@RSM-HQ: You're right, I was quite disappointed as well. But I suppose it's better than holding out hope for Zinogre, Tigrex, Mizutsune, etc, and then not getting them.
I couldn't care less about the Oroshi Kirin or Lunastra fights themselves since they are re-skins, but hopefully they will at least have decent equipment that opens up some more build possibilities. Alatreon should be good, and who knows what "Treasure Dragon" is (that's apparently the rough translation for the new monster).
So even if we assume "Treasure Dragon" is a good fight (not a given, I mean Zorah is absurdly boring), then we only get a total of 3 worthwhile DLC monsters (Jho, Aalatreon, Treasure Dragon). Not great.
On the other hand, it's fair to compare MHW to Tri, which is this last time they seemed to make any effort to "rebuild" the game. Tri was the most content-lite entry in the series for a loooooong time. MHW definitely beats Tri for content. But it's utterly dwarfed by MH4 and MHGen.
I'm holding out hope that for the G-rank version and/or MHW2, they will nearly double the roster and add at least one map, hopefully 2. They've already built the base systems and a lot of assets, so hopefully they can do more monsters in a shorter period of time for the next game.
@RSM-HQ: In the leaked monster list which thus far has proven 100% accurate, the rest of the DLC monsters will be Lunastra, Oroshi Kirin, and Alatreon. Plus one new-to-the-series monster. But the point is, if you want Ice weapons, I don't doubt that Oroshi Kirin will fill that gap.
Actually, it doesn't come off as pretentious, with that last comment you made, haha. Not gonna lie, your comments were rubbing me the wrong way, but your last post made me understand better where you're coming from.
Monster Hunter is a huge grind, man. The grind kinda is the game, and long-time vets like me like it that way. We relish the challenge, and we take it as a given that we will dump 500+ hours into every edition to get all the equipment we want. I got friends who also like the game but feel the same way you seem to: they want to enjoy all the content, but they just want to skip to end-game, and don't like they grind. They want to put 50-100 hours in and call it done, and frankly, the game was set up to play for thousands of hours, not 100.
Your point that you want to enjoy games the way you want to enjoy them is fair; as I said, you have the ability to play it unpatched, and more power to you. In fact, there is even a decoration duping glitch they patched as part of 1.05. If you want to reduce the grind in an unpatched version of the game before it hits PC, go ahead and look it up. I got no problem with anyone doing what they want to do with their game, as long as it doesn't affect MY experience!
But as you seem to understand now, your opinion on game balance changes just doesn't match the opinion of most of the Monster Hunter playerbase (or at least, not the long-time fans like me that Capcom is clearly trying to keep happy). Grossly unbalanced things do make it a less interesting game for a LOT of people, so I'm happy they made the change.
Anyway, glad this conversation got more amicable, haha. BTW, you said you had switched off guns to Lance/Gunlance. FYI, Lance is super-solid and awesome. Gunlance is fun but a little weird: less mobility than Lance, shelling isn't affected by attack stats at all and leaves you vulnerable often, but the advantage of shelling is that you can hit monster parts which aren't weak points, and do the same damage as on weak points. Gunlance shelling is unique like that. So it's a good weapon to have in the toolbelt, but not something I get top kill-times with all the time. If you're having a rough time in general and want to go melee, I'd say Dual Blades, Sword & Shield, Lance, and Longsword (which has a parry!) are all awesome jumping-off points.
Wait, so I gave two examples where lack of thoughtful balancing made games worse experiences, but I'm the one undermining my credibility?
And where did I say I don't use other weapons? I DO use other weapons. In fact I mostly play Bow, GS, and GL. I have only trotted out the bowguns for a total of maybe 2 hours out of about 140 hours of playtime, and they were boring for two reasons: one, slicing made the game too easy. Since damage is done entirely after the shot lands, so crit distance is irrelevant, making it the safest shot type in the entire game. And that's entirely besides the point that the damage on it is crazy, and outclasses every other weapon type. The second reason the bowguns were boring to me is the other meat-and-potato ranged ammo types (normal, pierce, element) weren't very good, and were generally outclassed by all the other weapon types. The nukes like cluster, and spread shots seemed fine, but those are situational.
Now that this patch has balanced the terrible shot types to be less terrible, and the OP one to be slightly less OP, I'm much more inclined to use bowgun. As other positive knock-on effects, I don't have the thought in the back of my mind when grinding equipment that I COULD be doing this faster with the boring OP weapon, instead of one that's fun to play. I am also more likely to be able to go online to play with randoms, and find games that don't have two slice gunners in them.
I'm not "encouraging forced choices". I'm reveling in the fact that there IS a choice now as far as "most effective weapon" is concerned, because they buffed the bad ammos and nerfed the OP one a bit. I still can't comprehend why you like having a single thing that's overwhelmingly better than everything else, rather than having multiple competitive top-tier options. But then you say at the bottom of your post that you can't wait for the PC version so you can hack/cheat, so I guess maybe you're just not interested in being challenged at all.
And I have no idea what you're about with your "new ammo type which happens to be called "slicing ammo"" is coming from. For the third time, it is still the best ammo in the game, and it behaves the same way, just with slightly smaller numbers.
