Increase melee hunters’ threat generation so the monster is more likely to attack them instead of ranged hunters.
現状/Current Status
In group hunts the monster usually targets hunters using ranged weapons like bow or light bowgun. Since ranged hunters usually want to keep their distance from the monster to do damage this means melee hunters have to spend most of the hunt chasing the monster instead of attacking.
Damage per second.
Its much easier to out pace melee users with ranged weapons especially bows. Especially wehn the bow user is holding one spot at a decent distance.
Now… i have been hunting for just about close to 19 years and ive used all the weapons and have a great understanding of whats going on here. have some wisdom i can share that will fix this Misunderstood concept.
Monsters will be more attracted to whomever deals most damage as fast as possible.
Now. In the beginning encounter against a monster with a team the bow users that stand ground (before they start dodging/perfect dodging) and place a strong lvl 4 shot gain the monster aggression.
Now once a player has the aggression the outcome of the follow up movements and attacks are directly affected by how the player who has the agression responds. At that point its a responsibility because you can manipulate where the monster will move.
I tell everyone to always listen for audio que sounds as % of the time thats the precursor to what physical/elemental the monster is about to unleash. This is one thing to remember. Theres other things to remember. You may have this understanding but say your team of hunters doesn’t. This leaves the responsibility on the user at range with aggression to play in a responsible manner geared to being alert of where all the rest of the hunters are and to reposition close to where the majority of the other 3 hunters are. Soo awareness is key to manipulation of aggression.
Lets use the elder dragon kushala as an example. Everyone in this example can have matching elemental weakness of say thunder only.
Bow arrows have two damage modifiers that are prioritized over armor skills. 1) range fall off damage. Too close can be bad and too far is even worse for the damage aspect. 2) the lvl of charged shot is the 2nd damage modifier. If you wanted to spam charged pierce shots this more and likely will force you to play at ranged distance. This is not favorable if you have 3 melee users. Infact playing like this will make the melee users to have to Chase the monster due to the range user not keeping in mind where the melee users are…
Thus… melee users miss out on optimization against kushala because kushala is focusing on damage per second.
Now if you instead spammed say… spread charged shots. This forces you to play just as close as a typical melee users. On a team with 3 melee users and you using bow… this is optimal choice as you will still probably have agro ( if your good at dodging up close) and will force the monster to hold ground with its agression directed at the range user. In the spread scenario agression can much easily be taken from the bow user as this arrow type brings overall balance to the team as a whole.
Now say you have a whole team of bow users all using thunder against kushala. Pierce charged shots would be good. Why? Because everyone on team can match said dps with same shot as well.
Now lets move on from bow/ranged users and move over to melee users. Melee users have a harder time then ranged users realistically keeping track of the rest of the team but more soo with ranged users spamming shots like pierce at range. Its all about your perception/and your teammates no matter what you use of 1) who has or will get the agression and guessing where to position based on this 2) keeping track of the sound for the que up of the attavk as this will tell you how and where the monster will move. 3) the monsters face/movement/positioning is the give away of who actually has said agression.
In my experience its very very very hard to find a team of randoms that understands this. Sooo i take this into consideration. If i see one other ranged user on my team i may choose to use bow (i use every weapon even in this game ) or i may use melee. If i use melee i position more towards the bow user if i hear him spamming say pierce shots. If i see no other range user then i may use bow and i would spam spread ( spread puts the damage out better any ways over pierce and rapid) or i would use another melee weapon. Its all about playing in a respectful and responsible fashion but that CAN’T BE DONE until you and your team have reached that point of experience.
What you say is correct and that is exactly the issue, ranged players have too much control over the hunt and that makes no sense considering that by virtue of being ranged their damage is way more consistent than melee. Melee hunters’ damage on the other hand heavily depends on the monster’s attack patterns and positioning yet we have no way to control them, the only thing we can do is hope the ranged player knows how to cooperate with melee hunters instead of running away from them.
I also have found moderate success as melee by following the ranged player(s), however that is not a solution if you have 2 or more of them in the party since it becomes a coinflip if they don’t move in the same direction. Being forced to change from melee to ranged isn’t a solution either, all party compositions should be viable in multiplayer.
If modifying the game’s threat system isn’t possible, then as an alternative I suggest adding a threat increasing skill to the game, something that has been done multiple times in the main games with skills like “Taunt”, “Provoker” and “Diversion”. As a bonus this would also help when playing with hunters that want to focus on tail cuts or go for Sneak Attack builds.