This analysis critically examines the evolution of endgame content and reward systems in the Monster Hunter series, arguing that well-designed, engaging endgames are crucial for player retention and overall game satisfaction, using Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate's Guild Quests as a benchmark for success.
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Good day everyone. It's Michael and this
is OG Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on 3DS.
Now, I feel old just saying this, but
this game is a decade old now and
unfortunately you can no longer play
online with other Hunters with the
closure of Nintendo's online services
for 3DS and Wii U last year on the 8th
of April, 2024. What you're seeing now
is a recording on that day 1 minute
prior to the planned shutdown time,
followed by some photos I took in the
subsequent days. I wanted to see this
game out and I was still online and in a
lobby 7 days later on April 16th where
another player by the name of Lex was
also still online and rejoined my lobby
to say that we were the only players
left. Hours later, I came back to see
that he was gone. And a few days after
that, on the 21st of April, New Zealand
time, I was finally disconnected by an
error of some kind or I was booted from
my lobby. I just might have been the
last man standing online in For
Ultimate. Now, the question you might be
asking is why? And the answer is that I
felt like I owed this game a thank you.
A thank you for providing something that
I had wanted from Monster Hunter since I
started playing back in MH3. an endgame
environment that would continue to
facilitate more of the Monster Hunter
gameplay I enjoy so much and have it
feel rewarding alongside combat itself.
Something that offered engaging
progression on top of Monster Hunter's
already wellestablished formula and
something that provided a wide array of
unique rewards that allowed for so much
more build crafting and customization
guild quests. Now, I do want to just
clarify that base MH4 actually
introduced this system in high rank. And
even though a focus of this video is
with four ultimate since that was the
localized version we got in Western
markets, I was of course not able to
play base MH4. I just wanted to mention
that for context and to applaud MH4 for
showing that a well-designed endgame
system can be present in a base game on
release. With there being so much
discussion going on at the moment
regarding Wilds and its difficulty and
amount of content, I don't want to add
more fuel to that fire and continue to
beat a dead horse when I and many others
have already been so critical of Wilds.
Instead, I'd like to use my perspective
as an older player to elevate and praise
a game that managed to get so much right
over a decade ago and how looking back
at mechanics and systems that have
worked well in the past might be
instructive for Monster Hunter in the
future. Now, I'm talking about certain
elements and the differences here
between great games and the exceptional.
I said in my channel introduction that I
only have time to talk about and
critique the [ __ ] that I love. And with
Wilds releasing in a fairly undercooked
state, that is the motivation for me to
enter the Thunderdome here and weigh in
on an aspect of the game that I think
can be improved. I know there is an
abundance of takes in the Monster Hunter
community right now, but I'm hoping this
video will add some real value as sort
of a retrospective aside from being
pretty topical and planting my own flag
on the take landscape. I've talked about
Endgame a little bit already in my brief
start to making videos on the series and
I wanted to go more in depth in the
right way on a topic that I think is not
talked about enough and so fundamentally
important to this series now. These are
games that many folks spend hundreds and
thousands of hours in and a large amount
of that is often spent once you uncap
and have reached the end of the core
progression. A big talking point within
the community about Wilds on release has
been about the difficulty and amount of
content on offer or lack thereof. And I
want to unpack why that may be, what
that even means, and how endgame could
be playing a role in this discussion. I
don't know how many people are even
going to end up watching this, but
drafting this video up, I'm now
realizing this is going to be a pretty
long video. I want to try and be
respectful of your time. So, please use
the chapters I have going to navigate
through to any portions of this video
that may interest you. After some
groundwork and a summary of my initial
thoughts, a big part of this video will
be taking a retrospective look at
earlier end games and RNG based systems
going all the way through until some
wild specific commentary at the end. I
wanted to cover things in reasonable
detail and try to look at as much
applicable material as possible to
present some of my own takes and theory
in one big video rather than try to
break things up and farm a topic
unnecessarily. If you're in for the long
haul, I appreciate it a ton and now
would be the time to grab your Tanzia
chips and a cool drink. Before I talk
about four Ultimate and other end games
in more detail, I want to first attempt
to explain what endgame means within the
framework of Monster Hunter and why it
could be having a large effect on the
subject of enough content for a big
group of players in the community.
Content is a very vague term as it
pertains to Monster Hunter. And I
proposed an idea in my first video
talking about Wilds that the content of
a game in this series could be defined
by three main things. difficulty,
roster, and an endgame system, with a
fourth supporting element being
optionals and side quests like NPC
requests. It's not a perfect theory by
any means, and a game like GU can have a
ton of core content with a huge roster,
a lot of difficult challenges to
overcome and mechanics to master and a
lot of side content to help support it.
And this is while not really having an
endgame system as such. Most other games
from fourth gen onward have utilized
some sort of endgame system or extension
of the core content to supplement an
established tried and tested progression
structure through additional mechanics,
increasing the difficulty of monsters,
and adding exclusive rewards. Endgame
can play a big role in the discussion
surrounding content in these games due
to the vast amount of time spent by
players that play Monster Hunter for the
build crafting, hunting the most
challenging enemies, and looking for
chase items to optimize and fine-tune
play styles. Years ago, I held a small
poll here on the channel that I think is
quite instructive despite the small and
perhaps more focused sample size. For
players familiar with the series, I
wanted to get a sense of what sort of
content that facilitates combat that
they like to engage with the most, what
they like to complete, and their
priorities within these games. This is
just something to keep in the back of
your mind throughout the rest of this
video as an underlying theory. I want to
go off this poll with an extrapolated
but I think fair hypothesis that a lot
of players first priority and the thing
they enjoy the most other than combat
itself is the progression of upgrading
and making builds that alter the combat
and allow them to have more fun or face
tougher foes and continue with that
progression. And I think that makes
sense and isn't a crazy idea. This is
effectively what Monster Hunter is at
its core. Dropping down this list of
enjoyment or priorities, I think players
are then looking to complete and
overcome the biggest challenge or most
difficult enemies, most likely after
progressing and optimizing their builds
to test themselves as players. After
players have overcome that challenge,
after optimizing their builds and
topping out on progression, I think they
then look to complete the rest of the
content on offer, whether that be
completing all quests, crafting every
piece of gear, maxing their HR, or
completing all side quests and optional
content. Now, this is my rough theory on
what I think players are actually doing
and in what order within Monster Hunter
games. I happen to fall within this
hierarchy myself, but I realize everyone
is different and has their own reasons
for playing. I think it is fair to
speculate that both the gear progression
and the challenging encounters do play a
huge role in what players enjoy about
Monster Hunter's gameplay. And this is
where Endgame comes in with the goal
being to provide that repeatable
challenging content that is still able
to engage and reward the player in a
system that is additive to the core
progression once it has been exhausted.
