Monster Hunter Wilds : The 5th Gen Skill Bloat & Power Creep

[@adgkadgk]

If we had fewer skills they also would have to be better balanced. Otherwise weakness exploit and crit boost would still be on every set while having less space for more interesting skills

[@brokemono]

I think they learned enough from World and Rise to know what to do in Wilds.

[@the_exxtra1425]

what if we have less crit skills?

[@BadEnd98]

Because of too limited armor skills back then, most defensive skills sucks, they cost too much that you lost essential offensive skills on your builds for little gains - with exception on some monsters that really really need counter builds - but damn, it come again to that those skills were too hard to build to countrr those monsters. Those who really understood how it was back in the day rather go all offensive instead, it's always like that. The major difference of 5th gen is because now there are way more they can put into a set, and some defensive/utility skills has gotten deserved buffs - like how Def boost add elemental res and percentage increase, divine blessing 5

[@nappa4317]

I agree. Would you prefer they make wex more costly to build and drop say ear plugs cost? Or make things like brutal critial actually good?

[@nestroit5010]

people will always prioritize offensive skills, who the fuck cares about eating, sharpening, earplugs and other garbage skills which should not even be relevant, only in japanese games you have to invest multiple slots to eat or drink faster, its ridiculous. "well lets see, 30 attack more or farting quicker than before? yeah, farting it is" - clowns

[@Kojisama]

I wouldn't mind skill bloat like in World/Rise if there weren't so many universal damage-oriented skills (Attack Boost, Critical Eye etc..) I would prefer if the only damage-oriented skills were more situational, like Offensive Guard, Adrenaline Rush, Repeat Offender, or FrostCraft. That way, you'll have to consider which skill fits better with your weapon, your playstyle, and which utility skill could synergy with them.

[@FightinCowboy]

I think an interesting concept would be singular skills per piece of gear and separate categories for each piece. So Head: Utility, Chest: Defensive, Arms: Offensive, Legs: Environmental Feet: Ele/Resist none anything beyond that comes from talismans. Hopefully this would reduce the DPS bloat we see

[@xleaselife]

Oh! I like this idea. As long as there is good parity with the skills (which goes without saying), you'd have a lot of room still for build expression and perhaps more meaningful skills that don't just amount to number/percentage boosts.

[@CRBRUSX]

This would actually be interesting and would open the door for multiple builds per encounter and not a meta of "the best build"

[@CidPsy]

This could help and would release the bloat we're in right now.

[@Tahu33446]

Kind of like how destiny 2 separates orb generation an ammo finding and ammo amount generation as well as flinch reduction mods differently by armor being on legs, head, arms and chest. It's not bad as long as there aren't to many things that are needed in a build being locked to a certain armor such as crit and damage skills locked to chest

[@viciouspotato6205]

I doubt this would change anything, people would just pick the piece with the most deco slots for the defensive pieces to make up for the damage loss.

[@sanguinetales]

I'm in a different camp. I think the skills are fine. I just want the unique set ls to retain some exclusive skills like the divinities and skill secrets. Dial back the total skills, but make full sets more valuable. Not exactly nerfing mixed sets, but promoting full sets.

[@kenjironakazawa9177]

agree with you on this. i like world with making some full sets be more rewarding such as drachen armor in base world, teostra 3 set armor piece, safi jiva 4 armor piece.

[@sanguinetales]

@kenjironakazawa9177 I even came up with a unique gimmick for Kulu Yaku's set. Too bad I don't work at Capcom. Kulu set secret Curious Collector/Hoarder. 1 - Collectors Stash. Consumable Items and Gathered items have an increased stack value 2 - Collectors Defense. Picking up or using consumables gives you a short window of increased attack and defense. Heroics(lite) - not as effective as Heroics but it adds Critical Eye equivalent to 2 levels, and Attack 1 Different parts of the set will have low levels of Marathon, Pro Transport, Stamina Surge, Free meal The different ranks of the armor will have adjusted stats to match the appropriate range . Its a silly set themed around how kulu behaves but it makes for an interesting hit and run playstyle

[@XBullitt16X]

I agree, more value is full sets would be awesome.

[@phipao]

What I would like to see is for each weapon to have more specific skills, so the builds would look way different depending on the weapon. I really don't like to see nearly the same build for almost every weapon.

[@Svoorhout85]

I hope they import the swappable techniques for weapons too. I was very fond of the greatsword skill that did a little less damage than the TCS unless you absorb a hit while charging, and would allow you to swing in any direction.

[@dopi3220]

Builds against monsters are cool imo so if for example you get a lot of handicraft but also a lot of electric resistence down, it would be bad against ketsu

[@averythegamer4949]

Gunlances weeping as they have to try and slot in another mandatory skill in low/high rank.

[@Wedgez]

This is potentially really bad depending on the execution. Mandatory skills, especially in games with rng skills (ie decos/extra skills in rise) just make you feel at the mercy of RNG. +If they're too powerful they just become a boring auto include like with bow in World.

[@4nto418]

That's already kind of the case, the issue is that weapons that have no specific skills can profit off of weapons that need lots of skills to just pump up all attack skills. I'd say bring the hammer/LS/DB/GS/IG on par with CB/gunlance/bow in terms of number of "required QoL" skills first. A CB will want focus, guard, power prolonger and capacity boost *on top of attack skills* whereas a DB only wants marathon runner or a LS only wants focus.

[@DelBoy573]

I just hope that elemental damage out performs raw damage if used against the right monster. Seems like raw damage is always meta rendering most elemental weapons useless, unless your weapon is fast like duel blades.

[@invincaspartan]

In Rise Sunbreak Ele Lance was BIS, at the end game.

[@DelBoy573]

@@invincaspartan I’ve just started playing Lance in world and am loving it so was gonna switch to that in Rise also, so that’s good to know! Thanks

[@invincaspartan]

@@DelBoy573 Enjoy. I felt so much more powerful in Rise with Lance, Although base game Raw Lance is the best one, it wasn't until Sunbreak where the Elemental Lance shines.

[@PieMK6R]

Element is broken in rise...

[@SH1NK1R01]

Not really sure how long it’s been since you played. Iceborne buffed element and made it viable for basically all weapons outside maybe hammer. And in rise it’s pretty much superior.

[@baelGIGAN]

i think the way they balanced armor set bonus' in iceborne was a really good start (before fatty) it gave each armor set a unique niche and also represented the personality of the monster really well.

[@albertoasara3074]

Bonus set existes before World, the idea is theory is niche but not when sets are garbage

[@mitchgowing2336]

I agree. IB did it best IMO. Set bonuses were great and there is room for improvement. And no, MHWs set bonus system had never been used before. Personally I would love to see action-altering skills ie switch skills tied to armor skills but that’s probably a hot take.

[@adonicetrig8908]

@@mitchgowing2336 frontier had them dude

[@mitchgowing2336]

@@adonicetrig8908tou che I guess like most I’ve never touched that one so my mistake

[@adonicetrig8908]

@@mitchgowing2336 u can give it a shot, it’s fairly easy to get it set up, you’d be surprised how much was taken from frontier and recycled into gen 5, especially in Rise.

[@MiraiKishi]

The thing I don't like with "complicated" weapons like Gunlance, Switch Axe and Charge Blade is that the weapons need pre-requisite skills on them to make them "feel good" or hell, increase their effectiveness, whereas with Long Sword and Great Sword, it's literally just "Slap in Attack and Crit based decos and get right to it."

[@rickcarrixdo8167]

I understand the feeling, gunlance without artillery or evade extender feels rough to play after you get so used to it. also the skill that makes the weapon form switching faster for Swaxe and Chargeblade become essential skills

[@MissSmoozie]

I think a solution to this could be found in the Iceborn and Rise endgame, just make it so the weapons start giving it for free after a point. Where LS or GS gets +10 raw from one level of augmenting, SA or CB get +8 RAW and 1 level of Rapid Morph, after a bit you have all 3 levels for free, Bow could get Mighty Bow the same way, and Gunlance Artillery. Bowguns could get their Tune-Up/Spare Shot/Recoil Down the same way.

[@rayne-t]

Uhh, greatsword without focus?

[@legobricknator]

@@rayne-tthat only matters much to faster monsters, you get focus not because its required but for comfort. if you dont have focus, learning the match up becomes even more important because now you REALLY have to know what windows of opportunity you have to charge attack

[@TheAdarkerglow]

I think it's a bad idea. Making some weapons impenetrable in the interest of balance will only encourage people to pick up easier weapons without the prohibitions, until they have the work around, and then they'll feel cheated by the other weapons that have more straight forward empowerments, such as Long Sword and Great Sword. A better choice would be focusing on adding in skills that help emphasize play styles, especially with variable weapons like the Charge Blade. A skill that improves guard and sword damage but slows phial charging. A skill that makes Sword Mode charge faster and do more damage, but expends the phial faster. Then you could have Long Sword high damage draw or sustained damage Focused builds, and faster/slow charging softer/harder great swords. They should all be pretty decent at a base, with skills that make them better at specific styles with drawbacks, or straight forward but less impactful skills.

