@feeplemurphy4618yea I love expert mode but despise master mode, anytime I want a vanilla challenge I go play ftw expert mode, not master because it has changes beyond just pure stats
@feeplemurphy4618 I didn't mention modded because that's its own beast but yea my go to is normally just Eternity mode, would much rather have something that changes the AI of all bosses rather the bloated stats that is master mode
If you want examples of "artificial difficulty," look no further than Forza Horizon. Instead of coding the braindead AIs to actually drive properly in higher difficulties, they just get a speed boost. Skill doesn't matter if the roads are straight and everyone else gets double your horsepower
I got well adjusted to this once I got into playing the limited time multiplayer driving events where it places you against a team of the most difficult AI. Anyone not in first or second watches all the AI just rubber band to catch up to the person on first, making it so they can’t even ride their draft to attempt to catch up. In fact, the game was so bad, it was more beneficial for the people in last to flat out leave, as then the AI would get less points due to technically not being in front of anyone. Complete garbage game for multiplayer, good casually.
I recently played one (I think 4) and despite easily get first place in most street races I struggled to win the off road races because despite having one of the best off road vehicles the other would simply fly past me unless I could find a super shortcut.
In Hotshot Racing even in normal difficulty the way the AI becomes a challenge is by mercilessly ramming you so you lose control and then you time out or leave you way behind, racing games are notoriously bad because the AI is not programmed to act as if their characters have to win, only to make you lose.
As far as I'm aware, every single racing game since the 90s has "rubber banding" where the back of the pack gets a boost to keep up. Some give you an option to turn it off, but it makes for a much better experience imo.
To anybody wondering why the hell this quest has a 30 min timer instead of 50 it's because in Monster Hunter 1 (2004) where fatalis was the final online boss battle, there was a mechanic in place where the dragon would flee if you did enough damage but no enough to kill him, this was because in those times final bosses where meant to be hunted by a group of four and had a fixed gargantuar health pool meant for those 4 players, well if they flee the next time you fought them they would come back with the remaining health and also any broken body part that you managed to break in your last attempt, guess Capcom forgot about this last part lol
@@carlosescamilla5260 I remember them doing a similar thing with yian garuga in mhf1 he had a 15 mins timer and damage was kept each run. I remember it took me around 4-6 runs to kill him for his armour.
Capcom forgetting about basic things seems like a real Capcom move, they screw up the most basic and easy things to fix sometimes. Like ultrawide in their pc ports.. Or an FOV slider.
My Headcanon is that as we fight Fatalis in MHW:IB the Flames are getting hotter and hotter so much that Schloss Schrade becomes unbearably hot that we need to leave after 30min.
Funny enough I think presentation is one of the important factors here. A strict time limit on a boss with super punishing mechanics that require good pre positioning and reactions while also executing a high enough degree of damage to beat the time limit. That sounds brutally punishing, but that's also pretty much exactly the structure of raid bosses in mmos. You'll have fights that are 10, sometimes 20 minutes of difficult mechanics where one or two players in the party doing it wrong can cause everyone to die, but even if you do all of the mechanics perfectly if your damage is too low you hit enrage and die. The structure of enrage as a time limit feels less arbitrary because it's just another part of the boss's pattern, rather than being an interruption to the flow of a fight. It doesn't "fix" the problem with the fight, but tying the timer in mechanically can change the feel a lot. Maybe fatalis is slowly destroying the arena as you fight and if you don't defeat it in time the ground is destroyed, or flooded with lava, or otherwise made intraversible for the player. Then it feels like the time limit is something the boss is doing, rather than the hand of the game itself pulling you from the fight.
Tying into the second part: it's also less frustrating to fail if it looks cool when you do it. Funny/cool death animations was something older difficult games often used to make frequent deaths more palatable.