Now, I just want to say that I don't
believe every Monster Hunter game has
even had an endgame. You might have
noticed that I said earlier that I don't
believe GU had an endgame as such. A lot
of the games in the series have just had
an end of the game, if that makes any
sense, where the core progression tops
out and there is nothing else to
incentivize gameplay other than your own
enjoyment of the combat itself or the
completion of side content. I'm also not
saying that this is a bad thing. The
core progression of Monster Hunter is a
ton of fun for me at least. And just
like with any game that you enjoy and
want to begin that progression again,
you can always just make a new save and
play through again whenever you feel
like it. Two things can be true,
however, and I think the games in the
series that have had robust end games
have done a better job at retaining
players and are generally held in higher
regard with even more on offer than
games in the series that were already
providing so much value to begin with.
I've said it before and I'll say it
again. RNG and repetition are not points
of negativity. They can either be used
well or not well. Like most things,
Monster Hunter is by nature a grindy and
repetitive game. Most games are by
definition repetitive. You are sitting
there repeating similar or the same
actions over and over again by playing.
The question is, how are these games
being designed and incorporating
repetition and RNG in a positive and
engaging way? Monster Hunter must be
doing something right if it is
repetitive. And yet, we are still
happily pumping hundreds, if not
thousands of hours into these games and
loving it. Whenever a robust endgame has
been present in Monster Hunter, it has
been a boon for these games. People have
continued playing. There is more social
media content being made on the game
with more guides or build showcases, and
the community sentiment is a lot more
positive. In general, when repetitious
endgame systems and RNG have been
designed poorly, the gameplay has
devolved into dire states where people
are doing mining runs with bombs in the
hope of finding or sniping talismans
like in third gen, coal mining in fourth
gen, or literally harvesting a flower
over and over again in exchange for
decorations or asher materials like we
saw early on in wilds. players are
naturally going to take the path of
least resistance or find the optimal way
to earn or farm something. And that
often results in players finding
alternative means to avoid negatively
repetitive gameplay because it didn't
need to be designed that way. If you
design rare items, chase items, or RNG
based mechanics that are important to
player and build progression, there
needs to be a strong structure there to
support that without shortcuts. A big
priority outside of selling a game is to
keep people playing it for a host of
reasons. I'm not saying that certain
repetitious systems are for all players.
And if certain grinds or end games
aren't for you or you feel like a system
is too grindy, then that is perfectly
okay. What I am saying though is that it
should be a priority to deliver and
provide something substantial to players
that do want to continue engaging with
your game with the goal being to retain
as many players as possible. Many
players thought and still do think that
guild quests in for you were too grindy
because the RNG was very heavy. And I
would respond to that by saying, "While
yes, the RNG was very heavy, I think
that is still a better option than
building a system that is too light and
chase items are too easy to get." With
hindsight, I do think the odds of
rolling the best modifiers could have
been slightly increased, or the amount
of bishackled weapons and armor from
quest rewards could also have been
slightly increased. But it's extremely
hard to get a perfect balance and Capcom
are obviously not in a position to make
changes on the fly prior to World. In
saying that, chase items do need to be
rare. And if the structure and design
around these systems is good otherwise,
and it's just a question of RNG and how
long you need to farm for chase items, I
believe it's better for a reward to be
too hard to get than too easy in pursuit
of retaining players. There is a reason
an entire subsection of the Pokémon
community enjoy shiny hunting, even
though the odds of obtaining what you're
after can often be very low. If a reward
is too common, then it can undermine the
significance of what you're chasing. And
if everyone has what you have, then
nothing is rare. This is part of the
reason relic weapons in for you felt
special since they were all unique and
it felt like you earned something that
only you have and then you were able to
bring it on hunts and show it off which
was a great form of customization and
player expression. But I'll expand on
this later. For the folks that don't
like an RNG heavy or grindy experience,
regardless of it being designed well or
poorly, they are most likely going to
stop playing anyway once they have had
their fill and gotten what they wanted
out of the game. And that is okay. Not
everyone enjoys participating in
something like shiny hunting and
Pokemon. And you're not wrong at all for
enjoying and playing a game how you want
to. I just think it is important to have
something robust in place for all the
other players that do play Monster
Hunter for the grind and enjoy it so you
can retain what I think is a large
portion of the player base between title
updates with this new content release
philosophy. That being said, I think
reward, challenge, and repetition all
need to be congruent with each other and
designed well to create an engaging and
rewarding system for those Monster
Hunter players. If there is minimal or
no reward offered at an endgame level to
players outside of personal enjoyment
and mastery of combat itself, it's going
to be hard to retain all the players
that have enjoyed feeling consistent
progression and upgrading for however
many hours, finally getting to a point
where they find out there is little else
they can do to continue that. If there
are chase items and substantial rewards
on offer, but the method in which you
obtain them is negatively repetitive by
repeating a specific route or set of
actions or something like hunting a
singular target, then no doubt players
are going to feel tired participating in
a grind that is optimal but not
enjoyable compared to the rest of the
game. If a system is not engaging enough
because it is too easy, then worst case
scenario is that players are going to
feel bored while chasing rewards they
don't feel like they need because they
weren't challenged trying to get them.
Of course, these are all big assumptions
based on my own theory and experiences.
But we can point to many situations in
Monster Hunter's history where if even
one of these three principles are not
handled right, then we encounter issues
where players gave negative feedback and
were unhappy for a variety of reasons.
