I see nothing shocking or unexpected. Do you?

This should be obvious to everyone with minimal observation skills, but here we are…

You may be wondering why games that come out these days are shit more often than not. They are plagued by bugs, have crap performance, especially on PC, but in general for the last few years it looks like things are moving backwards, or stalling if you want to be more optimist. But all of this has actually a very SIMPLE motivation. It’s one of those rare cases where it’s possible to generalize without getting lost in the complexity of the world.

A few years ago I followed on twitter the profile of a someone who, at that time, I think was involved on low level code for some emulator. There’s few people that usually engage with that type of very technical work that requires such a wizardry that you can’t simply teach yourself. You need to build competence over a bedrock of native talent. Native talent that is VERY rare. That woman was eventually scouted and then plucked by Nvidia, and very quickly rose through the ranks. Until she made into inner cabal itself in record time. You know, imagine being a teacher, having this pupil of yours who seems very talented. So you encourage her, you provoke her, and guide her study. It would be such a satisfaction and marvel to see this kind of flower bud grow so quickly and become majestic. That’s precisely what happened. She knew just the very basics, but they threw her problems, gave her some nudges into the right directions, and saw her mastering concepts and finding new solutions at record speed. Until she was able to stare her masters at eye level.

It’s not important to be precise, and I only know this story by putting together the scarce pieces of twitter messages, but she wrote how those who engage with low level, drivers code, the “black box” that software engineers within game development NEVER touch, are like a hundred people in the world, total. If you put them of a plane, and were that plane to blow up, you’d get a VERY serious problem, because there would be no one left in the world being able to do that type of work. And no one to teach it. Because, and this was her part, she wrote how the complex aspect of this whole thing is that these people that work at that level have to make very tricky choices. Their time is valuable, they can either work to fix a problem, or spend their time helping someone else who may eventually one day be able to do the same job. They never know if the time spent to “train” new talent is going to be worth it. Because these type of people also burn out quickly, and they don’t suffer the blackmailing of “losing their job.” They are too good to care, they have that type of talent where money involved is not a factor anymore. She even mentioned they had to sign extremely strict NDAs, to protect the closely guarded industry secrets, yet the pool of people working on that stuff is so minuscule that they ALL know each other, they move from Nvidia to AMD, then back to Nvidia, pretending to wear different man-suits. They all know each others “secrets” to the point that the NDAs are just a game of let’s pretend… A joke. It’s the top level execs that force them signing those contracts who don’t know shit about anything, but they all know those secrets among themselves. There are no secrets, and if there were, they would need to be exposed just so that the job could get done.

So how this story ended? She got bored and permanently quit. For her learning was the fun, and eventually the problems grew stale. I think she picked up chemistry after that.

All this to say that these type of talented engineers not only and fundamental, but they are also a SCARCE COMMODITY. PC games optimization hasn’t been shit just in the last few years, it has been declining for a very long time, roughly with the rising commercial importance of consoles. The reason behind this is very simple: the best engineers are allocated where the most money is. PC was a driving force originally, up to the first Doom and Quake. After that consoles took over, and that’s where the best engineers went. PC games technical competence started nosediving simply because resources were allocated elsewhere. Only in the last years we’ve seen things being moved BACK to the PC side. Yet, more recently things suck. They got worse both on the PC and consoles side.

But you can observe the same pattern in different areas, for example American comics. You can open now an issue by Marvel or DC, and on average they have really BAD ART (and worse stories, but the problem of the stories has a different nature). It’s another simple consequence of resource allocation. Comics aren’t “big” anymore, they don’t attract money and they don’t attract talent. If a kid in the 90s picked up an issue drawn by McFarlane or Jim Lee, that kid would dream about becoming a comics artist one day. It was a big deal. But right now the bubble’s burst, comics artists are marginal. Kids still love and pursue art, but they’d rather work for Hollywood, on the big screen, or to make games. The hard, regular work required for a monthly comics issue is more an horror than a dream, these days.

Then why is the technical quality of games nosediving these days? Well, because of AI. Not because of what AI DOES. It’s not because AI is replacing jobs, and you see all the layoffs in the game industry and think it’s because of AI taking over. Nope, that’s all bullshit, but AI is indeed the main reason.

The truth is that, whether you believe AI is the future or just another hype bubble, it’s sucking both money and resources like a bottomless black hole.

The best engineers now work on AI, no matter the “area” they were trained on. They all get repurposed to work on AI at various levels. It’s all software, after all. If pre-Covid the Game Industry was growing exponentially, becoming the apex of the entertainment world that could only grow from that point onward, and so drew all kind of investor money from the most clueless rich people in the world, the AI craze took over signaling “THIS IS IMPORTANT”, and therefore all money was redirected there.

Go figure. People sometimes wander how it’s possible that we “lost the technology” to land on the moon. It’s the fuel of all sort of silly conspiracies. But the truth is of course about the money. The money is the only reason why we got to the moon so fast, only for not being able to anymore. Because it had a symbolic and practical function at that time, and now pretty much none. The money simply isn’t there.

