First of all, I want to thank you. The monster tracker is a fantastic tool that will be a huge boon to all hunters.
Secondly, I have a suggestion for it. In its current state, it can only find “basic” monsters: No subspecies, no HAT-exclusive targets, and no invaders. I think it would be beneficial to put these other monsters in, but to set the tracking threshold from 3 to 10 (or higher, the exact number would be a balancing decision by Niantic) when a monster belonging to one of these categories was selected. So in 30 hunts, I could then pick up either 10 Pukei Pukei or 3 Azure Rathalos, depending on what monsters I need the most at this time.
EDIT:
I made this post before I fully understood how the system works. I would like to revise my suggestion to: “For the 5th daily Monster Tracker (20 hunts), any monster can be searched for, including subspecies, invaders, and HAT-exclusives.”
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Personally, I’d prefer to keep the rare monsters as rare spawns out in the field or in the HATs.
This will continue to promote exploration and meeting up with fellow hunters to chase down rare monsters while keeping the daily chore or clearing daily quests and building mainstream monster equipment more convenient with the current implementation of the monster tracker.
If every monster becomes “guaranteed”, even at low numbers, it’s not that interesting to go out hunt anymore.
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That’s a valid criticism, however there are only so many places one can feasibly visit in an hour, and speaking personally it has sometimes been 3-4 days since I have last sighted one of the rarer species. Even when I do see them, it is not always reasonable for me to go find them due to my own schedule, time of day, or weather. I think it has been about 5 days since the last time I was successfully able to track down and hunt an Azure Rathalos in the wild, instead of Hunt-A-Thons. Pink Rathian even longer, and Black Diablos not since late March. I don’t think the spawn rates should be adjusted, but I do wonder what to expect from them going forwards.
These monsters being permanent additions to the field is a wonderful change, and one that I have been a proponent of ever since December on the old forums. The caveat that comes with it, is that we will not necessarily see frequent boosted spawn rate events for them anymore, as newer subspecies like Coral Pukei-Pukei take the spotlight. Niantic has voiced concerns over the sustainability of spawn pools already (this was mentioned in an interview before The Vernal Invader, when asked if any of the new monsters added would be getting the Barioth treatment). By adding the entire monster roster to the tracker, instead of just the common species, this then relieves Niantic of needing to micromanage spawn rates, which would never be enough to truly satisfy everyone.
HAT-exclusive monsters on the tracker are honestly more important than subspecies. Because it is not very easy to add a gathering location, urban players have a significant advantage on finding Zinogre compared to rural players. This has been made even worse since the multiplayer update actually, since most 5-6 zinogres are now a guaranteed win no matter what rank the hunter is. While urban players struggled to find a group before, the challenge for rural players is finding a spawn in the first place, and the multiplayer update did nothing to mitigate this.
An alternative approach to the difficulty of completing a “rare monster” track might look something like this: In order to track a Pink Rathian, 3 green Rathians must be hunted. This should somewhat mitigate your concern by still forcing the player to go out and hunt specific monsters, instead of generating rare monster spawns with whatever RNG throws their way.
3 Likes
I understand your concerns too.
I think such games are never meant to be a really feasible game for rural players, especially when things like gathering points are based on player activity, and higher population density areas usually has the upperhand in this kind of games. That’s why I hesitate to comment much on issues around this topic since that inequality can never be equalised. But we can certainly try, creatively.
I started MHWorld recently, and I thought that the Scouty Fly thing was a beautiful touch to Monster Hunter.
Perhaps an alternative to the “n X = 1 Y” suggestion is to hunt monsters in a habitat where the target rare monster will spawn at. This makes sense, since it’s kinda… “strange” to be able to track down any kind of monster regardless of habitat type, which is very unlike World. I thought this would tie in with the lore and give exploration some meaning rather than simply just, as you said, “generating rare monster spawns with whatever RNG throws their way”.