Conversely, I would say that the two
best examples of well-designed endgames
in Monster Hunter got all three of these
principles right to varying degrees,
despite still being imperfect, with
those being guild quests and afflicted
investigations. The Guiding Lands, while
great in concept, were close to hitting
the mark, but ultimately fell short
because of core issues and a lack of
challenge, partly stemming from base
world. I think the KT and Safy Sieges
were pretty experimental and a very
mixed bag of good and bad within their
own ecosystems, even though they weren't
overarching systems utilizing the
majority of the roster. So, I'm treating
them slightly differently. Generations
and GU are a little bit different as
well with Deviants and Hyper Monsters,
so I'll be discussing that later in the
video, too. I've said before that I
don't believe a well-designed endgame
has to be G rank exclusive and that I
think it's completely irresponsible to
excuse the lack of a halfdecent endgame
in these base releases when people say
things like this is how Monster Hunter
has always been or this is just the base
game. It frustrates me because while yes
you are correct that is the status quo.
What I am asking is why does that need
to be the case? Especially now that
Monster Hunter has grown so much in the
West, among a whole host of other
changes, why does the release system
need to work the same as it did two
decades ago on ancient consoles for a
completely different market to now? Even
within the context of the status quo,
like I said earlier, base MH4 introduced
the relic system. And although it wasn't
perfect, as I'll discuss later, I think
it was impressive compared to the base
games that have come after it. I don't
believe that it should have to take what
is effectively an entire other game
being bolted on to something that
already takes 5 years to develop to
provide something Monster Hunter has
already demonstrated it can do well in
previous titles. Base games shouldn't be
the releases that are missing the mark
on endgame content and creating this big
of a disparity with the new game feeling
empty or lacking compared to the
previous game after its expansion was
added. If the G-rank expansions need to
be smaller and cheaper to help correct
this, then I'm all for that. They are
expansions after all. It is just
frustrating and seems bizarre and
backwards that in more recent years, an
expansion we pay less for has had the
prioritized endgame instead of that
being a focus in the next generation
fully priced base game on release and
carried through to the expansion and
then built up. Why not have player
retention be more of a focus for the
base release of a next generation game
when a ton of players, both old and new,
will be jumping back in instead of
putting something right at the end of
the expansion release when a lot of
those players from the base game are
already gone. With that synopsis done
and some of my overall thoughts
summarized, I'd now like to look at how
the concept of an endgame has changed
throughout Monster Hunter's history and
some commentary on applicable games.
What has worked poorly? What worked
well? And how did these different games
handle the three principles that
constitute an engaging endgame system?
Prior to third gen, the concept of an
endgame was simpler and a lot different
to what we know today. The reason I say
this is because third gen introduced the
talisman or charm equipment slot. And
that was the first time there was a
separate RNG or chase system alongside
core crafting, progression, and build
making. I'm going to be talking a fair
bit about talismans here to start with
since this was really the genesis of a
lot of later mechanics. If you want to
play a fun drinking game, take a swig of
that mega demon drug whenever I say
talisman. Through first and second gen,
the base crafting system set a
foundation to facilitate the gameplay
loop we all know and love. It is built
on a simple system providing incremental
power and upgrades to the player through
RNG based rewards, repetition, and
targeted farming with things like
breakable parts. Certain upgrades were
and still are locked behind rare
materials like plates and gems or
progression points like undiscovered
monsters and inaccessible loces for
mining, bones, or insects.
Fundamentally, the core progression in
Monster Hunter has remained unchanged in
this regard, where you keep progressing
and unlock more challenging monsters
that reward the player accordingly with
the most powerful gear and build
options. But that changed in third gen,
where talismans now played a huge role
in player power and build options by
providing additional skill points and
decoration slots on what effectively is
a sixth equipable armor slot without any
defense. Talismans now became a common
limiting factor to build crafting and
power progression with how many skill
points they could offer. And getting a
favorable or desirable talisman was a
huge deal back in MH3 and 3 Ultimate. So
much so that players like myself were
running mining routes in MH3 Volcano
with Feline Explorer and bringing barrel
bombs to detonate on ourselves to end
the quest with our inventory intact and
farm talismans effectively. that was the
path of least resistance. Folks were
also running the world eater giant devil
joe event quest when it was available
and it was really the only quest in the
game that awarded highranked talismans
with any regularity outside of mining
runs. Since these equipable items were
not able to be crafted or even really
target farmed like traditional rare
crafting materials like plates or gems,
there was a massive change in what
players were doing and what content they
were engaging with once the core content
was exhausted. In MH3, if you were
mining for talisman so that you could
continue build crafting, you were not
even engaging with the game's combat,
and you were mindlessly running the same
route every time with the hope of
getting something usable. It was
negatively repetitive, and there was no
challenge whatsoever for a reward that
was literally build enabling at the
time. Even if you ran Event Devil Joe
while it was available and were
challenged and rewarded accordingly, you
were still running one monster with the
same quest. And I think you can only put
up with something like that for so long.
And this tracks with my theory. Once we
exhausted the end of the game's core
progression with Devil Joe, Jen Moran,
and Elatrion, and had established our
builds, the way to keep progressing was
to find talismans that enabled us to
further upgrade our sets and try new
builds. And for what? So we could fight
Elatrion, the most challenging thing in
the game that by that stage didn't
provide anything else to work toward.
Talismans have changed over time across
the games because they are such a big
part of progression and buildmaking and
MH3 failed to implement them in a way
that was healthy for the game. MH3 did
not have an endgame. Talismans just
warped what we were doing at the end of
the game. This was the same with
portable third and arguably got worse in
three Ultimate. 3U arrived with a number
of additions to the roster that
dramatically increased the amount of
lategame gear options and the difficulty
you needed to overcome to be rewarded
with them. The core progression was
greatly improved as you would expect,
but talismans were still important chase
items for builds, and there was still no
way of farming them reliably or being
rewarded with them through combat or
challenge. World Eater Devil Joe was no
longer even an option, and we were still
doing mining runs. Many players like
myself got many hours into 3U. And once
we started investigating the best ways
to get the talismans we wanted, we then
found out about charm tables. Imagine
finding out certain talismans you saw
other players using were not even
attainable depending on what charm table
your character landed on when you
pressed new game hundreds of hours ago.
In MH3 and portable third, you change
tables whenever you open the game. The
only thing three Ultimate did was
introduce the charmer skill, which
sometimes gave you an additional charm
when mining one. You could argue this is
a good change, but I would then ask you
to consider how further incentivizing a
gameplay loop of just mining in the
pursuit of player power is positive when
this entire system around talismans
didn't need to be designed this way.
