One thing I've noticed is- oh nice, I just crashed from the hunt complete screen. Anyway- that the NPCs just praise you endlessly. I'll do some shitty hunt and throughout just hear "WOW HUNTER YOU'RE SO GREAT, SO AMAZING, YOU'RE THE REASON I'M ALIVE" as they more or less solo'd the hunt. God I hate this 'life is great' type of game writing that got popular recently.
That's how it was before World though. Players could fairly and somewhat consistently look at a monster's design and tell at a glance what parts were too hard or were soft and squishier. We also used feedback such as whether our weapons bounced off of a monster's body parts to know if that was an area we should be hitting or not. If all of our attacks kept bouncing all across a monsters body, then the issue was that we weren't using sharp enough weapons.
I remember monsters in World literally just bouncing every single attack that wasn't blunt. That made SnS feel fucking great cause you could be good in every situation. I'm 3/4 through Wilds with SnS and I legit found a place to use my blade every single time. And half the time it didn't make sense. Rock-hard monsters having weak points on their bulky thighs wheree you'd instead think the head was the weak point. The feedback just isn't there. At this point people use overlays and mods and hacks and DPS meters anyway, there is no turning back into touchy-feely monster hunter. Sure you can, but it'll be a self-imposed challenge.
I exactly really like the realistic world-interactive safari vibe. Build a gun, shoot for the soft part, change ammo if need be. Run around crafting ammo, gather materials. Actually feel like you're playing an RPG. And that's exactly what Wilds is underlining for me. "Oh I don't like ranged, I like engaging with monster parts and shit. Ranged is just dps". With wounds, ranged is exactly the one that engages with a monster. You pick where to shoot and use a cooldown based sniping move for HBG to strike wounds. Shits fun.
Yet here I am, stuck in the infinite loop of "No no, I'll clear these optional hunts and then craft a HBG and really make a build". But I just keep pushing the goalpost. I'm clearing out LR hunts while far into HR just to feel productive. I actually hate grinding and once I've made a HR outfit with decos, I lose interest. I wanna fish and collect and hunt, but there's just none of that in the game. No apartment to decorate, no outposts to build. There's one fishing quest and it's already bugged for me.
