In 2017 microtransaction and loot boxes made a lot of headlines, especially for EA. Players were really angry with the concept and wanted to change it somehow. Monster Hunter: World producer Ryozo Tsujimoto spoke with Trusted Reviews, and shockingly said microtransactions don’t make any sense for Capcom’s game, as it could cause friction among players and disrupt or dilute the core monster slaying experience.
This is a co-op game and you’re going out in up to four-people parties. The idea is that there’s a harmony in the four players going out and you’re going to get on well together. If you feel someone hasn’t earned what they’ve got or they’ve got a better weapon just because they paid for it and you worked for yours, that creates frictio.
Capcom has no interest in making money from its customer rather making the game more competitive. The producer went on talking about making the game skill based rather than money.
“Even in a co-op game where it’s not pay-to-win, because we’re all on the same team, it’s like you didn’t earn that or you’ve got it and don’t know how to use it. We don’t want that for Monster Hunter. There are absolutely no plans, it’s not in the game where you can get your random crate or random loot box and get a great item or great weapon. None of the stuff that affects the gameplay is even paid for; it’s all cosmetic, just stuff that’s a bit of fun.”
We want to make sure nobody is under the impression that, because it looks like the kind of game where you might have loot boxes, they definitely aren’t in there. We want people to just enjoy our great gameplay loop of achievement satisfaction where there are tough challenges, but learning how to play the game and getting better at it, you’ll be able to overcome those challenges.” This is great to hear that Capcom is focusing on the gameplay and the challenge, rather than on how best to monetize their game.
Tsujimoto had some thoughts where he explained how players spend a lot of hours and when they are stuck they just buy improved weapons. He wants players to enjoy failure and put some real effort like a true gamer would in Monster Hunter: World.
Even when you get to a certain wall and you’re like ‘OK, I’m 10 hours in, I suddenly have a monster I can’t beat’, it’s not about ‘well I’ll just throw a bit of money in and I’ll get better gear to do it. What we want you to do is go back to your house and be like ‘well, I’ve been using the great sword, maybe I need to use the dual blades for this monster.
“We want you to go in and, through gameplay, find out what’s causing you to hit this hurdle and figure it out. Whenever you get over that hurdle by yourself, it’s such a great feeling, why would we let you skip that just to make a bit of extra money? It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way we would interrupt that flow.
Monster Hunter: World beta will be releasing on January 26 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