I know why the monster hunter time limmit exists (to prevent the player from just stallling for an hour and just do chip dama, aka saving them from themselve and the "given the oppertunity a player will optimize all fun out of a game" rule), but using a shortened time limmit which is shorter for no reason to force the players to be aggressive is just bad... not only does the player have to deal with a change to the core mechanics in a fight which is ment to test those mechanics, but this really just feels once again like one of those "teehee, damage check" moments As the person above said, if there was some reason or animation for the time limmit instead of a "it is what it is", then it would be a little bit less frustrating... well maybe... the monster you unlock right before fatalis is a fantastic example of how not to do a good time limmit by game mechanics xD But if instead of a shortened time limmit fatalis had something like an ability which would continually boost its power or attack speed after the 30 min time limmit, that would make it feel less unfair and more of a desparation act on its side
The ground is burning in 3rd phase and fatalis becomes so hot that his chest glows like molten steel. The reason you fail after 30 minutes is because the hunter would literally combust while just standing nearby after that time. Unfortunately the devs didn't bother to make that evident. Also they didn't use the heat mechanic (luckily) which makes kt even less obvious
If only monster hunter used monster hunter mechanics for it's hardest challenges instead of a different genres. Also, you autolose alatreon's fight through what is effectively a time limit but baked in (it's escuton judgement) and that was the most controversial fight in the entire series, much more so than fatalis so I don't think that actually helps much.
@@AWanderingSwordsman There's definitely a question to be asked about if time limits and dps checks have a place in the game. I think the major alternative to point to is souls game boss design. Time is never a factor, it's just the player, the boss, and their ability to get some amount of damage in while staying alive. I don't think anyone would really argue that those bosses would be made better by the introduction of enrage or a time limit of any kind. Doing more damage in those games just means you have to dodge less and have fewer opportunities for mistakes and that works for them. I'm mostly just trying to workshop how you make a fight like this feel less frustrating without fundamentally changing the challenge being presented to players.
The problem with “get good” is while it is true, it isn’t constructive. How can I get better? What am I doing wrong? Never try and tell someone to fix their ways without offering a solution
I mean most people that dont clap him do not post a video of their Fight nor their Equipment. and without it you csnt make any good comments outside the meme of get gud
most people who receive "get good" are not posting whole vods of their 10+ attempts. if you want constructive feedback on a part of your gameplay, you need to show people the gameplay.
@@jacoblockett390 still you should be asking the likely mistakes they might be making or giving advice on things they should be doing instead of saying "git gud" or just ignoring them
@justenoughrandomness8989 there is no way for whoever a post sees on the internet to know what mistakes a random player is making unless they're showing their gameplay. get over yourself. if you want someone to give deep and meaningful analysis of your mistakes, that person has to be able to see them.
Just saw the title & the thumbnail and here's my answer: Difficulty becomes artificial when the complexity & engagement of the enemy is no longer the force pushing the player to be better, but is rather the very high(sometimes unavoidable) damage along with possibly too much health. This causes the players to beat the enemy via pure war of attrition rather than by purposeful adaptation
100% the correct answer. When the enemy becomes a damage sponge with the devs just increasing the numbers on their resistances or damage or hp then it’s artificial
For me artificial difficulty is when the game breaks established rules, changes things that have been uniform, or makes things harder first arbitrary reasons like disabling core mechanics or giving an asinine time limit or instant kill mechanic that can rob a player of a victory for no other reason aside from “because I said so”
@@Rat_Fบcker It's entirely weirder because it's literally just doing the MH1 thing where you have 30 minutes to kill the monster, and if you don't it just runs away and returns with all the broken parts you gave it and all the HP you took away from it, and was meant to be fought with 4 players. Crapcom essentially forgot the most important part of that.
That's why I hate the FF7 remake trilogy's hard mode. They take away item use, something that been a core mechanic from the first fucking game, and also rest points dont restore your hp/mp. And the cherry on top is that THERE IS PROGRESSION LOCKED BEHIND IT! Not story progression, it's stat progression but still. I shouldn't have to bang my head against a wall for hours to max out my stats. In fact, I'd argue that maxing stats should be a good thing to do before taking on a challenging difficulty
@@Rat_Fบcker the final fight designed for you to have mastered the game and have all the equipment in you would ever need hell they even give you the weapons that counter him in the fight before him
Artificial difficulty is when you're punished in a way that pretty much feels like there's no lesson. When you beat a boss not because you got better, but because you got lucky.
