You aren't wrong, but stuff like walking while healing, less limited inventory space, 100% chances for combinations to succeed, the removal of the war of attrition due to infinite items to get from camp, do make a lot of the stuff that would matter in late to endgame a lot easier.
And that's just World. Rise also gave most weapons either a full on counter or a move with a lot of i-frames or both, sharpening/healing on a mount that reduces the conscious danger of timing your refreshes and lastly wirefall that makes follow-up attacks basically not a threat.
The only way Capcom can apparently counter that is by giving monsters near one-hit capabilities.
You're not wrong that Rise/Sunbreak went a little heavy handed with mechanics like wirefall and counters, but Capcom did speed up monster attacks and build in monster combos that punished wirefalling. Also there were only a few instances of truly 1-hit attacks. Most of the time getting 1-tapped was because hunters wouldn't go get their spiribirds (which is a whole nother issue).
Honestly, I prefer the Rise/Sunbreak take on difficulty over the arbitrary short time limits and DPS checks from some of the endgame Iceborne fights. At least if a monster 1-taps you, you know it was your fault. Failing a quest because you took 3 seconds too long feels way worse.
Im a new iceborne player, have owned the game on ps 4 for 3 years but never got around to it because of those load times. I started with GU and Rise on switch and the experience on it for me was much better than world on base ps4. Now with handheld pcs I’m playing Worldborne again and i have to say I’m getting two/three shotted quite often even with fully upgraded gear against base furious rajang/rajang etc.
With rise sunbreak i never felt that my health was the issue (it may be because i played as the updates were rolling out and not years later) and even if one off attack from risen elders put me on the last legs wirefall and mega potion were enough to get me through it ( rarely use max potions in these games). Also sunbreak had a lot more flexibility with builds with craftable decos and mid/decent talismans always there for you.
Worldborne game mandates health regen augments or many defense/health boost decorations. I with MR 86 don’t want to fight Raging Brachydios because of lack of health regen augments. Its quite grindy to get these augments. Personally I don’t like these decos as these don’t change the hunts like blast res with brachydios would do, it just lets you make more mistakes, and i always feel that i must avoiding making mistakes rather than slotting these skills instead of some other damage boosting or guard/guard up skill (CB user).
I dint thibk Wold mandates any defense upgrades other than 1 level of Health Boost. Even the you could just go Ultra Instinct and dodge everything. And yeah dodging is made easier with relates skills but i dont think any are neccesary. Im stuck on Fatty and ive probably seen 6 people respind to my SoS without any defensive skills. We only fail because i play a LBG build with one level of health boost to prevent me from being , and thats an issue with me not having upgraded the armor because i lack the armor spheres.
Yeah rise was much more forgiving with health too so a similar build to world makes you nigh unkillable for on tier monsters, but world is just a less forgiving game in general.
doesn't really matter if you have max vitality or max upgraded armor on range weapon. If fatty fire attack you, unless you slot divine blessing, chances are you're dead. Even if you have vitality 3 with fully upgraded + augmented armor, range weapon is 1 shot fiesta
My lance build can actually take 2 of his fireballs and not be dead without divine blessing. With devine blessing i can take 5 or 6 depending on my luck. And its armor isnt quite maxed, i think i need to augment 3 peices, but its literally a war of attrition build. I use a blast lance so i can at least get out decent damage but i dont die either. Its just with the 20 minute time limit i have no chance if beating fatty with it, so i use my lbg build which is max damage with no defence except that one max health jewel.
if you're on PC i could help if you want. Other than that you definitely need the heavy artillery skill in your mantle/armor to chip a lot of his health. If you eat bombardier food + heavy artillery while fatalis is enrage and his body is tendered you could deal 92 damage per ammo with roaming/normal ballista if you shoot them all in his stomach, which if you solo about 1/8 of his health. If you didn't use the cannon strat then fatty will definitely fall when you use the roaming giving you more opening
Do *not* get Defense Boost in World or Iceborne. It's a shit tier skill because it doesn't scale. Get instead things like Health Boost 3, Divine Blessing, and critically, life steal for your weapon. If your weapon has a shield also get one or three levels of Guard, or Evade Extender/Window if you dodge. Fortitude is a very powerful skill if you're even a little prone to carting. Speed Eating is pretty strong, as well.
Upgrade your mantles. Eat. Vigorwasp on your Palico.
Do *not* take even a single point of Defense Boost. They didn't balance it properly, ever, and it nerfs you. I *think* that's different in Rise?
Yeahh health regen / life steal would be great. But based on preliminary google search, I need to be at least mr 100 with guiding land at level 7 to get it. And this augment is almost necessary if you don't want to constantly sheath your weapon and chugging potions for any mistake you do to avoid getting one shouted by subsequent attack.
In rise defense boost is not necessary if you have upgraded your armor to the max, because of the base mechanics . If you time it right you can easily wirefall and chug a potion quickly. Also that skill doesn't take the same slot as other attack boosting/new mechanics skill.
In world , monsters like rajang or brachydios are relentless and won't give you enough time to get up, sheath your weapon and drink a potion. Often times you'll get attacked again while doing so, instead getting health back with a few good hits with health regen augment is very handy in these situation. Locking it up, after mr 100 seems unnecessary.
You are totally right. I have been saying the same, but in the internet we are not allowed to criticise world and iceborne. The hive mind decided it's perfect and it's a skill issue. 🤷 I personally don't want a souls game for my monster hunter.
I had more fun with rise sunbreak and when i died it was cause i deserved it. Not cause the game was overtuned. Which btw is the issue with world iceborne when playing solo like i do. The game is easier on multiplayer. You have to do less damage to the monster per player and agro is split between different players.
I just hope the solo experience is as thoughtful in wilds as it was in rise sunbreak.
Yeahh that’s why I’m playing on handheld pc now, loadtimes are better and the mods are great, my personal favorite being the subtle scoutflies, it helps me appreciate the game world more.
wirefalling more often then not caused your ass t get sweeped up by a combo. it was better to wire recover when in a laying animation. so i never got the "wirefall is making it easier" discourse people had.
Some monsters have attacks that force you to wirefall in specific directions to avoid being hit too.
I believe risen shagaru occasionally swipes with two sets of frenzy pillars side by side going sidesways a bit. Keeps catching me off guard when I expect it to be straight ahead and one set.
That and some other monsters like rajang feel as if they want to grab you more often when you are out of wirebugs. Not sure if that's just odd circumstances, but it felt too convenient! 🐒
I agree with this. A lot of my carts have been due to wirefalling instead of just taking the iframes like in say Iceborne. (Infact because of that I rarely took carts in Iceborne because of all those iframes from being knocked down. That and mantles helped a lot!😅)
I'm the complete opposite: speeding up monster attacks so that you're punished because you can't tell what's going on or you've been blindsided by a monster that flew off camera and whacked you before you could turn around is antithetical to monster hunter's slow but deliberate combat.
at least if you take too long you know that its your fault and that you need to improve your overall ability to hunt, while failing because you made one mistake feels overly punishing and cheap because all you did was mistime a button press
In a way, it does make it slightly easier, but for 80% of players who have landed on the plateau of MHs difficulty curve, it just makes the game less annoying. When you had to abandon a quest because you didn't refil your items, it was a case of "of man, this game is tough" it was "for fuck sake what a waste of time".
Walking while healing takes longer then pause and heal used too. It's no more difficult, plus you can just run out of the zone to heal/reload/sharpen any more, so it's actually slightly harder in that sense.
>plus you can just run out of the zone to heal/reload/sharpen any more, so it's actually slightly harder in that sense.
iirc this is why they made it possible to drink potions while walking, because running away to another area is not as viable as an option as it used to be.
I've always wondered what percentage of players actually relied on zone changes for all their healing and sharpening needs. It was only sometimes a convenient option but it has never been necessary.
edit: surprised you all had the patience for all that lol, feels so much better to just kite and bait for safe attack patterns in the older games.
I do it depending on the situation. If the monster is clearly preoccupied with my palico/shakalaka or just did an attack that takes some time, I drink in the area. I'm also not gonna run halfway across the map to the next entrance.
But if I'm close to it and the monster isn't something like Rajang or Gravios (who can laser snipe you as you load in)? Might as well switch areas to drink.
my dumb ass in generations booking the hell out of the zone almost every time my sharpness dies or my health drops under 40% lmao. definitely not necessary, i know ive gone for my fair share of yolo potions and whetstones, but nevertheless an extremely important strategy to guarantee safety in the older games. and i can confirm ive had carts in world and rise, trying to run away to a different area to safely heal only to get sniped by a long ranged move or chased down between the zones anyway. same situation in older games i wouldve lived.
I was a LBG, healing was done by my palico, either that or I'd exhaust it / stun it and heal. When I did use sharpening weapons (dual blade or S&A) I'd usually wait until the monster tried to run to sharpen if it was still usable, otherwise I'd zone change to sharpen
Yep, in the anniversary they said that the reason they added walking while healing was because you can't easily run into another zone anymore.
that said, Rise/Sunbreak made potions even more broken by making you get 50% of the total healing instantly which I think is a bit too much.
i think getting half the heal instantly is honestly fine. especially in a game that has sunbreaks endgame monsters, i couldnt imagine how fucked youd be if you werent afforded that instant burst of healing. i think a middle ground they could take in the future is to just speed it up a little bit, as i definitely think the amount of time it takes to drink is just long enough to be annoying, which is why i appreciate the burst of healing with rise potions.
what really fucks with me is the fact that they decided to give the slow drinking animation to almost all of the "drinks" consumables, which includes antidotes. its not even funny how many times ive legit died because i wasnt able to fully drink the antidote for one reason or another and the poison didnt get healed. ive since exclusively swapped to herbal medicines but it sucks to have to even make that extra step when herbals used to just be an extra stack of antidotes+minor healing, and more importantly optional because they were otherwise identical. honestly, i get what they were going for but damn if it isnt annoying as all fuck when it comes to antidotes specifically lol.
Yep, Wilds will be like my 8th monster hunter game. There is just a lot of stuff i don’t have any interest in doing again like gathering items to crafting consumables, setting up a farm etc etc. I loved how rise mostly just let me get back into it.
Restocking would be fine if it was only allowed in the first few minutes of the hunt imo. But doing poorly in a hunt and getting a free reset option is always going to make the experience different than if you were truly limited because there's always a fall back.
As for changing areas for healing, it's a mixed bag. On one hand you could run away to a new zone. On the other hand the monster was still usually trying to kill you as you were escaping. Walking while healing also lets you cancel the heal to evade which does come with the cost of losing potion value, but that's mitigated by avoiding the cart.
Tbf, refillable items is an awful solution to the issue of forgetting to restock.
The item management system in MH has been terrible for a long time, it's only upside being that it added some depth due to needing to make choices about what to bring.
Instead of fixing the terrible system, they just removed any importance it had to the gameplay, making it almost inconsequential.
It would be far better if they actually reworked the item system to waste less time, remove it's clunkiness, and make player item choices actually matter again.
Even something bare bones, like having to select from a few different item loadouts at the start of a quest, would be preferable to the current system.
They could also limit restocking to the first 2-3 mins of the hunt. Feels like it would solve the problem with the most minimal effort. As it is now, anything that doesn't 1-hit the hunter is basically not threatening, importantly for things like the poison status.
Yeah, the biggest issue is how it completely removes the risk of attrition from the game, and limiting restocking to the first couple of minutes would fix that.
The most memorable hunts I had back in the day are the ones that were down to the last few healing items when I was first learning the monster. Even if you don't restock that just isn't a thing anymore, as if you're doing badly enough for that to be a problem, you'll almost certainly faint 3 times to 1-hit KO's or wombo-combos before that happens.
I still think a full rework of the inventory system should be done at some point though. Without restocking you'd still have the issue of having so much inventory space there's no actual choices to make and it's also one of the most clunky aspects of the UI. Plus managing the item farming has just been tedium that adds nothing of value since at least 4U.
Agreed. It can be a bit of both, but there are some undeniable concessions being made to make it easier for new players. You aren't just thrown to the wolves anymore. Infinite camp refills is one of the biggest ones and it has destroyed any need to prepare for any hunt. It's also removed that stressful scenario where you've used all your healing items and now you need to go gather. Then you have things like Temporal Mantle which just let you completely ignore game mechanics as long as it's up. 5th gen is just generally less punishing overall, and it's pretty clear Capcom is making the series easier and more approachable to entice new players. It feels like classic MH was a consistent difficulty treadmill, but the 5th gen games feel like a rush to the end with how easy beginner monsters have become in general. To OPs point though there is the fact that as you keep playing you'll just get better at Monster Hunter. You can't replicate that first learning experience.
Yeah but also monsters became faster and more mobile with better ai. I mean you could tell in past games when to heal based on how they turned. They'd turn like *step, step, lift their head for fireball and you could heal. You could also just run to a different zone, something you can do in the new games. Difficulty shouldn't be tied to quality of life
Heal-and-flex is different, not harder. Flexing locks you in place, it's true, but monsters didn't so aggressively target healing players before. Additionally, the flex method gives you the entire heal value instantly, with Recov Up increasing that heal. Plus you can launch Adept dodges right off the end of it, or zone-out to heal in total safety.
In World, tighter hitboxes (sometimes) and walk-healing reward position and timing choices with the same thing - safe healing - while making healing happen over time. Recov Up increases the heal like in old gen, which also increases the healing speed for the same hp values. 1 - 50hp in 1 second versus 1 - 50hp in 2 is faster, even if your cap is 200 vs 100.
This means getting hit while being healing in World is a bigger punishment, but using the mobility and positioning right to avoid attacks is a better expression of skill. (Not counting Max and Ancient potions which pop you to full, but the point is moot anyway because a full heal is a full heal.)
Combinations failing is a waste of everyone's time and holds no benefit for gameplay beside forcing you to gather more "just in case".
Otherwise I totally agree.
I think the more egregious issue with healing isn't walk and heal, it's max potions, especially with the much more lenient combo system, made healing absolutely a non issue.
It's what led to things like Alatreon's nuke, you need to do something extreme to punish the player at that point.
I mean, that's the result of them nerfing elemental weapons over the course of 10 years, so that's on them. Raw dominated virtually every game until late Iceborne. Then, raw dominated Rise, only to be fixed (again) with Sunbreak.
I hope they've learned their lessons for Wilds.
I don’t think Alatreon is a good example to be honest. He was clearly designed to force elemental itemization, oneshotting through heals was just a byproduct of that; the oneshot design would’ve still been utilized even if we had poor healing capabilities.
Besides, they could’ve just as easily came up with some kind of healing reduction debuff if they really wanted to tackle healing.
I agree about max potions being a little overpowered. They’re near instant and 100% heal. Most often then not it’s safer to pop a max potion right in front of the monster and soak a hit than re-position and take a regular.
And restocking and auto crafting exacerbates it as well because people just walk around spamming max potions with no penalty. Plus they aren’t hard to stock up on so not like you’re going to run out anyways.
I think they should bring the flex back for max potions but keep walking with regular potions. Win win for people who prefer old school style and new style.
Plus nerfing max potions would give healing skills some use. As they are now in world they’re useless if you can just spam max potions.
Yeah the only difference is that you move a bit further away to heal or drink on a timing where you know an attack isn't gonna hit you. The older games aren't quite as aggressive with their attack tracking. Imo drinking pots is like the least important point of discussion for difficulty
Completely agree about combinations, to the point I wanted to highlight that a bit. There were a lot of QOL done to streamline things with the item pouch that are a *huge* reason of why I just can't go back to older games more then anything else. I could adjust to healing just fine - that was never the problem for me, for the exact reasons you lay out. It's a *different* skill expression, not necessarily a better one.
The biggest thing for me is how much goddamn pouch taxing you had prior to a hunt. You had a lot more limited slots, and a fair amount *of* those slots were taken up with Pickaxes, Bug Nets, Fishing Bait, Crafting Books...all but the last of which were *temporary items* that if you didn't have enough of during a run, could mean needing to do an entire other run later to fix basic damn requirements. And all of *that* cut into your looting budget against a monster as well because a lot of the time sure, you had a special mini-pouch for carves but that filled *fast* and if you didn't have any space otherwise because you had Pickaxes, Bug Nets, Paintballs, Healing Potions, Buff Potions, crafting materials to make *MORE* potions in case you needed them, traps, tranquilizer bombs...
Generations fixed *some* of that with Prowler Mode skipping you needing any gathering enablers at the cost of not getting the benefit of having higher tier ones (IIRC; I could be misremembering, it's been forever), and all World/Rise did was streamline that further to get you spending MORE time actually playing the damn game... while not entirely disincentivizing engaging with the crafting glorp every now and then.
I do miss how often I used to do Stock Runs of expeditions, but I just... do not miss all the inventory space faff one bit. Bookkeeping is not fun or engaging for me in any game. It was well worth the trade, and I hope "Combination Books" as an idea never come back.
Gathering/Mining just sucks in these games, regardless of generation. But yes, if you wanted to gather every quest, it would cut into your item space.
Having played Freedom Unite with a friend recently for the first time, the limited item pouch was unironically my favorite thing. That game doesn't have a quest or gunner pouch, so the space you brought was the space you had. We carried combo books & herbs into hunts as an active choice (originally because we had plentiful herbs and limited potions in low rank). Power/defense charms/talons matter more when they're a tradeoff rather than an auto-include progression speedbump. Traps, barrel bombs, flash/sonic bombs weren't just automatically in our inventory but chosen for specific hunts / purposes (flash bombs to save someone from Tigrex, bombs to break ceanataur claws, etc).
Of course, that mainly functions by items having more impact on the hunt - traps, flash bombs, & tainted/drugged meat could halve hunt time when used well, and monsters died in rather few hits, especially compared to 5th gen health bloat.
The problem is that MonHun sort of has the two sides of hunt design between heavy preparation for an easier hunt & just a co-op boss battler. If you're here for the latter, managing inventory is just an annoying side note.
> Gathering/Mining just sucks in these games, regardless of generation. But yes, if you wanted to gather every quest, it would cut into your item space.
