As a gamer who mostly prefers single player, but in exceptional cases also plays with friends, Monster Hunter is the perfect hybrid for me. I can hunt alone and have peace and quiet or sometimes hunt monsters in a closed group with others.
The big open beta began at the weekendAnd there was no question about it for me: Of course I wanted to test all 14 weapons and then hunt with friends! What could possibly go wrong, I thought to myself.
However, nothing could have prepared me for how complicated it was to go hunting or exploring with friends in the beta. Capcom actually managed to make the co-op system even more complicated than it was on the Switchwar.
Do you want to have a closed group in the lobby? Then first link
Immediately after the introductory mission in the open beta, Monster Hunter Wilds put me in a lobby with 99 other players, 15 more of whom are displayed next to me in my game world. If a quest is posted here, all lobby members can basically join it. Of course, this means that the quest board becomes confusing pretty quickly.
However, if I really only want to go on a quest with my closest circle, I have the following options:
- I ask dealer Alma in the multiplayer settingsa password, before I post quests. If other people plan to join, they must enter the code first. Only when I fire an SOS while hunting does the password become disabled. But that doesn't solve the problem with the countless quests from other lobby members on the board. This just ensures that no one but my friends can join my hunt.
- I'm creating a link partyso that I can set off together in a closed group of up to four people. As soon as a hunter in the group posts a quest, all other members are notified and can join.
In the long term, the Link Party is the best choice for going on quests with friends. However, despite the closed group, there are up to 15 other people in our world, so it remains particularly crowded in the base camp. On top of that, the Link Party has another catch - I can't just go exploring with my team!
From Link Party to Environment Link
Anyone who has played Monster Hunter World is certainly familiar with the expeditions in which we were able to freely hunt monsters and explore areas without a quest timer. This also happens in Wilds. But if we want to go on an exploration tour together with our group, things get complicated.
With our Link Party we can go on quests together, but if we just want to start an expedition, we have to use a completely different function instead: the Environment Link.
But creating it is more complicated than expected. First of all, the selected friends must already be in a Link Party with us, because only then can we invite them to an Environment Link group and set off with them without having to post a quest first.
It gets even more complicated:While we are in an Environment Link, we can no longer post quests to Alma. So we can only hunt monsters that are currently on the map. Creatures like Rey Dau, which only appear in certain weather, are only very lucky. This limits us incredibly when it comes to farming.
For example, if we want to hunt Rey Dau for materials and he is not on the map at the moment, we first have to solve the environment link again in order to then be able to post our quest to Alma as a link party. Unless we just want to twiddle our thumbs and hope that Rey Dau shows up in the world at some point.
In short: unnecessarily complicated
So in summary we can say:In order to complete quests together as a closed group as easily as possible in a lobby with 100 players, we have to set up a link party. In order to be able to explore together, we also need an Environment Link, which we can only create if we are already in the Link Party. If we want to switch back and forth between quests and expeditions with the group, we have to leave or recreate the environment link each time.
Capcom can do this better too
As a long-time Monster Hunter fan, I'm disappointed that Capcom still hasn't found a good co-op system after so long. This point was already criticized by the community in previous games. In Monster Hunter World there were hunting groups, even if we could only go on an expedition with them if we stayed together in the area after a quest.
Wilds wants to make this easier by dividing it into Link Parties and Environment Link, but instead it just becomes unnecessarily complicated.
I really hope that the function will be refined a bit before the release. For example, Capcom could easily combine Link Party and Environment Link so we could go out into the world with our friends and post quests at the same time.
Ideally, there should also be an option to completely turn off other players' models in the lobby - even better at release would be the option to create a private lobby.
Despite all my criticism of the co-op function, I really enjoyed the beta. I can't wait to go hunting with my friends again at the end of February. If playing together becomes easier now, I'll be perfectly happy.
Have you played the open beta and if so, how have you liked the lobbies so far?
