Topic: Monster Hunter: World

@CrazedCavalier
For real?

Ugh. Well, this is gonna be a rollercoaster ride of emotional highs and lows

The combination of the MH: World announcement and XX apparently not being localized has turned the MH subreddit into a war zone.

@Ralizah Yep. The fandom as a whole, actually.
One of the chillest fandoms I've been a part of has devolved over night due to console-wars nonsense.

@CrazedCavalier
It's a crappy situation. Capcom is to blame by the lack of XX announcement.

Even though it's bogus they left Switch out of MHW, had they at least announced XX and thrown fans a bone, people would be cool with it. Cause then the fanbase on Nintendo would have a traditional game to look forward to, and if the new game turned out good, well even better. Even more to be excited about, be it on other platforms or not.

They really asked for this. Regardless of their true intentions, it feels personal. It feels like they're just flaunting the fact they're yanking the franchise from Switch owners who were excited and ready for a MH game on console and handheld in one.

@CrazedCavalier I can't help but think that the MHXX Switch version was Capcom's way of dampening the blow in Japan.

Well, I hope that sweet, sweet Sony money was worth alienating a large fraction of its global fanbase. If this somehow ends up not being a hit on other platforms, Capcom will really be in a bad place. I suppose they really are all in at this point.

The game looks fun, but I don't know if I can knowingly continue to subsidize Capcom's continual mistreatment of the Nintendo community. At this point, when even collections of NES games and slightly upgraded ports of already localized games are skipping the Switch, it's hard not to take this all personally.

EDIT: You know, it just occurred to me: I wonder if blowback from all this will affect the sales of Monster Hunter Stories?

Is that even confirmed? It was Capcom's decision to not continue the franchise on portable systems as far as I'm aware. On top of that, the game has been in development for three year from what I've gathered, maybe they expected Nintendo to come out with a home console, but it turns out the Switch just can't run this game. It's not like that's a new thing.

I don't think there's anyone stopping Capcom from localising XX either. Unless there's a giant tin-foil hat conspiracy set up by Sony that prevents all of this, but I highly doubt it.

@Octane Sony's already got exclusive content lined up for the game.
It's a moneyhat of some sort.

EDIT: @Ralizah Nintendo's bringing that over themselves. The game bombed in Japan and nobody expected Capcom to localize it themselves.
Really wish Nintendo had stepped in and done XX instead.

@CrazedCavalier So they paid for some cosmetic stuff, big deal

@CrazedCavalier Oh, I know Nintendo is bringing MH Stories over. I wouldn't expect Capcom to bring it over (I think it's pretty clear Capcom wants nothing to do with Nintendo or the Switch, at least in the West). What I'm saying is, hopefully there's not some backlash against the brand itself on 3DS. I imagine this has burned and will continue to burn quite a number of bridges. It's not just the switch (ahem) away from Nintendo, but the switch away from portability itself.

The game is not PlayStation exclusive though: Xbox, PS, PC - I think that Capcom just wanted to evolve the series and try to make it a hit the western market as well. It makes a lot of sense as it is confirmed this is developed by the main team of MH games, not a spin-off. They probably started developing this way before knowing the Switch's specs.

@Ralizah The game wasn't going to sell either way, so you can't say for certain.

@Octane Considering they've been locking up actual gameplay content like Raids in Destiny, I'd say there's cause for concern.

Wanted to jump in and say Nintendo has helped with localizations for the MH games, I think even at the end of 4U's credits Capcom gave Special Thanks to Nintendo/Treehouse.

And Nintendo has been all about localizing games lately (such as Stories, a game people didn't expect to come here), I really feel/hope this no XX announcement is Nintendo's doing. They enjoy being secrety and all that, so...

• Monster Hunter: World has been in development for four years.
• Originally, it was going to be called “Monster Hunter 5”, but the development team really liked the name, “World” (Japanese ワールド).
• The Base Camp spawns in random places. Each time a hunt starts, hunters will be at a different Base Camp.
• Hunters can change weapons and armor midhunt by going to the Base Camp. This feature was added due to there usually being multiple large monsters in an area and from each having a different strength or weakness.
• Hunters can now hunt freely without being held back by the main objective/quest, even if the quest is complete. Hunters can hunt freely without any limits now.
• Hunters use Scout Flies as guides to help them navigate the area if they can’t find the monster and to find certain items, including drool and footprints.
• The monsters can easily change the environment you are fighting in with certain attacks and destroying certain objects.
• Each large monster in a location has a territory in a certain part of the area. In some cases, hunters may need to lure another threat into their territory in order to get their target to reveal itself.
• By hiding from monsters, hunters can avoid fighting them or prepare for a silent escape from the battle.
• Capcom thought about giving the monsters health bars due to a majority of people. Globally, fans requested for a way to see how much damage they were dealing, so Capcom decided to add damage numbers to the this game.
• The Quest Giver was fully voiced in English, and she sent the hunter on a quest to hunt an Anjanath, the T-rex-like monster shown in the reveal.
• Hunters can quickly pick up resources as they run by, meaning you don’t have to stop and wait for foraging animations

@DarthNocturnal They got a year's exclusivity.
This included multiple instances of Raids in paid DLC (in the smaller $10/$15 expansion packs, even). The scumminess of it all makes me cringe.