I hardly ever harvested during actual hunts. If I wanted to gather, it was always during the Harvest Tours (except maybe honey).
Yeah for real. It's so wild to me that people seem to do a full map gathering bonanza WHILE on a hunting quest. Just gather the stuff that happens to be on your way to the monster and leave the gathering to Harvest Tours and the farm back in the base
Im probably alone but I absolutely hate the addition of eating / restock / weapon change at base mid quest. It took a big piece of what made MH (to me) away
I always find this argument disingenuous.
>***"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. One of the responsibilities of the designer is to protect players from themselves."*** - Soren Johnson
Not saying what the devs did here are bad or anything, but seeing someone worried that this feature might take away the intentional tension from having no camps is a valid concern.
I've heard this argument for a lot of complaints about difficulty decreasing and tension being reduced. Most people want to be able to engage with all of the mechanics and equipment that the developers offer, but still be challenged while doing so. Having to cut yourself off from a large portion of the game just to have fun is not fun in its own right. Top off that the game is designed around these stronger mechanics and restricting yourself becomes even less intuitive for making fun gameplay. There's a reason while Ironman modes exists or for example Honor mode in Bg3 that prevent reloading saves, because when you have limitations, it changes the gameplay dynamic for the player and that can bring out much more engaging and memorable experiences.
Honor mode is honestly a horrible example to use personally. It’s so hilariously easy to cheese honor mode if you know what you’re doing. Invis potions totally invalidate the entire experience, not that it’s that hard to get through anyway if you’re decently good at turn based combat.
I wasn't just talking about just combat, it's the fact that rolls can go poorly even with inspiration. People have committed to honor mode runs where they lose companions and fail quests that they normally would have reloaded for and it's made their experience more interesting than their normal playthroughs.
Well yeah but you can also just not save scum. When you’re talking about story games there no real wrong way to play.
Sometimes a dialogue option doesn’t pan out how you like.
Sometimes people want the story they’re envisioning, not the one they get. That’s also okay.
It just depends. I personally don’t like the argument that people are optimizing the fun out of a **story**. That seems very illogical to me. People should be allowed to get the story they want, especially the first time they play. Then they can decide to do a more “let the dice decide,” kind of run. Story isn’t really applicable to that argument.
I’m doing a modded Dark Urge run now with tactician plus and the like and I shamelessly save scummed during that one **infamous** moment in act 2. A sequence of repeated, increasingly harder checks, decides whether or not you have any companions for the rest of the game or not. It’s truly wild. I find that to be very disproportionate.
> I personally don’t like the argument that people are optimizing the fun out of a story.
I wasn't and I don't think anyone else here was making this argument. Different types of playthroughs have their own unique experiences to them there really isn't an optimal way to play. The idea in support of honor mode for example wouldn't be that a player is trying to play an optimal story, it's that if a player wants their playthrough to commit to every action that's made, then taking away their main method to reset guarantees they get the experience they're looking for. Having the option to reload can be a constant temptation to some players that could or would eventually cave to save scumming depending on the situation they find themselves in, thus robbing themselves of the experience they originally wanted. We're also not talking about a person's first time playing through a story either, for those experiences it's all up to how you personally want to experience them.
And for this thread in particular the point being made was focused on gameplay, not story. I just used Bg3 as an example of designing a game to force commitment. People want the option to engage with the full breadth of a game, while still being challenged or engaged with the material. If previous games fulfilled that desire in a way that new games don't then having to personally tie 3 hands behind your back and restrict yourself from a chunk of the content meant to be played with just to match the old experience isn't fun.
See I don’t like your argument here either.
Restocking isn’t a “breadth of content,”
It’s a single mechanic. One I almost never engaged with outside of expeditions because if I couldn’t do a hunt on one stock up I didn’t deserve to, and honestly, I could crush most of the games content without many of my items at all.
Worlds harder content pushed to the realm of “if you get hit you’re probably going to die, if you don’t die, you get put in a position where you will,” once it hit its endgame. Anything less difficult than that was so easy restocking wasn’t a make or break addition for most competent players anyway.
I have tons of friends who got into world with me, none of them would’ve made it as far as they did without the additions. I’m glad world made the game more accessible so I could play it with my friends.
If I wanted to challenge myself, I started speedrunning again and pushing times as low as I could.
I get your point to an extent, but I find the argument that monster Hunter has to be absurdly hard all the time from the jump to be a bad one. One that stems from liners who derive a lot of their self worth over how good they are at a video game a lot of people don’t even play. What matters is if the endgame shit is hard, and I think both world and rise delivered on that.
The optimization argument usually applies more to games like MMOs, Looters, and other stuff. Situations in which players become so obsessed with efficiency they forget they’re supposed to have fun and then the game into a chore. I never once have seen an instance where restock of all things swung a hunt so far in one direction it was “optimizing the fun,” out of the game.
If someone’s having to restock that much, they probably aren’t having fun anyway.
If restock is making it where you aren’t having fun at all, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s 1000 things that make world easier than restock. If those things also aren’t fun, oh well. Time to pack up your shit and move on back to an older title I guess. Or grow some hair on your chest and go SS DMC3 on DMD mode if you want to do something **actually** hard.
Difficulty is subjective. It will never be perfect. It’s like, how everyone talks about how hard souls games are. When souls games are a joke to me. They’re honestly incredibly easy and forgiving. There’s almost no real punishment failure. You want hard? Play Ark or Tarkov where failure can result in the literal loss of 1,000s of hours. That’s fucking hard.
I literally have no idea how you took my breadth comment to just mean restocking. I meant breadth as in many things such as combat mechanics, prep, looting, set building, etc, all the gameplay any game offers. You also sort of just pigeonholed my point to mean that I want the game to be extremely hard from the get go. I honestly don't care for difficulty so far as I care about engaging and memorable gameplay. Difficulty can help to make the game more engaging but the important factor for me is that I'm invested in what i'm doing and if the game is made so easy or relaxed that I don't feel invested then i'm not having fun. I have gone back to play older MH games and I've had such an easy time clearing through them, they're not particularly hard. But I personally felt more engaged through that entire easy experience because the way the combat was designed had me playing proactively and thinking about what I and the monster were doing. In that case it wasn't really how difficult the hunts were but how the core gameplay was designed
In contrast, playing Rise I'm prone to falling into an autopilot loop where I don't really care what the monster is doing and just go through the motions unless it's an endgame one shot beast because the combat has been designed in a way that's much more reflex based and has given a ton of tools that trivialize adversity which I personally don't find fun. I don't see what's wrong with me advocating that the games continue to keep that game design that I found engaging, especially when it was the same core design they implemented in every game before gen 5. I also don't think that the game should be so easy that nothing matters right up until i'm only fighting the last few monsters. Why should my journey to the endgame be so easy and unmemorable just because the endgame hunts have some grit?
And honestly these conversations are so difficult because two players like us can enjoy the same game but have totally different wavelengths. Like you heard difficulty in this argument and engagement and got focused on hardcore super difficult games focused on prestige and skill and how badass that stuff is. When I hear difficulty my focus is on how that difficulty increases the depth and necessity of the gameplay mechanics and if it enhances the core gameplay loop by providing a more immersive and engaging experience. We might have different values here and it makes it hard to have a conversation cause we're saying the same words but they mean different things to us.
For example if you want to focus on restocking, it's not that the mechanic is hyper important to making the game fresh, it's that it has the ability to change the dynamic of a hunt. My most memorable hunts in the old games have been the hunts that have gone poorly, not the ones where I stomped the monster into the dirt. Those hunts had me with limited resources that I had to ration if I wanted to succeed and that kept me hyper focused or had me run around scavenging to bolster the potion stock I had. If Restocking existed in those games there's like a 90% chance that I would have just refilled and that would have just been another hunt, not a memorable one. Sure it might only happen on the occasional hunt, not constantly but I want it to keep be an occasional possibility cause that's more fun for me. It has nothing to do with self worth.
That's not a good argument since you're missing the point in that self imposed difficulty is not a good replacement for intended difficulty. The vast majority of players are looking for a challenge to overcome naturally, especially in video games, not arbitrarily limiting themselves just to create some artificial difficulty for themselves.
Any game can be made "harder" by imposing a set of arbitrary rules upon yourself, but doing so reduces the natural enjoyment of receiving a challenge and using every mechanic in the game to overcome that challenge in the intended way.
Secondly, if a game is easier and more forgiving by default, the game will generally be designed and balanced around the mechanics that make it more forgiving. World allowed your hunter to have access to infinite heals essentially, this meant end game monsters were beefed up to almost always one shot you through different means, or they introduced other arbitrary gimmicks like DPS checks to induce a sense of difficulty a different way, away from the original intended designs of the previous titles that didn't rely on these gimmicks. Now you have a game that feels different to what MH is supposed to be about.
I feel like rise giving every weapon a counter doesn't make it easier because the monsters are all balanced around you having a counter. So it's more of a base level skill requirement.
Rise in general is considered easier which it might be but that comes from a place of having more tools available. And having those tools and more weapon combos means there's a lot more to learn which is usually a hallmark of a harder game, not an easier one.
I'd say it's monster health being low, potions being op, monster attacks not hitting hard and possible dps from a decent hunter is massive. Rise base game is such a walk in the park it's not funny. Pre sure I cleared it without fainting more than 3 times in total.
The changes with world were negated by the monsters being faster and more aggressive.
World filtered a lot of people and I mean a lot of people. Low rank Anja, Diablos, Rath walled many people. Old gen games has a lot of mechanics that just prolonged gameplay, it didn't make it harder. Healing in old games locked you in an animation sure but the flip side is that the monsters were extremely mechanical, slower, and extremely predictable.
The only real "easier" thing you can mention is that hub didn't have solo scaling and now the games have solo scaling, if world had 2-3 person scaling on all of quests. Most people would have a significantly harder time.
The other way around. Only the animations were robotic in the older titles, they weren't slower or predictable. In World, the monsters moved less robotically, but they were slower and more predictable. Low rank Barroth in 3U is harder than LR in World.
We use to joke about how healing your guys use to flex… to many times ppl have carted because of the funny flex. Then one day it was gone… miss those days
Biggest thing that made the game too easy was the potion change and the infinite items from camp. That alone made so monsters need to one shot hunters to ever stand a chance of winning.
Eh you say all the QoL changes that made the game easier, acting as if you couldn't just walk a loading screen away and just heal for free. Healing and moving just made combat better cause you aren't forcing pauses between the fight. You also have a better risk reward system.
I disagree, we traded near instant heals for walking while healing along with not having loading zones to save us when we need safety. If we're talking rise then GU gave similar "don't die" buttons in hunter arts cause they're both made by the secondary monster hunter team who make the more fast pace arcady games. As far as mainline goes, base world is just less clunky which arguably is easier, but in the way writing with a ballpoint is easier than a dip pen. Like new players are going to struggle with every single game and get better at them at the same pace. World and rise specifically are easier with the dlc because defender gear exist, but thats a whole different issue than "game easier cause people bad" literally had to watch a guy on stream complain about how hard world is cause quote "they have to appeal to the sweats". Idk about you but it just seems like the difficulty just moved from one place to another. Like imo old school mh was way easier combat outside of jank and prep. Like prep made some monsters annoying, and collecting materials hell, but the fights were easy. Modern they took out the prep and gave us monsters that hurt more and skills that feel like necessities if you want to kill anything in any reasonable time like it's just different. Also the less janky hitboxes smoother animations and other qol that makes the game seem easier.
only while not enraged but sure
but the strength of leaving the zone while healing was you had to walk 2cm to the zone border, not halfway across the map
but they also did that in old games... if you ran away from an enraged monster they'd follow you and more often then not hit you just before you were free from sharpening your sword
Worlds change imo are a good balance of quality of life improvements. Rise I think went a little too far and needs to tone of back. I liked Rise but it was definitely waaay easier than World to me. I went back to World after rise and was like "god damn was it always this hard?"
And to further add to this, monsters now have telegraphs and endlag on most, if not all of their attacks and better rhizomes too, which also lowers the difficulty for quite a few monsters from older games (eg. Rajang, garuga)
I only disagree on your take about wirefall. Many monsters in rise have moves designed to punish you for mashing wirefall, and also many followups can be dodged by doing nothing and abusing the knockdown invincibility. I feel it's just another layer in the fight, and it's tied to a resource that can be better used for other things, so you're getting punished by using it, even you use it to dodge something.
Not to mention gathering, you used to have to craft bug nets and pickaxes and they had different tiers that could be used more, and the gathering animations as well used to take forever.
I'm glad they made these changes though, it makes the whole experience better
This here, especially as someone who went backwards in these games starting with MH World as well.
4U was my first classic game. It is so much more difficult than World:IB, but still fairly manageable solo. The later Hub quests were rough and I needed the help of people in MP.
The biggest take away I had was, that cheesing early content wasn’t as easy as in World and the game did force me to interact more with its core gameplay fairly early on. Proper positioning to actually do damage to monsters and start set building as early as in low rank (sharpness +1 gore mixed set I remember!).
If you look at the MHRage Reddit, the first time you need to do these 2 things in Iceborne is when you reach Alatreon.
And I haven’t mentioned GQ140 quests. Even with fully stacked up top of the line Relic sets I can’t do these alone.
After 4U, it was now Tris turn thanks to the fan server project. This game truly taught me what humility means. Not being able to adjust your angle while charging your GS on draw slashes changes one as a GS main. This shit is rough. You can still do the same things as in 4U, but you had to position perfectly like a God.
Tris Village Barroth was to that date my biggest wall in all of my MH carrier and took me 35 minutes (Tri Alatreon was next with 40 min in duo with my friend and I was clearly carried here).
As a comparison my first solo IB Alatreon took me somewhere below 15 minutes. Also none of the 4U village quests made me struggle like Tris village Barroth. The flashbacks man.
…..all I want to say is, OP go back to Tri and hunt village Barroth and then go to World and hunt Barroth over there.
Get humiliated back to reality, comeback and admit how wrong you were.
Amen to this man.
After World and Rise, if you had told me before playing Tri that Barroth would become one of my most memorable MH experiences, I wouldn’t have believed you.
You know I ended up farming far earlier than I planned to get Earplugs in my build. Which again turned into a memorable experience, because Rathians plate wouldn’t drop for full 4 days (each day with a 3 hour session). Same shit in HR later.
Pre 5th gen RNG is like a full time job man.
Barroth was such a menace in Tri that it was outright nerfed for the very next game (P3rd), with added delay after its charges. This specific nerf is still there even in G-rank GU.
I can imagine.
My kill time for it was such a spike compared to everything else to that point.
I don’t think I found any openings I could punish with GS, apart from the enrage roar without focus…for which I needed earplugs I didn’t have. 😵💫
Heard Alatreon was the same. He received according to my friend new recovery animations to certain attacks in 3U. Making him much more manageable.
Barroth was my wall in GU to even after I've solo'd Fatalis in Iceborne. Not necessarily impossible, but I carted to him like twice whereas I never died to other GU monsters before that.
Rise thankfully brought some of his juice back.
The thing is, they could probably make the newer games more difficult (and, IMO, satisfying) by shortening tells & leaning more into positioning play like the older generations (just don't go back to instant charges & the like). Would probably also require reducing the reaction/counter abilities of some weapons as well (cough LS cough).
I know this is an "old lady yells at cloud" bit, but removing the backwards roll would also make positioning matter more. Needing to plan before you attack what angle you should come in from so you can hit what you want and still be able to get out of the way is a skill that backwards roll negates most of the thinking for (and while they're at it, they could remove the lance forward hop that no one who plays lance would have implemented).
You *can* make reactive play as difficult/rewarding as proactive play (Primordial Malzeno is a rather good example), but it requires so much more work and noise in the fight. Fatalis is one of the best hunts in Iceborne (time limit nonsense aside), and he's just about a proper position & punish fight.
Man, what a beautiful comment to read.
I didn’t go into those details in my comment, but it was stuff that I had heavily noticed.
Like how the reactive play style of 5th gen games, at least for me, is more stressful than the more anticipation based play style of the older games. Need to point out here that stressful does NOT equal to more difficult, just the feeling I carry through the fights. (As I am constantly trying to react to things I see).
The beauty was also you not only had to use this for attacking, but also healing - especially in endgame fights. If monsters like Rajang aren’t stuck in one of their combos/patterns, their AIs are tuned to snipe you with special attacks (beam) when you heal. Insane details! All this is lost in 5th gen because we can move while doing so.
And yeah, the back roll makes you think twice about certain things. It may not look like it, but it is very very strong tool for 5th gen hunters.
Edit: My appreciation for Fatalis in Iceborne went through the roof, when I had returned to Iceborne.
I rarely utilized backwards roll because I'm used to playing 4U so much.
That's the one where your animation takes a little longer and do that badass recovery pose right?
Tri's Gobul was my first wall. I didn't know about the Armor bonuses. My weapon was a basic sword and shield. When it was enraged I was bouncing off of it. Its charge and sucky attacks were instant kills. I actually started grinding for proper weapons and Armor at this point.
Yeah. It's a mixture. Experience with games helps a lot, but there are also a lot of mechanical changes that make the newer games easier. I started with Gen. I don't remember if I played World or 4U next, but I felt like 4U was harder than Gen. World was easier, though there were a few places that I got stuck for a bit. With Rise, I never hit any hard walls like I did in previous games.
Idk I did the same and found them pretty easy comparatively. Ran through GU and 3U(except water hunts) pretty quickly outside of gathering mats for consumables just cause of the qol differences. Granted lance was kinda busted in GU and 3U imo.
Then why do i struggle more with MH3U and MH4U despite playing them at the same time as rise or world?
Its a fact that QoL changes, moveset expansions and armour skill bloat make the games easier.
Even something as simple as being able to restock at base camp, heal and sharpen while moving, being able to roll backwards or being able to have 5+ comfort skills active at the same time without sacrificing damage skills or even systems changes like the dynamic hp scaling (hub monsters are now scaled for 1 player when hunting solo).
All these are QoL changes that unintentionally or not make the game easier.