I agree that beating a boss simply due to beating your head against the wall until you finally got lucky isn't meaningful or satisfying or a good type of challenge. But at the same time, if a game has any random elements at all, then increasing difficulty past a certain point inevitably increases the odds that luck will be what finally wins it. The harder a boss is, the less the player is in control, and the less control a player has, the less the player is able to offset the influence of luck alone, which is otherwise a constant. Furthermore, the harder a boss is, the more tries it takes, and the more time you roll the dice, the more chances you have to get that lucky roll. Quite honestly, I'd say that almost every time I've EVER finally beaten a boss after say, twenty or more tries, if not less, it has been luck that ultimately made the difference, not increased skill. I know that because I consciously noticed that the boss just randomly didn't use their worst moves as many times that time, or I button mashed parries at just the right time through sheer blind luck, etc, and if that wasn't enough, I've proved that by refighting the boss after winning on try 37 and finding that I'm once again doing no better than the last 20 tries. And on the rare occasion it wasn't sheer luck that made the difference, it still wasn't so much that my own personal skill improved, as that I simply memorized the boss's moves enough or noticed some exploitable quirk to its AI, that meant my current otherwise insufficient skill level could get the job done with the very cheap added benefit of knowing exactly where to stand where the hit detection breaks for some reason, or finally noticed that a grab attack never, ever follows a fireball. And personally, I don't think that simple memorization of move sets or level layouts has ever been a legitimate or meaningful test of skill. So this is all to say that I truly believe that in order for a boss to be a proper, meaningful test of raw skill, rather than luck and/or very specific memorization (that could never be justified in-story since your character shouldn't be getting multiple tries,) bosses should never go past a certain level of difficulty or total expected tries. A true, meaningful victory is the one that comes from properly reacting on the fly because you've gotten that good, not from simply trying until you get lucky, or replacing/supplementing legit skill with knowing exactly what the boss will do, and the more tries you take, the more likely the latter two things are what will make the difference instead of real skill. Which means that yes, I feel like the proper game design job of bosses isn't training, or otherwise making you better. Bosses should be about testing the skills you should have ALREADY developed. You should get good enough to beat the boss by fighting the common enemies in the preceding area, and as long as you did that, the boss itself, as long as it's properly balanced, should take only a few tries at most. Ideally only one. Bosses should be like the final test at the end of a class: there only to provide confirmation of the learning that was intended to have already happened on the way there, not a teaching point in and of themselves. Though I will make a small exception for bosses that appear multiple times, getting more difficult each time. In that case, it is okay to expect you to learn a thing or two in the fight itself, because that experience should then build for the next time when the boss is tougher/uses more moves/etc. Like with common enemies that show up over and over, training actually applies to multi-encounter bosses since there are future battles to apply that specific training to. (That's why I think recycling bosses is actually a good thing, it makes them skill-building stepping stones instead of hard pass/fail only walls.) Though even then, the final encounter with a boss should still follow the previous rules of being a skill check only.
@@Alloveck a boss having a "worst move" is bad design. That's why malenia is so bad because she has one singular move that is way harder than her others so the luck of how much she uses that one move plays a large factor in your success. If the difficulty of all the moves is relatively equal then there is less luck involved and the fight overall feels more enjoyable and balanced. It always feels bad to get killed by the one super hard attack and then have to redo all the easy attacks at the start of the fight just to get back to the one hard one.
@@NihongoWakannai In regard to your last point, I'd say that in a larger sense, any time games make you redo a bunch of easy stuff just to retry the only part that actually gives you problems is bad design. A classic example is "Do X perfectly 100 times in a row," where it gradually gets harder and only the last, say, 20 times are where you actually start screwing up at all. So redoing the first 80 rounds that aren't a problem proves nothing you didn't prove the first time you passed the first 80 rounds, making them a pointless waste of time on the way to the actually meaningful challenge. And yeah, that somewhat applies to multi-phase bosses too, but they're complicated by variable resources like HP and MP and so on being a factor, meaning that redoing early easy phases can still be relevant because doing them even better next time means you go into the hard phase with more HP, heal potions left, etc. But yeah, if you could theoretically do the early phases perfectly anyway, then there's definitely no point in redoing them just to retry the final phase. More on topic though, I agree: Waterfowl Dance alone really is 95% of Malenia's effective challenge right there, and that's just not good design. The other 4% is knowing not to get Scarlet Aeonia nuked in the second phase, but as damaging as it