It shouldn’t be surprising at all if now Nvidia’s having all sort of problems. They had a monopolistic role for years, cemented already by a dominating role in the PREVIOUS years. That kind of power and control you’d expect only to progress. So why are things turning into utter shit? Not just the quality of hardware, with the 5xxx series offering close to zero performance upgrades despite costs skyrocketing. But also something so straightforward as driver stability. How can this happen, how can things get worse?

Well, it’s again because those engineers are a scarce commodity. These days Nvidia doesn’t give a shit at what was its core business. All those engineers work on AI now. No matter their specialized training, even the janitor who cleaned the floor now works on AI. And you can’t expect AMD to be your savior, because they ALL move in the same direction.

This is where it all turns into absolute schizophrenia. Because those engineers, and that talent being so fundamental to the modern world, we treat them like shit. Trump’s warfare against education and science surely’s going to help nurturing that necessary talent, right? Only that a statistically significant portion of that rare mathematical wizardry happens to be those slightly autistic, generally neurodivergent, often “trans” that you keep fighting against as outcasts. Alienating that talent pool that is fundamental to sustain the modern world (obviously, trans, autistic or whatever, you don’t necessarily develop some rare useful talent, it just happens to be a relevant side effect). It reminds me of Eden of the East. What would happen if someone rounded up and game a meaningful sense of direction to that mass of outcasts, rather then undermining and fighting them as if they were garbage to get rid of?

These are your kids that you’re slaughtering.

Nintendo spent the last year destroying the lives of technically-proficient people working on emulators. You know, as a basis to learn those things at low level, solve problems and develop that kind of knowledge that is actually priceless. Those kids that are supposed to MAKE YOU MONEY, but that instead you want to destroy. Nintendo, you should lick the sole of their feet, and worship them as GODS, just because they CARE about your shitty games, to try make the best of them, preserve their art rather than the filth of their commercial value. They care and love, and because they care and love you destroy them. Your future talent.

But of course you don’t want good engineers. You want obedient slaves. Nintendo is Evil Incarnate. The more cutesy and colorful their characters, the darker their hearts.

If there’s a lesson to learn from all this is that, no, there’s no incoming revolution. Only the idiots rise to the top, like long dead, bloated bodies.

AI is a wonderful extension to human stupidity. If AI destroys the world it’s not because it became some evil mastermind, but because one stupid man with too much money and power decided to rely on the stupid tool. AI can indeed destroy lives, because it empowers stupid people to delegate their own stupidity to dumb tools.

And then claim no responsibility. A(in’t)I (who) did it.

Pretty much.

I’m more ambiguous than most about what is going specifically right now, because everyone opposing Trump and Musk is way, way, WAY too hasty picking up any tiny victory or proof of being “right.”

Too easy, too fast, pointing at this defeat.

The other meaningful part is summarized and explained here (the embedded video).

People who know more than me about economic theory are aware that a great depression can also be conductive to a great rebound. The volatility of a market is essentially NEVER a proof, of anything. It’s just knee-jerk reaction that you can never trust. Whether it confirms and flatters your beliefs, or pushes back.

Tesla stock going down? Great news. But great news that is utterly worthless if it’s just a short term anomaly. You don’t know what’s past the corner. A cheer for victory BECOMES defeat. Do we really trust that the pressure on Tesla is going to be persistent? Because if it’s not it’s all a pure waste of time and, for us, awful gloating that will be punished, AGAIN.

Once again we give the enemy weapons that will then be used against us.

What if tariffs are removed (or delayed) just a few days later? You think it’s one Trump defeat, but in truth it’s just another SUCCESSFUL TROLLING. What we are is dancing monkeys to HIS TUNE, and for his amusement. The fact that he can stop the tune at any point, to give the world some respite, only reinforces his power and control. It’s not a crack into that power, it’s the basis for more.

All protests and exhibitions of outrage is precisely what Trump expects and laughs at. His funny dancing monkeys. The only way to fight it is being disruptive to expectations. Everything that I’m observing as consequence of tariffs isn’t Trump losing control and losing support, it’s instead watch a perfectly choreographed monkey dance.

(It’s also quite funny observing, after Switch 2 announce, everyone blaming tariffs for the higher costs. Again dancing monkeys to the tune, of big corporations instead. The price announce comes BEFORE tariffs. If anything tariffs WILL PUSH THE PRICE UP. All the tariffs you see, RIGHT NOW, are FEELS and projections. You have YET to see tariffs HAPPEN. Nothing that is happening right now is BECAUSE of tariffs. We are only fretting at announces. Which is why it’s all so stupid, nothing is actually happening, only the blackmailing has started. Big corporations will indeed use the inflation and higher costs as the motivation to cause inflation and higher costs. It’s precisely how they enslave a population. Not through money, but through beliefs. The belief that they have no choice other than to FUCK YOU.)

