Monster Hunter Wilds | Should the Element System be revamped?

[@Ghoulbladezilla0107]

Technically, blights for monsters exist in rise/sunbreak using firebettles, waterbettles, thunderbettles, and snowbettles. Fire blight does damage over time and makes the monster easier to stagger. Water blight softens the monster's body, basically part breaker. Thunder blight has increased stun buildup, and even non blunt weapons can apply stun. Ice blight slows the mobility of monsters so it is easier to dodge.

[@xemiii]

I'm surprised you didn't bring up the elemental beetles in Rise since they aflict monsters with elemental blights. Not only that, but some of the blights have unique effects, and I think the advantages they provide are executed quite well. Fire is damage over time, ice is slowed animations, thunder makes stuns easier, and water weakens the hitzones of monsters. There's no dragon beetle, but, as you said, elderseal is fine enough. I do think it could be made more impactful, such as severely limiting an elder dragon's ability (taking away chamelos' invisibility without the horn break, temporarily stopping nergigante's spike regrowth, ect.), that or give them elderseal and some form of dragon blight. I do have an issue with the beetles though, and that is actually using them. Since the beetles aren't items you can't start with them in your inventory, meaning you'll have to find the beetle on the map every single hunt. They're also awkward to use, as you have to stop what you're doing, aim the beetle, and successfully hit the monster. Imagine if the only way you could paralyze a monster was by going on a detour to grab a paratoad, and when you do use it you have to awkwardly disengage with the monster, all just to paralyze it once. They're just not worth using. If these blights were tied to elemental weapons, similarly to ailments, I don't think they would be overpowered. The only problem is that they're just better ailments at this point, giving you extra damage and a status effect. This could be mitigated by removing elemental damage, or you could buff the ailments to have other perks for using them (which I think is the more interesting idea). Your proposed ideas don't sound bad either, the water blight being essentially bubble blight sounds like it'd be a novel way to topple a monster. The main idea that elemental weapons should have the ability to apply blights is certainly one I can get behind. Hopefully Capcom finds something interesting to do with blights in Wilds.

[@deathclawproductions6723]

Agreed for the most part, I do hope we retain the ability to inflict blights on monsters. Similarly I do like the idea of Elderseal, that said it could do a bit of a rework to make it a bit more impactful.

[@bread3824]

I like the concept for the waterseal but I would be a lot of work for the animators. In my opinion I think waterseal should make the monster easier to flinch.

[@ghoulishgoober3122]

Maybe gives a very slight but helpful slow on the monster. Like they're actually soggy. Flinching easier also makes sense. Maybe the more parts you break the more sluggish the monster is when wey

[@Arkyuu]

I know they're totally different games but MH Wilds could pick up something from Dragon's Dogma 2. I love how almost every element can apply debilitations on monsters. Monsters can be burned, frozen, wet, stunned by electricity, tarred. They already did this with Rise/Sunbreak via the Beetles so I only hope there's some form of improvement with Wilds especially since I am a Dual Blades main where element is the specialty

[@mattbell888]

I mean, Status effects are basically Elemental Blights but apply to both players and monsters, with maybe Exhaust as an exception. Personally, I think it might just be better to do away with elemental blights altogether, and just make Burn and Stun applicable statuses. Then you could have weapons with both an elemental damage type and a status buildup. Exhaust could be applied to hunters and it just does the same thing Waterblight does now. Then you could make more interesting combinations of weapons or augmentations for customizing your weapon. You could have like, rath weapons have fire element damage and apply poison buildup, or like rathian has poison buildup and rathalos has burn buildup. Teostra weapons could have fire element and apply blast buildup. Maybe some monsters only have a status buildup, and some only have an elemental damage portion, or some just have neither. Making the systems more orthogonal and letting both players and monsters combine them in new ways, and letting weapon stats be more expressive of what monsters can do I think is the more interesting path. Oh and get rid of the Exhaust, Dragon, Poison, and Paralysis Switch Axe phials and just make them elemental phials with the appropriate element, thanks.