[@SnakesTheBas]

My first game was 3u, just for context, I feel that 5th gen skills are a million times better for set building. It makes it really fun and kinda forces you to hunt many different monsters just to get a specific piece. Also, it is really fun to see how weird you can get with your skills for different kinds of builds. If you want a bludgeoner, element, crit build, you could, and it's cool to see how good that can be. In the old world you don't look for different monsters because you wanna use one set, of course there are people who do set build, but the set building was what monster had the absolute best full set. When I played, it was extremely rare to see mixed sets over full sets, which just makes the game more of how fast can I get to this monster and get its armor. That's why I feel new gen is better

[@mahius19]

I have noticed this too as a 3rd genner myself. Mixed sets are the meta now, whilst back in the day, it wasn't worth it due to wasted skill points and full sets were the meta. Not necessarily a bad thing, but would be cool to see full sets be more viable alongside mixed sets, outside of end-game.

[@diodejr9385]

​@@mahius19 Am I just crazy for remembering that mix sets have always been the meta? Remember early Arekkz Gaming with Mix Set Mondays? Athena's ASS? We had wierd names for them. I've played since MH3U, but the ones off the top of my head are JhoCena. BujaBujabu.

[@moomanchu608]

@@mahius19mixed sets have always been meta, you just needed the right decos and charms to make them really shine.

[@caremo98]

Yeah mixed was always the meta, but they were much more difficult to grasp on your own, to the point that you abolutely needed helpprograms like athenas ASS to find a good one. So most of the time if you played casually, you just didnt bother with it and used full sets although those usually had also one negative skill active, if you didnt combat it with decorations. ^^@@diodejr9385

[@servantofcygnus]

@@diodejr9385 You're not crazy, mixed sets have always been the meta. The only exceptions were sets with completely broken skill and decoration availability, armors that are still broken today (e.g. MHWI Fatalis). They've always been meta, they just haven't always been totally goddamn effortless to construct.

[@AkantorCZ]

I think Rise and Sunbreak introduced quite a few new interesting skills that helped to increase build diversity. I also appreciate the attempt to introduce more ways of damage scaling other than through crits even though sometimes it didn't work out, e.g. damage on negative crits, Bludgeoner, Mind's Eye, Buildup Boost, Sneak Attack, etc. In the end it was probably bit too much but still I believe you couldn't simply get every offensive skill. What I don't like though is visual effect polution from all the skills effects character has. Another thing I like is that many skills have its power split into more points and having just a single point could make a difference. On the other hand investing exactly 1 point was often the most effcient way and fully investing into the skill was not worth it. Altought curios crafting system was bit too much RNG oriented and time demanding, I like it actually make low tier armor parts still relevant. If they could improve crafting to make it more deterministic and less work, it could actually be prety good. Also the part with lowering stats like resistances or armor was kind of pointless. However one thing I'm missing are set bonuses from the world. It added extra layer of complexity and unique identity to each armor set. That would be even more important with crafting system that allows you to combine any skill point efficient piece of armor to archive pretty much the same result. I also want to point out that each skill or skill point should be impactful. If you for example have +3 attack it might get rounded down and not even archive damage difference for lower motion value attacks. Similar issue occured with Critical Element in Rise. Elemental values were so low and target resistences so high that even when fully invested (15%) it made barrely any difference. In this regard I'd actually like to see less skills but more impactful. You know let the each skill point to be next threshold rather than allow stacking of multiple small pointless bonuses until it actually makes difference. And lastly offensive skills will always be more desirable so investing into defensive, supportive or utility skills should always be more skill point efficient. In Rise the most efficient armor pieces were the ones with offensive skills which completely destroyed build diversity. All builds were using pretty much the same armor pieces.

[@mrcamels3643]

I feel this. I played MH4U again recently and made a really good 100% affinity crit status sleep set once I was in g rank. I could feel the difference in my hunts, even against g rank monsters. I'm playing monster hunter rise with a friend right now. He's in high rank, and I'm at the top of master rank. Hunts feel largely the same as they did before. Even when i hunt with followers, it doesn't speed it up by much. I don't have full attack skills and stuff, but I have wex and agitator with emboldened. All of it is maxed out. I have 10-12 skills all at max, which should feel awesome, but I still feel like everything is mostly the same.

[@TwistedFox42]

A big part of this, which I hope they change, is that the Gathering Hall monsters scale to the number of hunters. In 4U and earlier (Not sure about G and GU) the monsters had static health. It made Gathering Hall solo harder, but it meant that each player that came provided a significant benefit as long as they were not carting. In Rise, the gathering hall monsters scale to the number of hunters, so if one hunter is doing a lot less than the other, the only benefit to the other hunter is the monster has to split it's attention. This means that playing solo can actually be faster for good hunters, which was almost never seen in old games.

[@UkazutoX]

@@TwistedFox42 This! It's also cut the community a bit I feel, less cooperative since it gives most people the feeling MP weighs down their ability to hunt a monster instead of each extra hunter being a benefit. (specially world where it felt like getting breaks were impossible in MP)

[@MissSmoozie]

@@TwistedFox42 The 2nd hunter has to be really bad for solo to be faster, looking at numbers right now, the HP is 100%/135%/154%/200%. So for solo to be faster you need to do 2.9x/3.7x/3x the damage of the average other hunter, or if they're doing the same damage as you, they can afk roughly 67-75% of the hunt, and it's still better to go together. To put that in a different way, if you're all roughly equal though you're 33% faster on 2, 49% on three, and halved the hunt duration on 4. Even if they just do half your damage, you're killing the monster 10% faster on 2, 23% faster on 3, and 20% faster on 4. The scaling is fine, if someone is still griefing by being in the hunt they honestly shouldn't be there.

[@MissSmoozie]

Follower damage is non existent, so that part doesn't surprise me at all, they're just good for their buffs, so unless you want someone specific you should just run Utsushi and Hinoa, both on Hunting Horn. As for everything feeling the same, I felt Sunbreak did a lot to encourage different playstyles with Dereliction, Bloodlust, Berserk, Intrepid Heart and Dragon Conversion, and really hope Wilds has at least some of them return.

[@InquisitorReid]

I honestly think having a return of negative skills would solve a lot of the bloat issues. I'm not even sure that they'd have to have actual debuffs, either. For example, let's say that Lucent Nargacuga armor had a negative on Attack up on each piece that had Sneak Attack on it. You wouldn't get a negative to your Attack if the skill was below zero, but if you wanted Attack Up 7 you'd effectively need Attack Up 10 to counter the negative. Though I'd personally want actual negatives back, too. It gave the armors more personality, like how Deviljho armor tanked your stamina gauge.

[@dianslabbert504]

The negative skills/attributes did technically make a return with the skills that can be described as very powerful. Such as Dragonvein Awakening, Dereliction, Bloodlust and Berserk's health draining effects, and you have Mail of Hellfire's massive debuff to your defensive stats. Negative skills shouldn't return. They were only annoying. Let the powerful skills like the mentioned ones have their negative that can be worked around with a more utilitarian skill investment instead of another offensive skill. If skills like Demonic Protection, Bad Luck or combo rate down had to return that be just annoying.

[@Kana-ql6xs]

I've always said there's way too many skills that all do basically the same thing of making your damage numbers bigger, ATK up, Crit Eye, WEX, Crit Boost, Agitator etc. So the meta just becomes cramming as many of these skills into a set as humanly possible. So yeah I'd like to see it dialed back, way way back. Let some of the more interesting skills shine.

[@VadeInSpiritu]

100% agree. I like having attack and crit, and there should be different build strategies to go for attack or crit. maybe it depends on the weapon or monster which is better. It should be very hard to max both. Everything else that's basically more attack or more crit with a different name can be way dialed back.

[@HammerGaming]

Also it kills variety and potential funny builds

[@KeiFlame]

well....when you get better at the game. Why bother put defensive skills in your set? I feels it is a natural progression of the player themselves.

[@austinjohnson8858]

you can still very much do funny/meme builds infact it is easier than ever before to do so having said that those will never be Meta builds so if you dont care about min maxing you can go for the quick sheath punish draw or some other fun buid of your choice. @@HammerGaming

[@ZGamingGuy]

I really DO NOT want skills that also have negative aspects to it. Really hate when games that aren't rogue likes do that. But going through and balancing everything would be nice. Take quick sheath on the long sword for example. It did basically nothing in world, but was too quick in rise. So somewhere in the middle would be good. The only "negative" thing I can get behind, are set bonuses. Because you need to wear enough armor to get the bonus, that generally means you have skills you couldn't care less about. So you're sacrificing more beneficial skills for a powerful set effect

[@zawardo5909]

Two things to this video: First i like the older system more (after having played mh4u and mhgu) however as a lance main i have to say that if they do this they need to fix the balancing between weapons on how deco/skill depended they are. Like in Iceborne i played GL, Hammer and Lance. And for the first two the builds were kinda just "ok i got all skills i need, lets see what utility i want." Like slugger on Hammer or evade extender on GL. Lance however needs a lot of skills to just function, wihch means i almost never had space for utility skills. Lance needs the guards skills (In early game you dont, but against something like rajang you need it or have to sheath and heal up every 20 sec just thanks to chip damage....and lance sucks at sheathing), both raw damage skills and elemental skills (since lance scales well with both but not amazing with either), sharpness skills ( lance eats through sharpness but most lances have terrible natural sharpness) and lastly lance is also a stamina heavy weapon. All of this is to say that i would be fine if they returned it to how it used to be however they need to balance the weapons around it like (using lance as an example) give lance better natural sharpness and/or give lance insta block/something like insta block so that if you are good enough with the weapon you dont need the guard skill, make the damage either focussed on raw or elemental not both and so on. The second thing i wanted to say is (a small detail).....you messed up, it is not guard up that got worse but the normal "guard" skill. "Guard up" got better. You only need one level to get the effect of "blocking unblockable attacks" and now you get chip damage reduction too (which it didnt give at all in iceborne) and you only need higher levels of "guard up" if you want more chip damage reduction. "Guard" on the other hand lost the chip damage reduction and now only has knock back reduction, but is still just as expensive to get as in iceborne.

