How Monster Hunter Games (don’t) simulate Hunting

Hey kids y’all like committing ecocide [Applause] [Applause] Monster hunter is a series as near and dear to me as it is self-explanatory whenever someone asks about the core appeal of these games there’s always some who can’t contain themselves as a snicker bro it’s in the name la mao and to their credit they ain’t wrong the title monster hunter perfectly sums

Up what these games are about you fight fantastical creatures and harvest their body parts for your own purposes mostly fashion but the word hunter specifically has to me always been an interesting choice the core gameplay of monster hunter consists of combat deep battle systems with high skill ceilings and an ever

Evolving list of possible play styles and yet it is not called monster slayer or monster fighter but monster hunter hunting is an activity that goes beyond just hitting a deer with a stick as it includes tracking traps scouting the terrain and long-term planning obviously the title isn’t a promise

Written in stone but the use of the word hunter does give us an excuse to examine how well these games simulate hunting as opposed to merely fighting how the elements that make up the simulation have changed over the years and even how it could be done in future games

I’m oceans and let’s talk about monster hunter now stating the obvious but in real life hunting isn’t one single thing and it’s not even stable within itself what people call hunting today and what was considered hunting 5 000 years ago are two almost entirely separate things completely divorced through a gap in

Tech and time but we can still identify a few core components within the concept of hunting that have remained stable hunting is a process which involves the locating observing and killing or otherwise maiming of a target generally an animal while i don’t want to dive into the ethics of that final step

The first two are important for this video the act of hunting is one of figuring out both the land and the target in order to predict and manipulate its movements that includes finding tracks and using them to make assumptions about trails and situations that may influence the hunt it includes taking local landmarks

Like rivers and clearings into account in order to determine where and when to strike in real life a hunt is determined by preparation and knowledge with the actual violence only taking up a tiny part of it that is obviously going to be different in monster hunter as an action rpg it cannot reasonably

Commit to having all of its fights last 10 seconds just to satisfy the linguistic pedantism regarding its name but that doesn’t mean the games never try to evoke that feeling of being out on a hunt the monster franchise positions itself in a sort of alternate stone age so

Convincingly in fact that the series german wikipedia article even erroneously points at a specific time period because hey we liveness allen often zacks again thus the hunting it wants to emulate is primitive and reliant on notes passed on knowledge and existing in nature to try and best beast based on situational knowledge

Now if these aspects can’t really be inserted into the combat part of the game then where can we see the hunting elements at play they somewhat play into the time between quests where the player prepares for whatever creature they wish to slay but generally i would say the hunting part

Of monster hunter happens within the time between a player being dropped into a wilderness and the player engaging the monster as well as the natural breaks in combat which happen when a monster changes location basically hunting is what happens when you’re not fighting but still out on the quest looking for the monster

This pre-fight period is when the player is asked in various ways to find their bearings and both prepare on-site as well as actually find the monster this took various different forms across the various games in the series in ye olden days of the original few games this stretch of time was pretty uneventful

In the starting hours of monster hunter freedom for example the pre-fight time is generally spent running around the map frantically like a child that lost his mom at walmart because the maps in the older games were made up of fairly small rooms separated by loading screens and because most

Monsters aggroed instantly upon the player being in a room alongside them the game inadvertently encouraged just popping into every area of the map checking if the battle music started and then moving on to the next one if it didn’t the furthest thing possible from the meticulous understanding of the

Monster’s environment and behavior that the word hunter would imply however what this element does come into play is when the pre-fight period is reactivated or in other words when the monster has been engaged fought for a while only for it then to flee into a different area an inexperienced careless player might

Watch that kezu leave and then realize that they now must once again aimlessly burst into every area to try and find it wasting precious time as well as just generally not having much fun a better prepared and more knowledgeable player however will during the combat encounter make use of the paintball item

Which can be thrown at a monster in order to make it visible on the hud map for a while this way the random and unfun process of searching for the monster can be entirely skipped when a monster eventually flees this in a roundabout way mechanizes the

Tedium of the first run to the monster because it is such a boring and uninteresting activity the player is motivated to find ways to avoid it ways that depend on the player’s preparation taking paintballs with them and responsibility actually remembering to use them so it does somewhat interact with concept adjacent to hunting

The problem however is that it relies on the threat of tedium and frustration which is an experience that works for everyone when i think of my time in monster hunter freedom i don’t really think about how the game pushed me to use the paintballs and how that is a step towards simulating hunting

I think of that kuku that made me look for it for almost 35 minutes live on stream paintballs are not the main way the old games simulate hunting however as they wait but oh uh sorry no they are the main way the old games simulate hunting there are auxiliary systems such as food