[@zequi007]

I think the way Rise introduced the blight on monsters is a more balanced way of doing it. Having these blights on weapon would make some monster way to easy and it would also restrict blights on certain monster while Rise lets you apply this blight to any monster and rather than being a permanent thing is just a nice way to get extra damage if timed correctly.

[@Segundachanceemgames]

Loving the video, thanks for the content! I so hyped for Wilds❤ Something i think it would be pretty cool, is that, if we got "punished" by using wepons wuth elements that the monster controls, like hitting Namielle with Water or Thunder wepons, she will actually get buffed, extra damage to her + speed, while we deal less damage.

[@xemiii]

Cool idea, but I'm against ideas that just limit player choice so drastically. Having specific endgame fights that do so is fine to me, as it can be a great chance to shake up gameplay or create a new challenge (I'm one of the people that like IB Alatreon, and Safi'Jiiva has a similar thing with elderseal). If this mechanic existed across the whole game then I feel it'd be quite restricting. Weapons are already restricted in viability by various means; poor sharpness, no decoration slots, low raw damage, low (or god forbid negative) affinity, ect. Adding another restriction there would just kinda narrow the scope of actually usable weapons. I've been playing through Iceborne again, and I was hoping that greatsword would have fun paralysis weapons since I wasn't familiar with its upgrades. Throughout my playthrough (which has beaten the main story of Iceborne) I haven't used a single paralysis weapon, and each time one looks like it might be worth making there's other weapons that surpass it in every other way. My experience with insect glaive is similar, though in early game Iceborne there is a good paralysis weapon in the form of the kadachi vipertail and paralysis kinsects (such as the bilbobrix velox). While initially fun to use, these weapons don't have upgrade branches to keep them relevant in the mid, end, or postgame. I wish there were the ability to have more options for weapon ailments (especially during the main story), but there really isn't remotely easy to get. This applies mainly to World as I remember there being a decent enough paralysis insect glaive, and Sunbreak allows for weapons to all get endgame upgrades easier than Iceborne. My point with this story is that the games already limit your options quite heavily, so imagine finding an actually strong weapon, only for most most monsters to ignore it or actively punish you for using it. While I do think this could be an interesting tradeoff, increased damage but a more dangerous monster, I'm not really for the idea. Then again this idea is a lot more compelling than negative affinity, so it could be used for something interesting. Considering the fact I think Alatreon and Safi'Jiiva are executed fine enough in this regard (and that Capcom has good reason to improve them due to the amount of backlash Alatreon received) future games could apply this to particular monsters and do so meaningfully.

[@Manawolf25]

I think keeping the elemental damage in weapons simple might be better for the game health overall. Monster Hunter already has a fair bit of complexity within it that the series has built up over its lifetime as a franchise. That said I think that Rise and Sunbreak already had a nice way of utilizing a concept of elemental blights on monsters with the elemental beetles. Maybe they can expand on it from there or look into how either other endemic life or environmental traps could effect the monster if used wisely. I personally hated how elderseal was utilized in world and iceborne. Not only was it too exclusive, but it also stepped onto a trait that was already there with poison when you looked at Kushala. I think it might also be better to exclude the dragon element from this. Removing elemental attacks from monsters might be too close to what exhaustion does to monsters as well to the monsters that can use elemental attacks. It doesn't help that the dragon element isn't effective for every elder dragon, so just bringing it for elderseal brings little value imo on an elemental weapon. I don't think that they should implement the weapons to be able to inflict elemental blights on the monsters. Keep it to something that you can search for within the environment to both learn the map and give an advantage when hunting the monster.