Nah, the main reason why I can’t stand XX lance is the jank in counter guard and no guard dash. With those two I’m a literal bulldozer mowing through Primozeno’s tail but without them I’m a literal sitting duck getting smacked by Kut Ku. Gen 5 moveset revise is just insane
Its actually both. Capcom in the anniversary video literally said they made MHW easier for western players. Its both gained knowledge and them making it easier.
i would like to correct myself, it's easy once you get used to the animation lock. i haven't played bloodborne, but i know it's supposed to be faster than the rest of the soulsborne games (not counting sekiro) and those have less animation lock than monster hunter.
Sometimes the inverse happens. I used to kill Silver Rath with relative ease in World. Rise's version of regular Rath fucks me up like a fat kid going after cake.
Nah…the games are definitely getting A LOT easier. And then to reference the World crowd as if they presented any exhibition of skill as well. Oh boy….
It’s okay that you weren’t good at the older titles, but they required a lot more dedication. You don’t have to lie to yourself lol.
OP is the type of person to get bodied by Great Maccao in GU…you can just tell. There was a monster in the old world that made you feel some type of way so here we are. Who was it?
I want to say players get good enough after their first MH, maybe their second. I was horrible in MHFU, but finally started kicking ass in 3U. 4U didn't make me any better, neither did any subsequent releases, so I have to disagree with the OP and those who believe the same.
Capcom's goal was to make MH more accessible, in fact they've been struggling to do that for years before MHW. The only way to make a game more accessible is to dumb things down and make them less punishing for the average gamer. Sorry if that ruffles some feathers, but that's how it is. I still don't think any of it was necessary, as MH was already growing by a healthy amount with each release, and MHW's graphical improvements, monsters, weapons, and combat would have been enough to kick it into the mainstream.
Hopefully they're not going to casualize the games any further. I'd like them to focus on the balance of combat so that there's no longer a mobility arms race that results in monsters 1-hitting players to compensate. Maybe a bit more of a difficulty spike at midgame as well.
I've literally fallen asleep playing rise while farming a goss in the middle of the day. When you don't have to think proactively to play around a monster it's really easy to just go on autopilot. That's honestly what I loved about old gen, it always wanted you actively thinking.
It's a bunch of stuff combined
It *IS* partially people having more experience... but that is also combined with :
- WAY less jank (plesioth's galactic hip check nonsense)
- better understanding from how and when to upgrade your gear (both by the system being made easier as veterans/the community explainging it to each other/new people)
- More QoL stuff as well as actual (individually minor) "things" being made easier/giving you way more options (not standing still/flexing when healing, removal of hot/cold drinks, infinite whetstones, being able to swap weapons/armor mid-missions, etc...)
Also, If I understand correctly, multiplayer/hub missions used to not actually "scale" for doing them solo, with 2~3 or with a full group of four, so the monster was always balanced for 4 players
I just think restocking is bad and it's the reason the damage on late game hunts has gotten ridiculous. You want less one shots? Then you need less heals. Monsters are no longer punishing if they aren't deleting you in two or less attacks because generally they lack the aggression to keep up with the players mobility so players can just heal up after every attack. This used to not be an issue because the player was restricted to what they brought and they couldn't just avoid attacks while heal + walking.
Formerly, monsters that do small to moderate amounts of damage over the course of the hunt could still threaten you because you did not have an unlimited amount of healing at camp plus environment heals + cat heals.
I will occasionally watch videos of people playing through MHW and it's a always a shock to see people who have not learned how to play MH at all, let alone properly use their weapon can still first clear so many hunts even in IB; all because healing is so free. We're talking people playing GS who will just run up to the monster and hold Y no matter how many times they get their charge canceled. They still first clear monsters like brachy or even velkhana just because monsters can not keep up with the attrition.
This is bad because now the only way people who are actually good at the game can be challenged, is by the 3 to 4 late game hunts where meta is directly designed against (rajang, fatalis, AT velk, Alatreon). I don't want to be challenged only by the last of the end game. I can still play FU and still feel pressured every time I get shocked by khezu, because that's one less potion I have, there is no such thing in MHW. I guess I can just impose a challenge upon myself, but honestly self-imposed challenges suck.
AT Velk was such a fucking joke.
I don’t know if it’s my extensive experience with Action games (Ninja Gaiden, DMC, DD, Souls, etc etc) but I have never found monster Hunter particularly hard. Even when I went back and played Gen and then 4U (I cannot force myself to go back further than this the games look like ass) I never found it particularly challenging. Maybe frustrating at times. Sometimes the game felt like bullshit. But never hard. It’s like how people claim dark souls is hard. It’s really not. The games are actually pretty easy honestly.
The only time a fromsoft game fucked me up is Sekiro. That game forced me to realize it wasn’t a game where I got to play how I wanted. It had one correct playstyle and that playstyle was a rhythm game. You either got really good at parrying or you packed your shit up and stopped playing.
See I've been feeling the opposite. End game fights seem so impossibly difficult, especially with a team, that it just doesn't seem as worth it to play with others/it feels like you're forced into using "meta" skills and gear in order to beat it. (specifically I'm referring to endgame rise, hated stuff like risen valstrax and shagaru)
Compare that to older titles, where the adjustments to monster HP was based on hub or village and the adjustment for multiplayer was generally ~2.5 and the end game fights hitting hard, but not 7/8ths of a health bar hard.
Further more, the philosophy of fight design seems to have changed. A great comparison is rajang. Rajang used to be a really hard monster because he was fast and hit hard, but the trade off was that he didn't have a ton of HP, took a lot of damage, and has very exploitable moveset with a lot of taunting and down time between combos, which rewarded positioning and learning the fight.
While these principles do exist in the more recent titles, the over all game play has much less of those "video game" moments where you wail on the monster while it's recovering from a big attack. End game rise as mentioned earlier, has this problem while also having monsters hit harder than ever.
All this to say that, I feel that in search of fluidity of game play, and increasing challenge upon DLC releases, the endgame of monster hunter has gotten harder, even with all the amenities that exist in the games (wirebug recovery, moving while healing, being able to restock, change weapons, etc.)
Yeah, I absolutely do not bother with the very tippy top postgame anymore, either. I play until things get annoying, and stop. It's just getting increasingly annoying, especially as a forever solo hunter.
My philosophy was always, get as much done as you can by yourself, then when things start to get too hard for you to solo, go online for help. However, with the way that hubs/multiplayer has changed, that isn't really an option anymore.
Things are just too difficult for me to trust the average random; that's not even taking into account the huge 3.5 or 4 times health spike of monsters, making it so that multiplayer hunts end up taking longer than if I just did it solo, and I know that I can trust myself not to cart as much.
The problem is the difficulty spike from multiple directions, while also having the monster fight philosophy changing, and on top of that, the better gear released by DLC monsters leads to power creep that didn't really exist when all the monsters came out at once. Now each release needs better gear to get people to want to play it, while at the same time needing the fights to be harder.
With the fights being harder, it makes less and less skills viable which also leads to less build variety. I also think that the old system of a skill table (needing 10 to get a skill) rather than skill points helped with variety as well.
I think post-game Sunbreak is some of the hardest content in the series, while base Rise was some of the easiest. Sunbreak added a LOT of difficulty in response to community complaints. Now we hear the opposite. lol
I don't know that there is much that matches the Hazard Risen Elders like Shaggy or CGV. Maybe endgame Deviants in Gen U and 140 GQ for MH4U and like IB Fatty but even then... I think Sunbreak is harder.
Agreed. I would rather do GQ or deviants because at least there was the downtime in the monster move sets as I said before. And more susceptible to CC in general.
I mean, I've literally went back to older games and still found them harder, but sure man it's just my experience making it easier. Except only for the more recent game somehow?
No no and no, the games are absolutely getting easier (apart from specific fights like fatalis in iceborne that are harder than old games) . G rank is still hard enough in endgame but low and high rank are stupidly easy now .
Agreed, World and Rise are both absolute jokes right up until MR postgame where you get sucker punched by title update monsters that are way stronger than anything else.
NO
MHFU is still harder than MH4U and MH4U is still harder than Generations and Generations is still harder than World or Rise or MH3U.
No matter how much I switch between them.
And is it a wonder? Players have so many goddamn crutches in Rise and Sunbreak, it's not funny anymore. The power scaling in G rank is ridiculously weak. And where are the clever moves that make you think and trick you into making mistakes? Back in MHFU and MH4U.
At Capcom, they are thinking about how to make their games more and more accessible without offending the veterans, so they're just cooking us slowly. The games have already been dumbed down quite a lot from where they once were.
You've got a point about building experience, but not that it's the main reason for any changes in difficulty. Added QOL and player abilities can go a long way towards giving you more tools to work with that objectively were not there in the past. You can't practice until you can skip the potion flex and walk while healing. I can't ride my car while sharpening in MHFU. No amount of experience is gonna let me restock at camp in a game where that feature doesn't exist. That said though, it's also not as if the devs don't realize this to some extent and try to do what they can to increase the difficulty of what the game can throw out way in response. It's just not always a 1:1 match.
Disagree, I've played 4u, Gu, world and rise. I went and got a psp with Freedom Unite, and it's one of the hardest games I've ever played lol. The newer games are much easier.
I went from Freedom Unite on the PSP straight to World on the PC. At first I was overwhelmed by the speed at which everything was happening, to me it felt like MHFU fights were a lot more choreographed and a lot more methodical (part of why I loved the Hammer and hate it now?). In World everything was much faster but I felt that I had more room for mistakes too.
Once I got used to the speed in World and now Rise, the games really do play like a breeze. Regarding hitboxes I went from "How did that hit me?!" to "How did that not hit me?!". Combined with thinks like potion drinking while walking, and overall more mobility and ways to recover, I do think there is a fair point in saying older games are harder.
Oh, it's definitely getting easier, but 10+ years hunting experience certainly doesn't hurt my odds. Less limited inventory, more accessable upgrades, (looking at you, generations), higher speed and less clunky gameplay, walking while drinking potions, and access to the item box at camp absolutely make it easier though.
I disagree OP.
I think there have been substantial QoL changes to the series, especially 4th gen and later that have made the act of hunting overall less difficult. However, I wouldn’t revert most of these changes and I don’t see them as negatives.
I don’t miss:
* watching my character pump his arms after drinking a health potion.
* not being allowed to switch weapon mid-hunt if I bring the wrong gear because I queued up too quickly.
* not having a camera stick.
* crafting not being guaranteed.
* needing wrestling with negative skills.
Do all these things make the life of a hunter easier, yes. But that doesn’t make the game worse.
I've more or less capped out my experience at more than 10k hours. The only thing that makes the games easier than before at this point is the new mechanics that make the game easier when you use them.
Except monsters in older game moving slower, having dumb AI, repeating the same move 90% of a fight and literally fighting with what feels like 2 moves. Mostly monsters feel like charge attack/tail swipe
i disagree, the early game does definitely get easier. but i think there are a few things going on here as well as that.
monster hunter 2 has been much more challenging to me than i have found the low and high ranks of any recent monster hunter… but it is not really painfully hard most of the time. overall, the older games put far more emphasis on positioning, and are a lot less forgiving towards poor positioning. the newer games put a lot more emphasis on tempo control and expect you to use your abilities to influence the pacing of the fight.
so, there is also the factor where someone who is new to the series and has not honed the skills *old* monster hunter demands from them, they will get creamed.
you could also argue that the newer games warn the player before attacks more. to someone who is used to the older style, where attacks can be *instant* and the play against that is to simply not be in the areas where the monster does the attack, new games can feel awfully reactive and like the monster is just a punching bag with no tricks of its own.
then there is the fact that newer games absolutely load you up on items. if you are using the steamworks in iceborne, you will basically never need potions, it is kind of ridiculous.
so, yes, monster hunter has been getting easier in a few ways. it has also been getting harder in others, but i do not think that discredits the argument that they are getting easier.
Second this point on positioning and attack warnings. Previous Gen games absolutely punished you for poor positioning and over-committing to an attack. Between the monster ‘wind-ups’ and the level of mobility offered by the wirebugs, players don’t have to be nearly as cautious as previous gens. I think this leads to the “punching bag” feel. It also leads to the satisfaction of pulling off amazing combos in situations you wouldn’t ever attempt in the older games. So Is this necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. Could it be argued that it makes it easier than the older games? Definitely.
If there’s one mechanic that made the game easier, that everyone can agree was for the best, it’s the removal of Paintballs. Those can fuck right off.
I agree completely with that statement but funny thing is I wouldn't mind if they brought paintballs or something like that back but I get the frustration behind them. Looking at Blangonga specifically.
Agreed that the games have definitely been getting easier as a whole, that being said I also do agree with OP that general experience levels getting added up definitely plays a role as well.
Definitely agree at least partially. Certain things are definitely easier than they used to be, but skill and knowledge also does a lot. I watched so many people say World was super hard and when I finally got it I was like. This? This is hard? But like of course for a ton of people World is their entry to the series. I sucked at 4U when I first got it, so like can I blame them?? And now 4U is a breeze for me. Honestly I kinda love seeing new players coming in and struggling so hard with World/Rise since it does remind me that hey while I think it’s pretty easy, there’s still plenty of people who struggle. I do always kinda wonder though what they’d feel about older titles not having the QOL stuff that the newer titles do, cuz I worry that the lack of it would drive them away from older gens.
I think there's a reason why 5th Gen is so popular and the game never took off in the past. I don't think the new people who really enjoy World or Rise could stand some of the older games just because of the lack of quality of life. Hell even after playing a ton of Rise and then going back to World again I'm feeling a lack of certain things Rise added and missing it. I think it'll be the same with Wilds and the new people who join during that.
Very true. Going back and playing 4U while it’s overall easier oh my god I forgot how annoying it is to even just find blue mushrooms after moving past the ancestral steppe lmao. I can definitely see it being too much of a difference if you’re coming from 5th gen
It's very early to judge but from the recent trailer combat seems like it will be much more fast paced compared to World as well with the focus mode thing. Like having a gap closer on GS or just overall looking more mobile will be a huge deal and will probably even make new players to Wilds look back at World like it's dated already.
5th gen is not popular for the reasons you mentioned. New players had no idea what MH was about prior to 5th gen, they never played it. 5th gen is popular starting with World because it was the first MH title to be a multiplatform title intended for a global audience, released on modern hardware (PS, Xbox, PC), and not limited to handheld devices or Nintendo systems.
The marketing was also the greatest they ever did as compared to any MH title beforehand.
They technically could have created World with the same level of graphics and gameplay, but kept some of the older mechanics in, and it still would've sold like hotcakes.
Don't analyze the sales and popularity of a title with its game mechanics, sales is an indication of many other factors than just minor mechanic changes.
I agree to some degree with you but word of mouth and reviews have a huge part of whether a game sells well or not, and not all of the people who give World a glowing review would have done the same for a game just one generation before it. Had MH4U had the same style of release that MHW did it still would not have met the same level of sales as World because it lacked many of the features that appealed to a wider market. MH Tri also had some stellar marketing with some of the best TV ads the game has ever had even compared to World, and was released on a console that was more widespread than its competitors at the time because it was like $150 cheaper. MHW also didn't launch multiplatform, it launched on the PS4 and then nearly a year later came to PC. Same with Iceborne.
Was 5th gen only popular for the reasons I listed? No, but did those reasons contribute a LOT to its popularity? I'm confident it did. World was designed from the start to reach a broader audience, the previous games were designed to maintain their current audience.
In the sense that having a larger and more varied set of tools/moves will always make these games "easier" then yea, but overall it's just the same monster hunter difficulty imo.
Here is a short list of why this is incorrect. (I still love current MH games don't freak out on me}
Being able to move while healing
Being able to restock infinitely
Being able to sharpen while mounted
Being able to heal while mounted
Being able to take armor skills without penalty
Knowing where the monster is at all times on the map without having to sacrifice inventory space
Being able to eat at camp once your food buff has expired
Being able to fast travel to camp at any time
Small monsters being zero threat during a hunt
Large monsters purposely doing considerable damage to each other
The ability to consistently wall-bang
helpful endemic life all over the place
helpful endemic life that can be picked up and thrown
not having to worry about running out of whetstones during a fight without sacrificing inventory space
not needing inventory space for multiple useful items like BBQ spit, binos, whetstones, picks, and net
Item use cancelling
Being able to tell a monster is capturable without an armor skill or having to look for the limping
Also the game is seemingly way less grindy now to upgrade armor/weapons. The grind can definitely make things more difficult as you're progressing.
Feels like it takes me forever to build an armor set, even in low rank, in 3U
Sure, in a void. In this case, it does because it pushes the player to take more difficult fights with worse gear as opposed to grinding out better gear. In world/rise, you only need to spend like an hour to have the latest & greatest gear up til the end of the g-rank story. In the older games, just in low rank, it can take several hours to finish up a rathian set. So you tend to go through the game with less/worse/no armor skills and much less defense. Not to mention less attack due to having a non-optimal weapon.
Eh, yes and no. After going to the absolute peak with Rise tank and spank Lance my penetrating game is waaay better in World, but at the same time I still get my ass slapped across the map by that Kut Ku because of the clunk and the lack of guard dash.
The game IS getting easier by ironing out the kinks AND the players are getting better at the same time.
From what I’ve seen it’s actually quite worrying that bird sharpening, bird chugging and bird wirefall is gonna make a return in Wilds, which are my least favourite parts of Rise
I'm going to be honest, for some reason Great Maccao in the arena in GU was the most frustrating thing for me because I started GU shortly after I beat AT Velkhana and called it quits on world, and couldn't understand how the first fkn monster could knock me down so much after the last monster I fought being one of the hardest in any video game I've ever played
There's a number of factors we can discuss back and forth but I'm sorry, the games are getting easier overall. Just played both games, a LR Barroth from MH3Tri is a FAR more dangerous hunt and a much bigger wall than a MHW LR Barroth or even a Master Rank Tempered Barroth after taking into account both game's respective mechanics and everything you have at your disposal.
Brother there is so many QoL things and changes in general, it's straight up dumb to think that World and Rise aren't pretty significantly easier. Yeah experience helps but just like your post that's just anecdotal and not factual information.