Skills which show you the monster on a map for the first few seconds of a hunt psycho serum which highlights the monster briefly when consumed and my favorite a hot air balloon which points you to the monster when you wave at it but those are just like the paintballs themselves situationally available

Shortcuts that don’t deepen the act of finding a monster as much as they entirely skip it moreover they are basically just limited versions of the paintball they are not new systems and they don’t require any additional skill or knowledge to use you simply have to have the right things available at the

Right time the only exception you might say is psycho serum which you do have to go out of your way to craft so that element preparation does come back but again not much more than you just taking paintballs with you one extremely painful mechanical absence here is the advantage of ecological knowledge

Monster hunter is a series that loves to dabble in speculative zoology and ecology with books full of lore and fantasy biology with such a strong groundwork one would think that the game’s ecology would play into the process of tracking and finding monsters after all knowing how certain animal species behave and what their

Preferences regarding food and shelter are is a big aspect of many hunting cultures but no this part was never really utilized in the old games this is a part of a larger problem with monster hunter namely that the series never seems all that interested in actually communicating its lore

Mechanics or really anything to the player so as a result many of the ecological intricacies of these beasts remain unknown to most players but even if the game told you about them it wouldn’t do you any good because the games do not actually tie these in with the hunting aspect of the quests

There is very little correlation between the monster’s ecology and its spawn and behavior outside of combat they generally just cycle between a few predetermined areas until the player finds them and what those areas are isn’t something you can figure out within the game across the entire franchise most quests

Have their own preset spawn locations for the target monster which do not necessarily coincide with those of other quests sure certain monsters have a general range of where they can spawn across all quests but it isn’t something that is regular enough for you to figure out because of this lack of regularity and

The fact that most monsters in the old games can appear in multiple maps thus making it hard to determine what area is theirs knowing about these creatures does not actually help you in hunting them which is a shame now this is how it was in the old games

But as you surely know monsanto world happened as maybe the biggest paradigm shift the series has ever experienced world shook up the formula of pretty much everything in the series including how to hunt before the fight is structured meet the scout flies a domesticated particle effect that will direct the

Player towards monsters and the newly introduced monster tracks when entering a quest the scout flies will fly towards and highlight the nearest tracks when collected they will begin filling a progress bar specific to the monster the tracks are from and then guide the player to the next tracks

Repeated often enough this spar will eventually fill and cause the scout flies to lead the player directly to the monster itself while also highlighting it on the map further progress on the bar through collecting additional tracks past this point will then enable the map to display more information about the

Monster such as whether it is hungry or close to death outside of quests the game adds the ecological research library where the tracks that are collected out on the field level up the research level for each individual monster the research level determines how many tracks the scout flies need before they

Display the monster on the map at higher levels they will do so immediately without any tracks required additionally levelling a monster’s research reveals more and more information about them in the hunter’s notes the in-game compendium on the various creatures you fight moreover because the monsters in this

Game only have one or two maps each in which they can spawn the places they inhabit are much more tailor made for them making it more feasible for the player to make assumptions about habitat and locations it is actually quite common for monsters in monster underworld to have bespoke

Zones of the maps dedicated to them such as the hot caves and horfrost reach being specific to the viper toby kadachi on paper this is a fantastic iteration of what was until now a very bare bones part of the game world’s hunting mechanics emphasize experience and gain knowledge as well as

Making the actual hunt a more involved process as you go from track to track it even finally incorporates a monster lexicon into this mechanic unfortunately this system is like many mechanics introduced in world extremely invasive to the gameplay and generally just poorly communicated for one the scout flies present a constant visual

Clutter that fills up the screen constantly world isn’t the most visually readable game due to its focus on photorealism kushala’s wind is almost invisible at times for example and the scout flies completely overwhelm the screen at any given time only compounds this issue it makes incredibly hard to figure out what

You’re even looking at when your screen is just filled with these green particles not to mention that the scout flies periodically yank your camera around and break your character’s neck causing you to feel like you’re wrestling for control but moreover while this system seems like it emphasizes studying a monster

For better success at tracking it actually doesn’t you the player never actually get better at finding monsters your gps does the knowledge you collect on monsters doesn’t matter because finding them is not actually a meticulous process reliant on said knowledge but simply a game of mindlessly following the pretty after effects particle layer

This becomes especially apparent if you mod out the scout flies the knowledge in your hunter’s notes that you gain through leveling your research is actually completely useless in tracking and finding the monster and monster tracks are both hard to see without scout flies and play so randomly

That finding them wouldn’t help you to track the monster anyway so in actuality the game doesn’t expand on the hunting aspect at all it simply invents a bunch of additional factors in bureaucracy to feign depth but then ultimately resolves them almost immediately with no player interaction or experience