Gathering and mining have always served
a minor role in Monster Hunter, but the
game is focused on gameplay through
combat. We are here to fight and these
supplemental elements shouldn't be the
primary way to progress at an endgame
level. I'm not even going to talk about
charm sniping since that is using
exterior tools outside of the game. I
think it's fair to say that the entire
system associated with talismans in
third gen was pretty egregious and
clearly undercooked if folks were
resorting to exterior tools. With third
gen behind us and some groundwork laid
for one of the focuses of this video,
MH4 brought about a number of changes
aside from the introduction of guild
quests. The first changes really
improved the system surrounding
talismans with the introduction of
melding and that you were no longer
locked to a charm table per save like in
3 Ultimate. Now, there is talk about
this being a bug within 3 Ultimate and
with fourth gen, this was now fixed to
what it probably was intended to be like
in MH3 and portable third. So, all
talismans were attainable. Melding now
provided a reliable way to farm
talismans that didn't exclusively
involve mining or an event quest.
Although some folks did still do mining
runs anyway, or to boost their meldding
supply, this system now meant that you
could go out and hunt while still
progressing with talismans between
quests. It also meant that all the
worthless talismans you would find now
served a purpose to be rerolled at a
later time. Melding has now become a
mainstay of the series in different
forms with Generations, Generations
Ultimate, Rise and Sunbreak reusing this
exact Talisman melding system years
later and Warian melding being very
similar for decorations. I think it is
important to say that this is a
supplemental system and we later saw
with base Rise and release patch
Sunbreak that talisman melding on its
own is not a standalone endgame. And
I'll talk about that more when I get to
Rise. Talisman Melding works best when
it isn't the main reason for you to go
on hunts or to save and reload or do
delivery quests or sub quests to refresh
it. Capcom has since made efforts to
seed meldding so that it cannot be
abused as easily. So they have clearly
designed it as something that is extra
but is still very important since it
affects build crafting and player power.
I don't remember the talisman experience
in four ultimate feeling nearly as bad
as it did in third gen. And that makes
sense because alongside melding to help
outside of quests, talismans were now
dropping with regularity as guild quest
rewards, which we were all running as
the main gameplay activity anyway. It
was still rare to get a strong talisman,
but we were now obtaining them naturally
from the rewards of challenging monsters
we were hunting anyway for relics and
then re-rolling anything subpar away at
the Meldder to boost our chances. The
talisman system finally felt like it had
been implemented in a positive way with
these different design elements. For
Ultimate was also the genesis of another
endgame mechanic we now know as weapon
augmentation. This was called weapon
honing back in the day, and we had three
options in the form of attack, life, and
defense hone we could put on non-relicapons
non-relicapons
in exchange for zenith gems dropped from
apex monsters. This was of course
iterated on in base world with
streamstones, ice spawn with spirit bane
gems, and sunbrake with afflicted
materials, all to different levels of
success. It was a pretty basic system
compared to what we have seen since, but
it was the first game to add
customization to weapons without any RNG
involved as a small add-on to the core
progression. The main attraction in four
and for you, however, is guild quests.
To break the system down for players
that are newer to the franchise, the
structure of guild quests is quite
similar to that of afflicted
investigations. If you played Sunbreak,
at a glance, you have level-based quests
with randomized targets, reward pools on
a procedurally generated map with the
Everwood. Just like afflicted
investigations, there is increasing
monster difficulty up to a maximum quest
level of 140 and an additional monster
mechanic with the frenzy and apex state
similar to the afflicted state. Quests
could be obtained through expeditions in
the Everwood and could be acquired as
early as low rank to be leveled up. and
desirable quests with certain monster
targets and quest rewards could also be
shared and sent to other players. There
was a lot of community effort put into
the sharing of quests to help players
track down quests that had what they
were after for target farming. 10 quests
could be registered at a time and
players would commonly have turns
lobbies set up to raise their quest
levels up to 136 to start receiving the
highest tier of rewards in the system.
So quite a lot to digest here already
and there was a lot of complexity within
the reward pools and how the quests
correlated with what folks were grinding
for. Relic weapons and relic armor were
the chase items exclusive to this system
alongside the affforementioned talismans
which were also now being rewarded with
regularity from these quests. The reason
these equipment pieces are referred to
as relics is because a lot of the
weapons and armor involved in the system
are skins and assets from prior games
that were not attainable through core
crafting. And all of the gear obtained
through guild quests were randomly
modified and altered in a number of
ways, even if their craftable
counterpart was already in the game.
Things like Lagocris weapons, elreon
armor, and many others were available to
target farm with altered slots and stats
despite those monsters not being in the
game outside of what was craftable from
trading with the wun. There were also
unique combination skills available like
ruthlessness having weakness exploit and
crit eye plus two and hone blade with
attack up L and sharpness plus one that
could only be found in built onto armor
and weapons and were non removable but
very sought after. Many players were
hunting these combination skills down to
make builds with along with one, two, or
three empty slots for craftable
decorations to also be slotted into all
of these relic pieces. Weapons and armor
obtained through guild quest rewards
would be obtained similarly to charms
where you would appraise them and then
have a usable piece of equipment. At the
highest tier with a quest level above
136, the shackled armor and weapons
would then be appraised after quest
completion and a series of roles would
take place as to the alterations on the
equipment. Inbuilt skills, empty slots,
defense value, resistances, and skin
were all possible outcomes for armor.
And weapons were even more complex.
Relic weapons could have alterations to
raw attack, sharpness, element, status,
slots, or inbuilt skills, skin, and even
weapon color. And all of this led to
such a wide array of unique items that
could be obtained through guild quests.
The way this all worked with the guild
quest structure was that quests would
have biases for what pull or series of
armor skin and type they could drop and
then that would coincide with certain
monsters being responsible for rewarding
certain skins. Similarly with weapons, a
guild quest would also have a bias for
weapon types and then the target monster
would determine the skin. This all seems
very convoluted and complex and frankly
it was. One of the things that I think
certainly made the system needlessly
complex is that there are different
letters within the armor series that can
make it really difficult to even
identify what is rewarded from what
quest. I think complexity is needed with
a system like this to give it depth and
longevity, but there is no doubt the
formatting of these rewards and the
segmentation might have been a bit much.
