Yes, Capcom heard you loud and clear about the dodgy hitstop in Monster Hunter Wilds beta – and they’ve tweaked it for the full release

The world is changing. Geopolitics are fractious and unnerving, environmental catastrophe seems more likely each day, and rampant digitally-disseminated disinformation further erodes our trust in one another. But I’ll let lesser reporters tell you about that stuff. I’m here to report that Capcom have made the big bonk feel good again. They’ve heard player feedback on the missing weapon oomph caused by the lack of hitstop in the Monster Hunter Wilds beta, and they’re bringing back the bonk.

Here’s a handy breakdown of the issue by X user Blue Stigma, but briefly: hitstop is the brief pause in an attack animation the moment the weapon connects with an enemy, giving you a real sense of bonkitude and making say, a hammer feel different from a dagger. As the video showed, the hitstop was greatly reduced in Wilds compared to previous Monster Hunters, and many players reported the combat just feeling a bit off as a result.

“Some of the changes in the hitstop were obviously intentional, and some were not implemented due to the settings of the game,” director Yuya Tokuda said at a recent press event, via GamesRadar. “When Monster Hunter: World was released, many of the users from overseas commented that the hitstop was way too hard and it made it difficult for them to play. So it’s very positive feedback seeing the users who experienced the [Wilds open beta test] this time saying that they missed the hitstop that they were experiencing in past titles.”

“It’s a very unique Monster Hunter experience being able to experience that hitstop,” Tokuda continued. “So it’s very positive feedback from my perspective. In the current version that I think you guys had hands-on gameplay with, there was obviously a little bit of adjustment compared to the [open beta]. And for the full product version, there will be adjustments. For example, the finishing moves will have adjustments to hitstop as well.”

Very Gary Computing also had a big chat with the Wilds team, in which series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto also mentioned some bugs from the beta they’d since ironed out. “The monsters were moving more often than intended,” he said. “It wasn’t actually a design intention to have them be so rapidly moving, it was just that every X amount of seconds they just were moving on, and it wasn’t something we were planning for – the general processing of how monsters decide where to go next and what to do, that’s being refined towards the full game.”

The VGC piece is well worth a read, not least for Yuya Tokuda going into detail about the new endgame it sounds they’ve got planned for Wilds:

One of the unique aspects will be related to the environmental change system that happens in Monster Hunter Wilds. You’ll be doing things like having a synergistic relationship between the monsters that you’re hunting and the environment itself.

Perhaps if you hunt this monster now, that might make something happen like this one becomes easier to hunt later or harder to hunt later. The details are going to be discussed later, but I’m confident that players who love [past games’] end-game cycles will be really pleased with what’s in store.

In conclusion: bonk.