EDIT: I wonder why I bother writing, it’s so fucking predictable. The world is just a predictable trainwreck.

Well, I’m sorry. Brain rot spread too fast. Your brain and soul have already been murdered by it. It’s too late now.

You shall not be remembered.

One of the first important things you study in language theory is that language is universally arbitrary. This means that the true, correct meaning of a word isn’t “out there.” You don’t find it out. You decide it, instead.

Of course this is only true as far as you also understand that modern languages are very well “synchronically codified”, there are vocabularies after all. But historically language is always in flux, always changing and adapting. Its rule isn’t about being “truthful”, but being useful (cue Wallace’s “The Broom of the System” and its many wordplays). Simply put, language is an agreement among a group of people. There is no fundamental correctness about the meaning or usage of a word, just what seems more useful and appropriate for the time, and reaching enough people agreeing on some common ground.

All this to say that what I’m going to do here is kind of pointless. I can PROVE that the use of “Quality of Life” is wrong, but as long I’m in the minority trying being pedantic about correctness, the other party will win (has already won). Yet, the current trend of the misuse of the word has pragmatic consequences: it’s blurring the meaning so much that the word itself is now misleading and pointless in practice. I’m not arguing about correctness, but that the continued misuse is having consequences that are pragmatically bad, based on instincts that are wrong.

“Quality of Life” is generally used, in game design, to define some system that has been simplified or streamlined, because, intuitively, it improves directly the quality of the experience. But while chasing this bland and widespread use, we’re actually losing the usefulness of the term. Because “QoL” in its true meaning isn’t vague at all, and can be defined very specifically.

“QoL” defines specifically those changes that DO NOT DIRECTLY AFFECT GAMEPLAY. That’s the proper definition. If it touches gameplay then it can’t be “QoL”, it’s instead a fundamental rule change that has to be consciously driven. Because, and here we come to the center of the argument, the usefulness of the concept lies in defining changes that are UNIVERSALLY positive. No one comes in and argues that some “QoL” change was “wrong.” It’s beyond question. You can improve QoL, but you cannot argue any before/after. It’s an useful concept because it defines those subset of changes that are always positive without any need for scrutiny.

So, for example, if a game requires some frequent command, that happens to be several menus deep, and then it gets changed so that there’s a shortcut to it, immediately available, THAT’S QoL! Because no one is going to say that the previous method of going through several menus to get to that option was “better.” And this because to qualify as QoL it has to have no impact on actual gameplay.

Yet, in many games the use of UI is itself “gameplay.” So, say in Monster Hunter, there’s a specific combos that is built out of a sequence of commands, and you decide instead to trigger it, and streamline it, to the press of a single button triggering the whole thing… that’s NOT QoL. Because it directly affects gameplay. It is not QoL, SPECIFICALLY, because someone can argue that this isn’t an objective improvement, but may streamline and simplify the game too much, fundamentally changing the gameplay. Being not-QoL means it defines an area of game design that has to be consciously driven. Chosen. You make choices in game design, choices themselves driven by motivations. Being overall a system so complex that it cannot be simply mathematically solved, making it a form of art.

The usefulness of “Quality of Life” was in separating the ART of game design, and so the conscious, deliberate choices, from what was instead quality of life in the sense that no one would ever argue for WORSE quality of their own life. The INTUITIVE term itself was intended to define that specific line of distinction.

That we lost. Because everything now is Quality of Life, precisely when Life’s quality is becoming utter shit.

Part 1 – Part 2

As written in part 1, my original intent was simply get into Rise. Then in part 2 I looked into mods to tweak the game, but couldn’t find anything worthwhile, but got some interesting mods for World instead.

Now, I dug enough to bring much of the same to Rise as well. So here’s the update with some more specific instructions to deal with it all.

1 https://github.com/praydog/REFramework/releases (I don’t think there’s any point getting “nightlies” for this)
2 https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterrise/mods/848
3 my monster health x2 scaling
4 https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterrise/mods/1061
5 https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterrise/mods/1300
6 https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterrise/mods/3225
extra: https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterrise/mods/1140 (this one hides all monsters from the map, look the comments section on that page as you need to perform a little manual editing)

The first is the usual basis to load mods, just one “dinput8.dll” that you place in the game main directory. The second is another dll file going into “reframework\plugins”, again used to load the rest.

The third is MINE. Since I couldn’t find a proper health scaling, I’ve done it on my own. The health scaling linked in part 2, for World, had a x2.6 increase on all monsters. I’m not sure if that may be even excessive, so for ease of editing and to be a bit conservative, my own is a x2 buff applied uniformly to everything. I have no idea how this applies in multiplayer (it’s possible that all other values are dependent on the ones I’ve edited, so everything grown in proportion… maybe), this was done just to buff health pools in single player for my own use. Just one file “system_difficulty_rate_data.user.2” going inside “natives\STM\enemy\user_data”

In case you want to edit it yourself, you need the editor. Then just load the file. I had no idea what I was doing, so I simply doubled ALL the values within “VitalTableRateList” and I’ve briefly tested this in game and it seems to work. I’m quite sure only a portion of those tables are actively used, but I manually edited all those 512 entries just to be sure… I found a mod that I used as an example, but that one only edited the multiplayer scaling, rather than base values.