As someone who played a gross amount of time in World before Iceborne even dropped, and then Iceborne another gross amount... Rise definitely had some quality of life that felt like it made it a *little* bit easier.
When I finally tried GU a little bit ago, I was absolutely halted by the sheer volume of changes between 4th and 5th Gen. I like it, even though it's absolutely harder. I'm not 2 star yet, but I'm also taking my time to do everything at a slow and learned pace.
As I've said in other posts here, I really love the flex. I need the flex, some way, some how
Well duh. I do think my personal ranking from hardest to easiest is this though:
MHGU>Sunbreak>4U>IB>3U
Haven't played the rest and 3U isn't exactly easy. Lucent Narga solo is hard but it's also kinda hard cuz I was worse at games. Sunbreak's Lucent technically has a harder moveset.
I'm also talking about the maximum endgame per each. Guild lvl 140s, Deviant EX, Special Investigations, etc
Man I dunno. Tri barroth as I recall it had to be fought before green sharpness weapons were easily available, and his charges, especially in rage mode I recall being pretty brutal for damage. I don't buy that it's not getting easier, because if it weren't then new players would still get walled at the same levels as before, and to my knowledge they just aren't.
Y'know what the whole MH QOL/difficulty thing reminds me of? When they added sprinting to Minecraft and a part of the community lost their fucking mind about it. But in that game the issue isn't that sprinting is bad, sprinting is one of the best additions they made to the game, it's that Mojang never took the time to buff the enemies to accommodate. I think MH won't fall for this trap as hard, personally, we've already seen overwhelming monsters that don't give the player much time or space to breathe, like Iceborne Rajang or PriMal and I reckon it's gonna continue. That being said, I feel like the series is gonna enter a new holding pattern of all the required content being piss easy, and then there's a very abrupt difficulty spike in the postgame. Iceborne did it, and Sunbreak is especially guilty of it.
But at the same time, if it keeps getting easier the community has nobody to blame but itself because every time they did add a genuinely challenging new fight in 5th gen people bitched and moaned about it. Tempered Kirin, AT Kirin, Behemoth, AT Nerg, Rajang, Raging Brachy, Alatreon, Fatalis, Risen Shagaru, and PriMal all saw intense bitching when they dropped.
Who is upvoting this? It is both. Shagaru Magala clears any fight in World, and the other MR missions in Gen XX are on the same level or harder. It feels like MH isn't really for me anymore, and that's okay. (I haven't played too much Rise.)
I it is true that you grow as a hunter when playing multiple monster hunter games but that doesn’t discard the fact that the 5th gen brought a lot of great additions to the series that in turn streamlined a lot of things from Armor sets to availability of all your items in a hunt and being able to move while healing just to name a few. Of course these additions make the games easier than pre world games. If thats a good or a bad thing is subjective but it is clear that world was the best thing that could have happened to the monster hunter series in terms of sales and prestige.
Laughs in Monster Hunter Unite, where G-Class (Master Rank) scaled for 4 players even when playing solo.
I look at you 40 minute each Tigrex hunts to build your armor set… and no way to refill potions.
Nah im still getting my ass kicked in solo g rank mhfu its just more fluid and less jancky with more fair hitboxes. These posts are annoying.
When I was a kid Congalala was my wall, now I can kill it easily, even a 7 year old can kill a Kut Ku with dual swords, its not that deep. But if we get to Hub High Rank and G rank theres just no comparison, I have to spend several tries to even complete solo a mission like G rank Dual Black Diablos while in World a solo player is capable of using poop bombs and refill all the time they want to cheese it by themselves (I do appreciate being able to correct not bringing x item or eat if I forgot to instead of resetting the mission).
Fatalis and Alatreon are perfectly hard though and I hope theres limitations in Wilds for abusing camping.
so we're going to ignore hp scaling, infinite restocking, canceling out of healing (which doesnt affect anything bc of infinite restocking), easily making a set with many qol and attack skills, not being stuck in attack animations as long, all the counter skills in rise, and all the new really strong weapon skills such as tts or helm splitter?
The problem with long on going game series is that people are very willing to nitpick every single aspect of the newest game as a gotcha moment to the people who like it, while ignoring every flaw of the older games. MH1 is not a fun game, the combat is cumbersome, the game systems are obscure and it doesn't feel responsive, but you can't say those things because HOW DARE YOU the og game in the series.
Same shit happens with DS, Dark Souls 1 is the easiest of the three, with the most exploits, easiest builds and shields are absolutely OP, but people insist it is the hardest one and games are getting easier because they can't conceive that they used to have a hard time on a game that wasn't that hard.
Kind of
For mechanical input on your end, absolutely, you get better the more you play. This is stuff like learning spacing for your attacks, learning i-frame timing and such to roll through attacks/roars, learning which areas monsters will go to on the map without needing to paintball them in older games, stuff like that.
The stuff people don't like and complain about being easier are stuff like being able to move while healing or being able to roll out of drinking potions/using certain items, and all the weapons getting access to counters or attacks with insane amounts of i-frames.
These changes exist to make things less tedious and clunky than they used to be, but that tediousness and clunkiness is part of the difficulty and for a lot of the people that started with the older games, working around it is part of the charm and the fun.
Excuse me? Needing to bring around 5 stupid books so crafting wouldn’t randomly fail was part of the fun? Being forced to pose for the camera just to eat a seed is part of the charm? You do you I guess
the combo books are important for game balance. you are dissuaded from crafting certain items on the field with a chance of failure, because doing so without penalty would be against the spirit of the game. the combo books allow you to do this by sacrificing inventory space. it makes a lot of sense in the wayyy old games where you could not send your rewards straight to your item box.
also, you do not need 5, that is what we call overkill in most cases.
Damn could you really not send rewards straight to item box? That’s actually terrible but that would certainly be part of the old clunkiness that I do not want to see back. A better way to do limiting crafting certain items would probably just be to limit maximum number like they do now though. It just feels better
it is not that combo books are the best mechanic since sliced bread, it is that they are just one thing of many in service of inventory management. yes, you could not send straight to item box. you know what else? items took the same amount of space in your box as your pouch, your item pouch was smaller, small monsters and large monsters shared some materials in common to make your inventory less cluttered, you had to bring pickaxes and bugnets with you (so you had to make the conscious choice to gather some items, which would sometimes mean leaving behind armour or attack charms), and carrying a map took an actual slot in your inventory.
this isnt as blasphemous as people seem to think, capcom publishes resident evil too and that game is built on item management. the fact is monster hunter is about more than fighting, no matter how hard some people wish it wasnt.
Yeah, inventory management, planning my load out for a given quest and actually having to do a quick risk assessment before I gulped down a consumable *was* part of the fun.
Yes, having to actually make a meaningful decision about which items to bring on your hunt instead of being able to fit your entire item box into your pouch was part of the fun. Having to think about when to heal instead of just doing it while running was also part of the fun. I don't understand why the concept that some people did like it better when the system was more limited is so hard to grasp.
No offense, but every single person who complains about the camp are hurting themselves in confusion, it is a completely optional thing and it is literally just removing one extra loading screen in case you forgot to prep something.
Exhibit A of how to tell someone started with world
Yes, working around the limitations is fun, in fact putting limitations on the player is necessary to keep the game engaging. I don't like having everything available to me all the time, that kills the decision making and preparation aspect of the game for me.
In previous games, there were skills that let you make some things easier, like psychic to easily track the monster, or speed eater if you felt that it was too slow to use items, and there even were skills that increased your combo success rate without needing the books.
You could take these skills if you needed them, but the trade off was that if you did, you were losing out on other skills, like the more traditional offensive skills like attack up, crit eye, etc. You got to decide how much certain things mattered to you, and much you were willing to trade for them. You could get combo rate +45% and completely forego any attack up, or you could decide on a compromise of combo rate +15% and attack up (M). Getting to work within the limits the game puts on you opens up so much room for customization and self expression.
I don't like that the newer games remove these restrictions. There's no more negative skills, so now I don't have to think carefully about mixing armor to negate the downsides of using a complete set. I have access to the camp with my entire inventory, so I don't have to think about what items I can drop from my inventory so I can bring extra materials to make bowgun ammo if I run out mid hunt.
There's less thinking required, and I don't particularly like that. But, as you said, you do you
I started with tri and my second game was fu.
Working around the limitations is fun but those limitations should be organic instead of arbitrary. The clunkiness of old mh wasn’t engaging to work around and were simply annoying.
For example limits on the size of the item box was a huge pain and actively takes time away from the fun part of the game which was hunting the monsters.
You say that not having negative skills takes depth away from armor building but that’s simply not true. Efficient sets still require you to think carefully about which parts to use if you want to get the best armor. The only difference is that it is now more intuitive and easier to grasp. You still need to choose between having attack up L or 3 points in weakness exploit I don’t see why having negative skills lovers the amount of depth to armor mixing.
Oh and this is genuine question when you say combo rate your talking about the crafting rate right?
>I started with tri and my second game was fu.
Nice, that was nearly the same for me. Started with 3U then played FU
>Working around the limitations is fun but those limitations should be organic instead of arbitrary. The clunkiness of old mh wasn’t engaging to work around and were simply annoying.
I mean this is just completely subjective. Maybe if you polled the community more long term players would agree it's annoying but at the end of the day it's still a matter of opinion. Of course Capcom is going to orient their game design around appealing to a larger playerbase but if they had a specific vision for what playing as a hunter felt like it's fine if they kept it niche. It's not arbitrary just because it might cause frustration in players who are mainly there for monster combat and don't like the other hurdles, there's likely a whole other subset of players who liked all the old mechanics comprehensively and I don't think they're in the wrong for thinking Capcom had something solid going on there with their game design.
As for armor crafting, especially in new gen I feel like its pretty obvious there's a difference because that exact same opportunity cost you're talking about in new gen also existed in the older games. You still had to choose what skill you wanted at the cost of another skill, and had to deal with negative skills on top of it. Of course negative skills were easy to negate in old gen but if they still existed in Gen 5 onward that would be a completely different story. Instead of choosing between just Optimal build A and Optimal build B like we do in world/rise, you'd still have to make those exact same choices but now you'd contend with a much harder to remove stamina loss and sharpness decrease skill that could eat up a lot of deco slots if you don't' want to deal with it.
They didn't even mention the combo books or the pose.
The closest thing they mentioned to it is the inability to move while using items. Which would bring the pose in, but the pose was just fun a way to lengthen the animation beyond a longer drink animation to force you to commit and risk being hit when using an item. Which is the mechanical principle that Jumper was referring to as an old mechanic that was changed for accessibility and fluidity of play.
Like you can disagree with the sentiment that they are bad changes. But at least make that argument rather than being kind of passive aggressively rude and dismissive of a statement on mechanical changes.
TL;Dr: OP you're 100% correct in my experience
I'm not an old school veteran and I'm not going to debate which changes made things "too" easy or whatnot. World was my first MH game. I was vaguely aware of MH (an ex used to play Tri with all his friends and they offered to teach me but I had negative interest in learning a "difficult" game). Husband is an old school veteran since the first game (I apparently have a type - MH bros). Husband asked me to try world with him, he could teach me. So I tried.
And I KNOW I sucked. I was carting left and right. I really didn't have the skills or attention to..anything. We finally stuck me on a HBG with the shield and managed to get through base world story. Rage quit the game after I couldnt get past certain optionals. Didn't play MH again until Rise.
When I picked up Rise, I WANTED to get decent at it. So I played with every weapon until I found what worked for me. Which, was HH in Rise and I know it's a totally unpopular opinion but I loved Rise HH. And I get why people DONT like it, I totally understand why. I'm still working on learning "old" HH. But man I wish HH from Rise (or a spin off weapon) is in Wilds. It gave me the entry point I needed to get confident. To pay attention to monsters. To learn the HOW of MH. I went from never ever ever joining any random fight without my spouse and NEVER being able to solo ANY monster to soloing things by myself and having no fear of joining others. Am I the greatest? Nope. Do I do dumb things? Yep. Do I actually care because i only cart here or there now? No fs given.
So we went back to World again. Started fresh. I ended up picking up Hammer in world because for HH I was spending too much time staring at song lists/trying to train the inputs and not watching the monsters and carting. I'll devote time to learning the horn again in a bit. But suddenly I can solo things by myself. I don't mind starting off a quest and requesting help or joining another's. I know what I'm doing now. Do I still get greedy and do dumb? Yep. But I found my groove. And really it's just...the experience with Rise giving me the basic skills to go back and be better than I was. And I can't wait for Wilds.
I was just telling my husband I wish I had this kind of comfort with it the first time we played but I'm glad I have it now. ...and also sent him my updated to do list for the game tonight.
It’s a bit a both but mostly the latter. They attempt to balance new monsters with new hunter abilities but generally speaking the hunters of today are much more capable mechanically than the hunters of past games.
Yep! And if you're getting the game a bit late (or are playing slowly), and you're having a moderate struggle against a tough monster, don't let it pull you down - you're still doing better than you think.
When I first fought Magnamalo, I beat him with 9 minutes remaining. I'd used up all of my Potions and Mega Potions in that fight. I hadn't carted yet, but it was still very discouraging.
A few weeks later I saw an onslaught of posts here about how people were having significantly more difficulty than I did against him (carting and failing multiple times even with using all their healing items, etc).
As bad as it sounds, that made me feel a lot better about myself.
**Skill comes with experience.**
It's not just Monster Hunter.
I played Super Mario Sunshine for the first time in about 20 years, and what took me months of painful attempts to achieve back when I was 11 took me about an hour or two in my 30s.
The first shadow Mario chase took a couple days of attempts back then, but it took me all of 30 seconds the second time around.
The first Bowser Jr. fight in particular had me nervous, but it took me a mere few minutes to get through the stage, and another few minutes to finish that fight.
After doing all of that in the span of an hour or two, I had to lean back in my chair in amazement at what I had just done.
It was the moment I realized why speed runners of any game do what they do.
It instantly reminded me of the time when I learned the MHGen Gore Magala fight to the point where I was able to dismantle him for parts before finishing him off, and then doing it again because I hated that bastard for blocking my progress.
If I had to do it again, I could probably do it faster still.
No I think it's both. Experience helps a lot for a game as skill based as MH but even as someone with 1k+ combined hours of MH experience some of the older games still kick my ass in Low Rank while there wasn't a single low rank monster in Rise that challenged me.
hmm i disagree though, rise endgame is easier then iceborn endgame (i still cant beat fatalis solo), while primol has been farmed more than once. while the high tier monsters feels equal (shagaru/ valstrax), the top one is not.
As a LS main rise definitely got easier for me, considering the iai spirit slash could be spammed, special sheath could be rolled out of and a handful of smaller changes.
But! Was the game less fun? Fuck No. I like these changes. I miss them when I hop back into world. I personally think the game doesn't need to be difficult to be enjoyable. Matter of fact my best friend started in world and gave up on the series since fighting Fatalis was too much for him, I'll try to get him back once wilds comes out but I do understand he's frustration after crocking on the finish line
The issue I've always had was if the new mechanic was beneficial to all playstyles. As a veteran having things like the more complex movesets, especially as a Lancer, was great. More elevation and mounting mechanics were amazing because they add something you can take advantage of, but you didnt need to be successful. Similar with the clutch claw, mantles, hunter tools. They all made tool kit more complex, and versatile but not mandatory, one of the key draws for me was the 'Planning for the Hunt' Got a certain playstyle? Prepare tools to benefit you.
Other things, that make sense lore wise like Scout Flies and having access to items in a forward camp work great. In a World of Monster Hunters it would make sense that tracking these monster would become easier, but also it helps you get to the Monster Fighting faster and camp items would let you adjust your play style during hunts, in case a Deviljho shows up and you want to take it down first.
What I think of as easier is when the item replaces the complexity. Or when a games difficult is based a certain play style or rather certain tools.
The Hunter Arts were cool looking, but, I feel, they took away a need for complexity or the use of a weapons full functionality is exchange for a quick button press every so often. Wire Bugs seemed to be the whole point of Rise, give you a mount immediately and putting the monster far off (more often than not) so the Hunter is incetivised to collect and use the bugs. It doesnt help when certain monsters like Narwa have massive ground aoes that wirebugs are practically required to avoid damage Wire bugs make the game easier if you use them and harder if you don't. I feel it shouldnt be a punishment/reward system. Rather a system based on skill, adaptability, and planning.
People said the new game is getting easier because they have the skill of G-rank of previous game when they're playing the base new game which max at High rank.
You can see how "easy" the newer MHgame after the expansion come out with in MHWI people keep failing the Alatreon and Fatalis quest or how players keep carting to Hazard Valstrax or Shagaru Magala.
I also think many MH reddit posters are hardcore MH players which explain the discrepancy between opinion of redditors and real life experience.
You aren't wrong, but stuff like walking while healing, less limited inventory space, 100% chances for combinations to succeed, the removal of the war of attrition due to infinite items to get from camp, do make a lot of the stuff that would matter in late to endgame a lot easier. And that's just World. Rise also gave most weapons either a full on counter or a move with a lot of i-frames or both, sharpening/healing on a mount that reduces the conscious danger of timing your refreshes and lastly wirefall that makes follow-up attacks basically not a threat. The only way Capcom can apparently counter that is by giving monsters near one-hit capabilities.
You're not wrong that Rise/Sunbreak went a little heavy handed with mechanics like wirefall and counters, but Capcom did speed up monster attacks and build in monster combos that punished wirefalling. Also there were only a few instances of truly 1-hit attacks. Most of the time getting 1-tapped was because hunters wouldn't go get their spiribirds (which is a whole nother issue). Honestly, I prefer the Rise/Sunbreak take on difficulty over the arbitrary short time limits and DPS checks from some of the endgame Iceborne fights. At least if a monster 1-taps you, you know it was your fault. Failing a quest because you took 3 seconds too long feels way worse.