By "more vulnerable" with bowguns, I think you mean less armor, but you're not really "more vulnerable". It's a tradeoff for being able to do damage at range. You should hardly ever be getting hit with LBG in particular, since it's so mobile, and slicing compounds that by not needing to be in critical distance while still doing 80+ damage per shot against weakpoints.
Gunlance explosions may be more powerful per shell, but slicing does multiple hits per shot that add up to more than any Gunlance shell can do, with the exception of charged long-type shots. And, you can't fire charged shells with GL nearly as fast, and you have to sit stationary and helpless within melee range to use them. Biiiiiig difference.
To play the game unpatched, all you need to do is delete your game data (not your "save game data", your game data). That will bring it back to version 1.0, what's on the disc. Then you can just cancel any updates that happen to pop up. If you bought it digital, I'm not sure if they update the executable that's in the store or not as new versions are released, but you could try deleting game data and then re-downloading, and canceling any patch download that initiates at the same time.
Of course it was your "1st ammo of choice". It was for EVERYONE, because it was obscenely overpowered compared to everything else. That was my point (and, clearly, the developer's point).
It's not like this is a point being made in a vacuum. Take Borderlands 2. The Bee was stupidly overpowered, and trivialized the game. The smart decision would've been to give it a sizable nerf. Instead, they made the entire game harder to compensate for how good the Bee was, such that you NEEDED to use the Bee, or the game was impossible. Anyone who wanted to use other things? Screw them I guess.
Or, take Diablo 3. They hardly ever nerf anything, instead they just buff the bejezuz out of everything around OP items to try to bring things to parity, and in the process make the pool of high-end playstyles smaller and smaller and smaller because of inflated set multipliers. Before the numbers got huge, there was a lot more room for creative builds.
Long story short: if you want one EZ-mode ammo that is the best at everything, feel free to play the game unpatched.
The vast majority of us would like to play more than one way, and don't want something in the game that's so strong, the rest of our options field like cardboard cutouts by comparison.
I'm excited that I get to use other ammo types now without feeling like I'm wasting my time (since they all got buffed to be within shouting distance of slicing, even though slicing, again, IS STILL THE BEST). It's unbelievable to me the amount of complaining about a nerf small enough that the nerfed item is still best-in-class. The point of Monster Hunter has always been conquering tough fights, so why the need to have OP things to make monsters roll over for you?
Read the article again. They didn't nerf a weapon.
They slightly nerfed one ammo type (slicing). They buffed 10 other ammo types to compensate (n1, n2, n3, p1, p2, p3, thunder, fire, water, ice).
I've played almost every game in the series, and one ammo type being utterly, stupidly overpowered wasn't fun. Different guns should have different strengths and weaknesses; there should be a reason to use different guns on occasion. Instead, slice-focused guns were just ALWAYS the best by a mile. Heck, slicing is STILL clearly the best general-use ammo type.
In Monster Hunter Generations, the guns were balanced such that I had a stable of about 12 guns, each with a specialized purpose: one for explosives, one for rapid-pierce, one for status, one for each element, one for normal 3's, one for siege-fire, one for dazzle-shot, and several that were combinations between each of those. Gunning never got old in hundreds of hours. In MHW, it had already gotten old because slicing trivialized everything else.
It's pretty simple... going to Gamestop used to be a decent value proposition. I signed up for their e-mail list over a decade ago when they still sent out a weekly 25% off coupon. Then they stopped that, and replaced it with a points system that gives barely a fraction of the value the coupons used to give... what, thought I wouldn't notice, because I'm a stupid gamer who thinks all things with "points" are "fun" or "cool"? Yeah, no. I can get a better deal on Amazon basically always. For the last decade.
How about start being price-competitive again, and I'll come back? How about give me a discount for pre-ordering a game on faith, before reviews are out, like Amazon? How about ditch your idiotic points system and bring the 25% coupons back? How about knocking more than $5 off a used game compared to new? People have wised up to you, Gamestop. Time to change or die.
@marshalmathers2: My biggest issue with Fifa last year was that, in an effort to make the effect of "fast" and "slow" passes more clear, they rendered it impossible to play a "just right" pass. So your passing options became: bad or worse.
But just in general, PES took the baton of better overall gameplay starting last year. The players do feel weightier and have more presence. I do wish they cut down on the canned animations that always end with the defender taking the ball, rendering the offensive player unable to even fight for it. But that's a small price to pay. This year thy finally seem to award cards as well, which was an issue last year.
Off-field is a whole 'nother story. Master League is atrocious compared to Fifa's career mode (which could usse some work, itself). Wish I could have PES's gameplay and Fifa's off-field stuff in one game.
It used to be clear to navigate before they started aping the 360/XB1's store. I couldn't even find this demo on the PS4's interface. I had to go to my PC and Google "pes 2017 demo ps4"to find the PSN page, and add it to my download queue from there.
Why must you break things that weren't broken, Sony...
@GunEye: Agree, I'm always up for more good Berserk stuff.
Though to be fair, Berserk already has a couple good console games: one for Dreamcast, the other PS2 (import). I recommend them both if you can get your hands on them.
AtheistPreacher's comments