What the Future of Monster Hunter Could Be

 

          Hello! Maybe one day I’ll have all my ideas together at one time. Probably not but you know how it is. So this is just a dream situation I guess, things I’d really like to see in Monster Hunter that will probably never come to be and some things that Proxy and I discussed. A long while ago, before Rise came out, I talked about what I’d like “the next Monster Hunter” to be like. That idea was probably too ambitious for the Switch but I still like the overall concept and I’ll probably refer to it once or twice.

            One thing that I really liked with Generations Ultimate and Rise is the ability to select different “styles” or moves for your weapon. I almost wish it was more customizable to the point where each move, each part of the combo could be changed with two or three options. There’s some moves that I just don’t like, don’t use or because they are there, they get in my way of my combo when I accidentally press A one too many times. The one that comes to mind the most is on the gunlance; I’ll do ground splitter to the over-the-head smash, unload all my shots and then want to reload but sometimes I’m not pressing the right button or I let go of a button to quickly (I think you have to be holding the trigger in order to reload and sometimes I’m just going to fast that I let go of it early) and end up shooting the pike thing out. Nine out of ten times I don’t want that to happen and now I’m stuck waiting for this animation to finish so I can go back to business or dodge or whatever else. I hate it, I don’t need this move, let me delete it. Am I missing out on some big damage? I don’t fucking know, nor do I care, just let me play the game! I see some videos on YouTube about people talking about with certain “builds” or moves that the hunt might “take too long” like, shut up. Why am I expected to be speed running this shit? Anyway, another thing I think about is having fundamentally different play styles. I like the insect glaive all right but I feel like I constantly have to be in the air. I like my ground combos and being able to pole jump out of range is nice but I kind of wish I wasn’t exactly forced into the air stuff. Another one I think about is the charge blade. I don’t play CB, it kind of intimidates me but I think it’d be cool if it had one play style for the sword and shield aspect of it, the axe and the normal morphing blade itself. I know in GenU, I think striker style let you do more damage in axe mode but it wasn’t “viable” or whatever but I think the SnS part could be really cool with the shield being like an impact hammer almost. I think of it similar to Big O’s punches and they could do different around that.

            I would like hurting the monster to be more visibly rewarding or give us an actual advantage in hunts. I would like it if when I cut off the Rathian’s tail she can’t poison me when she flips anymore. I don’t know animal anatomy or anything but I imagine that the poison gland is somewhere in the tail and that it comes out on the barbs at the end of her tail and when she cuts you with those barbs the poison then goes into your blood stream. When I cut the tail off I would like that to not happen anymore! Even if the SAC, as it were, was further in her body I don’t think that the vein or whatever that feeds it to the tail would really be able to poison you when she hits you with her fleshy exposed tail end. Sure her scales would PROBABLY still hurt, if not cut you and that if you HAPPEN to get a drop or two from the poison duct into your open wound you COULD still get poisoned but what’re the chances huh? Also when it comes to flying monsters, if I “break” their wings they shouldn’t be able to fly around anymore. I think the Dreadking Rathalos liked to be in the air a lot and if you broke his wings he didn’t fly, as much, but I want more than that. If I clip your wings no more air time for you! You hobble on the ground like the rest of us; you want to flee the area? Well get walking buddy! As it is, it just seems that the damage we do to the monsters doesn’t really matter? Like sometimes you could be going and the hunt seems to end abruptly, like there was no indication that it was close to dying and it’s just over. I kind of want the monster to be at its most lethal at the start of the hunt and the parts we break to be helpful. Maybe the parts are harder to cut off or break? I think I remember hearing in World it was hard to get tails and such because pretty much everybody had to be aiming for the tail, even if you didn’t have slicing damage. But maybe if tails are harder or something, the person who posted the quest can also leave a comment saying like “I’m going for the tail” or “I need the tail” so everyone knows what the goal of the hunt is. And maybe if you break a certain part of the monster it actually helps them, it changes an attack like the Nargacuga’s arm blades extend out well past what they’re supposed to because you broke what kept them in place. It sounds awfully painful for the Nargacuga but you get the idea.

            One thing Proxy brought up in our conversation was having actual seasons in the game that follow the real world calendar. The map(s) could have literal four different versions of them and maybe even have fewer areas at first/launch. So you have the typical forest level and everything is all green and full of life in summer then when it’s fall the leaves fall down and you can see through the trees better, maybe find some secret areas that weren’t accessible in the summer or see the monster from a few zones away and who knows what’s hiding in those large piles of leaves? Maybe during the winter the lake freezes over and opens up a different area of the map because like, you can’t swim and boats are, hard… Different herbivore types could show up and different endemic life. Seems like it’d have to be an MMO to me. Another thing he brought up was imagining landing in a new area for the first time so there is no village, there’s no outpost yet, you’re the ones that will start it. So you start off at one corner of the map and hunt some of the weaker, starter monsters, get slightly better armor, progress, progress, progress, fight the flagship monster of the area and then a town can be built, (sounding kind of like a survival/crafting game), and then you can go to the next zone and do the same thing. I kind of like this idea, it has a natural form of progression that I understand you know? Back in my day, BACK IN MY DAY I SAYS, it was pretty straight forward. You go here, fight these things, they make you stronger, give you stuff that’ll work good for the enemies coming next. Now-a-days it’s all hodge-podge, do whatever you want sort of things or things like “this new sword is BETTER in this area but WEAKER over here so is it really even better? Who knows, we won’t tell.” Like if they ended up doing the four seasons, the winter monster weapons would be better for the spring and summer monsters and the summer weapons would be good for the autumn and winter creatures, it’d be nice. I remember back in old old vanilla WoW, guilds trying to fight Ragnaros had to specifically farm (I think anyway) for gear and potions and such that upped their fire resistance just to even have a chance against Ragnaros. I like things like that. I remember when they first added Chameleos, Kushala and Teo to Rise that was kind of the thing they were going for. Chameleos armor had good stats for KD, KDs armor was good for the Teostra, that sort of thing.

