EEEXXXXXX PLLOOOOOO SSSSIIIIIIOOOOOONNNN!!!! *VILLAIN LAUGHTER*

and you didnt even touch upon palico

This is a really good video. I personally haven’t fought fatalis because I didn’t play a lot of iceborne, so maybe what I am about to say is incorrect, but I think part of the difficulty especially with the timer comes from limiting yourself to no fatalis gear and doing so solo. Like it obviously can be done but it’s a far greater challenge because I would assume most people would plan to do so with others to begin with and then fight fatalis solo. But I could be totally wrong!

The analogy to Dragonball is spot-on. I got really into fighting games because of Naruto, and it was all about playing with my fav characters until suddenly it wasn't. Before I realized I was diving into reads, combos, stun frames and everything.

to me artificial difficulty is when games (like Skyrim or Oblivion) just pump up the enemies health and damage so you get killed in a hit or 2 and poke them with a finger instead of a greatsword.

The timer has always been apart of elder dragon fights you have 30min to learn and improve in that time i did the hunt solo for my first time once he came out it was mostly leaning what to certain windows to take advantage of certain windows that tell me hey gtfo it all comes to to getting good at the fight to the point it becomes muscle memory for me Another thing to mention is that you have the capability of blocking attacks with a shield greatsword, lance/gunlance, charge blade, sword and shield all have this capability to block attacks its about utilizing the entier kit of the weapon you chose to use, incest glive you can jump over the majority of attacks and stay in the air for a bit keeping dps on the head for relatively easy head brakes as well, there is alot you can do in this hunt to make it much easier. As for the 30m timer its always been like that when fighting elders its a test of your skill and your understanding of the hunt, if you are constantly on the monster with both your understanding and knowledge of your weapon of choice you can stager lock the monster down, jinmoran is good example in 3u you can keep him pushed back off you and the gate you need to protect you can kill him or get the repel all within that 30-15m timer, there are investigations in the game that will give you less time to do the hunt, also in frontier 5m to kill or repel a zenith monster that can and will one shot you as soon as you enter the area. Its not that hard of a thing to do learn what you are doing in the fight, in the best way to put it GET GOOD and learn what you are doing and need to do in the hunt One big thing i really hate was when they nerfed the fight its was really fun to go toe to toe with a monster really testing my skills against said monster after they had nerfed it had gotten brain dead easy for me to do its supposed to be the last hunt of the game its supposed to be a challenge but what now its in line with alatreon now with difficulty

Dark souls lost me when I found out coop is not a given but earned by being good. I dont wanna get good alone. Let me play with my friends

i have never met anyone who liked both rise and world, its always been your either a rise player or world player

1st situation mentioned in the intro is Nuanced. If the Attack is instant and gives no signal its going to go off. Then It is Artificial Difficulty. However very rarely is that the case. In most cases there is always a subtle tell an attack is coming and you are positioned bad it's your fault you got hit.

You nailed it about how some MH bosses are death by a thousand cuts Actually, that's basically how i felt about most of Iceborne. I felt relief that i can stop playing after beating Iceborne's story by clunking around clumsily whacking at monsters and dodging bs one shots. I played Sunbreak with its plethora of movement and dodging options and wanted more after beating Primordial Malzeno, who had plenty of unfair tricks but never ones that felt unfair.

As a GS user I found Fatalis easier than Alatreon, I do agree that the hitboxes are horrible, but I learned to stay closer since they overcompensate usually at the end rather than the beginning, and the ballistas and hooks are great to force him to stay grounded but there is a lot of rng to it, I beat him solo 4 try but Alatreon solo took me 20+ and never did it online randos die too quick.

The timer is one of my favorite aspects of the Fatalis fight. It forces the player to play more efficiently, stick to the monster like glue and land wall bangs methodically. Have a good set up and plenty of items. You don’t need fatalis gear to solo fatalis. But you do have to study and study well both the fight and the mechanics of the game and your preferred weapon. Honestly I think the Fatalis fight is perfect.

When I intentionally played Elden Ring I felt like you when your first played Dark Souls 3 I was like this is bullshit I got to Margit and was like this game sucks and moved on. Then around a year later I was like I need to try it again to see what the hype was about. So I restarted the game with a clean slate and went straight to Margit again and got my ass kicked over and over I got so pissed off I deleted the game and decided I was done forever. Then the next day when I went back on I saw Elden Ring sitting it redownloaded itself for whatever reason and it just felt like the game was mocking me at that point. I said fuck it I’ll give it one last try then that’s when I actually beat the boss. I tell you after being stuck on that boss for so long actually finally beating him felt great. It was one of the best moments I’ve ever had playing a video game. I just sat there staring at the arena and being happy I was finally able to accomplish this challenge that seemed impossible to me. That moment is when I finally got the souls games hype and I was hooked into it from there.

Also, just because an obstacle (or part of it) can be overcome does not mean its existence is justified. This goes well beyond gaming.

This is very low tier bait.