is, its so easy to deal with once you've seen it even once that it's only 4% of her challenge. Still not cool that it's an attack that basically requires preemptive positioning to successfully avoid though, and thus is nearly impossible to avoid if you haven't already experienced it once to know a massive AoE you can't simply dodge roll out of like usual is coming. Also, the first one is guaranteed after the phase change, so its luck factor is reduced. But while you're very right that having one randomly used, outstanding super attack is basically intentionally making luck a factor, I'd say that it's a bad thing even regardless of luck. Like you said, a severely imbalanced move set just makes the rest of the fight seem like a waste of time. If the point of Malenia is dealing with her signature move, then just cut to the chase and have her do nothing but Waterfowl dance, since that's clearly the only real test or challenge there anyway. That one attack is on such a different level from everything else that you can't even make the argument that the lesser attacks function as warmups or training to help ready the player for when she finally busts out her best attack, so the rest of her moveset truly is pointless padding. Just halve her HP to compensate and go all in on Waterfowl Dance. And finally, as far as random boss luck goes, singular "worst attacks" not coming up are only one example of many. There's also attacks that aren't clearly worse on their own, but extremely difficult to deal with for positioning reasons if the boss randomly chooses them both back to back, so a lucky win would be the boss AI simply rarely if ever doing the worst possible sequence of attacks. If a stamina system is involved, and boss AI has randomness to how often it attacks, or the amount of stamina needed to dodge/block/outrun attacks varies, you can get lucky by the boss randomly giving you breathing room between attacks more than usual, or never stringing together high-stamina attacks back to back. Maybe level geometry makes certain attacks more or less difficult to deal with in certain boss arena locations and hey, what luck, the boss consistently only did its big AoE fire breath when you were already near cover. Or got you in a tight spot but then randomly didn't do the melee combo that's nearly impossible to dodge without some open space. Point is, there are many, MANY ways that boss design can make luck a factor, so many that I'd say it's basically inevitable. Which is why I say that luck ultimately being the deciding factor gets closer to inevitable the more tries a boss battle takes, and therefore bosses shouldn't be designed so that a lot of tries are expected to begin with. Every try is another chance for the luck factors to finally come through instead of skill.
Beating a boss because you got lucky instead of just getting better can feel good in certain situations. A desperate fight that left you at the edge of death and improvement you one because you just happened to get the killing blow to land first can be such a rush as it confirms you can do it, now you just need to work on making it consistent.
I hate when boss attack animation doesn't line up with the hit boxes because the animation is supposed to teach me timing of attack or dodge. I'm talking about you radhan phase two from shadow of the erdtree! That boss had so much screen cluster it was Impossible to actually learn how to dodge the attacks
Oh yeah dlc Radahn phase two was so overstimulating, though some moves were similar to some phase 1 attacks they were still different enough (also light beams attack spam catching you mid roll 😄)
That's the tricks FromSoft uses to make their games look hard, because they can't make good gameplay mechanics and enemy AI to create actually hard content. FromSoft's games are like a very basic and easy rhythm game with good music, that has atrocious HUD, they only show you the notes barely 0.1s before you miss them, and on top of that the songs have weird rhythm changes and timings just to throw you off.
Yes. Design-wise, visuals give the player information. They say what behavior is happening, and theoretically where attacks and stuff are hitting. Oversized hit boxes unfortunately send the message of "ignore the information I'm giving you visually and just figure it out by dying unexpectedly"
@@OnigoroshiZero that was an elden ring problem, not a from problem. Ds3 bosses have very little visual clutter so its much more intuitive to dodge attacks, even without having seen them before. That was helped by fantastic animations wich clearly communicated and attacks speed and area. Elden ring has all the flashy bs
Awful example. Let me guess. You just saw a clip of someone slowing down the attack's and exclaimed the attack is bullshit because the hitboxes don't perfectly align? That awful way of analysing games is plaguing video game discussion. It strips away all of the context of a scenario in an attempt to justify their own, subjective dislikes. Radahn's hitboxes are slighty larger than his swords, but that literally dosn't matter, because he swings his swords so fast, in-turn the hitboxes move extremely fast too. Do you know what that means? Of course not, because the cherry-picked examples don't give any context what so ever. It means, the amount of frames that the hitbox would be in a given, player sized location, are much, much lower. There by increasing the margin of error, and making the hitboxes not being exact, negligible. The only other reason the hitboxes could come into effect is if you tried to strafe the attack, and were clipped because the hitboxes were too wide. But this also, dosn't happen because Radahn's tracking is very very strong. But of course, its much easier to just parrot a video you saw online, than actually applying some critical thinking.