[@heyimurchin6575]

What I really wanna see are unique set bonuses that really represents the monster they came from. Like if you get hit while wearing multiple pieces of brachy, you drop slime that explodes and will also hurt you. Or while wearing Lavasioth armor you get bonus poise and armor but when hit with anything fire related(environmental damage included), suddenly you're super squishy.

[@Lexaegis]

Personally I prefer the World skill system over any other game's, but I think we definitely need negative skills on top of that. Minmaxing is way more fun when I have to think about how to balance out the negative skills or decide if it's worth something like worse sharpness or worse defense to get full crit or attack. (Just dont put too many negatives onto equipment for defensive builds, cuz then it'll just encourage hyper offense more). Also bring back world set bonuses, but give some of the ones for Elders things like Bloodlust for their set bonuses, rather than as regular skills.

[@totalwarlock9498]

i think set bounuses would work much better with the old world skill system becuase you would have less skills active and that would incentivise you to use full sets if they fit with your build or weapon, set bonuses on top of poorly blanced one and done decos/skills would play out just like pre iceborne world and just create the same kind of gameplay instead of fixing the huge problem of skill bloat

[@cablefeed3738]

I don't want negative skills and I'm glad they're probably never coming back. The only thing I want changed from the world's system of skills is crafting decorations instead of farming them.

[@BaronSterling]

I for one absolutely love the increased number of skills the recent games let us have. Feels like my armor and builds have a much larger effect on the game than previous end-game builds that would pretty much just be Sharpness and Handicraft + damage skills. I especially enjoy the end-gane Sunbreak skills like Heaven Sent, Berserk, Wind Mantle, Redirection, etc. that totally change how you play. They're by far my favorite new skills, and I love how they open up tons of new playstyles for various weapons just by using armor skills. At most I'd like to see only a minor reduction in the max number of skills we can get, imo it feels like we're at a pretty good number right now. Honestly, I'd rather see a rebalancing of skills like Weakness Exploit so that there aren't as many universal skills that end up on every single build.

[@joereed8872]

As someone who enjoys both systems, my take is very simple. Dont go half way. If you want to allow lots of skills, then by end game, allow players to slot max offense plus some utility. If you want to make skill difficulty to get, dont allow end game sets to have max offense. If you allow just enough slots of max offense, then the fun utility skills are basically discarded. With extra slots, everyone gets to try their own flavor of utility and max offense, with less slots, you can choose your version of offense or use utility because you aren't missing out on that much offense.

[@Khalmoon]

The bloat was added for number chasers, ever since they added numbers people prioritized power up only skills. And then those same people get upset when they get carted since they don't have defensive skills whatsoever. Stun Resist, Free Meal, Earplugs so good

[@dragonslayer3552]

Who needs earplugs when you can roll through the roar and activate adrenaline rush/ evasion mantle... And who needs stun resist it's not like I'll get hit more than on- OH SHI- *carts*

[@irsandar10]

I'm laughing and crying at the same time in my Defense Boost lv. 7 in every set 😂

[@ShadyButFresh]

Prior to worlds, you bet my ass prioritized evasion, evasion distance, and speed eating. Who cares if it took a few extra hits to kill the monster? I didn't cart often lol

[@redtorres8667]

@@dragonslayer3552 people who run speedrun sets and gets shocked when they get one shot by the monsters

[@juanlife6255]

i can't play without evade window 5, i need my dark souls s on monster hunter

[@wookiecote]

I remember really enjoying the balancing act between positive and negative skills, when you would be able to make a build work with all the negative and positives was reaally satisfying! Also in wilds, Decorations craftable or RNG ? (:

[@darkinsanity98473]

Craftable, talismans too tbh. I hate the RNG factor more than anything. I wouldn't mind it so much if they weren't so against letting us manipulate RNG for better results. But they seem to try to put a stop to that any time we find a good method in the last two games.

[@zombie7945]

I like the concept of set bonus (except fatalis that give u everything). Set bonus makes it more thoughtful for your build as you need to think of what play style & build u r going into.

[@demontiming9095]

i think the max number of skills you could have active at one time in older games was 8 and certain skills would over ride others and would not activate an example of this is agitator and latent power both are powerful skills but you could only have one active at a time i would like to see this come back as a means of nerfing the skill bloating or have them make more harder to get combo skills like steady hand which was your recoil and minds eye skill combined into one either way id like to see some change be made to how skills work

[@rayshroud9729]

To me getting all of these extra spare skills by the end of your journey through these huge games is the reward. By the time you beat Fatalis in world, a truly impressive feat, you've mastered what the game has to offer. I don't think its fair to say "We have too many skills" when for most of the journey up to that point that wasn't really true. We struggled to fit what are the most core skills for all the playtime leading up to endgame, being able to relax and be more free with what skills you pick is the payoff for sticking with it to the end. Thats my two scents anyway

[@JoolsyB]

Personally I liked the way they did it in World, and it's difficult to fault how OP Fatalis gear was (and yes, it definitely was) because that was (virtually) the very end of it all, in fact super-Velkhana was only really added afterwards to give us something to use this OP set against. What I want is more monsters and monster types, and for every monster to have a weapon of every type. That's the ideal imo. More build options for everyone.

[@thepope2412]

Still wished they would have added arch tempered varients of all the elder dragons in iceborne. That would have helped fatalis be not blatently better than everything else, especially considering you can unlock fatalis at mr15 or something stupid.

[@Wordgoblin]

Definitely needs to be dialed back, and I'd be all for builds being very much in the 'specialist' realm, ie you have to pick a few skills that you want to specialize in and have to focus your build to get those skills up. The heart of build diversity is choice, and choice means nothing if you don't have to sacrifice something, a sentiment that has been lost over the last few years. Now, everyone can get everything with no downsides.

[@VadeInSpiritu]

I agree. Choices making you feel like you have purposefully built a set and strategy for a specific encounter is great, just maxing damage (or just maxing raw damage) every time is boring. I also liked some of the slower or maybe more realistic combat when power bloat of both hunters and monsters was lower. I don't think monsters should need the ability to literally nuke a whole map to make the fight hard. Having access to endless resupplies might also be related to that issue too.

[@mitchgowing2336]

Couldn’t have said it better.

[@BWX4]

This is the reason I wouldn't mind seeing negative skills back, too. Time used to be that specialization meant you had to take the bitter with the sweet...

[@Wordgoblin]

@@VadeInSpiritu "I don't think monsters should need the ability to literally nuke a whole map to make the fight hard." This 1 billion percent.

[@komo6103]

Despite being a veteran since Tri, I actually like how many skills we can get nowadays. Though I do think that there's far too much homogenization between priority skills, especially across different weapons. Maybe Capcom can weaken the weapons a bit, but return the power through new skills? They can also make some skills have downsides along with their upsides as well, like Attack lowering max HP, or Critical Eye working on you as well. I really do hope that the skills feel more tangible than just +5% to this stat or something. That's why I loved skills like Load Up or Guard Up, though ones with massive bonuses to very specific things like Slugger is always great.

[@VashimuXIV]

I consider myself both a fan of the new and old systems for different respective reasons. The new feels as though it compliments the more fluid and faster experiences, catering to a greater increase in power, and the old being a more gradual journey that relates to the slower paced aspects of hunting. And I don’t think everyone that plays Monster Hunter have the goal to speedrun every encounter they come across, I think generally speaking people want to be powerful and hunt the monsters they enjoy hunting. Now I’d not be opposed to things being more restrictive, being more meaningful with your decisions, but I also enjoy the free flowing aspects that powerful talismans and armor bonuses provide, and especially when making more quirky utility based sets like Bladescale Hone Switch Axe or Status Evade Window Lance while still being able to make them strong with the other bevy of skills at our disposal, not even factoring in Qurious Crafting, I find it very robust and allowing one to personalize their builds. But that’s just my opinion, because the both offer levels of satisfaction for the games they are made around.

[@MouseKeyboardPlayer]

I 100% agree Rurikhan, I loved my set in GU the most which had only 5 skills in endgame, Valor GS with Quick sheath, sharpness+2, Crit draw, Punish draw and Crit boost.