It is basically impossible to determine
what is rewarded from what bias or
monster in game. And these tables were
pretty much essential resources to even
understand guild quest rewards. As an
example, I have a quest here that
involves velocrome and rajang. It has an
armor bias of trierc arms, meaning the
ludroth arms will be appraised from any
bishackled armor drops. The weapon bias
on this quest is lance and gunlance. So,
the front rider lance and full voltage
gun lance are the available rewards for
bishackled weapons obtained in this
quest. Now, it's important to say that
the first target monster in a guild
quest determines the reward types and
the second monster adds a weight or
value to the amount and rarity of the
rewards obtained. So, with this quest,
Velocadrome is determining the reward
types and Rajang is kind of boosting the
amount of those bishackled relic drops.
Commonly, players would run quests with
either Rajang or Devil Joe in the second
slot to add the most weight to their
quest rewards while target farming
certain equipment using the first
monster. This brings me to another
smaller gripe with the system overall as
it relates to formatting and hunt
variety. And this also applies to a
bigger degree with the Aran system with
Arkfeld and Wilds. Rajang and Deviljo
were almost always involved with
efficient guild quest farming in for
you, just as Arkfeld has been by far the
most optimal way to engage the Ashen
system with it adding the most reward
weight in multi monster quests to reward
a parts. Now, you could hunt elder
dragons and guild quests as well. And I
don't think this problem with hunt
variety was as severe in for you than it
is in wilds since you were actually
incentivized to target farm specific
monsters in the first slot. And then you
had either Rajang or Devil Joe boosting
the rewards instead of just Arkfeld in
Wild's case. Prior to eightstar tempered
apexes being added to wilds, tempered
arkfeld has basically been a mandatory
target within the endgame upon wild's
release with it being the only eightstar
tempered monster boosting reward
quantity with a massive drop off in
quantity with sevenstar tempered. Couple
this issue with the fact that a part
rewards are not able to be targeted by
type outside of meldding that is
unlocked for rarity 8 at HR 100. So,
it's a total crapshoot from actually
hunting that you get what you're looking
for. You are only able to increase the
amount of random parts by hunting
something like tempered Arfeld plus
another target versus a sevenstar Apex
plus another target. We can clearly see
that the devs have taken on feedback
about this negatively affecting the game
with eightstar tempered Apexes being
added and the frequency of multimon
quests being dramatically increased.
Obviously, Capcom wasn't really in a
position to make changes and updates to
something like Guild Quests on 3DS, but
I think it's fair to say that the state
of hunt variety within Guild Quests was
much better than what Wilds has
delivered upon its release with the Aran
crafting system. Guild quests had 24
monsters involved in the system, all of
which at the highest quest level
presented increased challenge with
monsters receiving increased speed,
health, and damage, making even low tier
monsters like Velocadrome threatening
alongside the Frenzy and Apex states
that affected a lot of the target
monsters as another gameplay mechanic to
raise the difficulty. Frenzy and Apex
monsters were really the first
implementation of powered up monsters in
the series. Aside from specific quests
in past games like Demon King Diablo,
World Eater Devil Joe or Clashing Fists
Brachaddios, Frenzy and Apex monsters
both use the same mechanic used by Gore
Maggala where upon getting hit by a
frenzied or apex monster, you would
receive the frenzy debuff. This would
give you a time limit to either play
more aggressively to receive an affinity
buff or once the frenzy bar fully fills,
take increased damage for a period of
time. Apex monsters, while having a big
issue, as I'll cover shortly, did build
on this concept from MH4, and monsters
that had apex forms, aside from having
increased health, damage, speed, and the
frenzy mechanic, also had new moves
while in their apex states. Rajang
received the infamous giant boulder
throw. Apex Diablos received moves from
Black Diablos. Devil Joe from Savage.
And Zenogo received a change to its
electric orbs among many other such
changes. The reusing of assets is
something that I believe Monster Hunter
has been able to use to great effect.
And a lot of Foru's roster wasn't even
involved with guild quests. The gripe I
have about Devil Joe and Rajang being so
common in Foru's Endgame could have
easily been improved or even solved by
just having a little bit more
development time to implement more of
the roster into the system like the
Wraths for example. We saw how afflicted
investigations were built up and what a
more developed implementation of this
idea looked like where almost the entire
roster in Sunbreak is reused as part of
the system to create great hunt variety
and keep the endgame gameplay feeling
fresh for as long as possible. Now, I
have a few more issues with guild quests
I want to cover to be evenhanded before
I wrap up with the positives and the
overall experience. I think the raising
of quest level was very slow and what
ended up happening with lobbies a lot of
the time was that players would just
leave when they saw someone posting a
quest at something lower than 136. This
is a formatting issue and could easily
have been adjusted to get people up to
136 faster, so people can start running
their quests at the highest tier more
quickly instead of the quest level
progression slowing down to one level
increases as you get closer to 136. I
will just say that it was a good thing
that there wasn't an actual HR
requirement for participation in higher
level guild quests. So, as long as you
had reached G special, you were fine.
The problem we had with the MR caps in
the guiding lands with region level and
the gated research levels with afflicted
investigations in Sunbreak is not
present here. And as such, if you reach
G special, you could join level 140
guild quests through multiplayer and
friends straight away, even if you
didn't have your own quests leveled up
that high. The leveling was just slow,
which is something that affected the
guiding lands 2 and also afflicted
investigations in Sunbreak. I've already
spoken about Devil Joe and Rajang
playing a negative role in the hunt
variety with how they affected reward
waiting. And something that exacerbated
this problem was the apex state and
wston stones. I think the whole idea of
frenzy monsters introduced in MH4 was
actually a really solid first attempt at
something like this. And Apex's in for
you did do some positive things to build
on this concept. However, Apexes could
also be very frustrating at times and
were ultimately held back because of the
decision to add armor that made your
weapons bounce off the majority of
monster parts while in the apex state.
The idea here is that you needed to use
Yston, a reusable item to buff your
weapon, allowing you to do actual damage
to these monsters and knock them out of
the apex state. While having some
novelty, I don't think the concept
really improves Monster Hunter's
gameplay when sharpness and wet stones
are already a pretty substantial
mechanic to keep track of and maintain
throughout hunts. And I think the armor
on apex monsters led to a lot of really
negative game scenarios. You had to stop
before every Apex fight to apply your Y
stone. You had to manage the cooldowns
for the next time it regains the effect.
