Cool and often hard fights are the essence of Monster Hunter. Actually, because in the Monster Hunter Wilds beta, many players were frustrated by a different kind of harshness of the fights: the opponents fled the conflicts much faster than usual. The developers have listened to this feedback and explained how it came about.
What was the problem? During the open beta from November 1st – 4th, 2024 (users with PlayStation Plus were allowed to start on October 29th), interested players were able to explore the first biome, the Wind Plain, and hunt monsters.
But during the hunt, some players’ desire to fight was quickly dampened, as the confrontation sometimes only lasted a few seconds before the target ran away.
As a result, many hunters felt like they spent more time running around chasing the monster than actually fighting it. Fans therefore vented their frustration on social media (for example via Reddit) and discussed the possible reasons for this.
The developers commented on this feedback in an interview because this behavior of the monsters was not intended.
Here you can see 20 minutes of gameplay from the preview session:
Monster Hunter Wilds: 20-minute gameplay features carmine forest and new monsters
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“It was not my intention to let them move on so quickly.”
How did the developers react? The developers were asked about the problem in an interview with VGC. Director Yuya Tokuda responded that this was a bug that had already been addressed in the newer preview version and would no longer be an issue in the finished game:
It wasn’t actually a design intention to have them move on so quickly, it was just that they moved on every X seconds and that wasn’t planned. So we fixed that bug, and since beta testing we’ve gotten a lot of feedback, and that and a lot of other things are being improved for the final game, and also the general processing of how monsters decide where to go next and what to do – this will be refined for the full game.
Until the release, the team wants to concentrate primarily on ironing out the bugs and improving general performance. Since many players encountered graphics issues during the beta, this would be one of the focus points of development. Currently, graphics priority mode runs at 30 FPS and performance mode at 60 FPS, with minor limitations in graphics-intensive scenes.
MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya was also there at the press event in Japan and was not only able to play the latest version of Monster Hunter Wilds for 7 hours, but was also able to conduct an interview with the developers and gain new insights: “Elemental weapons open up a lot Potential for creative second weapon combos” – Interview with the chief developers of Monster Hunter Wilds