Right game, evade window is basically ADP lol That’s kind of what I love about MH. It’s the kind of game that’s as hard as you want it to become because there are a LOT of defensive skills to keep you alive if you need them.
@@meepmeep9943 this. I slowly take off the survival skills as I get better in the given MH title I'm playing. Usually starts with none, realize I'm not quite him like I said I was, then revert back to my former prowess by the time G rank rolls up lmao. Can't wait to do it for the 6th time in Wilds~
The amount of sonic gongs that flinch a monster at a bad time is astounding. Turns a perfectly good clutch claw window into a insta mantle shred, insta pin and into a one shot. Thanks AT Velkhana.
Honestly, this was perfectly explained. It took me 40 plus carts for me to finally solo Fatalis. And now I can solo it with Defender weapons just because I simply gotten much better than I was 4 years ago.
I'm glad you mention that timeline actually, since originally when I planned to write this script it was going to be *much* more negative lol. However I thought "ya know, it really wouldn't be fair to write this considering I've only beaten the monster 2 or 3 times, and without even having proper endgame gear so lemme see what the fight is like if I have full fatalis and weapons augmented a bit" and I'm really glad I did since in doing so not only did I get a much better understanding of the fight, but I also just got a whole lot better at it! It's crazy how much more fun this fight becomes as you improve
MHW:IB is my first MH game. Played it on 2019 and I admit, I use cheats just to solo World and Iceborne content. My dad bought me a NSW since it's pandemic that time and I don't have a pc. Played MHGU and MHR and got very good at it. I replayed MHW and I soloed all my hunts up to Fatalis using only defender armor and weapon. There really is no such thing as hard games, you just try and try and familiarize yourself to the mechanics. That's why I just roll my eyes whenever a veteran would say "waaah monster hunter is so easy now" like bro ofc it would be easy, you've been playing the game for almost a decade. Some of my friends started playing MH when they ported Rise on to pc and I watched them get bodied by great izuchi lol.
@@boangsiate7701 they are veterans because they have a lot more hours and knowledge than you. Thats why they are right when they say the game has gotten easier. You have no idea what they are comparing to. Go back and beat every hunt in mhfu then you can have 1 piece of what they are using as relative judgement. No cheats allowed you filthy casual.
@@LeetTron5000dude I’ve been playing since freedom 1 on the psp and am currently on 4U in my 6th full playthrough of the games, so I feel like I am what you’re calling a veteran. I have no issues with people using cheats on their first solo playthrough of a game. It’s a hard game series. Especially if it’s your first time playing something like it. If they’re cheating in multiplayer using one shots or something like that then it’s an issue, but that’s pretty rare. They also said they went back and implied they beat it normally after learning more about the games and getting better in gu and rise. And GU isn’t one of the easiest games at least by endgame. I think the most harmful people for this community are ones like you attacking someone for lnot being good enough” and not having played the games you played. Let people play how they want if they’re doing it solo. I have a friend who doesn’t like the endgame material grind so he has a mod to change the drop rates so there are less trash gems. I have another who just edits his save and adds them, also increasing his rank so he doesn’t have to grind the guiding lands to fight ruiner. Not everyone has the time to no life these games and ultimately they’re not hurting anyone other than themselves with that hacking in of decos and ranks.
I hate the gaming nomenclature where the second someone suggests a boss might be overtuned in a game they are immediately met with hordes of people just telling them to get gud and they're stupid. It's cancerous and had always annoyed me.
The one bit that annoys me most is when they then suggest that you must be a newcomer to the series and therefore you just "don't understand" the game's design. But to me, it's actually the opposite. I have such strong feelings because I've played and enjoyed a game series for so long, that I feel like such strange difficulty is going against the series' previous ideas of difficulty.