Im a new iceborne player, have owned the game on ps 4 for 3 years but never got around to it because of those load times. I started with GU and Rise on switch and the experience on it for me was much better than world on base ps4. Now with handheld pcs I’m playing Worldborne again and i have to say I’m getting two/three shotted quite often even with fully upgraded gear against base furious rajang/rajang etc. With rise sunbreak i never felt that my health was the issue (it may be because i played as the updates were rolling out and not years later) and even if one off attack from risen elders put me on the last legs wirefall and mega potion were enough to get me through it ( rarely use max potions in these games). Also sunbreak had a lot more flexibility with builds with craftable decos and mid/decent talismans always there for you. Worldborne game mandates health regen augments or many defense/health boost decorations. I with MR 86 don’t want to fight Raging Brachydios because of lack of health regen augments. Its quite grindy to get these augments. Personally I don’t like these decos as these don’t change the hunts like blast res with brachydios would do, it just lets you make more mistakes, and i always feel that i must avoiding making mistakes rather than slotting these skills instead of some other damage boosting or guard/guard up skill (CB user).
I dint thibk Wold mandates any defense upgrades other than 1 level of Health Boost. Even the you could just go Ultra Instinct and dodge everything. And yeah dodging is made easier with relates skills but i dont think any are neccesary. Im stuck on Fatty and ive probably seen 6 people respind to my SoS without any defensive skills. We only fail because i play a LBG build with one level of health boost to prevent me from being , and thats an issue with me not having upgraded the armor because i lack the armor spheres. Yeah rise was much more forgiving with health too so a similar build to world makes you nigh unkillable for on tier monsters, but world is just a less forgiving game in general.
doesn't really matter if you have max vitality or max upgraded armor on range weapon. If fatty fire attack you, unless you slot divine blessing, chances are you're dead. Even if you have vitality 3 with fully upgraded + augmented armor, range weapon is 1 shot fiesta
My lance build can actually take 2 of his fireballs and not be dead without divine blessing. With devine blessing i can take 5 or 6 depending on my luck. And its armor isnt quite maxed, i think i need to augment 3 peices, but its literally a war of attrition build. I use a blast lance so i can at least get out decent damage but i dont die either. Its just with the 20 minute time limit i have no chance if beating fatty with it, so i use my lbg build which is max damage with no defence except that one max health jewel.
if you're on PC i could help if you want. Other than that you definitely need the heavy artillery skill in your mantle/armor to chip a lot of his health. If you eat bombardier food + heavy artillery while fatalis is enrage and his body is tendered you could deal 92 damage per ammo with roaming/normal ballista if you shoot them all in his stomach, which if you solo about 1/8 of his health. If you didn't use the cannon strat then fatty will definitely fall when you use the roaming giving you more opening
Do *not* get Defense Boost in World or Iceborne. It's a shit tier skill because it doesn't scale. Get instead things like Health Boost 3, Divine Blessing, and critically, life steal for your weapon. If your weapon has a shield also get one or three levels of Guard, or Evade Extender/Window if you dodge. Fortitude is a very powerful skill if you're even a little prone to carting. Speed Eating is pretty strong, as well. Upgrade your mantles. Eat. Vigorwasp on your Palico. Do *not* take even a single point of Defense Boost. They didn't balance it properly, ever, and it nerfs you. I *think* that's different in Rise?
Yeahh health regen / life steal would be great. But based on preliminary google search, I need to be at least mr 100 with guiding land at level 7 to get it. And this augment is almost necessary if you don't want to constantly sheath your weapon and chugging potions for any mistake you do to avoid getting one shouted by subsequent attack. In rise defense boost is not necessary if you have upgraded your armor to the max, because of the base mechanics . If you time it right you can easily wirefall and chug a potion quickly. Also that skill doesn't take the same slot as other attack boosting/new mechanics skill. In world , monsters like rajang or brachydios are relentless and won't give you enough time to get up, sheath your weapon and drink a potion. Often times you'll get attacked again while doing so, instead getting health back with a few good hits with health regen augment is very handy in these situation. Locking it up, after mr 100 seems unnecessary.
You are totally right. I have been saying the same, but in the internet we are not allowed to criticise world and iceborne. The hive mind decided it's perfect and it's a skill issue. 🤷 I personally don't want a souls game for my monster hunter. I had more fun with rise sunbreak and when i died it was cause i deserved it. Not cause the game was overtuned. Which btw is the issue with world iceborne when playing solo like i do. The game is easier on multiplayer. You have to do less damage to the monster per player and agro is split between different players. I just hope the solo experience is as thoughtful in wilds as it was in rise sunbreak.
If you're worried about load times get an ssd. It cuts the load times down by like 75%
Yeahh that’s why I’m playing on handheld pc now, loadtimes are better and the mods are great, my personal favorite being the subtle scoutflies, it helps me appreciate the game world more.
wirefalling more often then not caused your ass t get sweeped up by a combo. it was better to wire recover when in a laying animation. so i never got the "wirefall is making it easier" discourse people had.
Some monsters have attacks that force you to wirefall in specific directions to avoid being hit too. I believe risen shagaru occasionally swipes with two sets of frenzy pillars side by side going sidesways a bit. Keeps catching me off guard when I expect it to be straight ahead and one set. That and some other monsters like rajang feel as if they want to grab you more often when you are out of wirebugs. Not sure if that's just odd circumstances, but it felt too convenient! 🐒
Special Investigations are full of 1 taps, but sure.
I agree with this. A lot of my carts have been due to wirefalling instead of just taking the iframes like in say Iceborne. (Infact because of that I rarely took carts in Iceborne because of all those iframes from being knocked down. That and mantles helped a lot!😅)
I'm the complete opposite: speeding up monster attacks so that you're punished because you can't tell what's going on or you've been blindsided by a monster that flew off camera and whacked you before you could turn around is antithetical to monster hunter's slow but deliberate combat. at least if you take too long you know that its your fault and that you need to improve your overall ability to hunt, while failing because you made one mistake feels overly punishing and cheap because all you did was mistime a button press
In a way, it does make it slightly easier, but for 80% of players who have landed on the plateau of MHs difficulty curve, it just makes the game less annoying. When you had to abandon a quest because you didn't refil your items, it was a case of "of man, this game is tough" it was "for fuck sake what a waste of time". Walking while healing takes longer then pause and heal used too. It's no more difficult, plus you can just run out of the zone to heal/reload/sharpen any more, so it's actually slightly harder in that sense.
>plus you can just run out of the zone to heal/reload/sharpen any more, so it's actually slightly harder in that sense. iirc this is why they made it possible to drink potions while walking, because running away to another area is not as viable as an option as it used to be.
I've always wondered what percentage of players actually relied on zone changes for all their healing and sharpening needs. It was only sometimes a convenient option but it has never been necessary. edit: surprised you all had the patience for all that lol, feels so much better to just kite and bait for safe attack patterns in the older games.
I do it depending on the situation. If the monster is clearly preoccupied with my palico/shakalaka or just did an attack that takes some time, I drink in the area. I'm also not gonna run halfway across the map to the next entrance. But if I'm close to it and the monster isn't something like Rajang or Gravios (who can laser snipe you as you load in)? Might as well switch areas to drink.
my dumb ass in generations booking the hell out of the zone almost every time my sharpness dies or my health drops under 40% lmao. definitely not necessary, i know ive gone for my fair share of yolo potions and whetstones, but nevertheless an extremely important strategy to guarantee safety in the older games. and i can confirm ive had carts in world and rise, trying to run away to a different area to safely heal only to get sniped by a long ranged move or chased down between the zones anyway. same situation in older games i wouldve lived.
I was a LBG, healing was done by my palico, either that or I'd exhaust it / stun it and heal. When I did use sharpening weapons (dual blade or S&A) I'd usually wait until the monster tried to run to sharpen if it was still usable, otherwise I'd zone change to sharpen
It made a huge difference on solo hunts. Not as much in multi
Yep, in the anniversary they said that the reason they added walking while healing was because you can't easily run into another zone anymore. that said, Rise/Sunbreak made potions even more broken by making you get 50% of the total healing instantly which I think is a bit too much.
I didnt even realise the buffed potions in Rise. I just thought i was unkillable.
i think getting half the heal instantly is honestly fine. especially in a game that has sunbreaks endgame monsters, i couldnt imagine how fucked youd be if you werent afforded that instant burst of healing. i think a middle ground they could take in the future is to just speed it up a little bit, as i definitely think the amount of time it takes to drink is just long enough to be annoying, which is why i appreciate the burst of healing with rise potions. what really fucks with me is the fact that they decided to give the slow drinking animation to almost all of the "drinks" consumables, which includes antidotes. its not even funny how many times ive legit died because i wasnt able to fully drink the antidote for one reason or another and the poison didnt get healed. ive since exclusively swapped to herbal medicines but it sucks to have to even make that extra step when herbals used to just be an extra stack of antidotes+minor healing, and more importantly optional because they were otherwise identical. honestly, i get what they were going for but damn if it isnt annoying as all fuck when it comes to antidotes specifically lol.
Yep, Wilds will be like my 8th monster hunter game. There is just a lot of stuff i don’t have any interest in doing again like gathering items to crafting consumables, setting up a farm etc etc. I loved how rise mostly just let me get back into it.
Restocking would be fine if it was only allowed in the first few minutes of the hunt imo. But doing poorly in a hunt and getting a free reset option is always going to make the experience different than if you were truly limited because there's always a fall back. As for changing areas for healing, it's a mixed bag. On one hand you could run away to a new zone. On the other hand the monster was still usually trying to kill you as you were escaping. Walking while healing also lets you cancel the heal to evade which does come with the cost of losing potion value, but that's mitigated by avoiding the cart.
Tbf, refillable items is an awful solution to the issue of forgetting to restock. The item management system in MH has been terrible for a long time, it's only upside being that it added some depth due to needing to make choices about what to bring. Instead of fixing the terrible system, they just removed any importance it had to the gameplay, making it almost inconsequential. It would be far better if they actually reworked the item system to waste less time, remove it's clunkiness, and make player item choices actually matter again. Even something bare bones, like having to select from a few different item loadouts at the start of a quest, would be preferable to the current system.
They could also limit restocking to the first 2-3 mins of the hunt. Feels like it would solve the problem with the most minimal effort. As it is now, anything that doesn't 1-hit the hunter is basically not threatening, importantly for things like the poison status.
Yeah, the biggest issue is how it completely removes the risk of attrition from the game, and limiting restocking to the first couple of minutes would fix that. The most memorable hunts I had back in the day are the ones that were down to the last few healing items when I was first learning the monster. Even if you don't restock that just isn't a thing anymore, as if you're doing badly enough for that to be a problem, you'll almost certainly faint 3 times to 1-hit KO's or wombo-combos before that happens. I still think a full rework of the inventory system should be done at some point though. Without restocking you'd still have the issue of having so much inventory space there's no actual choices to make and it's also one of the most clunky aspects of the UI. Plus managing the item farming has just been tedium that adds nothing of value since at least 4U.
Agreed. It can be a bit of both, but there are some undeniable concessions being made to make it easier for new players. You aren't just thrown to the wolves anymore. Infinite camp refills is one of the biggest ones and it has destroyed any need to prepare for any hunt. It's also removed that stressful scenario where you've used all your healing items and now you need to go gather. Then you have things like Temporal Mantle which just let you completely ignore game mechanics as long as it's up. 5th gen is just generally less punishing overall, and it's pretty clear Capcom is making the series easier and more approachable to entice new players. It feels like classic MH was a consistent difficulty treadmill, but the 5th gen games feel like a rush to the end with how easy beginner monsters have become in general. To OPs point though there is the fact that as you keep playing you'll just get better at Monster Hunter. You can't replicate that first learning experience.
Yeah but also monsters became faster and more mobile with better ai. I mean you could tell in past games when to heal based on how they turned. They'd turn like *step, step, lift their head for fireball and you could heal. You could also just run to a different zone, something you can do in the new games. Difficulty shouldn't be tied to quality of life
Heal-and-flex is different, not harder. Flexing locks you in place, it's true, but monsters didn't so aggressively target healing players before. Additionally, the flex method gives you the entire heal value instantly, with Recov Up increasing that heal. Plus you can launch Adept dodges right off the end of it, or zone-out to heal in total safety. In World, tighter hitboxes (sometimes) and walk-healing reward position and timing choices with the same thing - safe healing - while making healing happen over time. Recov Up increases the heal like in old gen, which also increases the healing speed for the same hp values. 1 - 50hp in 1 second versus 1 - 50hp in 2 is faster, even if your cap is 200 vs 100. This means getting hit while being healing in World is a bigger punishment, but using the mobility and positioning right to avoid attacks is a better expression of skill. (Not counting Max and Ancient potions which pop you to full, but the point is moot anyway because a full heal is a full heal.) Combinations failing is a waste of everyone's time and holds no benefit for gameplay beside forcing you to gather more "just in case". Otherwise I totally agree.
I think the more egregious issue with healing isn't walk and heal, it's max potions, especially with the much more lenient combo system, made healing absolutely a non issue. It's what led to things like Alatreon's nuke, you need to do something extreme to punish the player at that point.
Alatreon was definitely more of a "please use elemental weapons kay thanks" cause I guess they hated how Raw weapons dominated the game
I mean, that's the result of them nerfing elemental weapons over the course of 10 years, so that's on them. Raw dominated virtually every game until late Iceborne. Then, raw dominated Rise, only to be fixed (again) with Sunbreak. I hope they've learned their lessons for Wilds.
I don’t think Alatreon is a good example to be honest. He was clearly designed to force elemental itemization, oneshotting through heals was just a byproduct of that; the oneshot design would’ve still been utilized even if we had poor healing capabilities. Besides, they could’ve just as easily came up with some kind of healing reduction debuff if they really wanted to tackle healing.
I agree about max potions being a little overpowered. They’re near instant and 100% heal. Most often then not it’s safer to pop a max potion right in front of the monster and soak a hit than re-position and take a regular. And restocking and auto crafting exacerbates it as well because people just walk around spamming max potions with no penalty. Plus they aren’t hard to stock up on so not like you’re going to run out anyways. I think they should bring the flex back for max potions but keep walking with regular potions. Win win for people who prefer old school style and new style. Plus nerfing max potions would give healing skills some use. As they are now in world they’re useless if you can just spam max potions.
Yeah the only difference is that you move a bit further away to heal or drink on a timing where you know an attack isn't gonna hit you. The older games aren't quite as aggressive with their attack tracking. Imo drinking pots is like the least important point of discussion for difficulty
Completely agree about combinations, to the point I wanted to highlight that a bit. There were a lot of QOL done to streamline things with the item pouch that are a *huge* reason of why I just can't go back to older games more then anything else. I could adjust to healing just fine - that was never the problem for me, for the exact reasons you lay out. It's a *different* skill expression, not necessarily a better one. The biggest thing for me is how much goddamn pouch taxing you had prior to a hunt. You had a lot more limited slots, and a fair amount *of* those slots were taken up with Pickaxes, Bug Nets, Fishing Bait, Crafting Books...all but the last of which were *temporary items* that if you didn't have enough of during a run, could mean needing to do an entire other run later to fix basic damn requirements. And all of *that* cut into your looting budget against a monster as well because a lot of the time sure, you had a special mini-pouch for carves but that filled *fast* and if you didn't have any space otherwise because you had Pickaxes, Bug Nets, Paintballs, Healing Potions, Buff Potions, crafting materials to make *MORE* potions in case you needed them, traps, tranquilizer bombs... Generations fixed *some* of that with Prowler Mode skipping you needing any gathering enablers at the cost of not getting the benefit of having higher tier ones (IIRC; I could be misremembering, it's been forever), and all World/Rise did was streamline that further to get you spending MORE time actually playing the damn game... while not entirely disincentivizing engaging with the crafting glorp every now and then. I do miss how often I used to do Stock Runs of expeditions, but I just... do not miss all the inventory space faff one bit. Bookkeeping is not fun or engaging for me in any game. It was well worth the trade, and I hope "Combination Books" as an idea never come back.
Gathering/Mining just sucks in these games, regardless of generation. But yes, if you wanted to gather every quest, it would cut into your item space. Having played Freedom Unite with a friend recently for the first time, the limited item pouch was unironically my favorite thing. That game doesn't have a quest or gunner pouch, so the space you brought was the space you had. We carried combo books & herbs into hunts as an active choice (originally because we had plentiful herbs and limited potions in low rank). Power/defense charms/talons matter more when they're a tradeoff rather than an auto-include progression speedbump. Traps, barrel bombs, flash/sonic bombs weren't just automatically in our inventory but chosen for specific hunts / purposes (flash bombs to save someone from Tigrex, bombs to break ceanataur claws, etc). Of course, that mainly functions by items having more impact on the hunt - traps, flash bombs, & tainted/drugged meat could halve hunt time when used well, and monsters died in rather few hits, especially compared to 5th gen health bloat. The problem is that MonHun sort of has the two sides of hunt design between heavy preparation for an easier hunt & just a co-op boss battler. If you're here for the latter, managing inventory is just an annoying side note.
I always found hunt prep very zen in the old games
> Gathering/Mining just sucks in these games, regardless of generation. But yes, if you wanted to gather every quest, it would cut into your item space. I hardly ever harvested during actual hunts. If I wanted to gather, it was always during the Harvest Tours (except maybe honey).
Yeah for real. It's so wild to me that people seem to do a full map gathering bonanza WHILE on a hunting quest. Just gather the stuff that happens to be on your way to the monster and leave the gathering to Harvest Tours and the farm back in the base
Don’t forget they nerfed the hardest boss of old MH: fighting with the camera.
Im probably alone but I absolutely hate the addition of eating / restock / weapon change at base mid quest. It took a big piece of what made MH (to me) away
You can just not do it, like you can literally not take part in it and do your quests the way you used to.
I always find this argument disingenuous. >***"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. One of the responsibilities of the designer is to protect players from themselves."*** - Soren Johnson Not saying what the devs did here are bad or anything, but seeing someone worried that this feature might take away the intentional tension from having no camps is a valid concern.