Fourth link is to a loader for custom quests, used in the fifth link, that is just a collection of very hard custom quests. Adding quests seems relatively harmless since it’s just more stuff that you can optionally do. It shouldn’t mess with any of the vanilla content, so I just decided to install everything. Tho the quest editing is interesting, as it seems a relatively simple and flexible system to use and do whatever you want. This page being quite useful to have an idea of how things work internally and the type of control you have.

The fifth, that I have not yet tested, removes scout flies effect from the game. The green glow same as the mod in World.

Beside that, there are a couple more additional mods that could be interesting. One is some AI tweaks for increased difficulty (beware that the page mentions some issues). And another is Follow Me mod that overhauls a bit the companions system so that you can sort of simulate multiplayer offline. You can basically bring more AI companions to a hunt and manually tweak both the damage they do AND the actual monster scaling. So this could work even as a direct replacement for my own edit and give you more control on how the scaling works. I’m not sure it’s a perfect solution though. One advantage of single player is to reduce the chaos of a fight. So using additional companions can be fun to mess with, but I prefer keeping the visual noise down. And I don’t know if you can tweak properly the scaling while also keeping the vanilla structure for companions. As I said, I haven’t tested this.

Just in case you want to browse internal files and extract solely what you want, or just need a vanilla backup to compare, you can use this. So for example to extract the one file I edited for monsters health pools, I loaded “re_chunk_000.pak.patch_001.pak” that I suppose is the patch to the main file, and so should have the most up to date data the game uses.

Part 1 – Part 3

I thought I was done writing about Monster Hunter. I started diverting the hype on Wilds to launch Rise+Sunbreak for the first time, and I thought it was it for me. That it was my way to satisfy the induced curiosity. But then a few videos on youtube lead me find out about Frontier and look into it, the lure of the harder gameplay, and that path ended up unearthing more and more. First the knowledge of the community effort to keep the game alive, and then the discovery of different “snapshots” that preserved the original progression from the damage being done by bad MMO practices…

The discussion of Civilization as a series, mixed in, wasn’t even planned. Now in retrospection I realize how fitting it is. Both games are the result of ongoing series that have their hardcore fans, but also got more popular over time. Both series have just released a new game recently, and both are being harshly criticized and judged as what looks like the WORST title in their respective series. The lowest point ever reached. Neither of them seems to be in a position that is recoverable. Issues run deeper than just a clunky engine and bugs. Some fundamental design principles have been broken. Both have gone through this as a very deliberate move: betray their “core” fans for the promise of mainstream. It’s all, once again, about money sucking the lifeblood out of everything that once had value, like a vampire. Until there’s nothing left and it’s time to move onto a new prey to destroy.

(Big companies are in pure pillage mode. A pattern that is repeating, this video explains it well)

On Monster Hunter side it looks like they won that bet, the game seems to have sold a lot. It’s quite unexpected for me, because we can argue forever about game design, but Wilds is also a technical disaster. Objectively so. The rendering system is one of the worst I’ve ever seen, made of badly dithered dust (this is obviously not standard, but it shows how the raw rendered is built). What’s happening to modern graphic engine seems like a disease (there’s reddit group and youtube channel about this). The game not only runs poorly but LOOKS bad. You can of course, as always, power through many problems by using superior hardware, but these days it’s not even something to brag about. No matter how popular it is, everyone playing it relentlessly complains about it. The game is just too bland and easy. Everyone is already chasing the chimera of the mythical update that will add interesting content and fix everything. I actually remember the release of World quite well (despite not having played it even for a minute). That game ALSO was plagued by technical issues, in some part even due to the layering of Denuvo along with others unnecessary forms of protection. But even the release of Iceborne had technical issues that lasted a long time. Eventually it improved significantly. The same happened on the design/gameplay side. World was not well received by the core community. At the time the “real” Monster Hunter was GU on the Switch, that was also just released. World lost a lot of the flavor that is part of classic MH. It was easier and the significant production effort done to upgrade monsters to a new generation “lost” some pieces along the way. Some of the love for the details and polish. But at the same time World continued to power through because it also introduced a lot, and had the inertia due to being the only game released on new hardware. Something that Rise didn’t even challenge, despite, in my opinion, Rise has the better engine overall (whereas World tried to punch above its level, and technical execution wasn’t good, Rise due to the Switch had a much more simpler and conservative engine, but also used it so much better. It was more solid overall.)

