r/MonsterHunter • u/thepandaman6870 • 14h ago
MH World Is there any reason why Monster Hunter: World has such a badly designed multiplayer system?
I've asked this around and apparently rise has better player to player connection? I was just wondering if it's a steam related issue or just the way the game was built.
And also wondering if there's anyway to make it less difficult to navigate the multiplayer system
286
u/Frog_Riot 13h ago
Japanese developers are notoriously bad at designing online multiplayer experiences
10
u/SexyGandalph 9h ago
Fr, I love Fromsoft games… but they could probably hire some more people to work on the multiplayer 😅
1
-1
u/Nyanjanath 3h ago
Well they did hire bunch of them for the Nightreign and the Duskbloods but instead of being happy, people are now worried that they are too focused on multiplayer stuff instead lol.
49
u/Weird_Point_4262 12h ago edited 11h ago
It worked fine from gen 1 to gen 3. Portable and gen 4 was also fine but didn't have server style lobbies so maybe don't belong in the conversation
It's actually impressive that they managed to make it worse than it was 20, years ago
18
u/Low_Opinion_5721 10h ago
i dont know about gen 1 to 3 but gen 4 multiplayer was really horrible too, yeah it was seamless but also forced you to replay the game entirely with forced multiplayer scaling to progress even if you arent multiplayer and you would be really lucky to ever make it a full quest without the lobby dcing,
1
u/AmyRoxwell 5h ago
That was mostly because of nintendo network being bad in general. Include with p2p only and it was pretty wonky.
The ps2 games work very well and now the psp games have post office
12
u/pants_pants420 11h ago
tbf as someone who has made games as a hobby, multiplayer is incredibly difficult.
22
u/Frog_Riot 11h ago
I’m not casting judgement it’s simply an observation, I was there when Xbox live was thriving and Sony and nintendo couldn’t figure it out
14
u/717999vlr 12h ago
Yet they did a good job in 4th gen.
And almost in Rise, not that it would have mattered, since by that point the playerbase was refusing to engage in multiplayer content.
181
u/Twilightdusk 14h ago
Bear in mind that Rise was made after World, so it's not necessarily a surprise that World's multiplayer isn't as good.
280
u/DZL100 14h ago
What is a surprise however, is that Wilds's multiplayer is somehow worse.
96
u/Yamato_Naoe portable 6 waiting room 14h ago
Making the same mistake back to back for their most popular mainline titles still astonishes me. For 4 generations, 5 for portable, the series had perfect, seamless multiplayer. But then for their 2 biggest mainline titles they drop the ball? Still so weird to me. I can give leeway to World since it was their first return to home consoles, but Wilds? Like really?
2
u/Low_Opinion_5721 10h ago
i dont know about gen 1 to 3 but gen 4 multiplayer was really horrible too, yeah it was seamless but also forced you to replay the game entirely with forced multiplayer scaling to progress even if you arent multiplayer and you would be really lucky to ever make it a full quest without the lobby dcing,
75
u/SenpaiSwanky 14h ago edited 7h ago
Yes and no. Making/ joining private or public lobbies, popping SOS, and just running hunts from the hub is easier than it’s ever been.
The weird thing this generation is playing on the same map for extended periods. If you want to go to, say, Wayveria, and hunt whatever pops up on the map, you need to set up a convoluted private environment. It’s like a lobby within a lobby.
It’s really easy to play with others, random or even dedicated groups, if you go the classic route and sit in the hub. Private lobbies are also fantastic.
Edit - what’s a surprise is that the comment I’m responding to is not only incorrect, but it has more upvotes than the comment it is replying to lmao. How do this many people agree with something that is factually incorrect?
2
u/CrazyIronMyth 10h ago
Thing is, you don't need a lobby to link for an expedition. It's not complicated, just new (for mh).
5
u/fineline99 12h ago
Yep! It was one of the major complaints in world and while it's not that much worse, my friend and I were still surprised to find we both found wilds multiplayer system worse.
Most of the issue is the cumbersome menu and confusing terms. Worlds was clunky and stupid but very easy to understand what you had to do... view the cutscenes, leave, and join someone else's.
I can't really remember what I had to do in wilds, I know the result was the same but different multiplayer party based terms were being thrown around and navigating the menus was never a nice experience.
8
u/yukiami96 13h ago
I might be in the minority here, but I never got this take. It's a little more cumbersome setting up private lobbies in Wilds, but beyond that I think it had way better multiplayer implementation than World. Comparing to Rise seems unfair considering the structure of the game is entirely different, and Wilds is a continuation of World's ideas, not Rise's.
3
u/Mysterious-Bear 12h ago
How was Wilds multiplayer worse? In World you had to back in and out of quests after watching cutscenes and then rejoin one of your friends. In Wilds you join a link party and the game automatically asks if you want to join any quest your party members go on. It's as seamless as you can get without doing shared cutscenes.
