There seems to be no slowing Monster Hunter Wilds down, with Capcom’s latest entry in the long-running Monster Hunter series continuing to post impressive daily player counts on Steam after already breaking several records for the service. The daily average player count for Monster Hunter Wilds is just over 1.1 million concurrent players at the time of writing, making it the third-most-played game on Steam and the uncontested most successful launch for the Monster Hunter series. It’s a safe bet to assume that a sizable contingent of those million-plus players are hunting together through the co-op system, which makes Monster Hunter Wilds‘ approach to scaling all the more confusing.
Monster scaling has been refined over the course of Monster Hunter‘s history, and Monster Hunter: World‘s Iceborne DLC introduced a three-tier health system. Under this system, a monster’s HP is determined by how many players are in the hunting party, and monsters have different amounts of health when engaged by 1-player, 2-player, or 3/4-player squads. Capcom may have quietly altered the system for Monster Hunter Wilds, though, as the change to a monster’s health pool feels barely noticeable when switching between solo and co-op play, and that’s a bit of a “catch-22”.
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Monster Hunter Wilds May Take a Unique Approach to Multiplayer Scaling
Based on the way previous games in the Monster Hunter series have worked, it was reasonable to expect that Monster Hunter Wilds would incorporate a scaling system for monster difficulty and health that considered how many players were participating in the hunt. While Capcom hasn’t said anything official to indicate how Monster Hunter Wilds incorporates scaling based on player counts, the player base has already been hard at work trying to determine exactly how multiplayer scaling works in the new title.
This work has led to the belief that monsters have a standard baseline health when playing solo, and they receive increased health when hunted by more than one player. This is a seemingly modest increase, though, and it leads to situations where hunting large monsters as a solo player in Monster Hunter Wilds feels noticeably slow compared to hunting with a group. In fact, the speed at which players in groups of two, three, or four can take down imposing foes makes several fights feel almost trivial. Even on High Rank, where monsters become more difficult, completing a hunt in a group takes significantly less time than it does while playing solo.
What Monster Hunter Wilds’ Multiplayer Scaling Means for the Debate Over its Difficulty
Part of the discourse surrounding Monster Hunter Wilds has been focused on the game’s difficulty. Specifically, players have been discussing how much easier Monster Hunter Wilds is compared to other games in the series, especially when working through its main campaign. Things become noticeably more difficult in High Rank, as they typically do in Monster Hunter games, but playing with a group of friends almost trivializes what’s supposed to be the game’s apex challenge. Without a harsher scaling system for hunting in 2, 3, or 4-player squads, Monster Hunter Wilds stands to have a hard time shaking the impression that it’s “too” easy.
Of course, the flip side of the argument is that, thanks to Monster Hunter Wilds being the most accessible game in the series yet, it also stands to become the franchise’s most successful entry. Any adjustments that may have been made to multiplayer scaling could have been an intentional move on Capcom’s part to continue lowering the series’ barrier to entry, with the unintentional side effect that groups of veteran players will quickly burn through Monster Hunter Wilds‘ toughest challenges. Monster Hunter Wilds‘ campaign is easier than the campaigns in most games in the series, and that’s to be expected with the franchise’s push toward accessibility, but High Rank should be where the gloves start to come off.
- Released
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February 28, 2025
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Violence, Blood, Crude Humor