Hmmm, the boss where peak preparation is highly considered but you don't prepare, interesting. Having elemental damage resist from food, and the 3 defense item buffs, talons and charm. only the blue flames are a threat. This IS a case of git good lmao. You didn't get gear checked, your equipment and overall preparation for the fight is nonexistent

My family always has cans of spam on hand, so sometimes I'd fry them up till they were extra crispy and then eat them with tortillas and cheese. Maybe a little sriracha as well if we had any

i like mh3u the best, personally.

One of the most fun gaming evenings i ever had with friends was using an RNG generator to select which monster, weapon class and weapon style we choose. The pure chaos that resulted in having to adapt to new combinations you have never considered trying out was so unique. The highlights were 4 hunting horns trying to subdue an EX snowbaron lagombi or counting the laser beams of a bolt reaver while everyone was running for their life xD

The hardest boss of Soulslikes is not Malenia, Blade of Miquella, but Bed of Chaos, I Hate This Thing So Much. It just shows how you can implement good mechanics in a wrong way because Dark Souls is definitely not a platformer, but Bed is definitely a platformer boss

I love that they also heal and play whatever role they are they do seem a bit wonky using super complicated weapons like it takes a long time for then to get the full sword and sheild charge on cb and they seem to always walk instead of sheathing when using Lance and they're to far away etc but

I love morgit as a first brickwall. it's a boss that does a bot of everything, but it doesn't feel like he is pulling some bullshit plus all of his attacks are properly telegraphed

i really dislike clickbaits in your titles. tell whats the video about better

World's a master piece

Its funny as shit to me that i spent over 6 hours preparing for nergi to get the proper HH...only to ALMOST beat him with a starter tier 1 lance... Then easily bully him into submission with the 2nd defender lance. Enter Vaal hazak, no prep, just fun. Didnt even cart once and i got him in a lot of stuns with my CB...Vaal Hazak was actually kinda disappointing. My bf made him sound like a nightmare

Oh luchita my beloved if only every hunter was like you😢

Just to directly discuss the title for a second, artificial difficulty is such a weird term to begin with. It presumes the existence of a "natural state". A "natural difficulty". Which just isn't really true is it? All difficulty is artificial, its _all_ unnatural. The "natural state" of gameplay is to not exist, it needs to be constructed out of nothing. Difficulty can be over-tuned, unfair, counterintuitive, etc. But artificial is a terrible way to describe any of those things. It describes nothing beyond the presumption of some "natural state" that is usually just the personal opinion of the person talking. I think the urge to call difficulty "artificial" arises out of mismatched expectations. When you go into a fight expecting one thing, and get another. When you go into a fight expecting Margit to turn slowly, and then he hits you with an instant 180. When you go into Fatalis expecting the fireballs to be one size, but then they are another. "Artificial" is just an easy label to slap onto a fight when you don't want to put in the effort to figure out why it feels wrong to you. And I don't mean that to be insulting, I don't think everyone has to actually unpack why any given boss feels wrong to them. But when actually discussing difficulty, it's better to specify. To move past the initial judgement and do the work to figure out why these things are bad. To address some examples provided in the video real quick, with the red box and the dodge range. The actual problem with the first example is not artificiality, it is unfairness. An attack goes out with no chance for you as the player to defend. That is just unfair (presuming that you are expected to defend from it, there is some nuance to be discussed about whether dodging is the intended solution or if you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole but that is highly dependent on the game and mechanics. Eg, in elden ring there are a ton of mechanics that you are expected to run to avoid, jump to avoid, etc). If the dodge range is tight but barely doable, the problem is the hitbox and dodge timing are over-tuned. If a fireball hits a larger area than you expect, the problem is that the area was not telegraphed adequately. So to answer the question "When does difficulty become artificial?", it depends on what you mean by "artificial".

I really like your idea for Alatreon. I'm one of the people who really liked the Alatreon fight except to Escaton Judgement. Making it punishing but not breaking the entire fight sounds like fun given how much I like the attacks of the monster as is.

i also was kinda opposed to the clutchclaw at tze beginning. as well as i didnt like monster riding in rise. its one of these mechanics that get overused and exploited soon. like at one point its only about using every opportunity to ram a monster in a wall or ride it to the next turf war. but, i got used to it in the end.

I think you misunderstand grinding. Grinding is never a bad mechanic. You make grinding feel bad with repetitive game loops that arent fun enough to repeat. You also make it feel bad when the rewards are garbage, and you dont feel the progression of your work. No mechanic is bad. But there are bad choices to make it not work.

I think something you completely overlooked would help this discussion. Its not that the stuff combo kills you, its that there is no recovery from a mistake that makes it feel bad. Let me panic and clutch a heal by escaping mid combo. That cant happen if the boss true combos you.