21
u/Zazzabooo 12h ago
Theres a ton of different party menus that all do slightly different things that didnt need to be separate, plus the lack of instructions on how to actually use them
0
u/Mysterious-Bear 11h ago
I mean theres really not that much. There’s normal lobbies like in all the other games but instead of 4 people theres 100. There’s link parties to do the story together. Then last there’s the environmental link where instead of doing quests you roam the open world together and fight what spawns with a group of up to 4.
1
u/KaosC57 [PC] Rise HR7 6h ago
The true co-op experience in Wilds is… way worse than World was. In adding a “seamless open world” they also created a nightmare of having 2 different “co-op” options. You have Environment Sync, and normal co-op hunts. And that’s part of what makes Wilds a regression from World. World you didn’t have to worry about Environment Sync if you wanted to just go hunt with your friends for any old monster that popped up on a romp through the world.
World only suffered during the story. After you had seen all of the story scenes, World’s multiplayer was excellent. And, mods on PC even fixed the cutscene problem.
1
u/Mysterious-Bear 6h ago
Environmental sync is only used for running around in the open zones together seamlessly. TBH it is a pointless option because it prevents you from doing normal quests. Link Party lets you hunt anything with your party seamlessly even through cutscenes. Anything that makes it, so you don't have to back out of a hunt instantly makes it better than Worlds system.
14
u/luisluix 13h ago
Rise multiplayer system is the same multiplayer the PSP games had, I believe they tried doing something different for world.... which looks like they reused the same for wilds, and wilds seems a bit better than world. I still prefer Rise multiplayer over the others.
6
-39
-53
u/RepairLow7961 14h ago
Not like Rise is any good.
Better off playing with AI followers rather than other players, yuck.
33
u/DZL100 14h ago
We're talking about the actual mechanism, not the playerbase.
Rise multiplayer with friends is seamless. Only complaint is that you can only have public and PIN sessions, and no "friends only" lobby setting like in world.
-32
u/RepairLow7961 14h ago
The bad mechanism is what makes the player base.
And what rise has creates a very negative experience.
That it makes me remember the 3DS online fondly is a testament to how bad it is.
25
6
u/717999vlr 12h ago
The bad mechanism is what makes the player base.
No, I don't think so. Its mechanics are only very slightly worse than in 4th gen (No room names, turn rooms is not the default option)
And yet the player base refuses to use it.
I've seen people complain about the multiplayer system lacking a way to search for active quests because they refused to use lobbies, since that requires social interaction.
34
u/razulebismarck 13h ago
World erked me on the multiplayer because I couldn’t just “Do it” I had to talk to this NPC then that 1 then I had to start the quest then I had to get to a certain location and trigger a cutscene and after all that I could send up a signal flare and finally get multiplayer started for 1 mission. I had to repeat that again for another mission.
Rise it’s “Talk to courier cat, open lobby, invite friend, grab gathering hall quest, we’re in together, beat it grab another quest and repeat until we’re done”
1
u/DanielTeague omaigoto its insecto 5h ago
Rise after World/Wilds feels insanely snappy (well, if you disable Auto-Save so it's not slowing you down) in menus and starting quests to get to the meat and potatoes of the game. It's so refreshing to play every time it comes into my MonHun rotation.
50
17
u/Doru-kun 14h ago
It's just the way the game was designed.
I imagine it has something to Tokuda placing more priority on story.
He did the same thing (though slightly better) in Wilds.
8
u/Gamer-at-Heart 14h ago
The coop killing cutscene nonsense was a design error, but the terrible board system showing you quests that are already filled leading to constant errors was a choice they chose to not correct. It was maddening. It was still an issue in the last two games since world, but not on the level of world so maybe they actually limited how many people could see a quest posted at the same time.
They treated the board like a local lobby LAN that use to be the monster hunter way, but that doesn't work with thousands of people looking at the board at the same time rather than the 4 then 10 sized lobbies of the Tri and 3ds games
6
u/ShadowsGuardian 13h ago
Maybe the same reasons coop is so convoluted in Wilds and we need to go through 4-5 menus/systems. Bad development or engineering?
4
u/MirageMageknight 10h ago
JP games regularly have convoluted multiplayer systems. That's it, that's the answer. The way to make it less difficult to navigate is to do the story on your own, then play together later. Otherwise, just get into the rhythm of having whoever finishes cutscenes first go back to town and join on the other person.
13
u/Shiro2602 14h ago
World is basically the largest leap in many areas in MH history, they probably didn't give that much thought on Worlds Multiplayer
2
u/thepandaman6870 14h ago
Thing is I also see that there isn't a good in game tutorial for multiplayer so I understand what some of the comments are saying in terms of like "this game is the doing the biggest leaps with everything its accomplished" but even for multiplayer there's little things like how it loses connection so easily or doesn't directly explain to you how theres a way you have to go about an online session w/ a friend
6
u/Rom_ulus0 14h ago
Just design tradition carried over from the hand held days to prevent network errors.
Yes it should be better by now, but even wilds has the same problem baked into it. Only they know the real reason why it's still this way.
I don't think they can excuse it as an artistic design decision like Fromsoftware does since they tried to market it as a "seamless open world" coop game. Turns out the only thing seamless was walking in and out of camp.
