What happened to actually tracking the monster?

[Ankanator]

I have only played MH worlds before this one, and I don't know if other MH did this, but I really miss the part of checking for monster scratches and foot prints to actually get the fireflies to start tracking the monster's location. Going straight to the monster felt good at the beginning, but after some time of playing, it makes things feel monotonous. The tracking was part of the hunt, and without it, this game is only "Monster Whacker". Or am I miss remembering how things were?

Capturing a monster is also lame compared to worlds.

Edit: So the comments say that the tracking happens only the first time as a mission, not always, and after some time, you always know the location. So not a perfect system either, but I kind of wish there was an option to track the monster, maybe an event mission.

[JPM岩]

Originally posted by Khergit Horse Archer:

Originally posted by JPM岩:

World is the only game to have tracking, at it was heavily, negatively received.

how do they even collect data on this and how do they quantify it unless its some sort of online poll?

They pay attention to player feedback in popular sources. Twitter, reddit, Youtube, they also receive feedback emails, and also work with content creators of feedback as well. It seems to have worked for years, back in the day, Socksy, the old EU community manager used to be in various Facebook groups for feedback, and the only NA community manager used to work heavily with the old Capcom forums. They just go out and collect info.

[JPM岩]

Originally posted by BlairiesTTV:

Originally posted by JPM岩:

World is the only game to have tracking, at it was heavily, negatively received.

Elaborate. Cause last I checked World was capcoms best selling Monster Hunter.

If i sold arepas, and they were my best selling item. Why would I change the ingredients.

Because World has a high sales rate, and, according to the devs themselves, had a poor retention rate. theyve been open about this, citing that a large chunk of players stopped after Zorah's repel, and didnt even bother finishing the main game, which is why Wilds' story is all LR. Sales dont make a game good or not, and the team is very intelligent to recognize this.

[Khergit Horse Archer]

Originally posted by JPM岩:

Originally posted by Khergit Horse Archer:

how do they even collect data on this and how do they quantify it unless its some sort of online poll?

They pay attention to player feedback in popular sources. Twitter, reddit, Youtube, they also receive feedback emails, and also work with content creators of feedback as well. It seems to have worked for years, back in the day, Socksy, the old EU community manager used to be in various Facebook groups for feedback, and the only NA community manager used to work heavily with the old Capcom forums. They just go out and collect info.

idk im pwetty disconnected from all sorts of social platform, its way too noisy out there and i value my sanity.

by all means if players want a streamlined mon hunt into just a refined looter boss spamming game, i think thats still fine by me.

[JPM岩]

Originally posted by Khergit Horse Archer:

Originally posted by JPM岩:

They pay attention to player feedback in popular sources. Twitter, reddit, Youtube, they also receive feedback emails, and also work with content creators of feedback as well. It seems to have worked for years, back in the day, Socksy, the old EU community manager used to be in various Facebook groups for feedback, and the only NA community manager used to work heavily with the old Capcom forums. They just go out and collect info.

idk im pwetty disconnected from all sorts of social platform, its way too noisy out there and i value my sanity.

by all means if players want a streamlined mon hunt into just a refined looter boss spamming game, i think thats still fine by me.

Thats what MH was before World, so the "problem" is really new players thinking it never was.

[GladiatorB200]

consequence of broad appeal design, everything dumber so anyone can do everything
just will keep getting worse

[Zeoplez]

Personally I'm using 2 mods to achieve monster hunting again. Map Icon Configurator and Remove Monster Quest Marker. This is a pretty decent experience so far. No monster icons on the map from the first mod, and no quest marker from the second one. Just find the monster(s) and use a paint ball/pod on them. Only downside is the second mod disables auto run to the target but it's not that big of a deal to me.

[RoosterSuplex]

el oh el

[RestfulCrow]

It's not like they were hard to find in the old games. You just watched where they ran to and follow them, or throw a paintball on them. It really wasn't "hunting". World kind of had it with the Scoutflies, but none of it's literally hunting them down, when you usually know their location. Even in the old games, you learned pretty fast where they usually start at.

