Monster Hunter Wilds continues to lose players, sadly. It is one of Capcom’s most prized franchises and is the only unique one in its own genre. Several games have tried to copy what makes Monster Hunter amazing, but failed.
Now, Capcom is losing it all due to their own negligence and over-reliance on the goodwill of the IP. So we decided to list down a bunch of reasons as to why the game is losing players.
Monster Hunter Wilds is Continuing to Lose Players to Previous Franchise Entries
1) Inconsistent and slow update
One of the biggest reasons for the declining state of player count is an inherent problem with the current generation of Capcom’s live service. Updates have been insanely slow with all of them. This is not to blame just on the Monster Hunter team; it has been happening with other games, such as Street Fighter 6.
The last generation of Capcom games had focused on quantity for their games. We got an incredible amount of monsters with Monster Hunter Rise, which kept us fed for years. This was also the case with World, and if not as frequent, the wait was still tolerable.
Ever since Capcom moved its development to Unreal Engine, things have slowed down quite a bit. They wanted to focus on the quality of the game, how realistic and next-gen it can look, rather than the frequency of updates.
2) Poor performance issues on PC
While it may have had a great start on consoles such as the PlayStation 5, with good sales, the same cannot be said about the PC platform, which is also one of their biggest markets. When Monster Hunter World and Rise were released for PC, it almost ushered in a fresh release hype again.
But when Monster Hunter Wilds was released for PC, it was marred with one problem after the other. Performance was terrible off the boards, even on high-end PC systems. Capcom promised to roll out updates to fix the performance issues post-release.
But unfortunately, that ship has long since sailed its shores. A lot of Monster Hunter fans ended up having to refund their copies, or they were simply unable to play. The absurd requirements, such as an abnormal amount of VRAM memory, further enforced a lower player count.
3) Lowered Difficulty Compared to Previous Titles
If you are a big fan of Monster Hunter throughout the franchise’s history, then you might have had your first experience in how much things have changed. Some may call the older games in the franchise archaic in game design, but the difficulty was not artificial; it felt genuine.
Moving to Monster Hunter World and Rise, a lot of the difficulty curve was shaved off. This annoyed a lot of people, but it also brought in a newer audience. Later, the difficulty was made up for through formidable DLC content.
Such is not the case with Monster Hunter Wilds yet. The game focuses more than previous titles on cinematic storytelling. This ends up making monster fights feel like regular couch action game fight sequences.
The difficulty does spike up later, but that’s why, after the story mode is completed, and after players hit the highest rank in the game. Hence, the lack of challenge is a major reason why the game continues to lose players.
4) Missing Elder Dragons
This one ties in the problems that the game has with slow updates as well as lowered difficulty. Elder Dragons are a Monster Hunter series staple and fun to challenge. But almost all of them are still missing from the game.
When we saw Monster Hunter Wilds first appear in the earliest trailers, we were elated, thinking about Elder Dragon fights. We wanted to see monsters like Teostra and Kushala Daora in the new RE Engine.
Unfortunately, we are still waiting for that moment, as one has yet to appear and tip the scales of challenge. This is also another reason why it continues to lose players.
5) Mount-Based Monster Hunting
Older Monster Hunter games were pretty much survival horror titles. You had to gather materials and farm for gear, do small gathering subquests. All of that before you could get to your first Monster Hunt.
Nowadays, the game has become much more of a boss rush video game, shaving off the preparation parts. While some think of it as a welcome change but it doesn’t change the fact that how much it trivializes the buildup for a hunt.
This was also a complaint with Monster Hunter World and Rise, which a lot of the old players had. But it is even more prevalent in Monster Hunter Wilds with the easy mount-based hunting, which can auto chase monsters.
Previously, players would spend a good deal of time tracking down the monsters through different regions of the map. A paintball item was needed to keep track if the monster left an area. All of which results in a number of old players leaving the game.
6) Rare Drops Are Now Easier
Monster Hunter games are known for really awful RNG. It almost works like deja vu; if you need a particular material or an item to craft a weapon or armor, you would have to look for it. These searches include particular monster hunts or material gathering.
The hunts would range from small monsters to the hardest, depending on the type of item you are trying to craft. Sometimes, rare items would never drop even after going through a hard hunt multiple times.
This was an annoying RNG mechanic in the game, but it’s also what made the search and hunt worth it at the end when you finally craft that armor or weapons. Rare drops like that have been done away with in Monster Hunter Wilds. They are now guaranteed drops that can be gathered through certain quests.
In other words, the thrill of crafting powerful equipment has been lost to time. This is why Monster Hunter Wilds keeps losing players, as players keep going back to older titles.
7) Artian Weapons Are Broken
Artian weapons are the newly introduced tier of weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds. After defeating tempered monsters, players acquire artian materials. They can later take this to the Smithy and craft really powerful weapons.
But the problem with this is that it’s a very streamlined and easy direction to acquire endgame-level weapons. It renders other types of weapons in the games useless at the endgame level.
Nowadays, if a cool new weapon is introduced in the game, along by a new monster. No matter how cool it looks, crafting it is pointless and just a waste of time because it does not compare to the artian weapons. This is also why players are leaving the game.
8) Wrong Way Of Balancing Monsters
It’s fairly common to come across the same monster multiple times in the franchise. But the encounter is different enough to make it feel fresh. Monsters have ranks, a 2-star Chatacabra shouldn’t act the same way as a 4+star one.
In older games, this is how repetitiveness was balanced through higher-ranked monsters, surprising players with new combos and moves. Similarly, giving the players an incentive to learn the new patterns and figure out ways to handle them.
Such is not the case with Monster Hunter Wilds, and so it keeps losing players. The spike in ranks is balanced artificially. This makes a 9-star monster different from its 2-star counterpart by simply being able to one-shot the hunter. It’s the wrong way to introduce rank incentives.
9) AI Team Members Are Always There To Help
This once again ties in with the issue of the difficulty of the game. While it may sound a bit whiny as it does help absolutely new players get accustomed to hunts. We still believe the traditional way of losing a hunt and getting back up to do it all over again is more rewarding.
Monster Hunter Wilds introduces AI NPCs. It essentially acts as offline multiplayer, but you are the only one playing, while the other hunters are CPUs. This is something that’s not completely new; Monster Hunter Rise allowed this as well.
But you only get to hang out with a single AI NPC hunter in particular quests, which are significantly hard and late-game. Such is not the case with Wild’s AI Hunters, who can be summoned at any moment. They are more than capable of downing monsters all by themselves.
10) General Consequences Of Ignoring The Negatives
Even if we overlook all the previous reasons we mentioned in the points above, the fact that actions have consequences still stands true. This is in no way an attempt at antagonizing the developers. But it is true that Capcom needed to care for the game on release better.
We can look away from all the handholding aspects of the game in the long run. But we cannot overlook the fact that Capcom took lightly the release. Everything was buggy and awful for PC on release, a large number of players refunded.
Capcom is at fault for providing lukewarm responses to the criticism when they first cropped up. But the team of developers is having to give reasons as to why the player count is declining.