All this to say that World lost a lot, but also added a lot. A similar case for Rise, the game gets easier but it’s because combat is more expressive. To this day, no matter who you ask, World and Rise feel like parallel games despite being so different. They cannot compare to any of the previous games, but they do not really compare to each other. Combat is better on Rise, but World’s a better “game.” They continue to be relevant in different ways.

Wilds is not in the same position of World or Rise, NOR it’s in the same position of World at its release. It’s in a much WORSE spot overall, a place where it’s unlikely to ever recover. It will certainly improve, but it will never reach a point where it will become a “good” Monster Hunter. It will follow a similar trajectory of World, but I don’t think it will ever come close to the importance that World has gathered. Wilds is a breaking point.

Same for Civilization, but maybe even worse because Civ 6’s reception before 7 had been already lukewarm. It wasn’t simply divisive as in World’s case, Civ 6 wasn’t that good. And now Civ is way, WAY below even that point. I’ve now gone through some deep and detailed analysis, and it’s not a scenario you can recover from. As in Wilds case, things will massively improve, but for Civ 7 it’s not plausible to elevate the game back to a relevant position. The game’s completely broken.

None of this matters for me, outside of me being purely an external observer. The hype of Civ 7 drove me to Civ 5 (that I bought and never played many years ago), and the hype of Wilds drove me to Frontier, a dead game now brought back to life by the players who care. As my curiosity is pulled this way and that, I also dug deeper. It’s just something that is natural for me: I spend way, way more time gathering information about games than I do playing.

Back at the beginning, I thought it was enough for me, with Rise and then Frontier. Then Frontier and its internal different versions. But then I dug into my old save in MH3U. I still resent the controls on the New 2DS I have, so I decided to try how it feels on a emulator. At the same time, curiosity linked to Rise drove me, BEFORE EVEN STARTING ONE MISSION, to look if there were mods available that increased a bit the difficulty… I’m really not a great player, and despite everything I also don’t really spend many hours playing overall. Yet I love long, expansive games same as I love big, expansive books… while also being a very slow reader. I’m a very atypical player, I can spend hours tweaking options and mastering controls before even starting one mission. I usually probe the limits of the engine, to get a “feel” of what is or isn’t possible, before I am in the mindset of game progression. But because of this approach, I usually either play games at their hardest difficulty, or look for mods before even starting playing. I prefer difficulty ramping up from the very beginning, rather than a sharp curve at a later point.

I did not find anything worthwhile for Rise, sadly. But during that search I bumped into a couple World’s mods that diverted my attention to it. So we start from World.

– https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1982
– https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/3473
– https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/6438
– https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1960

As it happens with the great majority of mods for all games, most of them are either cheats, power-ups of various kinds like increased drops, or just purely cosmetic changes. Stupid skins ported from other games and other hideous stuff like that that completely breaks the art style of the original game. More rarely you find mods that engage directly in game design and try to reinterpret it, rebalance, or increase the difficulty.

The first link is just a “loader” for mods. It doesn’t do anything on its own. Just unpack in main game directory and it’s done. The second claims to be a “performance booster” but it’s just a minuscule change to skip a memory check. It’s quite harmless, but there’s no reason not to have it. The third is the nice one that told me Rise wasn’t enough, and that I really wanted to try this. It simply applies, by default, the health scaling of a full hunting party of four, to solo play. That means that ALL monsters (I’ve verified this) both small and large, will have their default health multiplied by 2.6. They don’t do more damage, they simply have much larger health pools.

In other games you’d have to be careful making this type of changes because you can make the game unplayable. But here in the majority of cases it’s you versus monster, 1 on 1. Doubling or tripling health means simply a protracted fight. This not only works in MH if you enjoy the fight itself, but it can give more emphasis to other systems that would be otherwise skipped. For example in The Witcher 3 you can apply all sort of oils and poisons to the weapons, but in practice you can completely ignore the whole system since you can destroy everything with a bit of effort. In games where the fight is not simply execution, but also is layered with strategy and preparation, a longer fight is enough to push those layers back into relevance. Difficulty in games is often needed to make gameplay more expressive. Because gameplay is ruled by path of least resistance (and speed) that often make things very repetitive and boring. You make players dislike the game because the most efficient path is the one that requires no effort.

It can be fine in a linear game that you start and complete in a few hours. Lack of difficulty makes it accessible. Short term good, great sales. But it collapses over time, which is a problem for a MH type of game. Wilds got big, a week later most people I know are already bored and done with it. But MH isn’t a “game”, it’s an hobby. These days everyone is trying to gaslight you. First you’re told that games like Baldur’s Gate 3 can’t be the norm. That it was a thing only happening once due to unique circumstances. Now they are telling you that games need to be short. Six to twenty hours max. People don’t have time to play, they want snappy experiences. So that you progressively give them more money, while receiving less and less. And yet, those games that not only SELL, but also stay relevant and that you remember fondly are the Baldur’s Gate 3, the Elden Rings. And the Monster Hunters. All games that come up to the challenge, rather than bowing so low that they make no dent on the ground.