[@NwinDii]

When you actually make a choice and play around it it's far more meaningful than when EVERYONE is meta gaming with crit and weakness exploit

[@ThatAngryJho-td3xe]

The point of working around a specific couple of skills is why I can so vividly remember what sets and weapon combos I used for certain monsters in mhfu and 3u. The later games sorta had this but power creep started to make it so that other than a few select monsters most encounters were fairly forgettable as long as your play was half decent in most of the games afterwards. GU and rise are the biggest offenders in my eyes on this because the weapon styles and silk bind skills pretty well let you cheese and turn everything into the same encounter/combat cycle if you have reasonably on level gear. Not saying that both styles don’t have their place but I don’t especially feel like playing the style that GU and rise presented in a MH game if I want something like that I will go play a god eater game or fighting game.

[@rayth217]

Maybe a wild take, but in stead of less skill. I would like to see Attack boost and Crit eye greatly reduced In Power. But the conditional boost skills like Agitator and Status trigger expanded on. That way people can have the damage boost skills but will gravitate to ones that suit their individual play style

[@VenomPureEvil]

Stacking skills is very rewarding for your time investment. Reducing the amount of skills would unfortunately result in everyone using the same four skills and ignoring everything else because not using the meta would hinder you exponentially due to how few skills you can have.

[@Ionknowman768]

This guy knows…. Im the type of player to fit in unique skills and setups into my build to mix things up, but I also wanna go into hunts knowing Im not wasting peoples time with trash builds. Im World You have enough options to fit in the meta stuff and still add some personality to your build without it being a detriment. whereas with less skills your locked into running meta or you grief your fellow hunters, and neither is really fun.

[@JD-se2eo]

I think a cool concept would be conditional skills/skill trees. For example, if you maxed out the attack skill, it would either unlock a small skill tree related to attack or a special type of attack skill. This could be an extra chase, as you could tie it to having to get certain monster parts for the tree

[@Rockalanche]

This is a really cool idea. However I can see it resulting in the same issue where certain skills will be preferred or almost required because the conditional skill is that much better than others.

[@Bahnking]

The amount of skills corresponds to the amount of content the game has. As long as there is harder content to be cleared, there needs to be progression gained from said content for it to feel meaningful. As such, the amount of skills just gets more and more redicilous, the further down a game you get. Ive not played the older titles (started at World/IB), but did the older games have as much different levels of content, from normal to high rank to master to tempered etc etc.?

[@sgray9057]

Every Monster Hunter game has Low/High Rank and every "G"/"Ultimate" title has Master Rank (G-Rank before World). The 4th generation of games introduced the "special" hunts, with MH4 having Frenzied monsters and MH4U having those in addition to Apex monsters (not to be confused with Apex monsters from Rise). They also both had level scaling, randomly generated quests called Guild quests, with 4U's level 140 quests being similar to Anomaly level 300 quests in Sunbreak with the monsters being even harder than their normal Master Rank counterparts. MH Generations and Generations Ultimate had their own iteration of special hunts with Hyper Monsters and Deviants. Hyper Monsters are similar to Anomaly Monsters, with special zones on their body that you are incentivized to attack and faster attacks while Deviants are basically just special subspecies with their own unique quest system. So yes, at least in the 4th generation, the games had just as many levels and varieties of difficulty in their quests as MHW:I and MHR:S do. However, something mentioned in another comment that Rurikhan didn't mention, either because he forgot or just didn't know, is that several high end skills in earlier games were actually combination skills, meaning that they would've technically had 1 or 2 more than the numbers he gave. Still not quite as much as World, and definitely fewer than Rise, but the gap isn't nearly as much as it first appears.

[@glardian966]

5:11 Yes! Played 4th gen and 5th and as far as builds go Sunbreak has had the game endgame yet. Every game before seems like its just attack boost, crit boost, crit eye and wex with no room for anything else. Every time I load into a sunbreak lobby people have different builds, beserk or blood awakening or heaven sent or frostcraft ect.

[@cosmicroyaltyxz]

The only real change I would like to see would be some incentive to choose a more diverse skill-set. As you mentioned in the video, almost all end-game builds, regardless of weapon, look very similar, with just a few different skills here and there. I wish there were more (and better) skills for other aspects too, not just dps output. For example I've always been a tank enjoyer in almost all RPGs, but I struggle to find a good 'tank-build' that's good in monster hunter. Now it could just be that tank builds aren't a part of Capcom's vision of monster hunter, but I at least would like it if more and different builds were not only viable and good, but also diverse and interesting

[@Fixti0n]

In GenU i had an amazing set with both Crit Boost, Crit eye +3, Handicraft and Minds Eye. This was the god set with the God charm, compared to the average set in Rice, this is something like a mid high rank set. I miss the old skill system where skills actually mattered, because a good end game rice set has all the skills.

[@BmacSoundsLab]

I feel like the more skills you had the less meaningful they feel. On the other hand getting a difficult skill to activate just felt more satisfying. There is merits to both but I kind of miss the old system where if you were shooting for a build you felt like a specialist that no one else has the skills for.

[@babayaga4320]

I definitely prefer the current system, because every skill I have on my armor actually means something, in World, one level of flinch free, and other skills are useful, and can change combat. It doesn't have to be either the new way, or the old, the current system could be tweaked to achieve some limitations, Ruri just doesn't seem to like the ability to stack too many raw damage skills, which I don't do, because I like comfy builds, but if this is something people are concerned about, why not just push for a system that simply limits the number of raw damage skills you can stack? I think that would solve what seems to be most people's issue with the current system, while not restricting people that just like to play around with wacky builds.

[@FlipsMG]

I haven't played rise. But in world I think bow has the perfect amount of skill slots with fatalis armor in endgame. Bow is more skill hungry in world than any other weapon and even with full fatalis armor you cannot fit ALL of your offensive skills in, and to get defensive skills you'd have to make serious sacrifices to damage. Whereas for SNS for example, the standard fatalis meta set fits in all offensive stats and still has 5-7 lv 4 jewel slots left which is ridiculous. Tl;dr: Have many weapon-specific skills, and enough jewel slots to fit about 85-90% of those offensive + weapon-specific skills. And leave no room for defensive skills without sacrificing offensive skills.

[@pockystyx4087]

I definitely liked having fewer skills to worry about back in the pre-world era. Kinda feels stressful to have to worry about filling out your entire kit with skills sometimes lol

[@austinobst8989]

Building sets was more fun wirh the limitations of the 10 point system. Felt like a puzzle

[@ulisesmantilla9193]

I think the sweet spot might be the same new system skill point but also bring back negative skills, both requiring just 1 point to activate. It is also true that so many skills felt pointless due to the existence of another, I've met people that still get confused between evade window and extender because rather than reading the description they find the wording too similar. There was so much joy in finding a set for yourself with that perfectly acceptable balance between negatives and positives, or negatives that could be turned into positives. I also find that a lot of the gathering skills feel comparably useless? there are so many implemented forms of passive gathering or just gathering while running, not to even mention the much more generous rewards on quest clear from classic to modern; in most cases people only complain, as always, about gems and plates, but nothing else.

[@lubbo5261]

I like how Sunbreak handeled a lot of offensive skills like Bloodlust and Dereliction as example who both boostet your offense but constantly drained your HP, or Dragon Conversion with raised your element attack but also set your element defense to 0.

[@Kegaran]

First off while I think Fatalis bloat was a bit much already, I think Fatalis bloat was obsulutely okay. Reason: It was the final pinacle challenge, you had to work for it. It was a reward for it. But I do not want the return of the skill bloat in Rise it was a bit much, the way they did leveled decoration played part in it. 4 element attack in 1 deco for example, but it was also logical. It is a really hard topic. But I think World skill levels were okay and that should be the sweet spot.

[@TheLloydLightning]

Fatalis still killed build diversity completely while sunbreak still has a lot playstyles with different pieces from different monsters.

[@keithcunningham3131]

Fatty armor in world was still broken though it made a lot of the game a little too easy which isn't good for the long run of the game especially since monster Hunter is all about spending tons of hours just having fun hunting

[@cablefeed3738]

​@@keithcunningham3131What are you talking about? By the time you get the fatty gear, you've probably already put over a 1000 hours into the game. At least that was the case for me.

[@shivasanjeevmana]

​@@TheLloydLightning sunbreak endgame invalidated all armour skills in general and turned the rng to a crazy degree since you could roll skill on any sets. In comparison world is far more restrained. The playstyle variety in sunbreak only stemmed from the skill scrolls and swapping them.

[@TheLloydLightning]

@@cablefeed3738 if you start playing now you can get full fatty below Mr 100

[@dethbedsmolzwhent.t6498]

The Fatalis Armor spoils me at times. However I understand why it's so powerful because it's end game armor. What I wish is that elemental dmg actually worked cause it still bothers me how Alatreon takes more from raw than elemental xD.

[@burntfishy7833]

I am 100% for power creep and I'll never understand why people aren't. As TUs come along you want to feel slightly more and more powerful. I get Fatalis was way too much and that's all people use in end game now, but before that you could find a pretty good variety.

