What World did to Monster Hunter’s environmental design and interactivity between its monsters did so much for the immersiveness of the game and the expression and scope of its titular boss monsters.
I think seeing how much that can add to the game experience is worth seeing before they get diminishing returns.
We’re not even close to fully reactive and physicalized flora and fully destructible environments so it’ll be a long way until we hit a wall. In some ways we’ve even gone backwards in that regard from the PhysX days.
It felt like Rise undid a lot of that. I don’t know whether it’s because of the limitation of the Switch, but Rise felt lifeless compared to World. Monster Hunters problem in general is that after a few hours it starts to feel like a Boss Rush mode and the ecosystem gets neglected. Instead of a Hunter you become a Killer.
I am glad that others are noticing that change, too. I do believe it was a change necessitated by the Switch, but was also half ideological. In World, the Ancient Forest showed where they could go too far with the map design.
Even today after how much I played that game, if it weren’t for the guidance bugs I would get lost in that forest because of how mazelike it is. I do actually prefer Rise’s maps that have no loading zones, but are not as gigantic and mazelike, instead more vertical.
though I do wish there were more of them, but remember that Rise is made by a different team than World, so not committing to all of World’s design decisions doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gone, as we move back into a new game developed by the World team once again.
I also feel that there is more to the transition from hunter to killer than the maps. The speeding up of gathering animations, the removal of most gathering and miscellaneous quests in World and Rise means that instead of having a lot more pacing variety in what you could be doing, it’s pretty much constant back to back large monster hunting, and if you want to change pace you have to play a different game instead of tackling some backlog gathering and transport quests.
I do know that I’m likely in the minority as someone who wants more non-hunting quests back in the games, and who didn’t like that gathering continually gets more and more streamlined out of the game as the series goes on, but I think that the monotony of being constantly railroaded into hunting and more hunting may eventually hit a breaking point.
I always loved the progression from gathering by hand, to having a farm to grow things and having Felynes to send and gather stuff for you. I was a little bit disappointed that newer titles ditched the farm from Freedom Unite, it had a certain charm that other titles couldn’t match.
I agree the Ancient Forest was a maze. I think the Egg delivery quest always served a very good purpose to teach players a map. You had to try and find a good and efficient route, so naturally you would learn the paths from the starting area all the way to the top.
It just boggles me that these apex predetors all simply chill around the area just to be killed. It should be emphasized that these monsters are usually in areas unaccessible by Hunters. And the area that we play in is their common hunting grounds. And that’s why those beasts of which some are literal gods are so easy to kill, because they are outside of their natural habitat.
It doesn’t make any sense why Nergigante is such a big threat in World, but then you just kill 10 of them casually. And there’s also a tempered version, which somehow wasn’t the main threat of the story even though it would wipe the floor with normal Nergigante.
I always hated that High Rank is outside the main story line. The most difficult monster off the game should mark the end of the main story, not some random High Rank quest.
What World did to Monster Hunter’s environmental design and interactivity between its monsters did so much for the immersiveness of the game and the expression and scope of its titular boss monsters.
I think seeing how much that can add to the game experience is worth seeing before they get diminishing returns.
We’re not even close to fully reactive and physicalized flora and fully destructible environments so it’ll be a long way until we hit a wall. In some ways we’ve even gone backwards in that regard from the PhysX days.
It felt like Rise undid a lot of that. I don’t know whether it’s because of the limitation of the Switch, but Rise felt lifeless compared to World. Monster Hunters problem in general is that after a few hours it starts to feel like a Boss Rush mode and the ecosystem gets neglected. Instead of a Hunter you become a Killer.
I am glad that others are noticing that change, too. I do believe it was a change necessitated by the Switch, but was also half ideological. In World, the Ancient Forest showed where they could go too far with the map design.
Even today after how much I played that game, if it weren’t for the guidance bugs I would get lost in that forest because of how mazelike it is. I do actually prefer Rise’s maps that have no loading zones, but are not as gigantic and mazelike, instead more vertical. though I do wish there were more of them, but remember that Rise is made by a different team than World, so not committing to all of World’s design decisions doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gone, as we move back into a new game developed by the World team once again.
I also feel that there is more to the transition from hunter to killer than the maps. The speeding up of gathering animations, the removal of most gathering and miscellaneous quests in World and Rise means that instead of having a lot more pacing variety in what you could be doing, it’s pretty much constant back to back large monster hunting, and if you want to change pace you have to play a different game instead of tackling some backlog gathering and transport quests.
I do know that I’m likely in the minority as someone who wants more non-hunting quests back in the games, and who didn’t like that gathering continually gets more and more streamlined out of the game as the series goes on, but I think that the monotony of being constantly railroaded into hunting and more hunting may eventually hit a breaking point.
I always loved the progression from gathering by hand, to having a farm to grow things and having Felynes to send and gather stuff for you. I was a little bit disappointed that newer titles ditched the farm from Freedom Unite, it had a certain charm that other titles couldn’t match.
I agree the Ancient Forest was a maze. I think the Egg delivery quest always served a very good purpose to teach players a map. You had to try and find a good and efficient route, so naturally you would learn the paths from the starting area all the way to the top.
It just boggles me that these apex predetors all simply chill around the area just to be killed. It should be emphasized that these monsters are usually in areas unaccessible by Hunters. And the area that we play in is their common hunting grounds. And that’s why those beasts of which some are literal gods are so easy to kill, because they are outside of their natural habitat.
It doesn’t make any sense why Nergigante is such a big threat in World, but then you just kill 10 of them casually. And there’s also a tempered version, which somehow wasn’t the main threat of the story even though it would wipe the floor with normal Nergigante.
I always hated that High Rank is outside the main story line. The most difficult monster off the game should mark the end of the main story, not some random High Rank quest.