Okay i'll play devil's advocate a little here. Because while i agree that what you say is true, i'll also say that most of the time, the solution against the boss is just that: getting better. I didn't watch the video in it's entirety yet, but fatalis IS supposed to be challenging. He is, and was always (at least in the games he appeared in) the final boss, and he was always the ultimate test for you, the hunter. For example, in mhfu, the white fatalis gets an armor that makes all attack bounce, an increase in attack and defense when at 50% hp. This armor gets only removed when it's at 20% hp. Is that a bit much? Maybe, but he is also doable with a few tries and the correct equipment. Same with alatreon in world. Is he hard? Yeah of course, the horn breaks and elemental threshold forces you to be aggressive all the time, while he can two shot you at full health, and even if you pass the elem. Threshold you can still faint during the judgement if you mess up your heal timing. But he is also very easy to read, and has a lot of openings to allow for some quick hits. And building an elemental build is not that bad as you are not forced to do the safi hunt (contrary to what i could read on the net) to have a decent build. Those are hard encounters sure. And they can seem like absurd increase in difficulty, and require a lot more preparation time than the rest of the roster, but two things: like I said, it's the culmination of the game, the ultimate skillcheck to everything you've learn until that very moment, the time to put to use everything you've learnt to master. And second, the satisfaction you get after you beat them is unrivalled. You finally overcame the wall. You did it, and only with your own skill
@@Hugolaste then i'll play devils advocate for your devilish avocation. The "solution" is ALWAYS to "get better". Boss does too much damage? Get good enough to never get hit. Boss has terribly mapped hitboxes? Get good enough to never be in a bad position. Boss has too much hp? Get good enough to hit him more. Obviously, if you're good enough you can beat anything at all. But that doesnt excuse poor design. "Erm, actually you just need to get good enough to not get hit!" Doesnt make up for a boss having a hitbox in the place that the visuals of the attack arent. Just because its possible to beat something by getting good enough doesnt mean that ascension of skill should be necessary, nor does it mean developers should just be able to ignore quality control because they have a ton of dick riders that will hard defend their poor decisions with copious amounts of "git gud"s instead of actually looking into other players complaints to see if they have some merit. Getting good should definitely be a large factor in a player beating a boss. But that doesnt mean the primary hurdles of that boss to overcome can just be at best cringe, at worst dogshit, issues like a timer running out or poor hitboxes. I agree that fatalis is a great final boss of world, but the amount of dogshit combined in it means that when i finally solo it, i wont feel elation or happiness, im going to feel relief thay i wont have to do it again
I’ve heard a lot of people point to Alatreon over fatalis when arguing about the artificial difficulty, which I think makes a lot more sense. Fatalis in general can *kind of* be just get good. But Alatreon is quite literally “bring this weapon and build, or you will lose.”
@ sure, but I could technically wipe my ass with a pine cone. The trick to game design is making the most fun parts of your game be the path of least resistance, and for anyone who isn’t turbo sweating Alatreon forces you to play hyper aggressive with an elemental build.
@@hunterkinsella5303 A final dlc endboss should NOT be "least resistance" and trying to be overly aggresiv makes noobs fail. The trick is to play clean and reactive and that takes skill.
@ so you think a passive playstyle doesn’t require clean play and reactions? As a hbg player, I’d beg to differ. And also, a final DLC that you can beat your way is much more interesting than forcing a build onto you. Who cares about optimization, the game Is supposed to be fun
@@hunterkinsella5303 Please define for me what a "passive" playstyle is. All playstyles are active in mh. Even support playstyles are first about doing dmg and only secondly about support. I have played enough hh and sns to know that. And I disagree on the second part. Mh since mh1 has always been about finding monsters weaknesses and then prepping against that. A final boss shouldnt be one against which you should be able to go in with "whatever" and then expect to have it easy. The game has always been about optimization against hard bosses. If you dont find that fun then mh isnt for you. For me that is the most fun part of mh. Coming up with new builts and strategies and then prepping to beat bosses.
I've found one of the most valuable tools in your kit when it comes to Fatalis is the superman dive (dodge away from the monster while sprinting, give crazy i-frames). You have to put your weapon away for it, but if you're reading his movements you should be able to just barely get it. Also it might get you comboed. But you can survive a fire cone dead on if you have fullish health by spamming it.
I think a big problem with MHW's later fights is that they unlock way too early. You fight the Icebotne DLC final boss and then are thrown against monsters right away designed for the players who have been grinding post-game content for weeks or months as originally these monsters were released 1 by 1. Fatalis and Alatreon feel like they should be minimum MR 100 monsters, but you can fight them before you have that skill and equipment which makes many players bounce off them saltily.
