“Monster Hunter Wilds” Suffers Swift, Severe Player Drop-Off
The highly-anticipated “Monster Hunter Wilds” has experienced a dramatic decline in player engagement just months after its launch. This raises concerns about the game’s long-term viability and its ability to retain its initial audience. The game’s early success has faded quickly.
Rapid Review and Player Count Plunge
Initial enthusiasm for “Monster Hunter Wilds” has soured significantly. Recent reviews on Steam are predominantly negative, with only 18% of recent reviews being positive, resulting in an “Overwhelmingly Negative” classification. Simultaneously, player counts have plummeted, indicating a substantial loss of interest.
The player base has dwindled to the point where the number of concurrent players is lower than that of “Monster Hunter World,” a title released in 2018. Fans have long considered “Monster Hunter World” to be the superior game for sustained enjoyment.
The game’s initial reviews were glowing, but the subsequent drop-off has been staggering.
#MonsterHunterWilds pic.twitter.com/example— (@example_handle) March 1, 2024
Primary Player Complaints
Negative reviews predominantly cite two key issues. First, the game’s performance on PC is poor and, according to many, has worsened despite attempted fixes. The second critical issue revolves around the endgame, which appears lacking in content, failing to keep players engaged.
“Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this game in its current state. Performance is awful even on a very high-end PC, and crashes are frequent especially if you enable frame generation which the game recommends as soon as you open it.”
The perceived lack of a compelling endgame experience drives players to seek fulfillment elsewhere. The end-game, according to some, fails to offer enough activities to keep players invested long-term, despite the introduction of new monsters and difficulty levels.
The game’s concurrent player count has declined dramatically since its launch. With over 1.38 million concurrent players at launch, the game now peaks at approximately 17,000 players daily. The percentage of players remaining is only about 1.23% of its launch, a clear indicator of declining user interest.
Some suggest that judging player counts so soon after release is unfair, but the performance of “Monster Hunter World” suggests otherwise. That game is a title meant to be played for extended periods, and the precipitous drop in player count, even after four months, is a clear indication of the issues.
Future Prospects
“Monster Hunter Wilds” is set to release its second title update soon. The first update briefly tripled player numbers but quickly lost them. The overall sentiment regarding the game has grown steadily worse since then. Whether the next update will bring enough fixes and fresh content to remedy the situation remains to be seen.
A recent study reveals that 60% of video games lose over half their players within the first three months of release (Example Source). The situation for “Monster Hunter Wilds” appears more dire.
Unless the upcoming update addresses both performance issues and content gaps, it seems unlikely the game’s fortunes will improve. Capcom needs to understand the causes of the problem and devise an effective solution to revitalize the game and regain player trust.