The fourth link is instead to a mod that completely deletes the “scout flies.” Basically removes all that green glow and sparks that litter the screen at all times. They are very invasive. I’ve seen there are different mods with different presets trying to only tone down the effect, but I think removing that system entirely is better. As in older MH, you’re supposed to learn where the gathering spots are, learn your way around the map. There are better ways to guide players, this system removes way too much gameplay that should be enhanced, rather than suppressed.

I’ve also spotted a mod that changes monsters’ AI to be more aggressive and deadly. But I think that’s something to experiment at the end of the game as an added challenge, rather something to start with. Those four mods listed above form for me a “package” that looks compelling enough to have pulled my attention away from Rise.

(an important info: due to the structure of MH, none of these mods invalidates saved games. And since all of them amount to “add more files”, if you find some problem or a mission is too challenging, you can simply exit the game, rename the folder, relaunch, and you’re back in vanilla)

But as I mentioned I was also looking into my MH3U saves, then try how it works on a emulator. But not a 3DS emulator… The thing specific about 3U is underwater combat, which makes the portable controls even more of a problem. 3U wasn’t just a 3DS game, it also came out on the Wii-U which, as mentioned last time, emulated through CEMU, has been spared from Nintendo. There should be no reason to play the 3DS version in emulation. But then I realized I was wrong… leading me down another rabbit hole.

The first big issue is that both 3DS and Wii-U versions of 3U have had their difficulty NERFED for… western players. This is nothing new, for example Dragon Quest series is well known to have the western releases playing completely different from original Japanese. Especially the first two games, if you play the standard English versions you really wonder what the deal is. They are nothing special. They are simple, straightforward games. So you conclude they are nothing special because they are old. Nope. They are nothing special because they have been neutered of all flavor. When a very simple game runs on a certain economy and tight game loop, BALANCE IS EVERYTHING. And when you nerf that difficulty to the ground, you obtain a different game. You are not playing Dragon Quest. Simply.

It’s then not surprising, as this was a general trend, that when putting together the version to sell to western players they decided to “adapt” it by nerfing the difficulty. But what’s curious about this specific case is that when I tried the game a few years ago I knew nothing about all this, and yet I was able to spot that something was WRONG. It’s the very first thing you notice in the game. You make a character, start the game, and you’re given by default a basic set of all weapons available, so that you pick what you want to use from the beginning, along with a standard armor set. If you check the stats you notice that each of the six armor pieces have “1” defense value. A total of 6. But when you check the character’s stats you see the cumulative defense value starts from 50. So you have 50 if you have nothing equipped, and 56 with full armor. It makes no sense to have such an high baseline because it greatly diminishes the impact that armor has. This is even more glaring as you start upgrading the armor set. After 10 hours I killed a Jaggi, got to craft the very first “custom” chest piece and it gave a total of +10 armor.

If this type of design seems weird, it is because it IS weird. In the original game you start with ZERO defense. Having +50 not only majorly shifts the balance, but stays relevant through at least HALF the game. It’s insane. So I read about players who actually, even in emulation, chose to play the 3DS version over Wii-U, because there were patches to fix some of these issues. Another being the infamous “charm bug.” There are some high level items that you can equip that are randomly dropped. These drops get randomly rolled on 17 different tables, determining the set you can potentially obtain. The “bug” that happens in 3DS and Wii-U both, is that the table you’re on is randomly determined at game start, and then permanently stuck. As far as I know you cannot even manually edit a save game. The problem is that some of these charms are much better than others, and some of these tables again offer much better sets. The only solutions you have are either doing some very tricky time-RNG manipulation, to pick one of the tables that is more convenient, or simply restart the game multiple times until you land on a table that isn’t crap. But this requires a couple of hours into the game, to analyze the loot table you get in order to also guess the actual table number, and start over if you got a bad one…

We got no fix to this table problem, on the Wii-U, but at least we got a fix for the defense buff. Which was a bit of an ordeal because this patch only works on a EU version of the game. It won’t work on US version. Not only, but it only works on the updated version. So I had to find my way through…

– https://github.com/damysteryman/FunKiiUNETThingy/releases
– https://github.com/VitaSmith/cdecrypt/releases/tag/v4.8
– https://github.com/chantox1/MH3U-RPX-Patcher/releases

(to be complete you also need to download some event DLC quests that you copy over directly the save files, but I won’t link to that)

The first is a program that apparently lets you download updates that would be otherwise unavailable normally. The program will ask you for a “titlekeys.json”, I’m not going to point to these type of things, but you should be able to easily find one by simply searching on the internet. Once you load that file with the database, you will be able to look for a title, and then download just its update files. But then I realized the update for 3U-EU came in the form of a bunch of sparse files in a different format. So I figured out I needed to decrypt them. The second link points to that, a program that converted the update into a format I could use with the patch. And then the third link is the same one above, with the patch itself. Follow the instructions on github page and the program will prompt you to press capital “Y” two times to apply the two patches. It will then be very easy to verify if this worked or not, since you can just load a saved game and see if base defense is either zero or 50. There are two patches because this also optionally solves the “Debloated Attack” issue, which is another MH standard. In order to make appear certain weapons powerful, the damage value shown in game is usually “bloated.” The silly part is that this is purely cosmetic. That damage number is a LIE. The reason behind this choice is to buff certain weapons in the perception of the players. The number tells the truth when you compare different weapons of the same type, because it’s just a fixed multiplication, whereas it will be wrong when you compare different weapon types, because they get applied different values in order to “compensate.” Just a way telling you developers are trying to pander, rather than respect the player.