[@HammerGaming]

I started my monster hunter journey with world. I played rise afterwards (and managed to get my best friend into monster hunter with it). Then I played generations ultimate. At first, as you'd expect, I was an advocate for everything in 5th gen.. Time passes and I play more and more of each game, and I start enjoying the old game more. I liked the restrictions, as they felt like a challenge. And made me realise the issue with 5th gen. Not that I hate 5th gen, quite the contrary, I love it. But I start seeing more issues pop up for me with the design decision. I felt like the games in 5th gen want you to build a powerful set, or you're not gonna be successful. Case in point, iceborne with alatreon and fatalis, and sunbreak with special investigations. I literally cannot beat a high tier monster in special investigations without my main weapon. It feels like the monsters are designed with the fact that we get ludicrous amount of skills, and that kills variety of builds. I honestly don't know how to approach this issue. A sollution would be that it would be similar to the old system, but instead of 10 for all skills, maybe lesser skills require less points to activate. It's funny that I started as a huge advocate for the new games, then turned 180 and now I'm advocating for the old games.

[@silje1248]

I'm in the same boat haha. Started with world and the rise, and im currently playing GU. I really disliked the skill system in GU at first compared to the new games, but now I actually really enjoy it :-)

[@tenchumatt]

I have nothing against negative skills coming back to balance out the decorations, though I would also love to see blade and gunner armour come back too and I don't hear this point bought up a whole lot. So am I on my own with wanting to see gunner armour make a comeback?

[@enokomitsugashirahandjob]

Totally agree, there's a lot of cool looking armour with skills only really viable for Gunner and not Blademaster, or vice versa, and it's an issue made significantly worse in Rise without the Alpha vs Beta tradeoff of replacing some unneeded skills with decorations. Been playing more World lately so an example there would be Girros armour, at minimum its head is giving you Horn Maestro which only benefits Hunting Horn. Still mostly locks it to HH within melee weapons but a Gunner set would at least open up more than one way to use the armour.

[@tarrickmerdev2324]

I really liked what we had in base MHW. I feel like the old system was too restrictive and forced people into only making builds with the absolute best skills without leaving any room for those secondary skills that are nice QoL but don't really boost your capabilities. I think the amount of skills that you could get in base MHW was a good balance. Negative skills are ok but I would say keep them limited to skills that break or allow you to completely ignore game mechanics when combined, such as making sharpness a complete non-issue like the old razer sharp vs sharpness.

[@Wotun]

I like the idea of less but more impactful skills, though I do think that of they are doing that they should borrow a bit from the philosophy behind Sunbreak's blood rite and blood awakening, where they reward you for taking utility skills by giving you more damage from using that skill. This way you could run a pure utility build without feeling like you're falling behind the curve damage wise

[@nestroit5010]

they should simply dial back the quality of life skills like eating, sharpening, earplugs, drinking, eating shrooms, etc. there are simply too many skills you should automatically gain when you level up instead of still eating and drinking slowly like a moron in master rank

[@endlesstrash4718]

@@nestroit5010 They should revert the speed and animation locking to that of older games but low rank armor should come with skills speeding up and letting you move while using items built in built in. You want to stack damage? Go ahead and enjoy flexing after every potion champ.

[@Vexal50]

I think a decent way to solve part of the skill bloat is to revert decos back to the old gen system personally. For those that didn't play the old games; Every piece of equipment ran anywhere between 0 and 3 decoration slots, there was no level system for the slots themselves, and a decoration could use up only one slot, or it could use multiple, with the more useful skills generally requiring 2 slots per copy of the decoration. The main thing I'd like to see is a *level* crunch however. Simply making a build ironically takes a lot more mathing out the pieces than they did in the past due to how many skill levels you're provided per piece of armor, and I feel lowering the level caps for all skills to 3 or 4 at most could be a way to solve that

[@maxlewis234]

I don’t mind the amount of skills so much as I mind the variety. It feels like it’s too hard to not prioritize attack crit and weakness exploit. I wish there were more interesting skills that had more of an affect on build crafting and creating a unique play style

[@searingllama5621]

I started with MHW pre-Iceborne and I found the overall skill system to be pretty decent and worked on an end-game set back then and there was always a bit of balancing to do to get certain skills. Then I got Iceborne and played through it, from double decos, the "Hard" gems that give either 2 levels or just straight up maxed some skills (like the resistances) and the Fatalis set, you could throw balance out the window and more or less have everything you want and I found that kinda overwhelming

[@bunnybreaker]

I really didn't like the skill thresholds. Seeing skills that literally do nothing is more annoying than motivating to me. Trade offs are needed, but I hope going forward they do it in a different way. For example having a regular attack boost with no downsides, but then a super attack boost skill that reduces defense/sharpness/crit/etc., they could even come in multiple flavours depending on the skills in question. Also, I'm not really a noob, but still have a lot to learn. How the hell are y'all not using defense boost? There are so many one shot attacks in master rank/anomalies.

[@NemoA90]

world was my first monster hunter and i think managing skills and decorations takes away from the enjoyment of the game. having a negative associated with every positive would probably make it more interesting. i think i would also appreciate fewer decoration slots.

[@CiromBreeze]

Personally I had an idea for a fusion of World's system and the Classic system, inspired by BotW's food system of all things. Skills would require a point threshold to activate (usually 3 points, maybe more for high-power skills like WeX or Crit Boost, maybe less for simple skills like Botanist), and skills would also have multiple levels with further point thresholds. The points would be clearly visible *on the squares themselves* how many you need for activation (Example: [_|_|_] [_|_] [_|_] for a skill which has an effect at 3 points, an extra effect at 5 points and an extra effect at 7 points)

[@servantofcygnus]

That's just the classic system with smaller numbers. "A fusion of World's system and the classic system" isn't gonna make a whole lot of sense because they're already the same thing - one is just a bit more granular than th eother.

[@CiromBreeze]

@@servantofcygnus I mean, yeah. The main issue with the classic system is how it's presented to the player, not the system itself.

[@gabagandalfoftheweed]

I'd be all for balancing positive and negative aspects. Like having Artillery reduce your raw and/or crit, Attack skills reduce your defensive capabilities and so on. One thing they could do against the bloat, is integrate skills like Mind's Eye into higher levels of Attack Boost and Guard Up into Guard, maybe make Secret skills a requirement for those higher levels and tie Secrets exclusively to certain Talismans and set bonuses, so that players have to commit to a build.

[@ricardorunos9782]

On the topic of old games, I think of 4U’s Star Knight set. IIRC, Razor Sharp and Handicraft were opposite skills (raise one = lower the other). The Star Knight set came with that Razor Sharp + Mind’s Eye combo skill as well as a few points in Handicraft. To my knowledge these made the set one of the few to be able to have both of those opposite skills at once.

[@myhr2320]

Imho, the discussion should not just be about skill bloat, but about build options. The thing with World, is that most of the build diversity comes from Skills and Set bonuses. In Rise, you have Skills and Move Scrolls. I haven't played the older MHs, but one thing that intrigue me is the styles of Monster Hunter Generations. And I'd also like to point at Food buffs as another source of build diversity that could be explored more. One key point is that these options serve two purposes that are conflicting. On one hand, they serve as power progression. On the other, they allow diversity. Power progression is thus both vertical and horizontal, and that's what tricky to balance. Personally, I'd like roughly the same amount of skills as in World, maybe a bit less (and certainly no Fatalis), but with moveset choices like Scrolls or Styles, and more streamlined food buffs.

[@doublewideshine5410]

I feel like if there are only a few skills to choose from that pushes the community to lean further towards hyper-optimized metas. I like the idea of having LOTS of skills to choose from BUT with limited slots to fit them in.

[@BIZaGoten]

Straight up I love the amount of different skills you can have in World, It's not too much or too little, it lets me fit in things like Vitality and Stun Resistance while also having space to fit in counter decos to a tough monster. You do get a lot of skills closer to the end game but at that point I feel like you've earned it and it's still not as crazy as the amount that Rise has, which is honestly too much when I saw you read up them all. Fatalis in World is also the one monster I haven't been able to defeat yet. So from an average skilled player I think World has a pretty good skill system.

[@kasando]

I'm fine with 5th Gen. What I would like to see is more interesting skills that alter playstyles. World's skills just enhanced how you were playing but I enjoyed what Rise did with things like Berserk. If we get more skills that change up entire playstyles I think that would be more than fine.

[@gabrielhenriquefachini4100]

i like having lots of skill you can have so many builds, you can actually see the progress on the character from a pleb with like 1 or 3 skill to a master hunter almost invincible

[@agni-kai132]

I do think they should maybe make less skills on armor, but i do think the skills should be impactful like mh is an rpg, just with you building your character through your gear instead of exp. Like everyone goes attack up, or skills like that because they are so good. But what if there were skills that completely changed the way you went about a hunt.

[@agni-kai132]

Like for example, maybe if you get enough quick sheath, it boosts and gives you valor style essentially, you get enough mushroommancer/bombardier and you get alchemy style moves.