            I remember during World people were like “Gah, Capcom really needs to make a battle pass or something” and like, how would that even work? I know Dauntless does it but it’s more cosmetic and stuff which is fine but when it comes to Monster Hunter I like to have the armor and the weapons from the monsters I fought. I understand transmogging and whatever but that’s just what I like. If Capcom could figure out a way to make a battle pass work in MonHun I could be okay with it. Again, sounds like it’d have to transition back to an MMO but I’d be okay with that too, if they kept supporting it. I feel like I’m playing less games then before and that’s because most games are a live service game now. Apex Legends, Deep Rock Galactic, The Division 2, even Halo now. The thing with battle passes is there’s ones that work and there’s some that suck. I feel like Apex’s seasons are SO LONG but it gives people who aren’t as dedicated to still have a chance at getting some of the things. Halo and I believe Deep Rock does this too where even after the current season ends you can still get the cosmetic bits in random drops in the game which is nice. Limited exclusive shit kind of sucks, especially if you get the game late. Division 2’s seasons are weird. There’s one going on right now, so there’s five targets but you can only go after one at a time and there’s a two week limit to get them. That’s quite a bit of time and the target mission really doesn’t take that long to do but it’s just the fact of “hey this guy just dropped today,” “cool, let’s do it,” bang, bang, bang, “okay did it, now what?” “log off I guess?” and then try to remember to do that two weeks from now, if you even feel like playing it at that point. Proxy and I have done the first two for this season but I don’t think we’ll have time this week to do the third and next week Sunbreak comes out so we probably won’t end up doing it at all.

            One last thing to through out there, I was thinking about this since Fire Emblem Warriors just came out (I think? If not then soon) that a Monster Hunter Musou could be cool. You just fight waves of smaller monsters, bigger wyverns show up and you fight them, it would just be neat to see the weapons used in a different way. Like everything would be so much more flashy and sooo much faster, it could be ridiculous. They could also put in weapons that we haven’t seen in the main games like the whip sword thing from the manga or some weapons from Frontier, I think Frontier had some weapons that were only in that game and no where else.

Thoughts? So to sum it up a little, I pretty much would like to customize my combos from start to finish so I actually know what all the moves are and how to do them. Capcom had this kind of system in Remember Me, I was okay with it. I’m still learning about new moves in Rise. There’s one combo with the sword and shield that I thought was only for the driller move but come to find out it’s just a SnS combo, not switch skill specific. I remember learning after like 300 hours in 3U that the great sword had a second charge attack. I saw someone online do it and was like “???” I would like it to feel like I’m actually hurting the monster, like I’m actually getting somewhere with this fight. I don’t mind the idea of a new Monster Hunter MMO, I think that could be neat. Like a game that the PC, PS5 and Xbox have that is regularly updated and maybe a game that comes out every three or four years for Nintendo and/or PC that’s a little different. Every “season” they could add in new monsters and take some out. They kind of did stuff like that in World but people weren’t really happy about it. I feel like the quests weren’t available for that long or something. For the most part I’m a one and done kind of fella. I fight a monster I move on. If I want its armor and/or weapon then fine, I’ll farm it but I really don’t have much interest in fighting just because. I’m not a big event quest kind of guy unless there’s something there I want or if the monster was different in some way. If you’re just going to make me fight the same monster with the same moves but are just going to make it hit harder, what’s the point? Just to say I did it? There has to be something to get out of it for me to want to do it so a rotating roster of monsters could be cool. I was also hoping to hear about Xbox’s supposed “Monster Hunter like” game, “Project Suerte,” last week during their game showcase but they didn’t.

So what do you think? Think the combos are fine as they are or would you like a little more freedom, add your own spin on things? Think the monsters damaged parts should impact the overall fight in some way or is it fine the way it is? (You know, thinking about it why isn’t the game called “Wyvern Hunter”? Like they make such a big deal about everything being “wyverns” even though things like Zinogre and other “fanged wyverns” aren’t a real definition of "“wyvern”"… Anyway.) Would you like a new type of game, an updated MMO or some crazy ass Monster Hunter Warriors game? Can you think of a battle pass system that could work? Sunbreak is out next week at the time of writing so maybe I’ll see some of you online soon. Bye bye!

        @AztecSauce