternative that feels less bad."
Mission Stucture
A Diverse Endgame: The limitations of Monster Hunter World's relatively small roster were made worse by the fact that the endgame was mostly about hunting the same handful of tempered elders ad nauseam. Drop rates for desirable decorations and streamstones was meager across the board, and everything that wasn't a tier-2 or tier-3 tempered monster wasn't worth fighting more than once. The game needed to include all monsters in the endgame loop somehow, and have each tier offer important components for crafting the best gear. World is far from the first MH game to have this issue, but that doesn't mean the problem isn't worth solving.
Permanent Events: Piggybacking off of that lack of diversity, event quests need to be permanent additions instead of weekly rotations. Anything that can give players a reprieve from the ceaseless farming of T2 and T3 investigations needs to be available at all times to avoid burning people out. The fact that most of these events were pretty lackluster is another problem, but one that lacks a clear solution.
Misc
Fewer "Routines": Every serious hunt begins the same way for me. I pop a demondrug, might seed, demonpowder, max potion and armorskin, eat a meal, then embark on my hunt. This initial minute really adds nothing to the experience, and should really be trimmed down by the time players reach the endgame grind. My solution would be craftable, permanent versions of these buffs that are stored in your inventory, similar to existing talons and charms. Something like 20 Demondrug + 10 Mega Demondrug = Demon Charm, which grants the same buff as Mega Demondrug, but also makes consumable demondrug unusable. Obviously the temporary buffs like powders and seeds would still exist and never become obsolete.
Consistent Food Buffs: A simple one. If you've gone out of your way to collect every possible ingredient (a somewhat obscure and arduous task), your reward should be +50/+50 buffs for every meal option. It's silly that you have to rely on RNG or items to get proper food buffs in the endgame.
Drop the Time Limit: Look, you almost never need to put anywhere close to 50 minutes into any given hunt. Those you do, if you last that long, you probably deserve to see through to the end. I could understand the "skill check" argument if fights were shorter, like 20 minutes, or if most monsters only needed to be beaten once like traditional bosses in other games, but taking 51 minutes to beat a superboss that you're probably going to need to beat again anyway doesn't seem like a big deal. Furthermore, Capcom really only uses this mechanic to troll, as they did with Behemoth (the hardest fight in the game gets a truncated time limit of 35 minutes, because fuck you!). It should go.
Better Weapon Designs: One of the most common complaints from MHW was the radically different approach to weapon design philosophy that seriously toned down the creativity of previous games in favor of realism. While it's true that some weapons looked a bit silly in past games, most of World's armory is generic. Worse still, some of the coolest designs have been spent on weapons with underwhelming stats, such as the Vice glaive and every Daora weapon.
Prowlers: Playing as a cat was the most fun way to get through Gen and GU, in my opinion. Strong, mobile and low-maintenance. Bring them back.
What are your thoughts?
(Note: While Iceborne will be making some cool additions to MHW, I doubt it will have any of these alterations. This thread is more about what we'd like to see in the follow-up to World than in IB.)