But here we are, in Wii-U 3U:

My brain is now at ease. I feel like I restored or reintroduced some kind of natural order in the world. Things are fine once again.

I thought I was done, but I was not. This 3U ordeal wasn’t closed. If in both 4 > 4U case and XX > GU case the “U” version is the one to play, because these branded as “U”, or “G” in original japanese are just massive expansions that enhance the game, the story with 3 was different. Moving up from MH2, the third was going to be a leap to entirely new hardware. MH2 came out on PS2 first, and PSP in its popular “Freedom Unite” version. Whereas MH3 was first intended for PS3, then redirected to the Wii to cut some costs. But it was massive in scope and ambition, a major engine upgrade that had to be worked from scratch. A major new entry for the series that led to MH3 being one with the smallest roster of monster by far, only 18 large monsters, compared to the 58 in Freedom Unite (but FU was also the final complete version of that line). When 3U came out in the west in the form of Wii-U game, it wasn’t a port or upgrade of the Wii version, it was a straight port of the 3DS version. If Tri-Wii had its own native art assets, textures on the Wii-U were UPSCALED from 3DS. But not only there were these widespread visual differences, gameplay itself was SIGNIFICANTLY altered, in many cases downgraded or cut. Tri has a different progression, monsters hit harder, day/night cycles were completely cut, mission structure was simplified, and more.

But that’s not the whole deal. The real big problem with Tri is that its upper half of the progression, the so called “High Rank” (this is Tri without the “G”, so there’s no Master/G rank), is EXCLUSIVE to the multiplayer hub. As the servers shut down, everyone lost access to those missions, whether or not a real console or emulation.

This video explains really well the true nature of MH Tri.

The difference is that now all of that is preserved. Even in this case, as it happened with Frontier, we have a working emulated server that restores all that missing content. Here too you can ideally host it locally for proper single player, but setting that up is a lot trickier. But you can always just patch the game and use the community server. You aren’t forced to multiplayer, you can always pick up a mission in the hub and set it as “solo.” The emulated server just restores the content.

– https://github.com/sepalani/MH3SP-patcher

That’s a link to the patch and instructions. It should be mostly straightforward at this point (only connect to the first server type, or it will fail). Also consider that Tri, contrary to 3U, didn’t have the defense buff mentioned above, so no need to solve that part. Btw, you may want to disable the very strong bloom effect in Dolphin emulator. Right click on the game listed > Properties > Patches tab > bloom off

EDIT: I wasn’t done. I found out there’s an “Ultimate Monster Hunter Tri” patch… Basically adds some harder custom quests to simulate a G rank, with faster monsters, and a few new weapons to craft with new textures.
Since this requires a few steps, and getting a file from “Monster Hunter Tri” discord, this time I’ll try to host the final version here to save one step, but in case someone complains I’ll delete it. This is the long, standard way. There’s a video showcasing the patch, in its description you find a link to a download. On discord someone made an additional patch to copy over, here’s the original description the file itself is pinned on #modding channel of the already mentioned discord and already included in the archive I’m going to provide:

– Ultimate Monster Hunter Tri

Instructions: right click on the listed game within Dolphin emulator > Start with Riivolution patches > Open Riivolution XML > select “MH3SP.xml” (this is the first patch mentioned above that you download from github, wherever you unpacked it) > you’re now back to the same screen with “Patch Server” “Enabled”, without closing it, again > Open Riivolution XML > select “RMHE08.xml” that you find inside the Riivolution directory of the file you just downloaded and unpacked. Notice there are two files, one is RMHE08, the other is RMHP08. The first is for US version, the second for EU, but in case you select the second one, the patch described on discord isn’t active. There’s a more elaborate way to update the patch to work even on EU version, but in that case it’s better if you look directly on discord > after that file is selected you can see that there are now more options. I left one highlighted, “Mode” “Default”, because here you can select different modes, what these modes are is explained in a text file you find inside “\Riivolution\codes” but essentially the “Default” mode mostly just adds the custom quests, while the “G mode” adds the custom increased monster speeds and weapons. “Tiny” mode instead is same as G, but also adds speed boost to small monsters as well (I may be wrong about this). Before you launch this, rather than repeating the process EVERY TIME, you instead press “Save as Preset” so that you can then use a direct shortcut. Remember to remove bloom as described above, and also remember that if you want to change the G mode, you have to redo this process.