[@vengeflyking2722]

Personally, I’d have a whole armor set only give you 2 or 3 full level skills, but as a set bonus, you can gain compound skills. So for example Rathalos only gives you attack boost and windproof levels, but if you have 3 or more you get some fire attack and critical eye levels. Each rank of armor gets you more levels from the set bonus, and for a 5 piece you have a stormsoul effect on your full armor. So individual pieces are much worse than sticking to one or two monsters. Because that’s why Rise made it so easy to have everything, you can have so much by just mixing 5 sets together.

[@Stinkbugs5228]

i think that there are a lot of different ways to handle skill bloat like this. there seems to be two general build types, max dps for speedrunners and wannabes, and mixed DPS and utility builds for those who better value QoL improvements. any changes to the skill system has to reconcile these two styles of builds. one way to do this is to shift gathering and small QoL bonus skills into a separate system. skills like geologist or quick sheath from world could be added to a research tree of sorts, costing research points to unlock a node, and tiers unlock with story progression. or with the charm system: give 2 or 3 slots, and each charm still upgrades, but to max skill level now, and that's the only way to get certain utility skills. we could also add small dps boosting utility skills like quick sharpen or quick sheathe, but not larger boosters like sharpness modifiers, elemental resistance and damage buffs, etc . all of a sudden, we can reduce the number of skill slots on armor and weapons, and reduce the total dps boost. there may not be room for critical eye, attack boost, and elemental buffs all at the same time. there will always be "meta" dps skill builds, but utility would be much more freely customizable for situational gameplay and player preference, including weapon needs. now the proposals i just laid out also have problems, but they are also more more easily balanced than a fully integrated skill system like we see today. tldr: separate the dps and utility skills into separate systems. lower total dps skill cap.

[@Gehrich_]

I'm fine with the new skill system and even the late-game skill bloat. I always had something to work towards, and it made for a great theorycrafting progression. I don't like the Fatalis or Velkhana Gamma sets, however. It's cool that there are "final sets" that can still give room for growth, but they remove set variety and toss out theorycrafting for gem farming. Story time: The group I returned to World with just before Wilds' announcement ended up rushing ahead of me to get the Fatalis set ASAP. They skipped hours of progression to smash their heads against the wall, got super mad that it was so hard, then got upset that the only power progression left to them was gem farming/augmenting. I spent those same 40 hours working my way to a Raging Brach GS with a good mixed set to prepare for my own timely rush on Safi, Alatreon, and Fatalis. I came out of Iceborne's late-game with a positive view of it while they were quite mixed.

[@liamfergusson6151]

I'd hope that if capcom were to reduce the skill bloat, I'd hope they'd change some of the base parameters of a number of weapons to balance the skill budgets more fairly. For instance, a weapon like gunlance is much more likely to suffer from being able to fit fewer skills on a set than one like longsword or SnS. It'd be great to have fewer skills on a set again but if I have to have multiple levels of guard and artillery on a gunlance set just for it to work properly, that's really restrictive on what else I can fit in. For instance, my best GL sets in GU and 4U can only just fit either WEX or Atk up S on top of the basic GL skills, whereas my sets for switch axe can fit whatever they like because there's no skill budget for it. If the baseline of GL was buffed so we didn't need guard, artillery, razor sharp, etc, then that would be great for a reduced skill bloat system, but otherwise it can feel like being penalised for choosing certain weapons

[@maxmustermann3938]

Can't speak for Rise, but I think the system in MHW is this way to actually make the game more accessible by allowing people to pack in a lot of defensive tools. Earplugs, Flinch Free, Tremor resistance, resistance/immunity to status, and the like. The downside is that for experienced players who don't need any of that, they can just pack in all the offense they'd ever want, which seemingly lessens build variety and there doesn't seem to be a trade-off being taken because these players don't need that many other tools due to their skill. From what I've seen, the system in MHW does allow for entirely different playstyles at least for certain weapons. I've seen draw attack stun builds for greatswords, of course there are aerial builds for GS and Hammer, the regular typical DPS builds, support builds incorporating wide-range, small changes to builds for multiplayer like adding in a layer of long sword protection (flinch free) and so on. There is a lot of Freedom if you don't restrict yourself to meta and I think I do like this. As an added bonus it lets you do pretty whacky and insane stuff, like one shot builds or stacking 6000 defense, but its still balanced enough to where this isn't what people just do normally. For Rise, I haven't played it yet. I don't think I like this whole thing where a weapon is basically handicapped until you get a specific skill that you talked about in the video. Feels like something is being made mandatory. No skill is really that crucial or mandatory in MHW. Especially bad if the weapon just doesn't feel good to use without it. I think GS for example feels perfectly fine in MHW even without faster charge rate and that should be how things are. Not saying that skills that augment a weapons capabilities/moveset can't be a thing, just that they shouldn't feel mandatory, or maybe there should be different options that are exclusive to each other. I think some older games had this with stances? (or was it arts?). Anyhow, the current system allows new players to easily incorporate defense and then swap it out as they get better at the game, if they care about that. And if they don't, they can still enjoy the game nevertheless.

[@triplea657aaa]

I feel like the issue is that you can have all the offensive skills at once. We really just need to alter either how we get offensive skills (i.e. only head/arms give offensive skills or something like that) or make it somehow undesirable to just put all the offensive skills together such as if offensive skills had debuffs for having another offensive skill or if you had somewhat fewer skills to choose from and the offensive skills were more along the lines of head smasher and tail cutter or some other system by which the skills don't stack well together. Having the skills not inherently synergize much (or maybe just 1-2 skills actually stacking with others) is a lot harder to design, but I feel like that would be the best way to go about it as having certain skills only being able to be on certain parts just sounds horrendously clunky and tedious.

[@aaronmorgan5860]

The first monster hunter game I played was Monster Hunter 3 Tri. The skill point system back then was decent, but was not fun to mess around, especially when we start talking about the negative skill system. World introduced a new skill system in which for the first time I got to enjoy messing around with every known skill in the entire game. Like yes, I had to read for the first time(lol). Alatreon was the biggest challenge when it came to pushing what skills I needed to Solo it. Soloing Alatreon would for example require some skills like Blight resistance, and Evade extender +2. It was a challenge deciding on what skills I can fit in at that time. I like a skill system that rewards players for using skills outside of damage increase. Players from previous monster hunter games were only focused on damage skills because there was no pay off for including none damage skills. I liked the end game of the fatalis armor only because it's the ending for IceBorne, so yes it should have the best skills/slots in the entire game.

[@rand0mlyhere]

My take on the situation is that I’d like to see smaller, more impactful, skill lists. One step I’d take is the removal of non-conditional performance boosts like ‘Attack Up’ and ‘Critical Eye’. Instead: raise weapon and armor values at a baseline, because this one change removes a near necessary 3-4 skills from the list. In their place I’d like to see conditional rewards for engaging in certain systems/weapon types. Skills like ‘Blood Rite’ and ‘Frostcraft’ from Rise felt powerful (build defining in the latter case) and rewarded you for engaging with the game, however passively. Other skills could reward you for engaging with a weapon’s gimmick/playstyle; Bowguns could get a small chance of ammo refunds if hitting from optimal range ‘freishutz’ (like ‘free meal’), or Glaive users get bonuses from fighting alongside their kinsect rather than just using it to grab buffs ‘Kinsect Mastery’ Maybe I’m just blowing nonsense, but I’d just be happy if I didn’t have to slot the same 3+ offensive skills into every build I made anymore. If we got back to Iceborne’s length of skill lists in the process (maybe even a bit shorter) I’d be happy with the results.

[@Roge9]

I'm fine with the way gen 5 does skills. IDGAF if I have a billion skills, it's fun stacking all of them. Sunbreak I love the idea of adding skills onto armor, granted the RNG is rough. I don't mind it because the base armor itself can be good and the added skills is just a bonus.

[@genshi_zero]

Not to mention the fact that usually, in order for a skill to gain a point increase, it meant that another skill would get a point decrease. So you could end up with Attack +10, and Defence -10

[@epcarter6]

World was my first MH game and while I LOVE it I do hope they do something dynamic with skills. From what I hear about previous games negative skills were apart of armor pieces so that there was a trade off effect. I’d love something like that as apposed to what we have in World/Rise where it’s just pile on as much damage skills as possible. I’d like builds to be much more thoughtful.

[@WhiteRaito]

I doubt they gonna bring back negatives but i really wish they delete those skills such as the load shells, tuning, faster switch on cb n sa.. its just unnecessary bloating

[@lilremix]

your artillery example was great. sometimes i do feel like im punished for not wanting to build offensive stats when im playing the boom stick. as for qurious crafting in mhr. i absolutely love the concept of being able to take out a skill you dont want from a piece, and replace it with something else. but i hate the rng aspect. i started from world, so im used to the amount of skills in a build, but rise was definitely overwhelming. one thing i personally would love is to see is less punishment for non offensive builds. i love to play as a tank, but end game content always hits hard enough to where tank builds are useless, and they always implement some sort of dps checks.