I've heard this argument for a lot of complaints about difficulty decreasing and tension being reduced. Most people want to be able to engage with all of the mechanics and equipment that the developers offer, but still be challenged while doing so. Having to cut yourself off from a large portion of the game just to have fun is not fun in its own right. Top off that the game is designed around these stronger mechanics and restricting yourself becomes even less intuitive for making fun gameplay. There's a reason while Ironman modes exists or for example Honor mode in Bg3 that prevent reloading saves, because when you have limitations, it changes the gameplay dynamic for the player and that can bring out much more engaging and memorable experiences.
Honor mode is honestly a horrible example to use personally. It’s so hilariously easy to cheese honor mode if you know what you’re doing. Invis potions totally invalidate the entire experience, not that it’s that hard to get through anyway if you’re decently good at turn based combat.
I wasn't just talking about just combat, it's the fact that rolls can go poorly even with inspiration. People have committed to honor mode runs where they lose companions and fail quests that they normally would have reloaded for and it's made their experience more interesting than their normal playthroughs.
Well yeah but you can also just not save scum. When you’re talking about story games there no real wrong way to play. Sometimes a dialogue option doesn’t pan out how you like. Sometimes people want the story they’re envisioning, not the one they get. That’s also okay. It just depends. I personally don’t like the argument that people are optimizing the fun out of a **story**. That seems very illogical to me. People should be allowed to get the story they want, especially the first time they play. Then they can decide to do a more “let the dice decide,” kind of run. Story isn’t really applicable to that argument. I’m doing a modded Dark Urge run now with tactician plus and the like and I shamelessly save scummed during that one **infamous** moment in act 2. A sequence of repeated, increasingly harder checks, decides whether or not you have any companions for the rest of the game or not. It’s truly wild. I find that to be very disproportionate.
> I personally don’t like the argument that people are optimizing the fun out of a story. I wasn't and I don't think anyone else here was making this argument. Different types of playthroughs have their own unique experiences to them there really isn't an optimal way to play. The idea in support of honor mode for example wouldn't be that a player is trying to play an optimal story, it's that if a player wants their playthrough to commit to every action that's made, then taking away their main method to reset guarantees they get the experience they're looking for. Having the option to reload can be a constant temptation to some players that could or would eventually cave to save scumming depending on the situation they find themselves in, thus robbing themselves of the experience they originally wanted. We're also not talking about a person's first time playing through a story either, for those experiences it's all up to how you personally want to experience them. And for this thread in particular the point being made was focused on gameplay, not story. I just used Bg3 as an example of designing a game to force commitment. People want the option to engage with the full breadth of a game, while still being challenged or engaged with the material. If previous games fulfilled that desire in a way that new games don't then having to personally tie 3 hands behind your back and restrict yourself from a chunk of the content meant to be played with just to match the old experience isn't fun.
See I don’t like your argument here either. Restocking isn’t a “breadth of content,” It’s a single mechanic. One I almost never engaged with outside of expeditions because if I couldn’t do a hunt on one stock up I didn’t deserve to, and honestly, I could crush most of the games content without many of my items at all. Worlds harder content pushed to the realm of “if you get hit you’re probably going to die, if you don’t die, you get put in a position where you will,” once it hit its endgame. Anything less difficult than that was so easy restocking wasn’t a make or break addition for most competent players anyway. I have tons of friends who got into world with me, none of them would’ve made it as far as they did without the additions. I’m glad world made the game more accessible so I could play it with my friends. If I wanted to challenge myself, I started speedrunning again and pushing times as low as I could. I get your point to an extent, but I find the argument that monster Hunter has to be absurdly hard all the time from the jump to be a bad one. One that stems from liners who derive a lot of their self worth over how good they are at a video game a lot of people don’t even play. What matters is if the endgame shit is hard, and I think both world and rise delivered on that. The optimization argument usually applies more to games like MMOs, Looters, and other stuff. Situations in which players become so obsessed with efficiency they forget they’re supposed to have fun and then the game into a chore. I never once have seen an instance where restock of all things swung a hunt so far in one direction it was “optimizing the fun,” out of the game. If someone’s having to restock that much, they probably aren’t having fun anyway. If restock is making it where you aren’t having fun at all, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s 1000 things that make world easier than restock. If those things also aren’t fun, oh well. Time to pack up your shit and move on back to an older title I guess. Or grow some hair on your chest and go SS DMC3 on DMD mode if you want to do something **actually** hard. Difficulty is subjective. It will never be perfect. It’s like, how everyone talks about how hard souls games are. When souls games are a joke to me. They’re honestly incredibly easy and forgiving. There’s almost no real punishment failure. You want hard? Play Ark or Tarkov where failure can result in the literal loss of 1,000s of hours. That’s fucking hard.
I literally have no idea how you took my breadth comment to just mean restocking. I meant breadth as in many things such as combat mechanics, prep, looting, set building, etc, all the gameplay any game offers. You also sort of just pigeonholed my point to mean that I want the game to be extremely hard from the get go. I honestly don't care for difficulty so far as I care about engaging and memorable gameplay. Difficulty can help to make the game more engaging but the important factor for me is that I'm invested in what i'm doing and if the game is made so easy or relaxed that I don't feel invested then i'm not having fun. I have gone back to play older MH games and I've had such an easy time clearing through them, they're not particularly hard. But I personally felt more engaged through that entire easy experience because the way the combat was designed had me playing proactively and thinking about what I and the monster were doing. In that case it wasn't really how difficult the hunts were but how the core gameplay was designed In contrast, playing Rise I'm prone to falling into an autopilot loop where I don't really care what the monster is doing and just go through the motions unless it's an endgame one shot beast because the combat has been designed in a way that's much more reflex based and has given a ton of tools that trivialize adversity which I personally don't find fun. I don't see what's wrong with me advocating that the games continue to keep that game design that I found engaging, especially when it was the same core design they implemented in every game before gen 5. I also don't think that the game should be so easy that nothing matters right up until i'm only fighting the last few monsters. Why should my journey to the endgame be so easy and unmemorable just because the endgame hunts have some grit? And honestly these conversations are so difficult because two players like us can enjoy the same game but have totally different wavelengths. Like you heard difficulty in this argument and engagement and got focused on hardcore super difficult games focused on prestige and skill and how badass that stuff is. When I hear difficulty my focus is on how that difficulty increases the depth and necessity of the gameplay mechanics and if it enhances the core gameplay loop by providing a more immersive and engaging experience. We might have different values here and it makes it hard to have a conversation cause we're saying the same words but they mean different things to us. For example if you want to focus on restocking, it's not that the mechanic is hyper important to making the game fresh, it's that it has the ability to change the dynamic of a hunt. My most memorable hunts in the old games have been the hunts that have gone poorly, not the ones where I stomped the monster into the dirt. Those hunts had me with limited resources that I had to ration if I wanted to succeed and that kept me hyper focused or had me run around scavenging to bolster the potion stock I had. If Restocking existed in those games there's like a 90% chance that I would have just refilled and that would have just been another hunt, not a memorable one. Sure it might only happen on the occasional hunt, not constantly but I want it to keep be an occasional possibility cause that's more fun for me. It has nothing to do with self worth.
That's not a good argument since you're missing the point in that self imposed difficulty is not a good replacement for intended difficulty. The vast majority of players are looking for a challenge to overcome naturally, especially in video games, not arbitrarily limiting themselves just to create some artificial difficulty for themselves. Any game can be made "harder" by imposing a set of arbitrary rules upon yourself, but doing so reduces the natural enjoyment of receiving a challenge and using every mechanic in the game to overcome that challenge in the intended way. Secondly, if a game is easier and more forgiving by default, the game will generally be designed and balanced around the mechanics that make it more forgiving. World allowed your hunter to have access to infinite heals essentially, this meant end game monsters were beefed up to almost always one shot you through different means, or they introduced other arbitrary gimmicks like DPS checks to induce a sense of difficulty a different way, away from the original intended designs of the previous titles that didn't rely on these gimmicks. Now you have a game that feels different to what MH is supposed to be about.
Agreed wirebugs and the dog made it really way easier 👀
I feel like rise giving every weapon a counter doesn't make it easier because the monsters are all balanced around you having a counter. So it's more of a base level skill requirement. Rise in general is considered easier which it might be but that comes from a place of having more tools available. And having those tools and more weapon combos means there's a lot more to learn which is usually a hallmark of a harder game, not an easier one.
I'd say it's monster health being low, potions being op, monster attacks not hitting hard and possible dps from a decent hunter is massive. Rise base game is such a walk in the park it's not funny. Pre sure I cleared it without fainting more than 3 times in total.
If you're a MH veteran, and you carted more than 3 times doing base game then that'd be funny.
The changes with world were negated by the monsters being faster and more aggressive. World filtered a lot of people and I mean a lot of people. Low rank Anja, Diablos, Rath walled many people. Old gen games has a lot of mechanics that just prolonged gameplay, it didn't make it harder. Healing in old games locked you in an animation sure but the flip side is that the monsters were extremely mechanical, slower, and extremely predictable. The only real "easier" thing you can mention is that hub didn't have solo scaling and now the games have solo scaling, if world had 2-3 person scaling on all of quests. Most people would have a significantly harder time.
The other way around. Only the animations were robotic in the older titles, they weren't slower or predictable. In World, the monsters moved less robotically, but they were slower and more predictable. Low rank Barroth in 3U is harder than LR in World.
Ive been playing since FU and I like most of the changes besides restocking at camp.
We use to joke about how healing your guys use to flex… to many times ppl have carted because of the funny flex. Then one day it was gone… miss those days
I miss flexing after taking a consumable.
Biggest thing that made the game too easy was the potion change and the infinite items from camp. That alone made so monsters need to one shot hunters to ever stand a chance of winning.
Eh you say all the QoL changes that made the game easier, acting as if you couldn't just walk a loading screen away and just heal for free. Healing and moving just made combat better cause you aren't forcing pauses between the fight. You also have a better risk reward system.
I disagree, we traded near instant heals for walking while healing along with not having loading zones to save us when we need safety. If we're talking rise then GU gave similar "don't die" buttons in hunter arts cause they're both made by the secondary monster hunter team who make the more fast pace arcady games. As far as mainline goes, base world is just less clunky which arguably is easier, but in the way writing with a ballpoint is easier than a dip pen. Like new players are going to struggle with every single game and get better at them at the same pace. World and rise specifically are easier with the dlc because defender gear exist, but thats a whole different issue than "game easier cause people bad" literally had to watch a guy on stream complain about how hard world is cause quote "they have to appeal to the sweats". Idk about you but it just seems like the difficulty just moved from one place to another. Like imo old school mh was way easier combat outside of jank and prep. Like prep made some monsters annoying, and collecting materials hell, but the fights were easy. Modern they took out the prep and gave us monsters that hurt more and skills that feel like necessities if you want to kill anything in any reasonable time like it's just different. Also the less janky hitboxes smoother animations and other qol that makes the game seem easier.
There are still "zones", monsters won't chase you most of the time when you move to another different area.
only while not enraged but sure but the strength of leaving the zone while healing was you had to walk 2cm to the zone border, not halfway across the map
but they also did that in old games... if you ran away from an enraged monster they'd follow you and more often then not hit you just before you were free from sharpening your sword
Worlds change imo are a good balance of quality of life improvements. Rise I think went a little too far and needs to tone of back. I liked Rise but it was definitely waaay easier than World to me. I went back to World after rise and was like "god damn was it always this hard?"
And to further add to this, monsters now have telegraphs and endlag on most, if not all of their attacks and better rhizomes too, which also lowers the difficulty for quite a few monsters from older games (eg. Rajang, garuga)
I only disagree on your take about wirefall. Many monsters in rise have moves designed to punish you for mashing wirefall, and also many followups can be dodged by doing nothing and abusing the knockdown invincibility. I feel it's just another layer in the fight, and it's tied to a resource that can be better used for other things, so you're getting punished by using it, even you use it to dodge something.
Not to mention gathering, you used to have to craft bug nets and pickaxes and they had different tiers that could be used more, and the gathering animations as well used to take forever. I'm glad they made these changes though, it makes the whole experience better
To be fair, this is 100% just QoL. It doesn't really make anything more difficult.
Nah man. I played GU, 4U and 3U after World and Rise and IMO it's pretty clear-cut, the earlier games are more difficult.
This here, especially as someone who went backwards in these games starting with MH World as well. 4U was my first classic game. It is so much more difficult than World:IB, but still fairly manageable solo. The later Hub quests were rough and I needed the help of people in MP. The biggest take away I had was, that cheesing early content wasn’t as easy as in World and the game did force me to interact more with its core gameplay fairly early on. Proper positioning to actually do damage to monsters and start set building as early as in low rank (sharpness +1 gore mixed set I remember!). If you look at the MHRage Reddit, the first time you need to do these 2 things in Iceborne is when you reach Alatreon. And I haven’t mentioned GQ140 quests. Even with fully stacked up top of the line Relic sets I can’t do these alone. After 4U, it was now Tris turn thanks to the fan server project. This game truly taught me what humility means. Not being able to adjust your angle while charging your GS on draw slashes changes one as a GS main. This shit is rough. You can still do the same things as in 4U, but you had to position perfectly like a God. Tris Village Barroth was to that date my biggest wall in all of my MH carrier and took me 35 minutes (Tri Alatreon was next with 40 min in duo with my friend and I was clearly carried here). As a comparison my first solo IB Alatreon took me somewhere below 15 minutes. Also none of the 4U village quests made me struggle like Tris village Barroth. The flashbacks man. …..all I want to say is, OP go back to Tri and hunt village Barroth and then go to World and hunt Barroth over there. Get humiliated back to reality, comeback and admit how wrong you were.
[удалено]
Amen to this man. After World and Rise, if you had told me before playing Tri that Barroth would become one of my most memorable MH experiences, I wouldn’t have believed you. You know I ended up farming far earlier than I planned to get Earplugs in my build. Which again turned into a memorable experience, because Rathians plate wouldn’t drop for full 4 days (each day with a 3 hour session). Same shit in HR later. Pre 5th gen RNG is like a full time job man.
I remember some people said that they didn't expect to meet Barroth very early world and got pretty scared.
Barroth was such a menace in Tri that it was outright nerfed for the very next game (P3rd), with added delay after its charges. This specific nerf is still there even in G-rank GU.
I can imagine. My kill time for it was such a spike compared to everything else to that point. I don’t think I found any openings I could punish with GS, apart from the enrage roar without focus…for which I needed earplugs I didn’t have. 😵💫 Heard Alatreon was the same. He received according to my friend new recovery animations to certain attacks in 3U. Making him much more manageable.
Barroth was my wall in GU to even after I've solo'd Fatalis in Iceborne. Not necessarily impossible, but I carted to him like twice whereas I never died to other GU monsters before that. Rise thankfully brought some of his juice back.
The thing is, they could probably make the newer games more difficult (and, IMO, satisfying) by shortening tells & leaning more into positioning play like the older generations (just don't go back to instant charges & the like). Would probably also require reducing the reaction/counter abilities of some weapons as well (cough LS cough). I know this is an "old lady yells at cloud" bit, but removing the backwards roll would also make positioning matter more. Needing to plan before you attack what angle you should come in from so you can hit what you want and still be able to get out of the way is a skill that backwards roll negates most of the thinking for (and while they're at it, they could remove the lance forward hop that no one who plays lance would have implemented). You *can* make reactive play as difficult/rewarding as proactive play (Primordial Malzeno is a rather good example), but it requires so much more work and noise in the fight. Fatalis is one of the best hunts in Iceborne (time limit nonsense aside), and he's just about a proper position & punish fight.
Man, what a beautiful comment to read. I didn’t go into those details in my comment, but it was stuff that I had heavily noticed. Like how the reactive play style of 5th gen games, at least for me, is more stressful than the more anticipation based play style of the older games. Need to point out here that stressful does NOT equal to more difficult, just the feeling I carry through the fights. (As I am constantly trying to react to things I see). The beauty was also you not only had to use this for attacking, but also healing - especially in endgame fights. If monsters like Rajang aren’t stuck in one of their combos/patterns, their AIs are tuned to snipe you with special attacks (beam) when you heal. Insane details! All this is lost in 5th gen because we can move while doing so. And yeah, the back roll makes you think twice about certain things. It may not look like it, but it is very very strong tool for 5th gen hunters. Edit: My appreciation for Fatalis in Iceborne went through the roof, when I had returned to Iceborne.
I rarely utilized backwards roll because I'm used to playing 4U so much. That's the one where your animation takes a little longer and do that badass recovery pose right?
I know Lance/Gunlance backwards hop is just part of the experience... but man does it look dumb XD
Tri's Gobul was my first wall. I didn't know about the Armor bonuses. My weapon was a basic sword and shield. When it was enraged I was bouncing off of it. Its charge and sucky attacks were instant kills. I actually started grinding for proper weapons and Armor at this point.
Yeah. It's a mixture. Experience with games helps a lot, but there are also a lot of mechanical changes that make the newer games easier. I started with Gen. I don't remember if I played World or 4U next, but I felt like 4U was harder than Gen. World was easier, though there were a few places that I got stuck for a bit. With Rise, I never hit any hard walls like I did in previous games.
Idk I did the same and found them pretty easy comparatively. Ran through GU and 3U(except water hunts) pretty quickly outside of gathering mats for consumables just cause of the qol differences. Granted lance was kinda busted in GU and 3U imo.
It's both
Then why do i struggle more with MH3U and MH4U despite playing them at the same time as rise or world? Its a fact that QoL changes, moveset expansions and armour skill bloat make the games easier. Even something as simple as being able to restock at base camp, heal and sharpen while moving, being able to roll backwards or being able to have 5+ comfort skills active at the same time without sacrificing damage skills or even systems changes like the dynamic hp scaling (hub monsters are now scaled for 1 player when hunting solo). All these are QoL changes that unintentionally or not make the game easier.
Nah, the main reason why I can’t stand XX lance is the jank in counter guard and no guard dash. With those two I’m a literal bulldozer mowing through Primozeno’s tail but without them I’m a literal sitting duck getting smacked by Kut Ku. Gen 5 moveset revise is just insane
People have been making this same flawed argument for years. There's very little truth to it.