And if you didn't have your Y stone
activated while your target was in the
apex state, you basically were
completely useless while you waited for
your cooldown or your teammates to knock
the target out of apex so you can
continue with the fight. It was very
risky to be aggressive without activated
Yston because bouncing off armored parts
was incredibly easy and you could be
punished very quickly leading to easy
carts with how fast and how much damage
level 140 monsters were doing. I don't
think the armor and Yston stones with
the Apex system were necessary at all.
It just added another chore to the
gameplay loop and Apex monsters were
already challenging enough with their
adjusted speed and damage. Apex state as
an idea could have been completely
absent and monsters like Devil Joe and
Rajang could have just retained the
exact same speed and damage while being
frenzied monsters without the armor.
remove the Y stones entirely and just
have the frenzy virus modify the
monsters temporarily until you did
enough damage to knock them out of it. I
think this would have made the grind a
lot more enjoyable without the chore of
wston stones and removing the portions
of hunts that were frustrating because
of armor that Apex monsters had. The
last thing to piggyback off what I spoke
about with reformatting the reward pools
is the distribution of the relics
themselves. I do think that some of the
parameters of the weapons specifically
could have been adjusted to roll more
favorably and ease the level of RNG
needed for strong relic weapons with
favorable stats. I'm in favor of heavy
RNG as opposed to light RNG when it
comes to chase items as I discussed
earlier, but I will admit that the RNG
could have been tweaked and perhaps
removed some of the lower level mods
entirely or increase the probabilities
of the higher tier mods rolling. The
stars basically needed to align for you
to find that perfect weapon with godly
stats. Even though you could target farm
the weapon type and skin. And while I'm
personally fine with that, as I've
discussed already at length, I do think
that there is a point where the RNG is
too extreme and could use adjusting when
you have this many variables involved
with rewards. A max raw natural purple
sharpness weapon with slots and element
should be super rare. But with the rates
as they were in for you, you could play
for hundreds of hours and never find
something like that. Now, on that point,
in favor of the RNG associated with
relic weapons, although perfect rolls
were of course extremely rare to hit,
hitting on strong relics with good
improvements from craftable options was
a lot more common. Hitting on a weapon
with quality stats felt great, and you
didn't need to hit the god rolls to open
up more build crafting and feel more
progression. Talking about great swords
specifically for a minute, a lot of
players would commonly use the Serios
and Fatalis great swords at the end of G
rank and into guild quests when they
first started to engage the endgame.
These weapons, although set up slightly
differently within great sword sets,
would often be used while farming until
you hit a relic greatsword as an
upgrade. Looking at the stats and then
what was available through relics,
basically any of the top 50% rolls on
raw attack were an upgrade from the best
options that were craftable. If you hit
a relic greatsword with anything higher
than 1488 raw with element slots or
decent sharpness, you were in business
and that felt awesome. This applied to a
lot of other weapon types in the game,
and it was common to see players with
mid to high tier relics that they
earned. Despite the amount of variables
and RNG involved with the system, the
progression still felt very incremental
and earned, and you were rewarded with a
weapon that was unique to you, that you
worked for. That lagris blade that you
finally hit with good stats is yours,
and it was unique. the skin you target
farm for with unique stats and its own
color to boot. Relic weapons felt earned
and it was an awesome experience joining
lobbies and seeing other hunters with
their unique weapons, the sets they
built around them, and then rolling up
with your own build with a weapon you
found. Relic weapons gave builds so much
personality and expression aside from
just gameplay progression and gameplay
variety. And I miss that. Later when I
discuss the Ashen crafting system in
Wilds, this expression is completely
absent. Aian weapons in Wilds have no
soul. Upon launch, you can't even alter
their appearance with a layered system
like we saw in Iceborn. To me, the grind
and RNG involved with relic weapons
combined with their modifiers and skin
options worked so well to provide a
reward that felt meaningful and unique.
It felt earned and aren weapons don't.
You go out and collect random parts from
Tempered Arfeld, smash it all down and
meld it all together for the parts that
you want, and then hope to hit good
rolls on reinforcement in a menu at the
smithy instead of quest rewards from the
tough guild quest you just completed.
Overall, I think what MH4 built and for
you expanded was a success at the first
real attempt at a proper endgame system,
delivering on the fundamentals. an
engaging, challenging endgame
environment with the Apex issue aside,
coupled with a breadth of unique and
personalized chase rewards because of
the RNG with a number of monsters
involved in a system that could be
target farmed for those rewards. Guild
Quests pioneered an entire concept that
is supposed to enhance these grindy
games with more of a grind. And I think
it is impressive that the system got so
much right a long time ago on an
underpowered system with a smaller team
just through a clever reuse of assets
and certain design decisions. This has
been a pretty deep dive into guild
quests and I hope this has provided some
context to look at wilds from this
different perspective. Even if you don't
agree with a lot of my own takes on
things which I completely understand. I
will try to reference back to the
segment on for you when discussing wilds
at the end of this video more. I just
wanted to go in depth here for the sake
of continuity and to have all of the
fundamentals covered before summarizing
and drawing more conclusions later in
the video. Continuing on after 4 and
fourth gen, Generations and Generations
Ultimate were quite different games, and
I think the negative feedback the relic
system may have received for being too
grindy prompted the change back to a
more traditional setup. I would describe
Generations and Generations Ultimate
especially as having perhaps the largest
amount of core progression in a Monster
Hunter game, but that they didn't
actually have an endgame system like we
saw with MH4 and 4 Ultimate. Both
deviants and hyper monsters ran adjacent
to normal monsters and traditional
crafting. And even though you leveled
deviant quests up similarly to guild
quests, there was not a poll of RNG
based chase items you were targeting.
you were just raising the quest level
and hunting the monster and getting the
mats to craft that deviant gear like
normal. I don't think this is a bad
thing at all. I think Generations
Ultimate is offering such an impressive
amount of core content rivaling Iceorn
and Sunbreak even after those games
continued to receive additions over
time. Like I said in my opening summary,
I think a well-designed endgame is a
benefit to these games. But if you have
such a large amount of core content from
day one, like in Gu's case, I think the
players primarily wanting to grind are
of course going to feel a lot happier
and way more positive towards the game,
irrespective of there being an endgame
system or not. I don't think GU suffered
much because it didn't have an endgame,
but that might not be as true with base
generations because the relic system was
gone. I think the talisman system also
took a step back in these games.