[@Wauly]

Something that could simplify all of this is removing a cap on skill levels. Yes I mean you can have a infinite levels in Attack and infinite levels in Critical Eye (Affinity over 100% grants stronger crit damage or something), infinite levels in any skill. Players could Focus on a few skills exclusively (reducing clutter) or a lot of different skills, all with the limitations being the armor skills, decoration slots, charms etc. If I were to balance it, I'd say skills take too little requirement for their full effect, like Divine Blessing and make those cost more. This would be *wild*, but it would maximize player freedom/creativity. Personally, I'd like to see Monster Hunter try out an infinitely scaling end game 🤷‍♂

[@crumpet-kun]

Personally, for me, the most enjoyable part of Monster Hunter is not the hunting, nor the monsters (I love both, don't get me wrong), it is the set building. I have, can and happily will again spend *hours* of time playing around with different armour pieces and decorations and charms and weapons to try and squeeze everything I can from a set and encountering issues with that and finding out I need to go hunt something to make it better and that I can swap out parts when I progress and that entire trial and error process of taking something "workable" into something "perfect for my needs" is the most fun I will ever have with Monster Hunter. So I don't particularly mind whether they limit skills or go to the moon with them, so long as the system in which we can acquire and customise those skills is well implemented and intuitive. This being Capcom and the MH team, I am not worried in that aspect that they will execute whatever they decide to implement well. All I ask if that Qurious Crafting, if it is to ever come back in any form, works more like the Safi weapons or the Granular Qurious Crafting Mod where instead of it being raw rng what skills and modifiers you have, you can pick and choose what "slots" you want to roll for, so if you already have a skill you want then you can keep rolling but still keep that skill, which makes the grind significantly less miserable.

[@seamusrichardson5601]

I like how world has done it. Didn't really play Rise, but in world, you start with sorta kinda having some skills, but by the end of iceborne, you have lists it is hard to make it through in one breath. With the frankly incredibly long playtime of World, it felt really fitting. It actually felt as if you were an accomplished hunter who had spent lots of time growing their power, and it felt like you deserved to be OP.

[@Camohflage]

personally skill bloat is not one of my concerns but what i really dont want again is the balancing philsophy of world where the best weapons and armor is just fatalis. i understand why it makes sense for fatalis to be the best of everything but what i really enjoy is having to adapt to different monsters by switching sets ideally completely switching everything. this probably would mean that elemental damage would have to be important as in world ele damage is whatever on most weapons

[@DigitalinDaniel]

If I was to design a Monster Hunter, I would condense the armor to 3 pieces, combining Legs + Waist, and Torso + Arms. Then I would balance all skills to be 3pts max... and have only "Lv1" slots and decos. Then work on giving each monster a total of 3 unique skills in their set... Diablos for instance would be Slugger, Offensive Guard, Tremor Resist... (No other monster should grant these skills) LR armor would give you 1 point in each and 1 free slot in each piece... (letting you max 1 skill of your choice if you have the decos) MR armor would be 3 points in each and 3 free slots each. (Giving you max in the 3 Diablos skills, and enough slots to max 3 skills of your choice) You would use Diablos parts to craft the Diablos skill decos, armor, and talisman. Talisman should craft just like Charms/Talisman in World, but only for the big single point skills and "set-bonuses" that are not available on armors. For instance, crafting the Diablos Talisman would give you Bludgeoner. Crafting Namielle Talisman would give you Namielle Divinity.

[@nicholasballesteros4448]

Don't agree but I see your point. I loved the build system in Rise/Sunbreak. It allowed me to make some pretty marvelous stuff. If you're meta hunting then yeah I can see how it gets boring. But those weren't peak builds. The most fun I had in any monster hunter game was when I switched up my build to account for more evasion, evade extender and adrenaline rush after getting my cheeks clapped by Risen Shaggy for 3 hours. It was much more of an experience than just throwing on wex, crit boost and attack. Plus: this allows for Capcom to throw some truly dreadful monsters. The more powerful the hunters can get, the greater the challenge that Capcom is allowed to throw at us.

[@NumPad]

Worldborne was the best balance, I think. The director for Risebreak was the same guy who worked on Generations and he really likes the super high-intensity power fantasy busted anime gameplay style, which also extended to the completely out-of-control armor skills. Wilds will be more in line with World since it’s being developed by that team as opposed to the Generations team.

[@a4artstuff469]

I have a friend who started with World who when we started Rise I found he was upset with Long Sword because, similar to how you were saying certain weapons would require you to use certain armor skills, he felt forced to use the Nargacuga LS simply because it was the only weapon at the time with good white sharpness. He's the type of player that needs to be doing the most optimal damage at all times so highest sharpness, and the need to sharpen less often was what he needed but he WANTED to enjoy other long sword designs but couldn't... because of everything I just typed lol. I tried to explain damage calculation and how he can still use other long swords with different armor skills to do the same if not more damage than he was doing with what he had (like using the Hand-me-down Long Sword against a monster weak to fire will out damage Nargacuga's period, just had to sharpen more often), and his response to me was that for someone like me, these things don't matter because he expected me to be able to do anything without armor at all, which, aww, yay my skill and experience in the game are recognized, but also, I just wish he could feel a similar way about playing the game too. That anecdote to say that I feel we definitely need to have some kind of cons to having so many armor skills active or something. I don't know if going back to the good ol' days of negative armor skills would be the way, or if just lowering the benefit to having armor skills at all would be better. Perhaps we could have more diminishing returns on our skills now.. or maybe the opposite where a low number of points barely do anything at all but maxing out a skill will provide an actual benefit. Either way, There needs to be a reason to NOT put use a certain piece of armor, something to force the player to actually make a decision about the gear sets. These days, you're very right, our new hunters are just falling into a no brain, just put these skills on and go crazy. I think that's a lot of fun for endgame but before that at least, giving the player something to actually think about when figuring out how they want to play and what they'll need to forge to allow that to happen. I guess like my friend said, I just have the experience and skill to not worry about it so I do get to enjoy coming up with fun ways to build a set for the lols or to get the most out of something that no one else is using. Or getting to recreate the Kelbi slingshot from MH3 in Rise! Just for the fun of having that powerhouse back, even if it's not quite as great as before :D

[@sazuteks3104]

I could get by with 20-30 skill points, depending on how impactful the skills are. A lot of the skills that just make numbers bigger could be dropped, rolled into other skills, or replaced with equipment customization options. Add 'customize bow', and all of the skills that increase damage to one type of bow/bowgun shot (or add coatings, or increase bow charge) can be acquired through that. Gathering skills could also use a bit of combining. I can get behind negative armor skills as a counterbalance, but I can't go back to the 10/15/20 skill thresholds. If I have points in a skill, good or bad, I want to have that skill. I don't want +/-9 to mean nothing.

[@chaoscythe1704]

I don’t think the issue is with how many skills we have, but rather with the skills themselves. I, personally, find most skills as they are now boring and outdated and would love to see more skills like Intrepid Heart, Powder Mantle, Frostcraft, etc… Basic skills like increasing attack or affinity are just super boring. I want to call down a bolt of lightning when I land a True Charge Slash or unleash a counter attack with a perfect dodge. I want my skills to actually CHANGE the way I play as opposed to just affecting the numbers on my screen…

[@mfs96]

Just like MH Frontier then

[@chaoscythe1704]

@@mfs96 I haven’t had the opportunity to play Frontier myself, but I suppose? MH came out almost 20 years ago, and although the skill system itself has changed, the actual skills have not. I see this argument regarding skill bloat a lot, but I never see anyone talking about the skills themselves. They could definitely use an overhaul in my opinion, especially if we’re going to lower the amount back to pre-World levels (5-6 skills max).

[@MrLukhut1]

Honestly I want to see raw damage take the back seat. It would be nice to see an elemental damage rework to make almost every weapon useful for elemental damage, while the GS, hammer and lances stay as kind of raw machines for focused partbreaks. It would give certain weapons more well defined roles while also increasing the "content" by making crafting elemental weapons worthwhile. This would also lessen the push for max level crit/raw skills, as having skills to increase elemental damage or elemental weaknesses are more impactful. Make it so raw damage is really weak everywhere other than the tail wings and head would also make the change more forceful. At that point having builds for specific elements would be important, with different sets decos set as loadouts.

[@jakeharris2504]

This is a pretty complex topic because many skills synergize so well that they are sort of their own sets to build for. Take two examples. 1:Attack boost, crit eye, wex and crit boost are all pretty meh for damage boosting on their own. But the whole is greater than the sum when you can boost crit multiplier, boost crit consitency as well as boost the base damage getting multiplied. You can't half ass your investment because it's all about a multiplicative boost over incremental so it doesn't suffer from diminishing returns and delivers more reliable results the more you lean into it. 2: As a CB main, skills such as capcity up, focus 3, guard 5, offensive guard and artillery all synergize beautifully into easier charging, longer charged up time, more monster attacks I can guardpoint into an SAED from as well as stronger SAED. Artillery and Offensive guard are my only pure damage boosters per hit, but the others contribute to higher damage output over a hunt in secondary ways. And just like the crit build above, all these together are so much stronger than any one of them alone would appear. Having played only 5th gen, and maining both CB and SnS, I personally would like have fewer skills available per build and chose if I want to build for general crits, or build into my weapon's playstyle. I main CB because I love how it plays, so I'd love to build into its playstyle and be rewarded. SnS is lovy because it does nothing well enough to warrant pure focus. It does blunt well enough I can do a slugger build, it could comfortably fit a crit build and not feel like it's neglecting anything or build straight into pure comfort skills because it won't feel like it's neglecting anything. Dang. You've scratched the tip of a very deep iceberg here, my friend. This was fun to think about.