The biggest impact scout flies have is being annoying in the movement and confusing in the long term as the presence of two separate progress bars one within quests and one outside of them makes the system more confusing than it really needs to be but in general the scout flies just feel

Like they are constantly bearing over you they are constantly around filling up your screen and guiding your actions and it makes it feel like you’re not playing the game you are just there watching the scout flies play most of it for you so monster hunter world’s approach to

Simulating hunting can be summed up as well-meaning but ultimately more overbearing and annoying than it needs to be only to achieve fairly meager results now we must ask how did monsanto rise the newest entry of the series iterate on this It didn’t monster hunter rise does not engage with the idea of a hunting system at all and instead chose to get rid of the process of finding monsters all together in rise all monsters are immediately and permanently visible on the map the only exceptions being camellios and lucid nargokuga when they go invisible

Even monsters you haven’t met yet have their position always displayed just as a question mark instead of a usual icon the in-game excuse for it is the kahoot an owl companion who literally only exists to stop you from asking questions the explanation being that at the start

Of every quest you launch him into the air and he tells you where the monsters are they literally made an entire pet just to not have to deal with hunting rise entirely avoids dealing with the hunting phase of quests and instead focuses on just getting into the fight

As quickly and as stylishly as possible saying they didn’t improve it they just removed it may sound like a negative and to some it certainly is but i don’t think it has to be as we have illustrated the time in between combat when a monster has to be

Found has rarely been utilized well in these games meandering between tedium and frustration so perhaps the ultimate solution really is to just stop dancing around the bush and pull the trigger on the idea of hunting and instead focus on what is already the series’s core appeal the excellent gameplay loop of fighting and

Crafting i don’t want to be satisfied with that though there is real potential here and it’d be kind of a shame to just stop trying to live up to half of the game’s title now as a layman with many attempted but no published game under his belt it

Really really isn’t my place to tell experienced and accomplished devs how to do their job but alas i have ideas and i want to talk about them in order for this to not be too frivolous i will limit myself to not suggesting any entirely new game systems or programming milestones

We will simply repurpose and recycle mechanics that have existed in the franchise and it was proven to be possible so first of all we need to just bite the bullet and properly commit to making the system information based the franchise’s early insistence on never giving you any info on anything

Was rarely ever a good thing and i think it’s time we squarely move away from it we do this by expanding the hunter’s notes with two new elements e-section for locales and then for each monster a sub-section on habitat and lifestyle on the locale pages we add some flavor

Text that gives some general lore about the area but also include descriptions of its various landmarks and zones just to make it more digestible all text that relates to gameplay should be highlighted in a different color something that ryze already does so for example the frost islands page

Would describe the caves in the far north and the south of the area then in each monster’s habitat section you add in descriptions of what sort of environments it prefers for example that kazoo likes to dwell in caves you could even expand this and add some flavor text about their behavior outside

Of battle like saying that kezu prefers humid areas when it must venture outside of its caves this way by cross-referencing information between these two pages the player gains a solid understanding of where to look while still being encouraged to take in their surroundings themselves instead of blindly following some trapcode particular

Now should all of this information be available to the player from the very start i don’t think so while they should eventually have access to all of it obviously having first-time hunters know all about the enemy immediately would feel unearned and also a little overwhelming no this info needs to be drip-fed

Unlocked through gameplay and that is why we will repurpose worlds research library the idea of gradually unlocking a monster’s info page as you fight it repeatedly is an excellent one so let’s keep that in addition to weaknesses and loot tables however leveling a monster’s research would also reveal its habitat

And behavior section maybe paragraph by paragraph with each subsequent unlock giving more specific and advanced information you could even include advanced battle tips with this system but at that point we are redesigning more than just hunting so let’s just move on the most crucial decision would be what to show

On the map as this is where all previous entries have either struggled or given up i think a lot of the difficulty with this comes from how showing a monster on a map is tied to its icon be it its actual in-game drawing or a simple pink paintball

The problem with these depictions is that they are a strict binary you can either show the monster’s exact location or you can show nothing this all or nothing approach doesn’t fit the notion of incremental information gathering so we need something a little more nuanced what we need is this

This dear viewer is a unique map screen used a single time in monster hunter world namely in its first main quest where this red blob shows the approximate location of the quest target this image is also the reason this video exists you see the series’s struggle with the hunt for monsters is especially

Frustrating because the solution already exists this right here is the golden ticket but instead of taking advantage of it it was used a single time and then scrapped i will bet good money that you don’t remember this screen either this possible solution of showing monsters on the map is to use heat maps