[@themurdock619]

I think let's say said monster (element or normal) we all know their elements or their main element in this case. Zinogre for example. Thunder. There should be a rare chance Like 3 percent for the element to randomly change. Even change the name and color pattern. Say you hope into a fight for Zinogre and only to find out he is a fire type and not only that but his weakness has changed. Not only would it make a change but drastically. Now each monster has a handful of variants among them. Can even change the weopons and armor a bit and in these smaller changes again in weopon and armor pigment and element changes we can have our fav weopon in a special element or even raw if we get lucky enough to make them from these rare monster parts. Even go as far as after changes up their stats by 10 percent as the variant are a stronger type of that monster. Imagine making Zinogre weopon as a fire type or dragon etc. It would give farming that much more reason as well as greatly open the monster amount without drastic measures.

[@darkerm76]

Yes, we need more Element. Also a way to inflict Element blight with Weapon like Fire weapon will be able to inflict Fire blight.

[@nawerplusplus9132]

Hunter on fire : role 3 times to stop it Monster on fire : try to stop fire with "rodeo" (like when mounted by hunter)

[@nescafeine3063]

Sadly you completely missed blight with beetles in Rise/Sunbreak, which makes the ideas in this video pretty much the same idea, but in my opinion less interesting. I would love blight from Rise/Sunbreak being usable with more realistic environmental traps (for exemples, thoses lightning rods).

[@xemiii]

Oooh, the idea of environmental traps that inflict blights on the monsters sounds neat. I do think that players should have more convenient access to blights alongside this though, as my main issue with RIse's blights were that they were limited to something in the environment that you couldn't just keep with you for future hunts like items.

[@maldivesthegamer9774]

There also starburst bug too which I really like the idea and it really fun to throw monster into a bugs and see them explode

[@xemiii]

@@maldivesthegamer9774 they could be neat with a modified clutch clutch claw, or some other way to fling monsters into walls

[@DragonsilverXGenesis]

Hey X Zaguer, could you talk about the famous Ice mod and how it fix (for me) the most enormous problem in MHW vanilla : the gamebalance and the gamedesign of each weapon.

[@jinnn371]

The armored core background music tho 🔥🔥🔥

[@TherealNiqqa]

the answer is no

[@smol-man]

The idea gives in this video is not a good one, inflicting elemental blights should be exclusive to a outside source like the elemental beetles. Putting something like that on weapons would be just adding stuff to 'fix' an issue that's none existent and is admittedly a pretty dumb idea. At most. The thing that should be added in the future is combination elements from frontier

[@ksatriamadangdolan5345]

Since day 1 of monster hunter, there's no problem with element. No need to fix something that doesn't broken. But as an old player, I already prepared myself to see monhan game become unrecognizable in the future. Old game is simple 1 poke = 1 hit; monster hit you, you get hit. No counter, 1 hit deal multiple damage, jump 3m high, flying mid-air or transform into spiderman 😂

[@boredgamer7841]

I find the element system in Monster hunter to be bland, boring, generic, and uninspired. "this one does Fire damage, how can you tell? It is made from parts of fire monsters!".. that's pretty much it. I think elemental weapons should cause blights, have better visual presentation in terms of weapon design, hit effects, lingering effects on the monster, swing animations and idle effects for each element. Thunder weapons crackle with lightning, fire weapons glow red, etc. There should also be a more obvious difference between playing element and raw damage. To balance elemental weapons having blights/status effects, raw could have its own status effects such as poison, sleep, bleed. Maybe introduce alchemy or something, into the game that can combine elements, materials together to form new element types, or more powerful materials. I think the weapon crafting aspect could also use an overhaul to introduce a bit more player input, crafting is boring, it is just "gather these specific materials", with no room for player creativity.