[zero]

Originally posted by RestfulCrow:

It's not like they were hard to find in the old games. You just watched where they ran to and follow them, or throw a paintball on them. It really wasn't "hunting". World kind of had it with the Scoutflies, but none of it's literally hunting them down, when you usually know their location. Even in the old games, you learned pretty fast where they usually start at.

not that im actually disagreeing with you cause you are right that it was just walk up to them and paintball them always but like, i think a lot of people think "hunting" is equatable to tracking, which is really isn't, hunting is simply to follow and kill an animal(for food or sport), not actually find its location.

deer hunting in the real world can be done from little tree houses and just waiting, its still hunting, and you didn't have to move lol.

the game *is* monster hunter, not monster tracker

[BlairiesTTV]

Originally posted by RestfulCrow:

It's not like they were hard to find in the old games. You just watched where they ran to and follow them, or throw a paintball on them. It really wasn't "hunting". World kind of had it with the Scoutflies, but none of it's literally hunting them down, when you usually know their location. Even in the old games, you learned pretty fast where they usually start at.

While this is true i think its still more appealing for the newer titles given how much bigger the maps are and the way spawns work.

At the end of the day you were still making an attempt to "find the monster"

[Travis Touchdown]

Originally posted by JPM岩:

Because World has a high sales rate, and, according to the devs themselves, had a poor retention rate. theyve been open about this, citing that a large chunk of players stopped after Zorah's repel, and didnt even bother finishing the main game, which is why Wilds' story is all LR. Sales dont make a game good or not, and the team is very intelligent to recognize this.

Achievement completion on Steam seems to suggest that about 45% players made it to World's endgame. Which is pretty incredible given how much the game sold.

To put it in perspective, only a little more (49.5% of all owners) beat LR Magnamalo in Rise.

[JPM岩]

Originally posted by Travis Touchdown:

Originally posted by JPM岩:

Because World has a high sales rate, and, according to the devs themselves, had a poor retention rate. theyve been open about this, citing that a large chunk of players stopped after Zorah's repel, and didnt even bother finishing the main game, which is why Wilds' story is all LR. Sales dont make a game good or not, and the team is very intelligent to recognize this.

Achievement completion on Steam seems to suggest that about 50% players made it to World's endgame. Which is pretty incredible given how much the game sold.

To put it in perspective, roughly the same amount (49.5% of all owners) beat LR Magnamalo in Rise.

Look at it from this perspective: World sold 25mil. Across all three platforms, roughly only half actually cleared base World. So, only 12.5mil players of that 25m actually cleared the game. That's terrible metrics. Go to Iceborne, only 30% of that 25mil cleared the DLC's base story, only 8.3mil players.
I dont know where you got your Rise achieve data, but on PC, roughly 50% cleared base Rise's story with killing ibushi/narwa. 15mil sales, half is, roughly 7.5mil. 30% of the total 15m killed giasmagorm, which is roughly 5mil.

[vOiDW4LK3r]

Originally posted by Ankanator:

Originally posted by MeteoImpact:

Though let's be real, no one enjoyed paintballing a monster, fighting it, then at some point the paintball expires and now you have no idea where the hell the monster just went.

Yeah, there were times when that was annoying, but don't take that option away from the players. I mostly enjoyed it.
I already beat the available content and feel like I don't actually know the maps because I just let the mutant chicken take me there. I don't have to explore around to search for the monster.

They eventually came out with a mount in iceborne as well that would take you straight to the monster and you could sharpen and stuff.

[Travis Touchdown]

Originally posted by JPM岩:

Look at it from this perspective: World sold 25mil. Across all three platforms, roughly only half actually cleared base World. So, only 12.5mil players of that 25m actually cleared the game. That's terrible metrics. Go to Iceborne, only 30% of that 25mil cleared the DLC's base story, only 8.3mil players.
I dont know where you got your Rise achieve data, but on PC, roughly 50% cleared base Rise's story with killing ibushi/narwa. 15mil sales, half is, roughly 7.5mil. 30% of the total 15m killed giasmagorm, which is roughly 5mil.

I'm pulling the stats straight from Steam.

49.5% of players that own Rise have the achievement Ancestral Blade, for beating village Magnamalo.
48.1% of players have the achievement Calamity Conqueror Scroll, which is for beating Ibushi and Narwa.

Trying to paint this as a numbers game as in "there are ONLY 12.5 million people that beat the game" is silly, especially when it's being used as an indication of game quality given how other popular games fare pretty much the exact same.

For perspective, here are random stats from other games:
Elden Ring - 41% of players beat Hoarah Loux (using this one because it's essentially the penultimate boss and there are multiple endings)
DOOM 2016 - 32.7% of players beat the game on any difficulty
Bioshock: Infinite - 47.6% of players beat the game on Easy or higher
Psychonauts 2 - 36.2% beat the last boss of the story
The Last of Us Part 1 - 47.2% completed the game

It turns out having 45% of players playing all the way through, for your best selling game of all time, is actually very good.