Capcom Says Monster Hunter World Will Not Have Loot Boxes
Great news for Monster Hunter World fans. You won’t be seeing loot boxes in the game anytime soon, or any time at all for that matter. In an interview with Gamespot earlier this week, the developers said that randomized item rewards are already part of Monster Hunter World's core gameplay and that adding loot boxes just wouldn’t work even if they wanted to add them.
“You've already kind of got loot as a core gameplay aspect without having to shove a microtransaction version of it in," said series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto. “Our focus is on wanting to get people to play our action game and feel the kind of satisfaction that comes with the achievement you get with completing a hunt and getting rewards. We want people to have the experience that we've made for them rather than the option to skip the experience.”
Monster Hunter World Game director Yuuya Tokuda feels the same way. “I wouldn't see a paid loot box or paid system for getting random items as fitting Monster Hunter because it isn't a game where the strength of the items is the key aspect of how you proceed,” said Tokuda. “The idea is that the time you spend hunting and the action part of the game is how you brush up on your skills. And then of course you get rewards of better items; but by skipping out on the part where you get better and hunt--if you're simply getting more items--I don't think that'll be a very satisfying experience for players because it wouldn't even necessarily make it that much more of a time saver if you haven't got the skill to use the items you've gotten.”
“I think the games that successfully do loot box systems are designed around them completely from the outside and they're a core part of the gameplay loot,” explains Game Director Kaname Fujioka. “Whereas as our loop, it's more based on the gameplay action itself, then gathering items, then using that to create better gear, and then using that to go and do more action gameplay. We would have to fundamentally rethink our gameplay loop. When you're including loot boxes you have to make them desirable to players and make them want to have them by introducing them in basic gameplay. And then that leads to further opportunities for purchasing to save time or get cooler items. And with our gameplay, we can't just put them in there and have it work. We'd have to have a substantial re-think, which is not something we're particularly planning to do at this time.”
Monster Hunter World will be launching in beta for PS4 PlayStation Plus subscribers in December and will officially launch for both PS4 and Xbox One on January 2016. A PC release is planned for sometime in 2018. In the meantime, you can check out the latest trailer right after the jump.