Alongside melding, efficient talisman
farming in generations was now being
done in the form of coal mining and
delivering it one at a time with the
Sakura method. In GU, if you had
exhausted all of the core content or you
were looking for talismans to progress
builds, it was only marginally better
with the brackadeo sub quest method
where you were at least engaging with
combat for your talismans, albeit
against one monster in the same quest,
just like with World Eater Devil Joe.
Before I move on to fifth gen, I'd like
to just take a very short detour to just
give some props to both hyper monsters
and deviants for being some of the best
powered up monsters in the series. The
fights were substantially different and
more challenging from their regular
counterparts, and they did so much to
add to core progression with entirely
new armor set variants and weapons.
Hyper monsters were such a big
improvement from Apex's and for
ultimate. You were rewarded for precise
attacks, and you needed to be aware of
what part had the hyperbuff on it
because the attacks from that part of
the monster were going to do more damage
and come out at different speeds. Both
of these monster types were great ways
to engage and retain players for longer.
as part of a core experience without an
endgame system. So, big props to them.
Finally, we've made it to fifth gen and
I can finally stop talking about
talismans, at least for a little bit
until Rise, because one of the first
changes World made was to change
talismans to charms and to make them
craftable. So, they weren't part of an
RNG based system whatsoever. With how
much I've talked about talismans and how
they changed since MH3, I think this
decision was made because they were such
a controversial topic within the
community up to that point. I'm sitting
here drafting this and laughing because
I've said talisman over 30 times at this
point. But I think it's important to
have covered them in detail so that we
can understand why this change with
world was made and the effect that it
had. With talismans no longer being
chase items, another mainstay and
fundamental mechanic to build crafting
and player power took its place.
Decorations. I think we can all agree
that the design and structure around
this idea in world was not executed
well. It's hard to really say which is
the lesser of two evils. if decorations
should be craftable and talismans should
be RNG based or vice versa or both of
them should be craftable and something
else like certain weapons or armor
should be the chase items. Like I said
earlier, I think there should be chase
items, but what world did was not it.
Instead of geming core skills into our
builds, we were now often getting those
skill points from the charms we could
craft instead of the decorations we used
to be able to craft in previous games.
Decorations were even meldable now
instead of talismans. Although the
highest rarity warped phase stones were
only obtainable as tempered quest
rewards. This change ultimately led to
the same result as before where we were
chasing a part of our build crafting
through an RNG based system. So what did
world get wrong with tempered
investigations? Coming back to our three
principles, two of them were simply not
designed well enough. The first being
that the reward tapered off very
quickly. When you first reach the end of
the game and you were looking to do some
build crafting, you really don't have
much in the way of decorations. As such,
when you're doing your first tempered
runs and you get a couple of the
decorations you need, that did feel very
rewarding. But that poll of rewards
starts to become smaller and smaller to
the point where if you want to continue,
you were really just hoping to get
attack decorations. And that was to
improve a build by the most minimal
amount. It wasn't like with guild quests
where relic weapons and armor were very
rare, but they provided entirely new
build options or big upgrades to
existing builds if you found something
quite good. The pool of relics was large
and there was so much that you could
target farm that it didn't feel awful
like it did with attack decorations
where you were looking for one thing and
one thing only very quickly. Looking at
Sunbreak with anomaly investigations,
there was such a bigger pool of rewards
used for weapon and armor augmentation
aside from talismans. The incremental
progression and rewards were sustained
for so much longer, unlocking slots on
your weapon or rolling additional mods
on armor. The second issue being that
the challenge and monster difficulty was
not substantial enough. Tempered
monsters in world were basically just
slightly modified versions of existing
monsters that had a damage increase and
a very slight increase to health. This
time including even elders for the first
time. There were not, however, changes
to moves or speed like there were with
the frenzy and apex monsters in 4 and 4
U or hyper monsters and especially
deviants in Generations and GU. The
damage increase that tempered monsters
received was also far less punishing and
challenging to play against in base
world, largely because of restock, and
you could get hit as much as you want
and continually be able to heal in order
to not c and fail quests. Since there
was no substantial change to monster AI
or HP, the amount of time it took to
hunt a tempered version of a monster was
largely the same as a non-tempered
monster itself, with you being able to
burn them down just as quickly. Meatman
made a great video that many of us have
seen showcasing just how easy a lot of
the encounters in World were and that a
lot of the difficulty folks encountered
with World was a result of players being
unaware of mechanics and general
inexperience rather than the monsters or
their moves and damage presenting a
challenge. I don't think Monster Hunter
has been a super difficult franchise
with most of its entries. A lot of the
difficulty has even been artificial at
many points in the series, more so in
old gen. And I think Monster Hunter has
always struggled with actually
incentivizing or making the player
learn, showing the importance of certain
mechanics or techniques and the nuances
in combat that are the difference in a
lot of fights. Coming from old gen with
all of the changes and new mechanics,
anecdotally, I was an absolute beast in
base world. It was like taking the
weighted clothes off and the monsters
themselves were not at an equivalent
difficulty to what hunters now had at
their disposal once you understood the
game and your kit. I remember my friends
and I absolutely destroying tempered
basil nagante and kushala with kadachi
strike bow. I remember devil joe cluster
hbg flashbombs rock steady and temporal
mantle were all insane as items. maximum
might and weakness exploit prior to
nerfs with super strong skills and
fundamental changes like health boost 3
and the ability to restock all
trivialized so much of base world
especially prior to title updates.
Simply put, I don't believe tempered
monsters presented near as much of a
challenge at the end of the game like
Apex, Hyper, and Deviant Monsters did in
prior games. And it felt like we were
just mincing through these easy hunts
with little posing a threat to keep us
engaged. Why farm for countless hours
looking for the most minimal amount of
progression with attack decorations when
you're already steamrolling through
everything as is and the challenge is
already not equal to what hunters have
at their disposal without engaging RNG
that didn't need to be designed that
way. The third principle, the
repetitiveness, I would argue actually
wasn't an issue since the hunt variety
was quite good if you were running both
T2 and T3 investigations. base world
wasn't just tempered elders at the
endame grind like many people believe.
