Why This Blogpost Needs to Exists...

I've seen so many people decrying why Monster Hunter Wilds Roster is so small, and pushing the ideas that the dev were either lazy or malicious for skipping so many monster that were already in HD not being in Monster Hunter Wilds.

I'll say this before and I'll say this again:

Adding Monster were not as easy as copy paste

There are so many reasons why, especialy some that were seemingly easy to add as those were already in HD (Deviljho, Bazelgeuse, or even Monster like Magnamalo) wasn't there in Wilds.

Disclaimer

I'm not corporate apologist. Full stop. I'm totally dissapointed by CAPCOM for basically rushing the release both Dragon's Dogma 2 and Wilds just so they can make their respective Fiscal Year reports looks good. Both are victim of business and convenience of money. I'll elaborate more of this on reasons No. 4.

But we must separate business and game dev, and I have nothing but praise for the development team for whatever it is they manage to deliver, especially Monster Hunter Wilds.

Reason No. 1: Game Code Limitation

For those who don't know, monster hunter source code is incredibly messy and has a lot of weird idiosyncracies that technically not the best way to do things. One of the more important thing to understand is that many game logic actually hardcoding monster id, equipments, and how the monster (and environment) should behave.

This is, technically, not a "best practice" as ideally you should decouple as much as game logic with individual characteristic of monster as possible to make it a lot more scallable. But I'm just Software Engineer and just outsider making conjecture, so I believe there are many, many reasons why this kinds of design exists.

It could be technical debt from the past that's too big to refactor, or just because monster behavior was too detailed to be separated out into their own section, we don't know.

This is also the reasons why there are so many leaks exists before the game release. CAPCOM knows leak exists, they do their best to scrub both OBT and Benchmark, but because how deeply ingrained it is the Monster IDs and Equipments in the core logic of the game, this is simply unscrubable without making the game not working.

Reason No. 2: It's More Than Just Copy Paste

I know this is just repeat of the title, but humor me for a second. What does it takes for a "Hunt" to exists? What each separate mechanics that needed to be considered for it to be considered as "playable hunt"?.

I'll break it down a little:

• Hunter Action (including weapon movement, weapon hitbox, hunter position, tempo, etc.)

• Monster Action (including monster movement, monster hitbox, etc.)

• Hunter Buff and Ailments, both of which has meter and countdown

• Monster Buff and Ailments including exhaust, poisoning, paralysis, limp near death, etc.

• Interaction between hunter action and monster action, which to register first if hunter were to be attacked by monster mid action, when does i-frame applies and when doesn't.

• Environmental effect such as thunderstorm, traps, boulders, and other monsters.

• And many others..

Example 1: Hunter Action

Now let's take one example for us to see why this is a lot more work than it seems: Hunter Action.

Let's compare what our hunter in Wilds can do that our hunter in World cannot do (and vice versa)

• Focus Mode (New)

• Wound System & Focus Strike (New)

• Tenderizing (Removed)

That was only the general idea, now let's take example of 1 weapon, say Longsword:

• Spirit Release Slash (New)

• Crimson Slash Combo (New)

• Add hyper armor to spirit thrusts (Change)

• Red Gauge doesn't recover and deplete (Change)

This single weapon alone receive so many new and changed hunter actions it is nut. Now once this factored in, you can't expect copy pasting monster moveset wholesale would work just fine.

Adjustment to when does monster attack needs to happened so Guard Weapon can pull Perfect Guard and Longsword Player can pull counter needs to be done.

It would felt awful if Perfect Guard weapons can't punish the monster by always having follow up attack, but also not all attack needs to be Perfect Guard-able or it'll too easy and pinata fiesta.

Example 2: Anjanath World vs Rise

Let's take one more example: Comparing Anjanath in World vs Rise.

Technically, Anjanath is just a copy paste from World to Rise. This is the easiest example to pick as it's literally the least amount of work they need to do to make it work for Rise.

But is it?

Both monster have almost identical moveset, save for 1 move where it basically slam it's mouth vertically. And that's it. No new equipment looks, exact same models and texture, and mostly the same attack.

But turns out it isn't. Even with the same set of monster attack, there are many adjustment to be made. Some that comes to mind:

• Rise is very counter heavy. It cuts down i-frame on dodge roll significantly, and gives all weapon a counter move.

• All monster, needs to adjust to this counter heavy change to hunter action.

All Anjanath move were modified to signified these changes:

• A lot less random frantic move that it's World counterpart has, and now mostly has predetermined set of tempo.

• Each attack needs to cover bigger area to make hunter unable dodge roll it away.

• A lot more pin attack but also a lot more follow ups to punish Wirefall.

• Fire breath is now counterable and not continuous damage.

• More attack have higher vertical hitboxes to avoid making Wirebug too OP.

• etc.

See? there's a lot to be considered here.

Reason No. 3: It's an Art, and Game Devs are Artists.

Imagine you like to draw, and you draw something. It was good drawing, and all the lines, color, and composition is intentional to tell a story. You're proud of this drawing you made, and you spent months on it.

Then you share it online, most people praise it, saying it looks good. You love to hear it. But there's always this rumbling, some people that keeps coming back and saying "If you put more red color over here, and harsher line over here, it would look better. I mean it should be there as your old drawing does that. Why is it not here?".

Do you realize how pretentious is that for a second? How hurt would you be hearing that?

It's the same here. Game is an artform, and the devs are artist. Yes this is collectivist artform where multiple peoples contribute to it, but it is artform nontheless.

Any criticism that was pointed towards the art must be prefaced with the understanding that maybe the thing we will complained about is intentional, as it was a way to tell a story.

Saying "there's no reason why monster X Y Z not included" is callous and pretentious.

Even if adding monster were as easy as copy paste, if I think adding those hurt the direction of the art I wanted to make, I WILL NOT add those monsters. And player must deal with it.

Reason No. 4: It's Business As Usual

Alert: From this point onwards my arguments will use knowledge shared in leak forums and subreddit. It will not contain future spoiler but I'll include rumors and internal leaks that recontextualize events leading up to the launch of Wilds.

Wilds was supposed to released in Holiday 2024.

Yes, you heard that right. Wilds was initially slated to release within the holiday season of 2024, or as late as January 2025. The devs literally fought tooth and nail to delay it all the way to March, but it was impossible to push further as March is the closing of Fiscal Year 2024 for Japanese company.

Game was not in a good state even by the end of 2024.

Yes again, you heard that right. The game is still in not a very good state by the end of 2024 (or at least around October). Several reports that I've heard:

• Jin Dahaad quest basically bugged and unplayable.

• Performance was still pretty miserable.

• Game-breaking bug (and a lot of it).

• Overwhelming feedback received by the team due to OBT. (They expect changes but doesn't expect for the feedback to be so strong on so many fundamentals such as weapon moveset, hitstop, etc.)

• Performance Feedback due to OBT.

• and many others...

At this point, the team has to choose whether they keep going with their original plan or cut down on some things and focus on delivering good experience for players on release date. And thankfully, they choose the latter.

I wouldn't imagine what the game would be if they sticks with their original plan.

And yes... Spoiler alert

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The base roster was initially bigger. Expect these monster to be added as part of TU in the coming months.