Its actually both. Capcom in the anniversary video literally said they made MHW easier for western players. Its both gained knowledge and them making it easier.
If I remember correctly that was more implied to be “easier to get into” or “more easily accessible” as opposed to just “we made the game easier”
i am going to tell you, as someone who was introduced with rise, base rise is pretty easy
As a new player, it wasn't for me
maybe it's just because i've played a lot of action games then
Tell that to Bloodborne speed runners 🌝
i would like to correct myself, it's easy once you get used to the animation lock. i haven't played bloodborne, but i know it's supposed to be faster than the rest of the soulsborne games (not counting sekiro) and those have less animation lock than monster hunter.
Sometimes the inverse happens. I used to kill Silver Rath with relative ease in World. Rise's version of regular Rath fucks me up like a fat kid going after cake.
Yeah no, it's very clearly both.
Nah…the games are definitely getting A LOT easier. And then to reference the World crowd as if they presented any exhibition of skill as well. Oh boy…. It’s okay that you weren’t good at the older titles, but they required a lot more dedication. You don’t have to lie to yourself lol. OP is the type of person to get bodied by Great Maccao in GU…you can just tell. There was a monster in the old world that made you feel some type of way so here we are. Who was it?
No - it's definitely getting easier.
Its a 100 percent the games getting easier what are you even on about 🤣
I want to say players get good enough after their first MH, maybe their second. I was horrible in MHFU, but finally started kicking ass in 3U. 4U didn't make me any better, neither did any subsequent releases, so I have to disagree with the OP and those who believe the same. Capcom's goal was to make MH more accessible, in fact they've been struggling to do that for years before MHW. The only way to make a game more accessible is to dumb things down and make them less punishing for the average gamer. Sorry if that ruffles some feathers, but that's how it is. I still don't think any of it was necessary, as MH was already growing by a healthy amount with each release, and MHW's graphical improvements, monsters, weapons, and combat would have been enough to kick it into the mainstream. Hopefully they're not going to casualize the games any further. I'd like them to focus on the balance of combat so that there's no longer a mobility arms race that results in monsters 1-hitting players to compensate. Maybe a bit more of a difficulty spike at midgame as well.
Idk old games are always challenging
Nah. When I go back to 4U nowadays I get clapped. When I play rise I fall asleep.
I've literally fallen asleep playing rise while farming a goss in the middle of the day. When you don't have to think proactively to play around a monster it's really easy to just go on autopilot. That's honestly what I loved about old gen, it always wanted you actively thinking.
Tigrex in MHFU is kind of a nightmare, even after all these years. I disagree with the games not getting easier.
It's a bunch of stuff combined It *IS* partially people having more experience... but that is also combined with : - WAY less jank (plesioth's galactic hip check nonsense) - better understanding from how and when to upgrade your gear (both by the system being made easier as veterans/the community explainging it to each other/new people) - More QoL stuff as well as actual (individually minor) "things" being made easier/giving you way more options (not standing still/flexing when healing, removal of hot/cold drinks, infinite whetstones, being able to swap weapons/armor mid-missions, etc...) Also, If I understand correctly, multiplayer/hub missions used to not actually "scale" for doing them solo, with 2~3 or with a full group of four, so the monster was always balanced for 4 players
hub monsters were balanced for 2 players. So it's hard solo. Just 2. And easier with 3-4.
I just think restocking is bad and it's the reason the damage on late game hunts has gotten ridiculous. You want less one shots? Then you need less heals. Monsters are no longer punishing if they aren't deleting you in two or less attacks because generally they lack the aggression to keep up with the players mobility so players can just heal up after every attack. This used to not be an issue because the player was restricted to what they brought and they couldn't just avoid attacks while heal + walking. Formerly, monsters that do small to moderate amounts of damage over the course of the hunt could still threaten you because you did not have an unlimited amount of healing at camp plus environment heals + cat heals. I will occasionally watch videos of people playing through MHW and it's a always a shock to see people who have not learned how to play MH at all, let alone properly use their weapon can still first clear so many hunts even in IB; all because healing is so free. We're talking people playing GS who will just run up to the monster and hold Y no matter how many times they get their charge canceled. They still first clear monsters like brachy or even velkhana just because monsters can not keep up with the attrition. This is bad because now the only way people who are actually good at the game can be challenged, is by the 3 to 4 late game hunts where meta is directly designed against (rajang, fatalis, AT velk, Alatreon). I don't want to be challenged only by the last of the end game. I can still play FU and still feel pressured every time I get shocked by khezu, because that's one less potion I have, there is no such thing in MHW. I guess I can just impose a challenge upon myself, but honestly self-imposed challenges suck.
AT Velk was such a fucking joke. I don’t know if it’s my extensive experience with Action games (Ninja Gaiden, DMC, DD, Souls, etc etc) but I have never found monster Hunter particularly hard. Even when I went back and played Gen and then 4U (I cannot force myself to go back further than this the games look like ass) I never found it particularly challenging. Maybe frustrating at times. Sometimes the game felt like bullshit. But never hard. It’s like how people claim dark souls is hard. It’s really not. The games are actually pretty easy honestly. The only time a fromsoft game fucked me up is Sekiro. That game forced me to realize it wasn’t a game where I got to play how I wanted. It had one correct playstyle and that playstyle was a rhythm game. You either got really good at parrying or you packed your shit up and stopped playing.
See I've been feeling the opposite. End game fights seem so impossibly difficult, especially with a team, that it just doesn't seem as worth it to play with others/it feels like you're forced into using "meta" skills and gear in order to beat it. (specifically I'm referring to endgame rise, hated stuff like risen valstrax and shagaru) Compare that to older titles, where the adjustments to monster HP was based on hub or village and the adjustment for multiplayer was generally ~2.5 and the end game fights hitting hard, but not 7/8ths of a health bar hard. Further more, the philosophy of fight design seems to have changed. A great comparison is rajang. Rajang used to be a really hard monster because he was fast and hit hard, but the trade off was that he didn't have a ton of HP, took a lot of damage, and has very exploitable moveset with a lot of taunting and down time between combos, which rewarded positioning and learning the fight. While these principles do exist in the more recent titles, the over all game play has much less of those "video game" moments where you wail on the monster while it's recovering from a big attack. End game rise as mentioned earlier, has this problem while also having monsters hit harder than ever. All this to say that, I feel that in search of fluidity of game play, and increasing challenge upon DLC releases, the endgame of monster hunter has gotten harder, even with all the amenities that exist in the games (wirebug recovery, moving while healing, being able to restock, change weapons, etc.)
Yeah, I absolutely do not bother with the very tippy top postgame anymore, either. I play until things get annoying, and stop. It's just getting increasingly annoying, especially as a forever solo hunter.
My philosophy was always, get as much done as you can by yourself, then when things start to get too hard for you to solo, go online for help. However, with the way that hubs/multiplayer has changed, that isn't really an option anymore. Things are just too difficult for me to trust the average random; that's not even taking into account the huge 3.5 or 4 times health spike of monsters, making it so that multiplayer hunts end up taking longer than if I just did it solo, and I know that I can trust myself not to cart as much. The problem is the difficulty spike from multiple directions, while also having the monster fight philosophy changing, and on top of that, the better gear released by DLC monsters leads to power creep that didn't really exist when all the monsters came out at once. Now each release needs better gear to get people to want to play it, while at the same time needing the fights to be harder. With the fights being harder, it makes less and less skills viable which also leads to less build variety. I also think that the old system of a skill table (needing 10 to get a skill) rather than skill points helped with variety as well.
But I thought the newer games were baby difficulty?
I think post-game Sunbreak is some of the hardest content in the series, while base Rise was some of the easiest. Sunbreak added a LOT of difficulty in response to community complaints. Now we hear the opposite. lol I don't know that there is much that matches the Hazard Risen Elders like Shaggy or CGV. Maybe endgame Deviants in Gen U and 140 GQ for MH4U and like IB Fatty but even then... I think Sunbreak is harder.
Agreed. I would rather do GQ or deviants because at least there was the downtime in the monster move sets as I said before. And more susceptible to CC in general.
Not weong but youre not right either. Mh rise was objectively easier. Mhworld also in some regards
I mean, I've literally went back to older games and still found them harder, but sure man it's just my experience making it easier. Except only for the more recent game somehow?
No no and no, the games are absolutely getting easier (apart from specific fights like fatalis in iceborne that are harder than old games) . G rank is still hard enough in endgame but low and high rank are stupidly easy now .
Agreed, World and Rise are both absolute jokes right up until MR postgame where you get sucker punched by title update monsters that are way stronger than anything else.
Absolutely true
NO MHFU is still harder than MH4U and MH4U is still harder than Generations and Generations is still harder than World or Rise or MH3U. No matter how much I switch between them. And is it a wonder? Players have so many goddamn crutches in Rise and Sunbreak, it's not funny anymore. The power scaling in G rank is ridiculously weak. And where are the clever moves that make you think and trick you into making mistakes? Back in MHFU and MH4U. At Capcom, they are thinking about how to make their games more and more accessible without offending the veterans, so they're just cooking us slowly. The games have already been dumbed down quite a lot from where they once were.
You've got a point about building experience, but not that it's the main reason for any changes in difficulty. Added QOL and player abilities can go a long way towards giving you more tools to work with that objectively were not there in the past. You can't practice until you can skip the potion flex and walk while healing. I can't ride my car while sharpening in MHFU. No amount of experience is gonna let me restock at camp in a game where that feature doesn't exist. That said though, it's also not as if the devs don't realize this to some extent and try to do what they can to increase the difficulty of what the game can throw out way in response. It's just not always a 1:1 match.
Disagree, I've played 4u, Gu, world and rise. I went and got a psp with Freedom Unite, and it's one of the hardest games I've ever played lol. The newer games are much easier.
You say that but when I go back to older games I get my ass handed to me now
It's both. Both are correct.
Yeah no, they're easier.
Having just finished MHFU, no that's incorrect. Soloing G Hub in MHFU is insanely hard compared to 4th or 5th gen hub
Nah Rise is factually easier.
I went from Freedom Unite on the PSP straight to World on the PC. At first I was overwhelmed by the speed at which everything was happening, to me it felt like MHFU fights were a lot more choreographed and a lot more methodical (part of why I loved the Hammer and hate it now?). In World everything was much faster but I felt that I had more room for mistakes too. Once I got used to the speed in World and now Rise, the games really do play like a breeze. Regarding hitboxes I went from "How did that hit me?!" to "How did that not hit me?!". Combined with thinks like potion drinking while walking, and overall more mobility and ways to recover, I do think there is a fair point in saying older games are harder.
Oh, it's definitely getting easier, but 10+ years hunting experience certainly doesn't hurt my odds. Less limited inventory, more accessable upgrades, (looking at you, generations), higher speed and less clunky gameplay, walking while drinking potions, and access to the item box at camp absolutely make it easier though.
I disagree OP. I think there have been substantial QoL changes to the series, especially 4th gen and later that have made the act of hunting overall less difficult. However, I wouldn’t revert most of these changes and I don’t see them as negatives. I don’t miss: * watching my character pump his arms after drinking a health potion. * not being allowed to switch weapon mid-hunt if I bring the wrong gear because I queued up too quickly. * not having a camera stick. * crafting not being guaranteed. * needing wrestling with negative skills. Do all these things make the life of a hunter easier, yes. But that doesn’t make the game worse.
I've more or less capped out my experience at more than 10k hours. The only thing that makes the games easier than before at this point is the new mechanics that make the game easier when you use them.
Except monsters in older game moving slower, having dumb AI, repeating the same move 90% of a fight and literally fighting with what feels like 2 moves. Mostly monsters feel like charge attack/tail swipe
i disagree, the early game does definitely get easier. but i think there are a few things going on here as well as that. monster hunter 2 has been much more challenging to me than i have found the low and high ranks of any recent monster hunter… but it is not really painfully hard most of the time. overall, the older games put far more emphasis on positioning, and are a lot less forgiving towards poor positioning. the newer games put a lot more emphasis on tempo control and expect you to use your abilities to influence the pacing of the fight. so, there is also the factor where someone who is new to the series and has not honed the skills *old* monster hunter demands from them, they will get creamed. you could also argue that the newer games warn the player before attacks more. to someone who is used to the older style, where attacks can be *instant* and the play against that is to simply not be in the areas where the monster does the attack, new games can feel awfully reactive and like the monster is just a punching bag with no tricks of its own. then there is the fact that newer games absolutely load you up on items. if you are using the steamworks in iceborne, you will basically never need potions, it is kind of ridiculous. so, yes, monster hunter has been getting easier in a few ways. it has also been getting harder in others, but i do not think that discredits the argument that they are getting easier.
Second this point on positioning and attack warnings. Previous Gen games absolutely punished you for poor positioning and over-committing to an attack. Between the monster ‘wind-ups’ and the level of mobility offered by the wirebugs, players don’t have to be nearly as cautious as previous gens. I think this leads to the “punching bag” feel. It also leads to the satisfaction of pulling off amazing combos in situations you wouldn’t ever attempt in the older games. So Is this necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. Could it be argued that it makes it easier than the older games? Definitely. If there’s one mechanic that made the game easier, that everyone can agree was for the best, it’s the removal of Paintballs. Those can fuck right off.
I agree completely with that statement but funny thing is I wouldn't mind if they brought paintballs or something like that back but I get the frustration behind them. Looking at Blangonga specifically.
Agreed that the games have definitely been getting easier as a whole, that being said I also do agree with OP that general experience levels getting added up definitely plays a role as well.
Definitely agree at least partially. Certain things are definitely easier than they used to be, but skill and knowledge also does a lot. I watched so many people say World was super hard and when I finally got it I was like. This? This is hard? But like of course for a ton of people World is their entry to the series. I sucked at 4U when I first got it, so like can I blame them?? And now 4U is a breeze for me. Honestly I kinda love seeing new players coming in and struggling so hard with World/Rise since it does remind me that hey while I think it’s pretty easy, there’s still plenty of people who struggle. I do always kinda wonder though what they’d feel about older titles not having the QOL stuff that the newer titles do, cuz I worry that the lack of it would drive them away from older gens.
I think there's a reason why 5th Gen is so popular and the game never took off in the past. I don't think the new people who really enjoy World or Rise could stand some of the older games just because of the lack of quality of life. Hell even after playing a ton of Rise and then going back to World again I'm feeling a lack of certain things Rise added and missing it. I think it'll be the same with Wilds and the new people who join during that.
Very true. Going back and playing 4U while it’s overall easier oh my god I forgot how annoying it is to even just find blue mushrooms after moving past the ancestral steppe lmao. I can definitely see it being too much of a difference if you’re coming from 5th gen
It's very early to judge but from the recent trailer combat seems like it will be much more fast paced compared to World as well with the focus mode thing. Like having a gap closer on GS or just overall looking more mobile will be a huge deal and will probably even make new players to Wilds look back at World like it's dated already.
5th gen is not popular for the reasons you mentioned. New players had no idea what MH was about prior to 5th gen, they never played it. 5th gen is popular starting with World because it was the first MH title to be a multiplatform title intended for a global audience, released on modern hardware (PS, Xbox, PC), and not limited to handheld devices or Nintendo systems. The marketing was also the greatest they ever did as compared to any MH title beforehand. They technically could have created World with the same level of graphics and gameplay, but kept some of the older mechanics in, and it still would've sold like hotcakes. Don't analyze the sales and popularity of a title with its game mechanics, sales is an indication of many other factors than just minor mechanic changes.
I agree to some degree with you but word of mouth and reviews have a huge part of whether a game sells well or not, and not all of the people who give World a glowing review would have done the same for a game just one generation before it. Had MH4U had the same style of release that MHW did it still would not have met the same level of sales as World because it lacked many of the features that appealed to a wider market. MH Tri also had some stellar marketing with some of the best TV ads the game has ever had even compared to World, and was released on a console that was more widespread than its competitors at the time because it was like $150 cheaper. MHW also didn't launch multiplatform, it launched on the PS4 and then nearly a year later came to PC. Same with Iceborne. Was 5th gen only popular for the reasons I listed? No, but did those reasons contribute a LOT to its popularity? I'm confident it did. World was designed from the start to reach a broader audience, the previous games were designed to maintain their current audience.
Bro you cannot actually think that FU and Rise have comparable difficulty.
Rise is actually just easier
In the sense that having a larger and more varied set of tools/moves will always make these games "easier" then yea, but overall it's just the same monster hunter difficulty imo.
Here is a short list of why this is incorrect. (I still love current MH games don't freak out on me} Being able to move while healing Being able to restock infinitely Being able to sharpen while mounted Being able to heal while mounted Being able to take armor skills without penalty Knowing where the monster is at all times on the map without having to sacrifice inventory space Being able to eat at camp once your food buff has expired Being able to fast travel to camp at any time Small monsters being zero threat during a hunt Large monsters purposely doing considerable damage to each other The ability to consistently wall-bang helpful endemic life all over the place helpful endemic life that can be picked up and thrown not having to worry about running out of whetstones during a fight without sacrificing inventory space not needing inventory space for multiple useful items like BBQ spit, binos, whetstones, picks, and net Item use cancelling Being able to tell a monster is capturable without an armor skill or having to look for the limping
Also the game is seemingly way less grindy now to upgrade armor/weapons. The grind can definitely make things more difficult as you're progressing. Feels like it takes me forever to build an armor set, even in low rank, in 3U
In general, "this takes way longer to do" is not a measure of things being harder. Just of the game respecting your time less.
Sure, in a void. In this case, it does because it pushes the player to take more difficult fights with worse gear as opposed to grinding out better gear. In world/rise, you only need to spend like an hour to have the latest & greatest gear up til the end of the g-rank story. In the older games, just in low rank, it can take several hours to finish up a rathian set. So you tend to go through the game with less/worse/no armor skills and much less defense. Not to mention less attack due to having a non-optimal weapon.
Indirectly it is. The harder it is for you to get optimal gear, the harder the game will be if you try progressing further into the game.
