Hihihi I'm here with another opinion. And its thats Other Bill is a dumbass.
Other Bill really though familiar Bill was weak because he was playing house with a human. So what if he's domesticated? Does he not realize that this is a version of himself who actually has something to lose. He's the most dangerous!! :/
Other Bill's thought process kinda went like this:
This Bill is Soft for this guy! It's clear when you look at the human's reactions - and even in the environment! All the context pointed right towards some domesticated moron.
And Soft Emotionally = Soft Everywhere = Soft Target. No threat at all!
Clearly this was some whimpering, wailing, quivering, pathetic Bill, that would fold under a bit of pressure. Honestly, he'd be doing the multiverse a favor getting rid of that guy! Squishing (or stealing) his (admittedly cute) human would be a fine precursor to putting him down.
Other Bill did not expect a Bill who was, well. Still very Bill. The mistake he made was thinking that because Bill went soft in one single place - that he'd gone all jello-like everywhere. Classic overgeneralization. Along with a lot of egocentric cognitive biases.
The other dumb thing Other Bill pulled was not changing his plan.
He could have course-corrected when Familiar Bill reemerged- even that first interaction showed him he wasn't dealing with a total pushover - but he figured, hey! If one dumb human could ruin this guy, what could he possibly do against another Bill?
And then he found things out the hard way.
76 notes
·
View notes
One of the things I really, really, Really miss in MHW is, ironically enough, variety.
MHW is a game with dozens of amazing monster designs, all with unique attacks, strengths and vulnerabilities. And what does the game force the player to do?
Grind your chosen monster again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, cause you want that upgrade and it costs a (monster name)-gem, which has around 3% drop chance.
I think I won't be breaking any new ground by saying this has been not the best decision on the designer's part.
*to be fair, only the top-est of the top upgrades require a gem, and in my experience you don't Really need those upgrades anyway, cause they will just break the game numbers. that said, my actual experience is just the main story, and I haven't touched the enhanced monsters or the raid ones, also I have not played Iceborne, and I know for certain that the numbers in that DLC are Completely broken right off the start, so maybe that gem upgrade is actually a requirement for it. I can't say for certain
This 'single-monster grind for the rare part you need' is the thing that knocked me off MHW for a while, I am just really tired of farming a single enemy like that. It's so repetitive and boring, despite the combat in the game being stellar. I have tried to switch weapons to make the grind more engaging, however, the skill ceilling for both the weapon and the monster attack patterns is too high far that to work, and you can't get the Gem if you're switching to a less powerful monster version, so that strategy won't work either.
This whole situation is outrageous to me, especially when the game has a few monsters that I have not fought even Once. For ex. Uragaan, it just looks like a Radobaan reskin on a surface level and I don't need it's gear, so I have not engaged with it even once, also Radobaan is just more badass. Here I am, instead, grinding a single monster over and over and over.
Okay, I think I've conveyed my disappointment quite adequately, now for the solution. I think this is a great time to remember about Dauntless.
For anyone who doesn't know, Dauntless is/was s f2p online monster-hunter and I've been a big fan of it for a few years. (sadly, the game has been bought by a chinese magnate and is being driven into the ground by them)
Obviously, as a monster-hunter, in Dauntless the core loop of slaying a beast > getting gear from it > slaying a more powerful beast is the same as in MHW. The difference is that you don't need that much parts from a monster to craft gear (about three kills will secure you an armour, five total should be enough for a weapon on top, those are not exact numbers, and I am speaking from memory), buuuut you need special Orbs to upgrade it. You get Orbs from doing Patrols, and here is the simple beauty of the Dauntless' solution to the grind problem-
Patrols are hunts where your target monster is randomised from a pool of monsters. Later in game, you get Heroic Patrols, which are the same, but for more powerful monster versions, and some new elite ones start appearing only in this category.
Patrols force you to engage with ALL the monsters in the game, and prevent the grind from becoming overbearing. In Dauntless, Pangar and Hellion might seem like model reuse, However the game forces me to experience both fights, and the attack patterns of these two are quite different.
So, the game loop of Dauntless is much more interesting and varied than MHW, because it makes use of 100% of its own content, while MHW has you repeatedly engaging with only 1/31 of it (= monster you grind for gear / total big monster count base game).
From my understanding, this is more of a design oversight, rather than a deliberate mistake, as the Monster Hunter series is quite old, and the 'streamlined monster grind for rare part' was the core eastern design of the series for most of that history, made primarily for the local market. However, this is still a design flaw and MH World was primarily made to bring new audience to the series, so this was the perfect time to reassess some of the carried-over design philosophy.
2 notes
·
View notes