By using colored auras around the map the game could communicate approximate locations of monsters or even of monster tracks without just creating a binary quest marker a player may see their map colored in with potential areas where tracks and or monsters may be found and then each subsequent track would decrease the size

Of the aura making it more and more precise we can then combine this with our repurposed research library gathering tracks and killing monsters would level up your research level and the higher the research level for a specific monster the smaller and more precise the

Heat map auras will be at the start of a hunt therefore less running around required this would not completely eliminate the aspect of hunting in late game but it would still make it easier the more monsters you’ve hunted so with all of these new systems in place here

Is a sort of mock-up quest to illustrate how it could all work together you a new player get a quest for a kazoo in the frost islands you have never fought this monster before the quest text mentions that the kazoo love hanging out in caves

As you enter the map you notice a cave near the camp you spawned in no kazoo there but instead a footprint you collect it and immediately your map alights with a heat map showing the approximate locations of either the monster or more tracks as you make your way across the area you

Pick up more footprints and other monster specific tracks each time shrinking the heat map until it only highlights a small area in the north as you venture there you notice a cave entrance and your neurons fire bingo after a tough fight you return to the village and see your research level for

The kazoo grow because you’ve collected tracks and because you now have killed your first kezu now next time you enter a quest you won’t have to first find a track to get a heat map you’ll have one by default additionally you now have ecological info on the kazoo telling you about its

Habit of stalking baggy and ragi where it finds them again your neurons fire and you remember that in the northern area outside of the cave entrance there are baggies hanging around so theoretically you should be able to find a kazoo there if you don’t find it in its caves

This will now influence your behavior going forward and as you do it over and over again you become an expert at finding and hunting a kezu now this hypothetical system has numerous flaws while unvoiced text is not the hardest thing to add the amount of extra flavor

Text the new sections and hunter’s notes will require might quickly balloon the workload within bigger monster rosters especially considering lord checking and translation this heightened focus on quest descriptions and monster lexica would also likely alienate players who don’t want to spend their free time reading wikipedia articles more importantly at research level 0

Players who don’t read quest descriptions might find themselves aimlessly running around the same way the old games asks you to you could alleviate this by just making quest descriptions readable mid quests and by making it apparent from the beginning the quest descriptions are somewhat important but still if you’re

Not someone who enjoys reading in their free time this might be a barrier that being said i genuinely do believe that this system we illustrated here would benefit the overall experience by further emphasizing the ecology and thus the hunting aspect of these games monster hunter is a series that always

Flirts with the identity of a generic action game but pulls itself back through unique mechanics and quirks that set it apart its focus on the believability of its creatures and their place in nature is already an incredibly well-made distinguishing feature and while world emphasized it through graphics and

Cutscenes i think it’s time the franchise fully commits to having its plentiful fantasy biology influence the gameplay itself for example through this or another entirely different hunting mechanic but unfortunately we are all responsible adults so we cannot get around mentioning the elephant in the room

Any ideas we could come up with to make monster hunter more huntish would inherently be a self-destructive mechanic that is to say these mechanics would be incredibly beneficial at the very start of the game but would gradually become less and less interesting and rewarding as the game went on

Because let’s face it modern monster hunter puts combat front and center and while having to use your head and figure out the monster’s location based on information both provided and gathered is a cool and immersive experience the first time by the 70th time it loses its magic and becomes tedious

This is doubly true for monster hunter because of its main gameplay loop being entirely dependent on repeating content thus even the system i was so proud of would eventually have to transition into just showing the player an icon on the map at mac’s research level because

Let’s be real no one who has reached master rank wants to spend their time doing academic research on wrathy and snot well i do but i’m weird but is this bad i mean if adding a hunting system that emphasizes research and discovery improves the start of the game and then

Fades into the background without weighing down the late game that’s good by itself no i can’t give a conclusive answer but what i can say is that the title opens up a deeper dive into the game’s unique and fascinating lore which has so far been mostly absent from the games

Themselves an opportunity which i would love to see used to make those times between hunts more interesting more engaging and more monster hunter but what do you think do you like my idea what issues could you see in this approach or do you have an own idea that you would like to share

Let me know in the comments especially if you’re a dev yourself i would love to hear from you thank you for watching and happy hunting a very special thank you to all of our patrons without whom these videos would not be possible and without whom i wouldn’t have the confidence to make

Weird one-off videos like these an extra special thank you to karthiyer fiction ape cine cicada jar courage eric nelson iron camel jameson tate joshua ludenther paracha peroscoco project iceman wisdom minari mr meander angio thank you once again and i’ll see you next time until then be safe wash your

Hands and take care bye