Hunter's Wishes
Monster Hunter World may be one of the most entertaining and accessible Monster Hunter games to date, but it's far from perfect. More than a few things would have improved its overall quality. Whether these additions are in the form of an update, patch, or a future sequel, here are 11 things that would make Monster Hunter World a better game than it already is.
What do you think would make Monster Hunter World a better game? Let us know in the comments below.
Monster Hunter World is out now for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with a PC release to come later in the year. That's notable, as recent entries were limited to 3DS. The additional horsepower has allowed for a game with much larger, more beautiful environments to play in. It also does a better job of introducing newcomers to the flow of playing a Monster Hunter game. You can read more about what to expect in our Monster Hunter World review.
If you're curious about character gear, check out our galleries showcasing high-end gear for male characters and female characters. You can also check out our high-end Palico armor gallery.
Those playing on PS4 will be able to get their hands on some exclusive gear based on Horizon: Zero Dawn. We also know that new Mega Man-themed items are on the way, as well as character skins themed around Street Fighter V--and if past games are any indication, this won't be the last crossover content that Capcom releases.
Include Better Tutorials
Monster Hunter World's tutorials usually consist of multiple subsequent walls of text with some accompanying images or videos. They're not great--partially because they often don't actually explain things very well, and partially because they're so boring that many players will feel tempted to skip them entirely and try to figure things out for themselves.
The worst example has to be the 14 different weapon types. Yes, you can try them all out in the training area, and go over some rudimentary tutorials and combo examples for each. But the reality of using many of these weapons is so much more complicated than the game ever bothers to tell you, especially the deeply complex ones like the hunting horn and charge blade. Effectively using these weapons--much less mastering them--practically requires you to head online to peruse user-created guides.
That active, helpful fan community is part of what makes Monster Hunter World so great, but it would be even better if it could actually teach you what you need to know to play it. -- Mike Rougeau
Improve Organization Of Investigation System
Monster Hunter World's menus have a lot going on. Some of those text-heavy menus make sense, and they allow for complex systems like armor and weapon crafting to grow and evolve over the course of the game. The Investigation menu, however, is in dire need of some help.
Investigations are extra quests that allow you to hunt down monsters for increased rewards while under some kind of restraint, like a shorter time limit. But the way you earn and manage those quests is a confusing morass that makes the structure feel like more trouble than it's worth. At the very least, you should be able to sort or search through your list of available investigations by monster type. After that, the game should offer a way to bulk-delete the quests that you don't want anymore.
But the biggest improvement that Monster Hunter World needs is a way to manage investigations directly from the quest board. Speaking to the Resource Center, both to access and remove quests, adds an additional unnecessary step to get to the most important part of the game: hunting monsters! -- Justin Haywald
Make The Hub Online, Not Just The Hunter’s Gathering
Taking full advantage of the ability to play online can be a ton of fun when your session is filled with players to hang out with. It's therefore a shame that you can only see other players in the Hunter’s Gathering, rather then all of Astrea. It somewhat unnecessarily separates multiplayer and single-player--and even though your session may be full, you won’t really know unless you and those other players are hanging out in the Gathering.
While the Gathering offers its own version of amenities (like the Bounty Board and Canteen), you still need to visit the rest of Astrea regularly for things like the Smithy and Resource Center, which creates frequent inconveniences in your attempts to prepare for hunts. It's time to break down the barriers and open the entire hub to multiplayer activities. -- Jean-Luc Seipke
Add More Flexible Online Features
Monster Hunter World's online systems make sense on paper. To play with your friends, you need to join the same online session; you can matchmake into random sessions, or join your friends via invitations. But the system's many wrinkles make it difficult and counterintuitive to use, especially for newcomers to the series who might expect that they can simply hop into friends' hunts with little forethought.
Limitations like not being able to join others' "assigned" (story) missions until they've seen all the cutscenes, or being denied loot if you join too late, add further confusion. Problems arise, for example, if you want to help a friend with a story mission, but they take too long to find the monster... so, by the time you join them, the quest's rewards are no longer available. Joining and posting quests via the job board-style menu could be made easier as well.
One possible solution could be to allow you to simply join and invite your friends from a separate menu, independent of sessions, postings, or SOS flares, with a little more flexibility. They could even do away with some of the penalties that might otherwise be present (such as letting you collect rewards no matter how late you join a friend's mission). It would also be nice if the game were more clear about why you can't invite or join someone when it decides you can't--if you're not actually in an online session, for example, or if you're simply too early in a story mission. A little feedback could go a long way. -- Mike Rougeau
Better Load Times
For a game that is out on the current generation of consoles, the load times for Monster Hunter World feel way too long. Sure, breaks between hunts are nice--but the fact of the matter is, we’re routinely looking at screens with loading bars and a few tips (you even have to load into your personal living quarters, even though its part of the HQ!). Many games in the last year or so have been revolutionizing how they either hide loading screens, or finding ways to greatly shorten the time between each new area. Monster Hunter World's players would get more done overall if the loading times followed suit. -- Erick Tay
Improve The Item Upgrade Menu
With no traditional experience bar to speak of, gear is the name of the game in Monster Hunter World. The process of building, upgrading, and comparing items should be as pain-free as possible... and yet, it's a challenge. The inherent complexity in the upgrade tree shouldn't necessarily be eliminated, but it's often frustrating that seemingly simple tasks aren't as easy as they could be.