This way, the effort to use the tracker for getting rare monsters should still commensurate with the effort needed to find a rare monster on the field (by the way, I rarely see those subspecies too, even in the city area since they’re not directly tied to population density), so if a hunter wants to go all out, they have both tracks to pursue (twice the effort), or they can fall back on the more reliable Monster Tracker method which requires them to do some “habitat investigation” work to get the rare monster.
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Imo having a limit of 1 rare species per day (can be implemented into the existing one or tracked separately) would be a golden solution for this. Rare/elder adjacent species gear is meta most of the time (azure rath weapons being the olny notable exemption from this rule) but hunting one daily (provided one is actually able to kill it) won’t magically make gearing process the easiest thing ever. You would still need multiple days to get whatever you want, the olny difference would be the consistency of attaining materials for said stuff
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I just thought of another possible solution: track monsters related to the rare monsters so that there’s a low % chance of a tracked monster being the rare monster, with the chance increasing proportionately as the player tracks more monsters until the 5th monster, which should have the highest chance to become the rare monster (subjectively, not objectively).
For example,
If player wants to track down Pink Rathians, they simply have to track down Rathians. Nothing else changes: hunt N monsters to progress the tracker until the target monster is tracked and available for hunt. However, there is a very low chance (shouldn’t be too different from actually locating a Pink Rathian in the field) for the tracked monster to become the rare version (Pink Rathian in this example. For example, first tracked Rathian has 1% chance to become a Pink Rathian, second tracked Rathian has a 2% chance to become Pink Rathian, with the final fifth tracked Rathian having the highest chance to become Pink Rathian compared to the first tracked Rathian.
This way, if RNG is in user’s favour, user can potentially get up to 5 Pink Rathians via the Monster Tracker. If it’s not in the user’s favour, then you simply get just the usual Rathians. This experience is not that different from field-hunting for Pink Rathians, assuming you have no help from the community on the sighting and reporting of Pink Rathians near you. We also need the main species’ materials anyway, so hunting Pink Rathians and Rathians simply make sense.
As for monsters like Deviljho, since it invades the weaker monsters, you have to track either Great Jagras, Kulu-Ya-Ku, or Pukei-Pukei in order for a chance of your Palico tracking a Deviljho (because it invaded the Jagras/Kulu/Pukei that your Palico has been tracking).
I think this would tie in soundly with the idea of “Monster Tracker”, just that instead of the hunter going around tracking monsters, we have our trusty Palico do it on our behalf while the hunter tends to other more urgent matters like taking down the large monsters blocking our Palico’s way.
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I would like that idea if it didn’t fell apart on the lore of specific monsters (lorewise). Take zinogre for instance. Best boi doesn’t stalk, he just picks fights with whatever and sticks to his den. And what about variants of monsters deemed as rare? How would we, say, 4 years from now track down savage jho or Stygian zinogre?
Don’t get me wrong. I like your idea on paper. But purists are going to flood this forum the instant their favourite polygon model gets misrepresented
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It doesn’t matter what happens later, because we’re talking about what’s happening now.
4 years later, the game would be unrecognisable to the us now, and things would have changed and evolved along the way anyway. That’s how change works. It happens as it needs.
We shouldn’t look at the “end game” of what other games have and then push those designs onto a new game that just started 8 months ago. We should be looking at the designs that fit a game that is 8 months old.
Otherwise we’ll never get anything done.
Fair point. Still, I would lean more towards a secondary tracker for rare species that you can fill once daily. Once it’s done, you have to wait till reset for a new one. Rare tracker would include rare species, huntathon and invasion exclusives, monsters rotated out due to seasonal change and however Niantic want to tackle elders
My reasoning is simple. Having something to fill in makes you feel accomplished when done. Simple psychiatry in work. Meanwhile having a random chance to get said something would make you miserable when not attained. Because machine is mad at me today or however you want to call bad luck
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See the edit to my original suggestion 
Also, I agree with you that the tracker shouldn’t include randomness.
3 Likes
Ah. Didn’t notice the edit. Ye. Great minds think alike