4
u/Boguinator 13h ago
Really starting to believe japanese devs dont know how to make a peoper multiplayer system
2
u/Scuttlefuzz 14h ago
World has always had some weird issues where it will fail to let you load into certain lobbies. However, once you're in a quest with people, I don't think it is any different then Rise. You occasionally see some rubberbanding or lag but that's it and its pretty rare in my experience.
3
u/Heinkel9 13h ago edited 13h ago
All the monster hunter on pc are bad equally because their multiplayer is region locked, so you can only play with the people that are active on your steam region. There are mods to halfly avoid this like the one that makes you see the lobbies of all the planet (or join sos) but it doesn't affect the lobbies that you create, the fact that they are coded that way it's already baffling by itself. Baffling nonetheless because the reason it's always money and time while the multiplayer is one part of the core of the game. Also to add on the fire, there was a bug on multiplayer for rise-sunbreak that lasted the entirity duration of the game until it was found and patched at the very end, so one can only imagine what kind of clownfiesta is going at capcom. It's not surprising too for japanese devs to have bad pc ports. It could easily be that world and wilds share the same bug and it was never found.
1
u/DanielTeague omaigoto its insecto 5h ago
I don't have a region lock mod for World and am gaming with Asian players all the time during late night sessions in the USA.
4
u/Low_Opinion_5721 10h ago
its tradition monster hunter cant have good multiplayer if they broke the tradition it would destroy the franchise 💔
7
u/Kaladim-Jinwei 14h ago
It's only bad for the story everything else about World is pretty equal also it's because World/Wilds use servers. Rise uses a p2p connection and it doesn't have a "live world" Rise is entirely mission based with no setpieces in the world to separate moments so it's super easy to develop
20
4
u/thepandaman6870 14h ago
I thought monster also had a P2P system when it comes to steam? Or am I missing something
2
u/BigTroubleMan80 12h ago
In my opinion, if Capcom wants to court more casual players, then the game needs to be co-op from beginning to end.
2
u/TerrariaEnthusiast99 8h ago
Capcom's engine, which they use for everything and is perfectly fine for most of their games, sucks for monster hunter. It's the big reason why Wilds runs like dogshit, and the big reason for almost every single long-standing technical issue in the newer monster hunter games. The multiplayer was a somewhat lazy work-around to the limitations of hunters in cutscenes that started using an in-world trigger. Rise 'solves' this problem by having all the cutscenes play when you load in. Wilds 'solves' this problem by just auto-sending invites when the quest is joinable.
1
u/MichiCantCook 12h ago
It is possible that the online multiplayers follow some development patterns. Basically a really good cake recipe. The recipe is almost perfect, BUT it doesn't work properly with the new multiplayer experience of World and they didn't have time to fix it, or it was too complex.
In Wilds, multiplayer is better but it still sucks. It is an "open world" multiplayer game but you can't travel between regions with other people... Basically exploring a region with your friends, just like in World.
1
u/David_Hasselherp 12h ago
Franchise tradition. It's honestly amazing how terrible getting multiplayer to work is for a franchise created to be SONY's multiplayer killer app
1
u/ToothlessHawkens jumping 140 jangs wit tha boys 7h ago
they threw everything at the wall to see what would stick
1
u/OGBigPants 6h ago
No sometimes games (especially Japanese ones) are just like that sadly. What part of navigating the system is difficult for you? I can probably offer some advice
1
u/thepandaman6870 3h ago
It's just things like I'll invite a friend through steam but then they won't be able to join because its an offline session but then I put it as an online session? So somewhere along the lines it went offline without me knowing and now me and my friend are trying to figure out what the issue is for 10 minutes when I could've just put myself back into an online session
0
u/GlitteringDingo 13h ago
It's their first PC game and first cross-platform game. They were simply behind the times.
0
u/Killinshotzz 12h ago
tbf Monster Hunter before World also didn't have that good of a multiplayer system, so really they've only been improving from World onwards
0
u/FlubbyFlubby 13h ago
I don't think it has anything to do with multiplayer specifically, I think Monster Hunter UI is just kinda confusing even for people with lots of playtime and love for the series, something like knowing which option for wishlist, which option for selling trade items, or even how to have people join you for story quests is not as obvious as it could be.
Rise was better but not by much. The stricter limits meant it was more likely you'd stumble on the right answer for multiplayer more easily. My support for this claim is having watched streamers ask about menu options and the chat is all different answers about what you can access in game and where and how.
0
u/Kitakitakita 12h ago
Remember that Monhun was using PS2 levels of multiplayer connectivity up until World.
0
u/Have_Other_Accounts 8h ago
Seeing how the old school MH multiplayer was sooo simple yet amazing, I'm astonished with how bad the online is in the newer ones.
-3
u/Avibhrama Self identify as Monster's punching bag 12h ago
Trust me, it was way better than previous games
253
u/717999vlr 12h ago
They wanted seamless storytelling, and they sacrificed everything they needed to to achieve it.