At the simplest level, previewing an item from the upgrade tree is a less-than-smooth process if you're exploring the entire tree. Seeing what an item looks like requires tabbing over to stop the menu from blocking your view of your character, while moving back to the tree causes you to lose the spot you were looking at. A button to provide a clearer look at your character (or one that hides the menu) would make checking out a new piece of gear much easier.
Crafting upgrades is also not the simple process that it could be. Comparing two possible upgrades--which is not terribly uncommon, given how the upgrade tree branches at certain points--requires jumping back and forth between the two items. And keeping track of costs becomes a manual process, as you can't easily see the combined money and material cost if you want to craft several consecutive upgrades.
The complexity of item upgrades can be great; each time the tree expands, it comes with a (pleasantly) overwhelming world of possibilities. It would just be nice if the actual upgrade process were less of a hassle. -- Chris Pereira
Provide Easy Access to Safari Management
The option to stay out in the field following a quest is a welcome feature, but a trip back to Astera is necessary from time to time, to complete the required lap--visit the Ecological Research area, complete and acquire new Bounties, see what the Argosy has for sale, and check on your Safari. It's that last bit that I've come to find tiresome, as it takes you out of the main hub area.
The only way to manage a Safari is to head to the Research Base or your room. The latter is accessible straight from Astera... but since it's a separate zone, this makes managing a Safari more cumbersome. While you might not need to do this more than once every five quests (unless you want to end a Safari early), it's still an unnecessary step that feels like it only exists to get you to visit your room more frequently. This also potentially forces you to temporarily abandon a quest you've signed up for, because doing so prevents you from leaving the main area in Astera to visit your room.
Your housekeeper works for you, right? Then have them wait outside the door to spare you the unnecessary trip inside! -- Chris Pereira
Show Monster Health Bars
This one seems simple: Large monsters should get health bars. You might disagree, and that's fair--but there's an argument to be made here. Yes, monsters often give some indication when they're injured, whether it's some ruffled feathers or the telltale limp and skull icon that let you know they're almost dead. And the pulse monitor located next to your minimap can be helpful, too. But for less-experienced players, those signs can be hard to pick up on, making the game frustrating early on--which is exactly when it should be at its most welcoming.
Monster Hunter World's user interface is already unbelievably cluttered with bars, icons, numbers, buttons, maps, menus, and more... so why not add one more to make the experience just a little bit friendlier? -- Mike Rougeau
Fix Monster Health Pool Scaling
This is a big one, and it should be a relatively easy fix. Currently, Monster Hunter World has two difficulty settings: single-player and multiplayer. Monsters have a certain amount of health if you're hunting solo, and a much larger health pool if you're in a pack. The problem is, said health pool doesn't scale depending on the number of players on your team.
This means that Monster Hunter World's ferocious, giant monsters have the same amount of health when you're rolling with two players as they do when you have a full squad of four. Anyone who's played with just a single partner knows how insanely hard it can be to take down monsters, since each player needs to do the work of two. This unfortunately serves to actually discourage you from playing with friends, unless you can get more than two people together. We're assuming that this likely isn't the intended experience.
Should playing with two people be harder than playing alone? This game needs to scale the difficulty for the number of players in the game. Full stop. -- Mike Rougeau
Add A Notifications Center
You have countless things to keep track of while playing, particularly as you advance further into the game. Notifications pop up when you first head back to Astera, to inform you of any developments... but the ways these are presented is far from ideal.
What Monster Hunter World needs is a more robust notification system. The brief messages that pop up to let you know a Safari has returned are permanently gone within seconds, and given the rarity of crafting materials from Zorah Magdaros, you can easily miss the opportunity to replay the optional Zorah mission. Likewise, the messages about new downloadable content and quests are limited to the Daily Login Bonus screen. All of this would be better suited to a proper notification screen that is readily accessible and also allows you to see the status of other time-sensitive content, such as Limited Bounties. -- Chris Pereira
More Monsters To Fight
While I understand that this is a new game with entirely new assets, and we are eventually getting additional monsters to fight by way of DLC (I am ready for you, Deviljho!), I still can’t help but feel a little let down by the fairly meager amount of monsters in Monster Hunter World. I would love to square off against the everyone’s favorite ice-cold land shark Zamtrios, the brutal Tigrex, or even my most recent favorite: the Gore Magala. Capcom also did a great job on the designs of the new monsters, and I would love to see more original designs as well!
Thankfully, this will probably happen. We already know DLC is on the way, and fans can always hold out hope for the possibility of a Monster Hunter World Ultimate. Get some more monsters in there along with G-rank, and it will make an already fantastic game that much better! -- Ben Janca
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