Highlights

  • Monster Hunter World and Rise both have issues with camps, as they can be hidden and difficult to locate in dense environments, slowing down gameplay and creating frustration.
  • Monster Hunter Wilds should make camps easily accessible from the start, or at least show players their locations on the map, allowing for a smoother and faster experience.
  • With the potential for open-world gameplay in Monster Hunter Wilds, camps will become even more important, and their accessibility and ease of earning should be prioritized to enhance the game's pacing and quality of life.

Monster Hunter Wilds is the next entry in the long-running franchise. Over the past twenty years, the series has slowly grown and evolved, culminating in MH World's explosion into the mainstream upon its launch in January 2018. World kicked off the fifth generation of Monster Hunter titles, and it was succeeded by MH Rise, a portable follow-up that was initially exclusive to Switch. These two fifth-generation games did more than any previous entries to make the series accessible to newcomers and returning fans alike. Now that Monster Hunter Wilds is set to kick off the sixth generation of games in the franchise, Capcom needs to enhance its quality of life further.

Monster Hunter World's most apparent change to the series formula was its switch to open areas. In previous games, players would depart on hunts to different locales. Each region players visited would be broken up into zones that were divided by loading screens. This limitation made sense, given that Monster Hunter games were finding success on portable platforms, but it sometimes made the series feel old-fashioned. In contrast, MH World's environments were fully open, more visually dense, and large, making them feel alive when compared to older entries. Because of their size, each one featured additional camps that players could find in the world. These camps allowed for the player to rest and resupply on long hunts.

Ethan from Pokemon Gold and Silver over a scene from Monster Hunter Wilds' trailer
Related
Gen 2 Pokemon that Monster Hunter Wilds Should 'Steal'

Monster Hunter Wilds will need new monsters for players to encounter, and Pokemon's second-generation additions provide inspiration.

What Does Monster Hunter Get Wrong About Camps?

mh rise camp tent screen

Camps in Monster Hunter World are something of a mixed bag. As places to go to resupply, they function entirely adequately. Crucially, they also serve as fast travel points, allowing for quicker navigation. They do have some shortcomings, however. Monster Hunter World's camps are frequently hidden away, and the density of the game's environments can make locating them a pain. These camps' usefulness and impact on the game's pacing make them essential to find, but doing so can be incredibly annoying. MH Rise's sub-camps are unlocked via side quests instead, but this solution still feels like it is adding unnecessary steps to access a basic but crucial tool.

Monster Hunter Wilds Should Show Players Where Camps Are

Monster Hunter World and Rise both suffer from making players take extra steps to access camps in the world. Moving around Rise's smaller regions with Wirebugs and mounts is quick, but fast traveling between camps is still a significant improvement. Comparatively, Monster Hunter World's camps feel like a necessity due to the game's slower traversal and larger areas. Rather than making players search for or earn camps that improve the pacing of the experience, Monster Hunter Wilds should make them available from the start or, at the very least, show players where they are on the map so that they can find and quickly unlock them. This would create less busy work for players and let them focus on hunting monsters.

How Should Monster Hunter Wilds Handle Camps?

The Monster Hunter Wilds announcement trailer hints that the game will feature dynamic environments. Over the course of its short runtime, the space shown transforms from a barren desert into something much more vibrant following a lightning storm. The vista at the end of the trailer shows off an area that, if fully explorable, would be the series' largest locale by far. This has led many to speculate that Wilds will be open-world, which would make camps more important than ever before. Even if this speculation proves to be false, camps will be an essential part of Wild's gameplay loop. Making camps available from the start or easy to earn would improve the game's pacing and make it more approachable.

If Capcom wants to make players earn new camps, hiding them in dense environments or locking them behind tedious side quests isn't the way. The function of camps is to make the player more capable of hunting monsters and speed up the game's pacing, so it would make sense to have them unlocked from the start or at least make their location known so that they can be quickly earned, especially if Monster Hunter Wilds is open-world. Making camps more immediately accessible would raise the quality of life in MH Wilds and let players get into hunting monsters a lot faster.