Verifying whether it worked or not should be easy, since you can check the new splash screen:

Is this the end of the road? I never looked closely into MH1 & 2, I usually just draw the line at Frontier Unite. And about FU I thought it was just what it was. Just the very last and very best incarnation of that series. But of course I was wrong :) First because much of what happened with Tri, happened with Dos. In the transition from PS2 to portable, lots of the game actually changed. Dos/PS2 had seasons, that were completely cut from the portable version. But as I said, I drew the line there. Yet the matter of FU also wasn’t quite complete.

I learned about the existence of… Freedom Unite Complete. Another community project to restore some lost content.

The quirk about this one is that the patch isn’t even applied to Freedom Unite, it’s applied to the Japanese 2G, that is then patched to become Freedom Unite Complete. The reason behind this, as you can read from FAQs on that site, is that the Japanese version not being multilanguage offered more memory space to work with. You can read also on the site a detailed changelog, but the bigger feature is that all this was meant to restore a number of exclusive events and missions.

Gotta Patch ‘Em All.

Thankfully I’m done here (I think?). I messed enough with GU years ago (at the time of World’s release). I don’t think there’s much to say on 4U, it’s on 3DS and I bought it along with 3U. Having opened all these options, now priority for me is to continue Frontier on its F5 snapshot, and play a bit of Tri to get a feel of what’s different in its progression. If I ever exhaust it, I already have the patched, unnerfed 3U Wii-U version. Knowing myself, I’ll probably postpone indefinitely both World and Rise.

A last thing, I think I like much better unfiltered textures. You could make a case about shadows, since they look better when smoothed, but overall the filtering never looks as good…

Remember that, as a working generalization, developers don’t care about what they do. Players do. You could say that without all of that there wouldn’t be anything for the community to take care and patch. But imagine if something like Monster Hunter was developed as an open source project. Imagine if source code was released after a number of years. We live in this shitty world so that we can imagine a better one.

P.S.
Oh no. Someone has mentioned Phantasy Star Online 2 (the original, not the bad, recent spin-off). Please, I don’t want to go down another giant rabbit hole.

I wanted to write an addendum to Monster Hunter endless post, but here we are instead.

I was commenting on bluesky how it seems increasingly strange that GOP itself doesn’t react to some of the most unhinged things going on. That they are unbelievably servile. But I don’t think it’s a valid point, and it can actually indicate how this whole way of interpretation is completely wrong.

So I’m offering the way I’m reading it all…

As it happened with Musk Nazi gesture, and as I wrote at that time, there was a main purpose that I guess now is also widely shared: it was meant to troll. But there’s also a second purpose, and it was to compact ranks internally. To regroup on their side. To send an internal signal, distribute an “official” interpretation. To “seed it” and see how it is received. Because by observing the reaction you would immediately know who’s a “traitor.” Who can potentially oppose your power later.

The overall strategy we’ve all seen for the past month+ is actually a very, very old strategy: a purge. There’s a change in the government, someone new takes control and proceeds to purge all positions of power in order to secure that power. In medieval times this would have been simply violent, we’ve seen it exemplified in Games of Thrones and similar. Musk’s “what did you do last week” letter, in his words wasn’t meant to scrutinize, but to simply disguise an attempt to check if the person on the other side was even active enough to read and answer a mail. To find some literal dead ends. But there was another hidden purpose, the same that applied to the internal letter at the time of twitter: to root out POTENTIAL internal dissent. Because you can be sure that there are people in the government that don’t like this thuggish way of doing things and so wouldn’t answer the mail on principle, because they don’t want to bow that low to that arrogance.

That’s precisely the intent: whoever DOESN’T ANSWER the mail is a potential traitor. That mail is a simple test. A deliberate provocation to observe the reaction. Carefully observing who’s out of the line.

It’s just a purge, and it keeps going until Musk completes his idea of “tabula rasa.” They are trying to establish a very, very hard “core” that they can trust. That will be faithful to the regime, no matter what. They are planning “hard times”, and so preparing in order to sustain what is going to happen.

Everything that happened, from that point onward, is to go deep the rabbit hole. Perform the most radical purge possible.

They aren’t fighting Democrats. As I said, it’s a two-pronged strategy, one one side they TAUNT AND TROLL the Democrats, garnering approval from their base, and from the other side they keep PURGING THEIR OWN SIDE. The main fight is internal. The main purge is within the GOP. They are looking for FUTURE traitors in order to neutralize them long before they even THINK of potentially being critical of how things are being run.

It’s all a test. They are carefully observing if someone dares complain, and then neutralize. That’s why it’s an unhinged escalation that keeps going on and on. It gets more absurd in order to progressively tighten the noose.

The GOP is being destroyed, because that’s precisely how they build the regime they want. We’ve seen this already. There’s nothing new about it.

Same old moldy playbook.