[@ghoulishgoober3122]

You have a good point, however I will only say that we already have status effects. Weapons can be elemental or apply a status. So you can already craft weapons that inflict poison AND sleep, though it's true bleed is not available to us, we also have paralysis, blast, and stun from any blunt attack. I'm not sure how we could make crafting better, it already forces you to break specific monster parts during the fight in order to increase your chances at certain materials that are needed for the weapon or armor. I like the idea of mixed elements, and there actually are a unique set of dual blades where one blade deals fire and the other, ice. The obvious difference between elemental and non elemental weapons is that usually, non elemental weapons have the highest raw damage and often have lower crit chance the higher damage they deal, and have lower base sharpness. Elemental weapons will typically have better sharpness to make up for the mixed elemental and raw. Overall I agree that weapons could bave more visual effects, and I think we could absolutely find a way to slip in more status effects or elements than we already have. It's just, the crafting already asks that you gather specific materials, which asks that you break specific monster parts in order to get those materials easier. For hit effects weapons do already show this. Fire weapons cause a mini explosion, water makes splashes, ice is puffs of snow, the status effects like poison make the monster drool purple ooze, blast causes an explosion every now and then that deals damage, sleep makes enemies sleep, and paralysis paralyzes.

[@boredgamer7841]

@@ghoulishgoober3122 I was just trying to separate elemental blights from physical statuses, I was thinking that could balance it out if raw weapons had their own status effects that didn't/couldn't appear on elemental weapons. I was thinking crafting materials could get their own categories and stuff, you could have say "weapon blade" materials, or "weapon core" materials, "weapon guards", "weapon handles", "shields", and you had to pick from those types of categories to get your desired weapons. For example you want to make a high affinity weapon, you could pick Nargacuga "blade materials", these could be its wing-blade things, or its tail spikes, or feathers, then you need to find something for the core of your weapon, want element on that bad boy? pick a core material from say a Kirin which could be its Horn, and that adds lightning element to your weapon. Don't want element? could pick something from a Tigrex or Diablos. The possibilities for such a crafting system is endless if they put slightly more effort into it than "follow the upgrade path". Imo it could also make the monster materials feel more "real" and not just "yeah I got the right icons in the rewards menu!" Alchemy was just a stray thought, but could be like melding, think of melding parts together to form new crafting materials not just jewels or talismans. Throw in a kirin horn, some teostra gem, some pure dragon blood, some other parts to balance it out, and now you got yourself a new core material to give your weapons "blast-lightning" element or some stupid shit, could be cool. I was just thinking that there should be a lore reason to go for raw weapons other than "it is inconvenient to craft a full element set so I am just gonna get the highest damaging raw weapon I can find and use that for the whole game". I also think there should be gameplay reasons that sets Raw and Element apart from each other other than numerical values in terms of sharpness/affinity. I don't feel like the visual aspect of element weapons are particularly noticeable or gives you any real feeling of "yeah I am playing with this element and it is cool as heck". I think that's really lacking.

[@blankblank6214]

Ice and dragon need revamping like ice should slow general movement speed and dragon should explain what it does

[@Raptor700RPG]

This video feels extremely rushed you should have spent more time on it. Rise already let's you blight the monsters with most of the elements and they all have different properties. The main problem with your idea is that some weapons would erase monsters in second if they could give monsters blights. Bowguns can carry multiple ammo types and they don't need to be more powerful by applying status and blights at the same time.

[@turnipmanz1754]

If you want to offer constructive criticism probably better off not insulting the person with the first sentence

[@Raptor700RPG]

@@turnipmanz1754 In what way is telling a creator to spend more time on a topic an insult. Also everyone else can tell that there was no research on the topic cuz rise let's you blight the monsters and it's not brought up at all.

[@foxxtitan7028]

Well just make bogun needing to use more ammo of the same type of element to get the affliction or make the bowgun make a lesser powerfull version of blight

[@heyimurchin6575]

I think the concept of elemental blight is great but instead of a build up, how about a gauge instead. Hitting monsters will fill up your gauge similar to switch axe and once full you can trigger a unique attack that may inflict blight. Like silkbind but instead of a cooldown of wirebug you actually have to work for it.

[@spark9372]

All id want is for them to keep ice how it was in rise of it being the main "gimmick disabler" like say for instance if wilds main gimmick is switching weapons on the fly mid combo iceblight could freeze said secondary weapon to your satcher for a period of time and you cant switch for it's duration almost like how dragon removes secondary effects.

[@cheemslord9917]

maybe balanced it