Generally i use the "when the devs break their own rules" and "when the game contradicts what it's taught you" as artificial difficulty markers I dont generally consider unavoidable attacks as artificial difficulty since they dont usually exist to make the fight "harder" by "changing the rules", but by introducing an element to combat that you have to interact with utilizing other game mechanics than the one you might be most proficient with. Sometimes it's there to check your defenses, sometimes it's there to see if you explored and found the counter item, sometimes it's there to guarantee you take time to heal A game like "i wanna be the guy" is artificially difficult to me (which is an intentional choice by the sadistic dev) because one one screen a platform is a platform but on another it's basically a missile Id also say there's a difference between unfairly difficult and overtuned, an overtuned fight asks too much of the player's skill, an unfair fight asks the player to trial and error their way through unpredictable mechanics

I’ve always rationalized it as when difficulty is challenging your patience instead of your skill, that’s when it becomes artificial difficulty.

GU also has PROWLER MODE!!!!

Interesting that I had a completely different reaction to World and Rise than you did even if we're both veteran hunters. Rise to me was where the series felt like it was losing its identity to me, because the hunting simulation, ecology and survival aspects of the older games were what captivated me. Rise hunts always felt like arena quests with extra steps and it never gave me that familiar feeling of overcoming a wall that was present in every single title before it. World may play pretty differently compared to Freedon Unite, but for the lack of a better term they felt similar in spirit. World always felt like the game the devs wanted to make but were limited by hardware.

can someone remind me what the song playing in the background at 13:00 is

Fatalis never defeated me, the clock always blocked me If he was not shivering behind a 30 minute timer and had the normal timer he would be nothing 😈 Those puddles on the ground is fatalis sweat from him praying the time runs out.

Fatalis difficulty isn't artificial. He just have specific mechanics that you can utilize to beat him, also he requires a lot of preparation and it makes sense because he is literally the final boss of the game. An example of an artificial difficulty would be bosses from MMO

4:15 So.... you didn't like HUNTING the monster in a game called Monster HUNTER? What are you crying? This game was my intro into the series, and the mechanic fits well. The previous titles should be renamed "boss rush simulator" because you don't hunt anything. You fight bosses with slow-moving weapons. Turf wars are a fantastic way for you to add extra damage onto the monster while giving you time to recover, much like the environmental hazards are supposed to be used. Why you would have a gripe over FREE damage is beyond me.

Crosscode mentioned

Alternative title: why does people like mechanics that i find bad.

The 50 minutes time limit for regular missions are training wheels that are barely needed and, if goes near that limit, the player is gonna have an awfull experience and clearly has build problems. The game offers you a LOT of options to deal with the damage like fire resistence jewells, fire resistence mantle, divine protection jewell and, funny enough, Lunastra + Golden Rathian is a combination easy to farm and build. Building properly makes the damage almost trivial. I understand the apell to play agressive is fun and makes every fight a lot quickier but If you had trouble with this against Fatalis and didn't want to use a protective build or even put the Fire Resistence above 20 making the fight harder is your choice, not the game's fault. If this fight has a problem is to be free to try at level 26. It should be a level 100 to make it clear that it is a challenge for proper builds and experienced players, like the Arch Tempered, a bunch of Monster that are harder hitters than Fatalis, in a better way like Nergigante and Velkhana and for worse like Xeno'Jiiva: a lot of real shit hitboxes and a move set that don't give a chance to half the weapons in the game.

The vast majority of casual players play the game multiplayer.

Final boss drom dlc has a super banger theme

a friend of mine and I (he's way better at all games than me but I like playing support so I'm cool with being carried) loved basically all the fights. Glav was my favorite fight as it had the tail cut gimmick which made it a challenge to complete that each fight. We had fun with all the fights, especially the ones that kicked our asses and it felt really good going from being scared of fighting anything on my own to having the skill to solo big monsters. Then we hit end game. Raging brach was super tedious. It felt like luck that we would do well. With other monsters once we bet them the first time we'd want to go back and fight them again. I hate going back to raging brach. While trying to get the full armour set we had a dc in the final stage and that made us stop playing for the day. We then tried alatreon. We haven't beaten him and after watching this vid there is no way in hell I am ever fighting fatalis. The bosses went from beating us because we were underprepared and unfamiliar to kicking our ass because if you don't play nearly perfectly then you lose. I'm average at games, nothing amazing. I prob will never beat fatalis solo. When people tell me to get gud and just use fire res, I get a headache and stop playing. I want to have fun when I play games, not get bullied by big hitboxes and big number go brrrr. For me, difficulty becomes artificial when the challenge is to keep playing.

artificial difficulty is when difficulty happens to me specifically

bad boss design boils down to highly inflated hp pools like elden ring did it in the dlc, cluncky mechanics , way too high dps and unintuitive attack design. That said its easy to fuck up a boss but there is a fine line between bs and a great boss experience. A lot of people hated midir for being way too fast but yet they loved gael. its about the fine tuning and not making a player feel like they just wasted their time fighting some tedious monster that just doesnt die.

The best mechanic Sunbreak added were the npc followers. A shame they’ll probably not be returning for wilds.

hot take but the second question at the start of the vid depends on the attack and if u get s or not while dodging

I saw another video that described monster hunter almost perfectly. It’s a turn based game. You just need to know when your turn is. Which makes monster hunter a large learning curve game, because you don’t know when your turn is the first time you’re fighting a monster.