Cool and often tough battles are what define the principle of Monster Hunter. In fact, in the beta of Monster Hunter Wilds, many players were frustrated by a different kind of difficulty in the fights: the enemies fled much faster than usual from the conflicts. The developers have taken this feedback into account and explain how it came about.
What was the problem? During the open beta from November 1st to 4th, 2024 (users with PlayStation Plus were allowed to start on October 29th), interested players could explore the first biome, the Wind Plane, and hunt monsters.
However, during the hunt, some players quickly lost their fighting spirit, as the encounters lasted only a few seconds before the target disappeared.
As a result, many hunters felt they spent more time running around chasing the monster than actually fighting it. Fans expressed their frustration on social media (for example via Reddit) and discussed possible reasons for this.
In an interview, the developers addressed this feedback, as this behavior of the monsters was not intended.
Here you can see 20 minutes of gameplay from the preview session:
“It was not intentional for them to move on so quickly”
How did the developers respond? In an interview with VGC, the developers were asked about the issue. Director Yuya Tokuda then replied that it was a bug that has already been addressed in the newer preview version and will not be a topic in the finished game:
It was actually not a design intention to let them move on so quickly, it was just that they moved every X seconds, and that was not planned. So we fixed this bug, and since the beta test, we have received a lot of feedback, and this and many other things will be improved for the final game, and also the overall processing of how monsters decide where to go next and what to do – that will be refined for the full game.
The team wants to focus primarily on ironing out bugs and improving general performance until the release. In the finished game, the monsters will therefore be tougher than they were for some players in the beta.
Since many players encountered graphic issues during the beta, this would be one of the focal points of development. Currently, the mode with graphical priority runs at 30 FPS and the performance mode at 60 FPS, with minor limitations in graphics-intensive scenes.
Editor-in-chief Leya from MeinMMO was also present at the press event in Japan and was able not only to play the latest version of Monster Hunter Wilds for 7 hours but also to conduct an interview with the developers and gather new insights: “Elemental weapons open up a lot of potential for creative secondary weapon combos” – The chief developers of Monster Hunter Wilds in an interview