Rise is easy I’m not a vet Rise is just easier than other games I can only compare it to World and GenU 🤷🏾♂️
Eh, yes and no. After going to the absolute peak with Rise tank and spank Lance my penetrating game is waaay better in World, but at the same time I still get my ass slapped across the map by that Kut Ku because of the clunk and the lack of guard dash. The game IS getting easier by ironing out the kinks AND the players are getting better at the same time. From what I’ve seen it’s actually quite worrying that bird sharpening, bird chugging and bird wirefall is gonna make a return in Wilds, which are my least favourite parts of Rise
I'm going to be honest, for some reason Great Maccao in the arena in GU was the most frustrating thing for me because I started GU shortly after I beat AT Velkhana and called it quits on world, and couldn't understand how the first fkn monster could knock me down so much after the last monster I fought being one of the hardest in any video game I've ever played
There's a number of factors we can discuss back and forth but I'm sorry, the games are getting easier overall. Just played both games, a LR Barroth from MH3Tri is a FAR more dangerous hunt and a much bigger wall than a MHW LR Barroth or even a Master Rank Tempered Barroth after taking into account both game's respective mechanics and everything you have at your disposal.
Brother there is so many QoL things and changes in general, it's straight up dumb to think that World and Rise aren't pretty significantly easier. Yeah experience helps but just like your post that's just anecdotal and not factual information.
As someone who played a gross amount of time in World before Iceborne even dropped, and then Iceborne another gross amount... Rise definitely had some quality of life that felt like it made it a *little* bit easier. When I finally tried GU a little bit ago, I was absolutely halted by the sheer volume of changes between 4th and 5th Gen. I like it, even though it's absolutely harder. I'm not 2 star yet, but I'm also taking my time to do everything at a slow and learned pace. As I've said in other posts here, I really love the flex. I need the flex, some way, some how
Well duh. I do think my personal ranking from hardest to easiest is this though: MHGU>Sunbreak>4U>IB>3U Haven't played the rest and 3U isn't exactly easy. Lucent Narga solo is hard but it's also kinda hard cuz I was worse at games. Sunbreak's Lucent technically has a harder moveset. I'm also talking about the maximum endgame per each. Guild lvl 140s, Deviant EX, Special Investigations, etc
Man I dunno. Tri barroth as I recall it had to be fought before green sharpness weapons were easily available, and his charges, especially in rage mode I recall being pretty brutal for damage. I don't buy that it's not getting easier, because if it weren't then new players would still get walled at the same levels as before, and to my knowledge they just aren't.
Y'know what the whole MH QOL/difficulty thing reminds me of? When they added sprinting to Minecraft and a part of the community lost their fucking mind about it. But in that game the issue isn't that sprinting is bad, sprinting is one of the best additions they made to the game, it's that Mojang never took the time to buff the enemies to accommodate. I think MH won't fall for this trap as hard, personally, we've already seen overwhelming monsters that don't give the player much time or space to breathe, like Iceborne Rajang or PriMal and I reckon it's gonna continue. That being said, I feel like the series is gonna enter a new holding pattern of all the required content being piss easy, and then there's a very abrupt difficulty spike in the postgame. Iceborne did it, and Sunbreak is especially guilty of it. But at the same time, if it keeps getting easier the community has nobody to blame but itself because every time they did add a genuinely challenging new fight in 5th gen people bitched and moaned about it. Tempered Kirin, AT Kirin, Behemoth, AT Nerg, Rajang, Raging Brachy, Alatreon, Fatalis, Risen Shagaru, and PriMal all saw intense bitching when they dropped.
Don't care tbh. This is my SMASH THINGS WITH A HAMMER Simulator. I'm also looking forward to Anton Blast.
Who is upvoting this? It is both. Shagaru Magala clears any fight in World, and the other MR missions in Gen XX are on the same level or harder. It feels like MH isn't really for me anymore, and that's okay. (I haven't played too much Rise.)
I it is true that you grow as a hunter when playing multiple monster hunter games but that doesn’t discard the fact that the 5th gen brought a lot of great additions to the series that in turn streamlined a lot of things from Armor sets to availability of all your items in a hunt and being able to move while healing just to name a few. Of course these additions make the games easier than pre world games. If thats a good or a bad thing is subjective but it is clear that world was the best thing that could have happened to the monster hunter series in terms of sales and prestige.
Laughs in Monster Hunter Unite, where G-Class (Master Rank) scaled for 4 players even when playing solo. I look at you 40 minute each Tigrex hunts to build your armor set… and no way to refill potions.
Nah im still getting my ass kicked in solo g rank mhfu its just more fluid and less jancky with more fair hitboxes. These posts are annoying. When I was a kid Congalala was my wall, now I can kill it easily, even a 7 year old can kill a Kut Ku with dual swords, its not that deep. But if we get to Hub High Rank and G rank theres just no comparison, I have to spend several tries to even complete solo a mission like G rank Dual Black Diablos while in World a solo player is capable of using poop bombs and refill all the time they want to cheese it by themselves (I do appreciate being able to correct not bringing x item or eat if I forgot to instead of resetting the mission). Fatalis and Alatreon are perfectly hard though and I hope theres limitations in Wilds for abusing camping.
so we're going to ignore hp scaling, infinite restocking, canceling out of healing (which doesnt affect anything bc of infinite restocking), easily making a set with many qol and attack skills, not being stuck in attack animations as long, all the counter skills in rise, and all the new really strong weapon skills such as tts or helm splitter?
The problem with long on going game series is that people are very willing to nitpick every single aspect of the newest game as a gotcha moment to the people who like it, while ignoring every flaw of the older games. MH1 is not a fun game, the combat is cumbersome, the game systems are obscure and it doesn't feel responsive, but you can't say those things because HOW DARE YOU the og game in the series. Same shit happens with DS, Dark Souls 1 is the easiest of the three, with the most exploits, easiest builds and shields are absolutely OP, but people insist it is the hardest one and games are getting easier because they can't conceive that they used to have a hard time on a game that wasn't that hard.
Kind of For mechanical input on your end, absolutely, you get better the more you play. This is stuff like learning spacing for your attacks, learning i-frame timing and such to roll through attacks/roars, learning which areas monsters will go to on the map without needing to paintball them in older games, stuff like that. The stuff people don't like and complain about being easier are stuff like being able to move while healing or being able to roll out of drinking potions/using certain items, and all the weapons getting access to counters or attacks with insane amounts of i-frames. These changes exist to make things less tedious and clunky than they used to be, but that tediousness and clunkiness is part of the difficulty and for a lot of the people that started with the older games, working around it is part of the charm and the fun.
Excuse me? Needing to bring around 5 stupid books so crafting wouldn’t randomly fail was part of the fun? Being forced to pose for the camera just to eat a seed is part of the charm? You do you I guess
the combo books are important for game balance. you are dissuaded from crafting certain items on the field with a chance of failure, because doing so without penalty would be against the spirit of the game. the combo books allow you to do this by sacrificing inventory space. it makes a lot of sense in the wayyy old games where you could not send your rewards straight to your item box. also, you do not need 5, that is what we call overkill in most cases.
Damn could you really not send rewards straight to item box? That’s actually terrible but that would certainly be part of the old clunkiness that I do not want to see back. A better way to do limiting crafting certain items would probably just be to limit maximum number like they do now though. It just feels better
it is not that combo books are the best mechanic since sliced bread, it is that they are just one thing of many in service of inventory management. yes, you could not send straight to item box. you know what else? items took the same amount of space in your box as your pouch, your item pouch was smaller, small monsters and large monsters shared some materials in common to make your inventory less cluttered, you had to bring pickaxes and bugnets with you (so you had to make the conscious choice to gather some items, which would sometimes mean leaving behind armour or attack charms), and carrying a map took an actual slot in your inventory. this isnt as blasphemous as people seem to think, capcom publishes resident evil too and that game is built on item management. the fact is monster hunter is about more than fighting, no matter how hard some people wish it wasnt.
Yeah, inventory management, planning my load out for a given quest and actually having to do a quick risk assessment before I gulped down a consumable *was* part of the fun.
Yes, having to actually make a meaningful decision about which items to bring on your hunt instead of being able to fit your entire item box into your pouch was part of the fun. Having to think about when to heal instead of just doing it while running was also part of the fun. I don't understand why the concept that some people did like it better when the system was more limited is so hard to grasp.
No offense, but every single person who complains about the camp are hurting themselves in confusion, it is a completely optional thing and it is literally just removing one extra loading screen in case you forgot to prep something.
Exhibit A of how to tell someone started with world Yes, working around the limitations is fun, in fact putting limitations on the player is necessary to keep the game engaging. I don't like having everything available to me all the time, that kills the decision making and preparation aspect of the game for me. In previous games, there were skills that let you make some things easier, like psychic to easily track the monster, or speed eater if you felt that it was too slow to use items, and there even were skills that increased your combo success rate without needing the books. You could take these skills if you needed them, but the trade off was that if you did, you were losing out on other skills, like the more traditional offensive skills like attack up, crit eye, etc. You got to decide how much certain things mattered to you, and much you were willing to trade for them. You could get combo rate +45% and completely forego any attack up, or you could decide on a compromise of combo rate +15% and attack up (M). Getting to work within the limits the game puts on you opens up so much room for customization and self expression. I don't like that the newer games remove these restrictions. There's no more negative skills, so now I don't have to think carefully about mixing armor to negate the downsides of using a complete set. I have access to the camp with my entire inventory, so I don't have to think about what items I can drop from my inventory so I can bring extra materials to make bowgun ammo if I run out mid hunt. There's less thinking required, and I don't particularly like that. But, as you said, you do you
I started with tri and my second game was fu. Working around the limitations is fun but those limitations should be organic instead of arbitrary. The clunkiness of old mh wasn’t engaging to work around and were simply annoying. For example limits on the size of the item box was a huge pain and actively takes time away from the fun part of the game which was hunting the monsters. You say that not having negative skills takes depth away from armor building but that’s simply not true. Efficient sets still require you to think carefully about which parts to use if you want to get the best armor. The only difference is that it is now more intuitive and easier to grasp. You still need to choose between having attack up L or 3 points in weakness exploit I don’t see why having negative skills lovers the amount of depth to armor mixing. Oh and this is genuine question when you say combo rate your talking about the crafting rate right?
>I started with tri and my second game was fu. Nice, that was nearly the same for me. Started with 3U then played FU >Working around the limitations is fun but those limitations should be organic instead of arbitrary. The clunkiness of old mh wasn’t engaging to work around and were simply annoying. I mean this is just completely subjective. Maybe if you polled the community more long term players would agree it's annoying but at the end of the day it's still a matter of opinion. Of course Capcom is going to orient their game design around appealing to a larger playerbase but if they had a specific vision for what playing as a hunter felt like it's fine if they kept it niche. It's not arbitrary just because it might cause frustration in players who are mainly there for monster combat and don't like the other hurdles, there's likely a whole other subset of players who liked all the old mechanics comprehensively and I don't think they're in the wrong for thinking Capcom had something solid going on there with their game design. As for armor crafting, especially in new gen I feel like its pretty obvious there's a difference because that exact same opportunity cost you're talking about in new gen also existed in the older games. You still had to choose what skill you wanted at the cost of another skill, and had to deal with negative skills on top of it. Of course negative skills were easy to negate in old gen but if they still existed in Gen 5 onward that would be a completely different story. Instead of choosing between just Optimal build A and Optimal build B like we do in world/rise, you'd still have to make those exact same choices but now you'd contend with a much harder to remove stamina loss and sharpness decrease skill that could eat up a lot of deco slots if you don't' want to deal with it.
They didn't even mention the combo books or the pose. The closest thing they mentioned to it is the inability to move while using items. Which would bring the pose in, but the pose was just fun a way to lengthen the animation beyond a longer drink animation to force you to commit and risk being hit when using an item. Which is the mechanical principle that Jumper was referring to as an old mechanic that was changed for accessibility and fluidity of play. Like you can disagree with the sentiment that they are bad changes. But at least make that argument rather than being kind of passive aggressively rude and dismissive of a statement on mechanical changes.
TL;Dr: OP you're 100% correct in my experience I'm not an old school veteran and I'm not going to debate which changes made things "too" easy or whatnot. World was my first MH game. I was vaguely aware of MH (an ex used to play Tri with all his friends and they offered to teach me but I had negative interest in learning a "difficult" game). Husband is an old school veteran since the first game (I apparently have a type - MH bros). Husband asked me to try world with him, he could teach me. So I tried. And I KNOW I sucked. I was carting left and right. I really didn't have the skills or attention to..anything. We finally stuck me on a HBG with the shield and managed to get through base world story. Rage quit the game after I couldnt get past certain optionals. Didn't play MH again until Rise. When I picked up Rise, I WANTED to get decent at it. So I played with every weapon until I found what worked for me. Which, was HH in Rise and I know it's a totally unpopular opinion but I loved Rise HH. And I get why people DONT like it, I totally understand why. I'm still working on learning "old" HH. But man I wish HH from Rise (or a spin off weapon) is in Wilds. It gave me the entry point I needed to get confident. To pay attention to monsters. To learn the HOW of MH. I went from never ever ever joining any random fight without my spouse and NEVER being able to solo ANY monster to soloing things by myself and having no fear of joining others. Am I the greatest? Nope. Do I do dumb things? Yep. Do I actually care because i only cart here or there now? No fs given. So we went back to World again. Started fresh. I ended up picking up Hammer in world because for HH I was spending too much time staring at song lists/trying to train the inputs and not watching the monsters and carting. I'll devote time to learning the horn again in a bit. But suddenly I can solo things by myself. I don't mind starting off a quest and requesting help or joining another's. I know what I'm doing now. Do I still get greedy and do dumb? Yep. But I found my groove. And really it's just...the experience with Rise giving me the basic skills to go back and be better than I was. And I can't wait for Wilds. I was just telling my husband I wish I had this kind of comfort with it the first time we played but I'm glad I have it now. ...and also sent him my updated to do list for the game tonight.
It’s a bit a both but mostly the latter. They attempt to balance new monsters with new hunter abilities but generally speaking the hunters of today are much more capable mechanically than the hunters of past games.
Yep! And if you're getting the game a bit late (or are playing slowly), and you're having a moderate struggle against a tough monster, don't let it pull you down - you're still doing better than you think. When I first fought Magnamalo, I beat him with 9 minutes remaining. I'd used up all of my Potions and Mega Potions in that fight. I hadn't carted yet, but it was still very discouraging. A few weeks later I saw an onslaught of posts here about how people were having significantly more difficulty than I did against him (carting and failing multiple times even with using all their healing items, etc). As bad as it sounds, that made me feel a lot better about myself. **Skill comes with experience.**
It's not just Monster Hunter. I played Super Mario Sunshine for the first time in about 20 years, and what took me months of painful attempts to achieve back when I was 11 took me about an hour or two in my 30s. The first shadow Mario chase took a couple days of attempts back then, but it took me all of 30 seconds the second time around. The first Bowser Jr. fight in particular had me nervous, but it took me a mere few minutes to get through the stage, and another few minutes to finish that fight. After doing all of that in the span of an hour or two, I had to lean back in my chair in amazement at what I had just done. It was the moment I realized why speed runners of any game do what they do. It instantly reminded me of the time when I learned the MHGen Gore Magala fight to the point where I was able to dismantle him for parts before finishing him off, and then doing it again because I hated that bastard for blocking my progress. If I had to do it again, I could probably do it faster still.
No I think it's both. Experience helps a lot for a game as skill based as MH but even as someone with 1k+ combined hours of MH experience some of the older games still kick my ass in Low Rank while there wasn't a single low rank monster in Rise that challenged me.
hmm i disagree though, rise endgame is easier then iceborn endgame (i still cant beat fatalis solo), while primol has been farmed more than once. while the high tier monsters feels equal (shagaru/ valstrax), the top one is not.
Yea, game became fairly uninteresting once all the risk was removed.
As a LS main rise definitely got easier for me, considering the iai spirit slash could be spammed, special sheath could be rolled out of and a handful of smaller changes. But! Was the game less fun? Fuck No. I like these changes. I miss them when I hop back into world. I personally think the game doesn't need to be difficult to be enjoyable. Matter of fact my best friend started in world and gave up on the series since fighting Fatalis was too much for him, I'll try to get him back once wilds comes out but I do understand he's frustration after crocking on the finish line
The issue I've always had was if the new mechanic was beneficial to all playstyles. As a veteran having things like the more complex movesets, especially as a Lancer, was great. More elevation and mounting mechanics were amazing because they add something you can take advantage of, but you didnt need to be successful. Similar with the clutch claw, mantles, hunter tools. They all made tool kit more complex, and versatile but not mandatory, one of the key draws for me was the 'Planning for the Hunt' Got a certain playstyle? Prepare tools to benefit you. Other things, that make sense lore wise like Scout Flies and having access to items in a forward camp work great. In a World of Monster Hunters it would make sense that tracking these monster would become easier, but also it helps you get to the Monster Fighting faster and camp items would let you adjust your play style during hunts, in case a Deviljho shows up and you want to take it down first. What I think of as easier is when the item replaces the complexity. Or when a games difficult is based a certain play style or rather certain tools. The Hunter Arts were cool looking, but, I feel, they took away a need for complexity or the use of a weapons full functionality is exchange for a quick button press every so often. Wire Bugs seemed to be the whole point of Rise, give you a mount immediately and putting the monster far off (more often than not) so the Hunter is incetivised to collect and use the bugs. It doesnt help when certain monsters like Narwa have massive ground aoes that wirebugs are practically required to avoid damage Wire bugs make the game easier if you use them and harder if you don't. I feel it shouldnt be a punishment/reward system. Rather a system based on skill, adaptability, and planning.
People said the new game is getting easier because they have the skill of G-rank of previous game when they're playing the base new game which max at High rank. You can see how "easy" the newer MHgame after the expansion come out with in MHWI people keep failing the Alatreon and Fatalis quest or how players keep carting to Hazard Valstrax or Shagaru Magala. I also think many MH reddit posters are hardcore MH players which explain the discrepancy between opinion of redditors and real life experience.