My friends and I were running four or
five box leggana rather odarin for quick
runs and it wasn't just about elders for
us even though we were hunting them for
streamstones as well. Even if the hunt
variety is good, however, if you're
absolutely stomping everything you come
across at the end of the game and the
reward is drying up to this extreme of a
degree where an attack decoration is the
only thing you can obtain that can offer
you further progression, it makes sense
why so many folks didn't like what base
world had on offer. The only thing I can
say that was positive about Tempered
Investigations outside of the hunt
variety was that we weren't primarily
mining to engage the RNG. we were at
least engaging with combat and being
rewarded for hunting monsters. So, that
was good. But third gen or coal mining
in Generations is probably the lowest
bar to clear in the entire series. And I
wouldn't say that base world succeeded
at trying to create an engaging endgame
system when it was clearly aiming to do
something. Weapon augmentation was kind
of a secondary system that kind of flew
under the radar a little bit since
streamstones were just thrown in as
random rewards for tempered quests
alongside decorations. I don't remember
them causing me any issues or people
being too negative about them. I did
like that rare six and rare 7 weapons
were given extra augment slots to make
them more viable and that there were now
affinity and slot options to expand on
what four ultimate did. Even though I
played World a ton at launch, I'm not
going to sit here and excuse the endgame
with streamstones and tempered
investigations with decorations because
I think it was poor overall. I think the
reason myself and others may have put up
with it and there was less discourse
criticizing it at the time was because
we may have all been so focused on what
World was offering coming from old gen
and what it was doing right. world was
offering such a dramatic improvement
from old gen in terms of visuals,
accessibility, and gameplay aspects that
I think a lot of us were just happy to
be playing Monster Hunter in a long-
aaited modern form. Despite its endgame
actually being quite lackluster compared
to what 4 ultimate had done and preceded
it, looking at what world ended up
getting with the new title update
system, KT was really the second attempt
at another grind or system to get
players to return or keep playing with a
new set of RNG chase items. This
actually happened a second time as well
with its own arctempered version
bringing Kia weapons after the first
implementation. Anecdotally, I had a lot
of fun with KT because base world had
been very easy up to that point and
locking in with my friends to do pursuit
one single siege runs was an enjoyable
challenge. Each of us was bringing
different weapons to try and help with
CC in the final area. So, we had
multiple builds going that we could
change to for area 3 and four to try and
maintain enough damage for single siege.
It was a good challenge to run KT
efficiently, but it did drag on once the
novelty wore off, and the gameplay loop
could be frustrating at times with
different teams, certain players not
understanding the myriad of mechanics,
and the overall time it took to acquire
rewards did feel slow. I can see how the
gameplay and grinding experience would
vary a lot depending on your
circumstance if you play with friends,
solo, or playing online in open lobbies.
So, it's a bit harder to evaluate the KT
system since the siege and gameplay
mechanics affected the rewards
dramatically. The weapon rewards were
definitely padded and bloated with a lot
of chaff, which is probably the main
criticism of the system overall, but the
rare 8 and a few of the rare 7 weapons
were worth going for, and a lot of
players like myself were grinding sieges
for gear progression. There were a lot
of new builds being made around free
element taroth sets, specific individual
weapons like the taroth claw lance and a
number of the bow guns. The kar weapons
were pretty much all best in class for
elemental options when arctempered KT
came out. And if you had a good squad to
dial in on routing, damage, and CC, you
could get single siege runs and be well
rewarded for it. And that was quite fun.
I don't prefer these siege encounters to
normal quests, but it felt to me at
least like KT accomplished its goal of
feeling like a siege. It had complexity
to make runs feel engaging, and the
reward and challenge were both
appropriate. I thought it felt like a
big test, and a lot of the system was
reused and tweaked for Safy and Iceorn.
Alongside KT, DevilJoe, Lunastra,
Behemoth, Lean, and the Arcteed Elders,
the title update content all just built
up the core progression alongside some
event quests. Event Lavasio and Greatest
Jagras largely invalidated the only
positive thing Tempered Investigations
had going for them, the hunt variety.
So, while those events were up, you were
often just farming that one quest
instead of multiple targets like you
were before at base world's launch. base
world came and went, and before we knew
it, Iceorn was upon us, bringing G-rank
progression and a new endgame system,
the Guiding Lands. On release, tempered
investigations were back to being the
main way to acquire rare decorations
amidst some new changes. With the
introduction of four slot decorations,
there was now a much bigger pool of
rewards to go after. With there being so
many different combinations of possible
skills, with the roster being expanded
for G rank, the amount of possible T2
and T3 targets also increased, improving
the hunt variety during the decoration
grind, putting the question of whether
decorations should even be chase items
to the side. I think the system in a
vacuum improved with Iceorn. After a
certain amount of time, it wasn't like
you were just hunting for attack
decorations like in world. There were
many four slot decorations that players
were looking for to progress builds. And
there were often similar combinations of
four slot decorations that you were
still happy to find and you could still
use as substitutes within builds.
Because streamstones were now redundant
due to the new augment system, you could
also melt away all of your excess
streams from base world to supplement
your supply of high rank decorations
alongside the pre-established first
Warian melding carrying over for four
slot decorations. Guild alchemy was
later introduced through seasonal events
as another way to supplement the deco
grind outside of hunting through the
steamworks which players were using.
Anyway, so some positive changes there
to tempered investigations in Icebor,
although evented Zenoga and Teostra did
later arrive to yet again undermine the
positive repetition and hunt variety of
running your own investigations. So the
reward and repetitive elements of the
system were overall improved. Though on release, Iceborn as a whole was still
release, Iceborn as a whole was still lacking challenge at the end of the
lacking challenge at the end of the game, just as World did for similar
game, just as World did for similar reasons. Clutchclaw and Clagger were
reasons. Clutchclaw and Clagger were also now in the game and were having a
also now in the game and were having a pretty negative impact on combat itself
pretty negative impact on combat itself and the game's difficulty overall. Even
and the game's difficulty overall. Even with how important the Guiding Lands
with how important the Guiding Lands were, I didn't want to skip over how
were, I didn't want to skip over how Tempered Investigations changed from
Tempered Investigations changed from world. The Guiding Lands were not really
world. The Guiding Lands were not really a traditional RNGbased endgame, and the
a traditional RNGbased endgame, and the Guiding Lands ended up rewarding the
Guiding Lands ended up rewarding the player in five main ways. weapon
player in five main ways. weapon augmentation, charm upgrades, unlocking