The whole thing is just inexplicable. It's as though Capcom learned absolutely nothing from the past 10 years. They chased the COD money western market and almost sundered themselves. They sold off assets and closed studios left and right as they bled themselves dry. They FINALLY recovered from that calamity with the success of MH on 3DS driving most of it. They were almost stable again. And now they're diving right back into seeking the big western COD money by westernizing their franchises and abandoning even their Japanese loyal fans. Whoever is making these decisions needs a window office, stat.

So now, they've divided their loyal fanbase. Their #1 franchise was a game that produced almost all its revenue in Japan, a country that plays almost exclusively portable consoles. And they decide to remove that franchise from portable consoles entirely. Japanese aren't going to run out and buy Playstations over portables just for MH. Certainly not after Pokemon is announced. MH is popular, but not Pokemon popular. Playstation is the only winner here. PS4 will see a sales uptick in Japan by the die-hard MH fans in Japan that are willing to condescend to console gaming just to play. A lot of other Japanese gamers will look for something else to play on Switch and abandon MH, unless they intend to continue special MH games on Switch for the Japan market, in which case, the loser is Western MH fans.

Ultimately Capcom may have made the whole thing worse with XX though. If they just came out and said "MH is going to be on any platform but the one you guys have been playing it on' it would have been bad. But people would understand that they changed platforms (I could see going sony exclusive. Every plat but Nintendo seems targeted...) But announcing a port of the 3DS game to Switch before announcing MH5 is everywhere but Switch actually makes it seem a lot worse (even though we all know the Switch one will outsell the other 10:1.)

It's the kind of bad decision making and bad optics Capcom became infamous for some years back, but it seemed like it was finally behind them. They talked up Switch support a lot, but it doesn't look that way from here.

I'm not even a strong MH fan. I play them, badly, I enjoy them, but I wouldn't buy a platform for MH, and I'm not going to be wasting valuable play time playing MHW tethered to a TV with PS4 when there's so many more convenient games coming to Switch, and a handful of story driven narratives on PS4 I want to play. Can't play everything, and MH, honestly, loses most of it's charm without portable convenience. I'd have bought XX on Switch for that TV/portable convenience. MHW sits pretty low on the PS4 list below Detroit, AC:O, P5, Horizon, the new Uncharted, even Spiderman. Heck, Knack 2 is higher on that list. I'm the small group that enjoyed the first one

But even as a non hardcore MH fan who's not particularly offended at whichever platform the series goes to, the whole way this rolled out has made me fairly disgusted with Capcom again to the point that USFII even feels less fun to play. When you have loyal customers for a given product, it's just bad business to completely flip them off in search of a much larger different group. Nintendo learned that the hard way with the Wii.

@NEStalgia Japan wise, XX Switch is still coming out and the PS4 install base is very small.
Monster Hunter will still be on the Switch in Japan-- it's just, sadly, up in the air everywhere else.

And they've repeatedly clarified the core gameplay in World is the same. All 14 weapon types are back, attack animations seem just the same, sharpening and stamina are still a thing... .There's some questionable stuff like damage numbers and moving while drinking potions, but they didn't dumb down/overhaul the core game for the sake of mass appeal.

Sounds really freaking awesome. Tracking drool and footprints is insanely cool. So alot of mechanics are not only present, but drastically improved upon.

But is seems there may be a price to pay for all that awesomeness. The fact they were actually considering healthbars scares me. Glad they decided against it. Optional damage numbers is a good compromise (provided they're optional).

Not sure how I feel about the animation frames being borked. While not having to stop to gather could be a nice change, there are serious implications it brings with it, which along with potion animations changed really starts to paint a picture of what we're getting here.

It still seems awesome though. But I really want to see combat now and get info on other animation frames.

It's like the ICC saying:

"Yeah test match cricket, hundreds of years of tradition, insanely loyal fanbase but we're cancelling it all in favour of 20Twenty cricket because it attracts more stag parties"

No-one can deny it's a big blow to the Switch in Japan - which is presumably one of the things that made it a very attractive move to Sony.

From Capcom's perspective I can understand the logic somewhat. They want to be a major AAA player again because a AAA game can sell tens of millions and make massive profits. MH is their blue ribbon franchise and therefore the best option for that - especially if Sony is helping to pay the bills (though we don't know all of the details of the deals that have gone on I think it's safe to assume there are some agreements in place behind the scenes). So they're trying to make it fit in that square hole no-matter what.

I'm not sure it'll necessarily work for them - there are some elements of MH that seem not to be well suited to a "mainstream" Western audience. Hopefully it ends well.

I'd also hope that Capcom doesn't walk away from Switch entirely. They have an audience for their games here.

Why are you guys assuming the series is dead for Switch and 3DS ? they always had the Portable series on the PSP which were far more succesful for being, duh, portable.

MHXX is probably a way to test the waters for a next MH Portable game.

MH went full 3DS because it sold like crazy and its crazy popular in Japan, you think Capcom, of all companies, will forget about 22m user base in Japan ? and the switch is about to hit 1m in 2 weeks

EDIT: Remember how long did we had to wait for tri ? a full year, and by the time the Wii was already a success with millions of units sold, 1.5 years for 3 Ultimate, same with the 3DS being a hit already worldwide, again 1.5 years for 4 (4U)

MH has been pretty well recieved in the west, but look, Capcom always waited for a bigger install base because they didn't knew how people would react, PS4/XB1/PX are well established in all regions by now, Switch is just starting, if it keeps selling, dont worry, we will have a MH for Switch and localized

@Faruko
Nobody thinks it's dead for the Switch. People just think those future entries will likely never leave Japan now.

Which is almost just as bad as being dead if you don't speak Japanese.