現状/Current Status
Currently, there are no in-game benefits when hunting with friends. The only in-game benefits are to cheer each other and gift consumables to each other, but one is time-limited while the other is not economic.
提案/Suggestion
It will be nice if there are some kind of bonus when you participate in a hunt with hunters who are in your friend list.
While it may sound similar to the existing Cheer system, I want to distinguish this suggestion from the Cheer system because it’s not about the Cheer system and more about the hunt itself.
This idea was inspired by Cowabunga4611’s comment:
To make the bonuses more interesting, I think we can make it so that the bonuses applied depend on what weapons are being equipped by each person among the Friends in the group hunt.
For example,
- When a friend uses a weapon without any form of defensive capability (e.g. Great Sword, Long Sword, Switch Axe, Bow, Light Bowgun, Insect Glaive), everyone who is a friend of that friend will gain Attack Power, including that friend themselves.
- When a friend uses a weapon with defensive or supportive capability (e.g. Sword & Shield, Lance, Gunlance, Charge Blade, Heavy Bowgun, Hunting Horn), the friends gain Defense instead.
- If any of the weapons has elemental properties (e.g. Fire, Thunder, Ice, Dragon, Water), the friends additionally gain resistance to all elemental damage.
- If any of the weapons has status ailment properties (e.g. Paralysis, Sleep, Poison, Blast), give a one-time chance (chance is based on the number of friends with a status ailment weapon) to prevent that status ailment from afflicting each friend. The protective effect expires when the protection has been triggered. Each friend gets exactly 1 chance to be protected.
Assume the following scenario:
- There are four hunters, A, B, C, and D.
- Hunters A, B, and C are friends with each other.
- Hunters B, C, and D are friends with each other.
- Therefore, Hunters A and D are not friends with each other.
- Assume that the hunters brought the following weapons to fight a large monster:
- Hunter A: Silver Rathalos Sword & Shield
- Hunter B: Pukei-Pukei Bow
- Hunter C: Magnamalos Gunlance
- Hunter D: Volvidon Gunlance
- Hunter A will get 1 boost to Attack Power (Pukei Bow), 2 boosts to Defense (Silver Rathalos Sword & Shield and Magnamalos Gunlance), 1 boost to elemental damage reduction, and 2 boosts to status ailment negation chance.
- Hunters B and C will get all that Hunter A gets, and an additional boost to Defense and to status ailment negation chance from Hunter D’s Volvidon Gunlance.
- Hunter D will get whatever Hunters B and C get but 1 less Defense boost and does not get the elemental damage reduction as Hunter D is not friends with Hunter A.
- During the hunt, if the monster released a paralytic cloud attack that hits all 4 hunters, Hunters B, C, and D will have a 3 boosts’ worth of chance to negate the paralysis effect of the paralytic cloud attack while Hunter A will only get 2 boosts’ worth of status ailment negation chance.
- If the status ailment negation protection triggered for Hunter B, the protection will expire and Hunter B will no longer be protected from any further status ailment attacks for the rest of the hunt. The status ailment negation protection did not trigger for Hunters A, C, and D, so the protective effect remains for Hunters A, C, and D. If the monster later uses a poison cloud attack that hits all hunters, Hunter B will not have any chances to negate the poison status while Hunters A, C, and D will roll for their respective chances to negate the poison cloud attack’s status ailment.
Here’s a table to better illustrate the bonuses for each hunter:
| Hunter & Equipment | Attack Power Boosts | Defense Boosts | Elemental Damage Reduction Boosts | Status Ailment Negation Chance Boosts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hunter A (Silver Rathalos Sword & Shield). Friends with Hunter B and C. | 1 (B) | 2 (A, C) | 1 (A) | 2 (B, C) |
| Hunter B (Pukei-Pukei Bow). Friends with Hunters A, B, C, and D. | 1 (B) | 3 (A, C, D) | 1 (A) | 3 (B, C, D) |
| Hunter C (Magnamalos Gunlance). Friends with Hunters A, B, C, and D. | 1 (B) | 3 (A, C, D) | 1 (A) | 3 (B, C, D) |
| Hunter D (Volvidon Gunlance). Friends with Hunter B and C. | 1 (B) | 2 (C, D) | 0 | 3 (B, C, D) |
The bonuses will not be game-breaking. They are not meant to replace any existing equipment skills and serve to only provide an additional benefit for hunting with friends, similar to how the Cheer system is providing a marginal boost to HP amount. The bonuses shall not be enough to make it possible to drop a skill level in favour of hunting with specific equipment among the friends. For example, if a player really wishes to have very high defense, they would still need to consider skills like Defense Boost, Shared Defense, and Divine Blessing for maximum protection and cannot hope to gain enough Defense from playing with friends to replace 1 level of any of the above skills. I’ll leave it to the developers to decide how much these bonuses shall be. I’m thinking it should be similar to the Cheer system (in very small values per friend). Perhaps a maximum total of +24 Attack Power, +12 Defense, 4% elemental damage reduction (for the respective elements, not across all elemental damage types), and 10% one-time status ailment negation chance (similarly, for the respective status ailments, not across all status ailments), or a mix/combination of any of the bonuses, depending on the weapons equipped by the effective friends in the group hunt.
If we use the above hypothetical numbers, then everyone in the hunt would get +6 Attack Power, Hunters A and D will get +6 Defense while Hunters B and C will get +9 Defense, Hunters A, B, and C will get 1% elemental damage reduction, and Hunters B, C, and D will get 7.5% chance to negate status ailment one time while Hunter A will only get 5%.
The effects last for the hunt only and does not exist outside of the hunt.
I believe that this would be helpful for new players starting the game as having friends to play with would help boost their offensive and defensive capability as even a low bonus value would be significant at the beginning of the game. For the established players, the bonus values would still provide some means to further improve their hunt performance and offer a little protection against “accidents” when hunting in a group due to the potential chaos that comes naturally with group hunts.
In MHWilds, it is possible to execute a power clash to prevent a monster from charging into a party member and therefore save the party member, but since we do not have such mechanisms here in MHNow, I thought having such group hunt bonuses when playing with friends would help replicate a part of the teamwork spirit in Monster Hunter.