[@RJWoodMoroseTenacity]

Honestly something between GU and World would be fantastic. A more grounded insect glaive, MVs spread out throughout a moveset again instead of just spamming tornado slash, perfect rush, etc, make fights feel more fluid/dynamic. World is probably my favorite rendition of IG and Lance, but I still enjoy GU for it's style and monster variety even if it feels really clunky to play. Sunbreak was fun but it definitely felt like it dumbed things down too much while also going off the deep end in other ways. Cooldown based attacks like Diving Wyvern where you have to aerial 3x and then burn a CD I hope *never* make a comeback. Stuff like Spiral Slash for DBs where you can kinda just toss it in wherever you find an opening is pretty nice but the wirebug system in general was more fun for parkour than fighting imo. It seemed like a very difficult thing to balance - on top of way more skills we're now able to zip around and cancel falls and so on to the point that the only difficulty slide you can make is one shot or binary "wirefall or don't"

[@Glytchypoo]

I want the MHW style of skills but I want a deemphasis on skills that feel mandatory, like crit eye, crit boost, WE and instead focus on skills that change how you play, enable new options, or allow you to specialize in a role. Things like slinger ammo, speed sharpening, the bow coatings, crit draw, etc. I think these are a lot more interesting than the holy trinity of CE CB WEX

[@seikoc]

I think what made Sunbreak more enjoyable to me when it came to set building was more the demand that I feel like was placed on certain skills Because like critboost and wex was always a given but I also felt the need to add evade extender to everything And skills like quick sheath, focus, rapid Morph to specific weapon playstyles

[@AWanderingSwordsman]

We've actually had insane skill bloat in every generation. I remember how happy I was to make my endgame set in freedom which had autotracker and sharpness+1. That's it. I remember in 4U especially there was a lot of skill bloat amping up what you could get to like 5-6 complete skills by using combo skills like edgemaster. Gen 2 and 3 have a bit of an excuse adding decos and then charms respectively. As for my feelings, I think the root of the problem is that attack skills are too strong. The amount of your power coming from armor skills has gone up from like 10-15% in freedom to 100+% in sunbreak. This meant in earlier games if you wanted to forgo an attack skill for something like evasion up, you only drop like 5-10% damage and the fights themselves don't really change. In the modern games though, getting even 50% extra damage really changes the fight because the monster will be staggering and falling all over the place now. The skills are so synergistic that you just can't forgo them unless you want to really nerf yourself. The last thing is mandatory skills. i think this is actually a good thing because it causes class armor diversity. Because I need quick sheathe 3 on LS, I'm going to be using different armor (mainly barioth pieces) than if I want to use lance. More variety also equals more reason to farm when trying out new weapons. Skills like guard up becoming multipoint is because originally those skills in world/iceborne weren't normal skills, they were set bonuses. Adding them as single decos was a huge bit of power creep. As for what I want in the future? I would prefer them to hard differentiate attack and utility/defensive skills so every build is choosing some defensive skills without sacrificing offense. That's the real issue in the first place.

[@WhiteRaito]

At least fatalis is just 1 set with 2 pages compared to rise with 4 pages min maxes with curio rolls. At max its 2 pages for me. It reminded me yugioh cards that has more text than anything after the original synchro effects which is still alot to read... I am afraid that we think world its already alot but they were like... do you think its stop at 4 pages? Wait till 10 pages.... just like yugioh that kept going with more text.

[@kirchhoff7049]

The same thing happens in nearly every game. Power creep and "meta" builds ruin a lot of character building in RPGs. That being said, poor balancing of skills is a HUGE culprit here. One thing they could do is put certain skills into "buckets" and make them exclusive. That is, if you have 'Attack Up' then you cannot also have 'Peak Performance'. That would do a few things: 1) Make it so you can't just "grab every damage skill", 2) Add build defining choices (crit damage build or crit chance build), 3) Force you to think about and use "off meta" (defensive/utility) skills. Alternatively, you could have certain gear slots or decorations slots that ONLY allowed defensive/utility perks. This again forces you to mix and match a lot more. Set bonuses are another great way to force diversity as that takes away the "use whaterver has the most deco slots/skills on it" meta. Having said all that, defensive skills are VERY hard to balance in a game like Monster Hunter. This isn't a trinity game where you tank damage and get healed and your damage mitigation makes the healers job easier or conserves their resources. For the combat to work in MH, there needs to be a real threat of dying. As such, running a bunch of defensive skills can basically break the entire point of the game (if they are over-tuned). And frankly, there are a number of builds that get close (if not pass it) in MHW:IB (even pre-Fatalis). They are boring to play and make all your hunts super drawn out and long, but you would have to be pretty bad to ever die using them. Perhaps they could add some DPS check mechanics to help here, but it will always be a risk. These games quickly devolve from "the challenge is surviving and beating the monster" to "the challenge is to see if I can kill him in 2 minutes".

[@KyouOneZilla]

I think they should adjust the cost for deco's based on whether the skill is offensive, defense, or utility. Having Offensive skills use higher deco levels, defense using normal deco levels and pure utility skills having lower deco levels and being more efficient. Like a level 2 attack deco would be Attack skill +1, a level 2 Defense Deco would be defense skill +2, and finally a level 2 Speed eating skill would be speed eating level 2 AND another random utility like speed sharpening level 1. Kinda like how they did the level 4 decos for some skills. That way you get more bang for your buck when you don't go full UngaBunga.

[@chadsullivan3645]

Negative skills need to come back, either as they were or reworked. And if not, there needs to be a hard cap on how many skills you can get onto a set so its not a game of 'how many skills can I get on this set?'

[@anthonymondragon5043]

I have played a bit of generations ultimate, and really like that system, but I still personally believe that world "pre-Iceborne" has good, fun balance. The problem with Rise: Sunbreak for me was having too many skills with minimal effort. You hardly has to grind out anything in order to brutalize the monster. For most of the game, I just ran the valstrax armor and dual blade and the monsters folded like paper. In World, you actually had to work to get those really fun builds, and perfecting your weapon playstyle informed what skills were needed, and therefore what armor works the best. The biggest issue right now is the decoration systems in my eyes. Pre-Iceborne, most armor sets offer a choice between less deco's, but better skill selection, or more deco's and less skill selection. The alpha and beta sets worked great, as you had to balance your loadout between getting the skills and set bonuses you wanted, and trying to leave enough slots for some quality of life things. Post-Iceborne, you almost never had a reason to take less decoration slots. The alpha sets were mostly worse due to the additional level 4 decorations. The mantles gaining deco slots did not help this either. TLDR: If they recycle world's pre-iceborne balance and redesign the decoration system, (Taking inspiration from how Gen Ultimate handled it), it would be good in my eyes.

[@invincaspartan]

Just my Fire Lance Set in MHR had the following: Attack Boost 7/7, Fire Attack 5/5, MoH 3/3 WEX 3/3, OG 3/3, BB 3/3, CB 3/3, Shock Absorber 1/1, Teo Blessing 3/4, Critical Element 2/3, Intrept Heart 1/2, Resentment 3/5, Guard 3/5, Derelition 1/3, Coalscence 1/3, Heaven-set 1/3, Strife 1/3, Element Exploit 1/3, Bloodrite 1/3, Frenzied bloodlust 1/3, bloodLust 1/3, Burst 1/3, Guard up 1/3, Laten Power 2/5, and CE 2/7. Needless to say Rise had a lot of options.

[@progaula]

What I really enjoyed in the old games was the aspect that your charm kinda dictated the set you could go for. If I got a charm that was focus+5, crit draw+5 it would scream great sword set to me and it would also help to decide which skills you’re gonna get. The charm was a lot more important. Now you just get every single skill imaginable. It was a cool to see everyone have a more unique armor set tailored to their charm. I don’t think that the old system should come back tho, they swapped it for a good reason. It’s a lot easier to understand now. Making the skills a bit more restricted but therefore more meaningful would add a lot more diversity to the end game in my opinion.

[@Vorknkx]

Wearing Fatalis armor is cool and all. I know it's a reward for players to have fun with but I hope this kind of gear will only ever be available for the very endgame in Wilds. One thing I've pondered over the years is having gear-specific skills. For example, offensive skills are only available in the weapons and the gloves. Chest piece for defensive skills. Waist slot for utility and head piece could be a wildcard. And then you add decos to enhance those skills. I think it would significantly reduce the amount of activated skills. It would also have the effect of making armor sets have specific play styles, especially if wearing the whole set or at least multiple pieces gives out more bonuses. I haven't thought this out all the way yet, I'm not sure how to fit decos in this.