Best point I've seen brought up so far in these comments. Fatalis is far and away my absolute favorite fight in Iceborne, yet had I not played this game since day one, and perhaps picked it post Fatalis update, my opinion may have been different. I can 100% see how plenty of, fresh out of shara and the guiding lands, not even to ruiner yet, fresh fifth fleeters eagerly fighting one or both of the black dragons, and getting their teeth kicked in so hard they quit. However closed of a mindset that may be, I'd understand why to a point. I feel like it should at the very least MR 125 and 150 for alat and fatty, that gives players some REAL time to break into the endgame and hone themselves and their gear.
Personally I liked knowing what I was preparing for in the endgame. I gave up on MH Rise because it just turned into a bunch of endgame grind and there wasn't an obstacle I felt I was readying myself to deal with.
I personally like that they're unlocked so early. They act as walls so you know what challenges you cannot overcome, encouraging you to go back out into the rest of the game to get what you need. Go earn some decorations, new armor and weaponsets, augments, maybe some missing mantles, farm some strong consumables. However, for me, this does come with some hindsight because I played after the last patch of the game. Maybe people expect to be able to beat new bosses the day of release? Idk.
They definitely should be tackled after MR100, but I understand why they unlock them immediately. The title updates are meant to entice people to return to or even pick up the game, and those same people are less likely to stick around if they’re met with a MR100 requirement to see the new monster they’re excited for.
It is indeed too easy. The 1st alatreon fight isn't required Only the cutscene is Leave the quest and obtain the 2nd fight for some reason Beat that 2nd one with or without elemental weapons it doesn't matter it only has about 1/4 of its max hp. It should be dead before or just a little after 1 judgment. Then you have fatalis. No augments at all cause whoops I'm not mr100 to have the def minimum I need for fatalis
Facts. Superman dives are SO underrated in the Monster Hunter games. A lot of people only use them to dodge a select few attacks because they think the recovery time makes them too vulnerable to use the dive consistently. But the recovery actually isn't as long as it looks and using Superman dives can make a lot of monsters MUCH more manageable to defeat.
The cone isn't really too bad, if your close, it's actually a really good damage opportunity, and if your near a pillar, they block it. If you do get caught in the open with max health, you can spam dice to survive. The only time this move is a garuntees cart, is if your missing health, AND far from the monster, AND not near a pillar....at that point, it's kinda your fault, every time I have died to it, it's been my dumb xD
I should add too, I hunted with a group, and once we got into the swing, we went 15+ hunts without a single cart, not just no fails, no carts.... If there really were unavoidable tng deaths, we would have had some, but everything is avoidable, not easily avoidable, but avoidable.
@@jameslough6329 the one prolonged invincibility move every player has access to by default is absolutely not underrated in any meaning of the word. how often you use the dive is influenced by how quickly you can sheathe your choice of weapon.
Rule of good presentation: If you turn your title into a question, do clearly give the answer by the end. If you can not give a definite and conclusive answer, don't pose the question.
better rule of good presentation: never ever turn your title into a question. It will ALWAYS be more succinct and honest if you simply state your deductive conclusion, and then defend it in the content.
I think the best way to know if a boss was bullshit vs when its a skill issue, is when most people beat the boss do they have a"that was epic" feeling or a "glad thats over" feeling
I agree. The "just get good" crowd seems to forget that boss fights arent just about beating the boss, but about having FUN while doing it. I was super disappointed with Margit from Elden Ring. He has both un-telegraphed quick attacks and delayed attacks. To dodge the former, you need to roll preemptively but to dodge the latter, you need to wait before you roll. Before I noticed this obvious catch 22, I tried to learn his patterns for hours. After still not making any significant progress, I decided to simply trade hits with him. I legit just ran at him with no regard for his attacks and just spammed the one long sword attack that often staggers enemies. Guess what, got him on my second try. Didnt feel rewarding at all though.
This is just completely subjective and not a good metric whatsoever. I've seen plenty of comments from individuals who trash on bosses otherwise beloved by the community by saying it was a slog. The same comments have been levied torwards all the souls games at some point. Get a better metric. A better metric to know whether a boss is bs is when the difficulty comes from the boss having many jank elements(animation canceling, overlapping animations, clipping into the arena), as well as most of the difficulty coming from something outside of the boss ai itself(bad hitboxes, absurdly high health without the variety to compensate) and/or the boss has a mechanic that keeps you from actually playing the game and engaging with its mechanics(for example colonel pluck from dkc requiring you to just stand dead still doing nothing for over 5 seconds). None of these by themselves will be a deal breaker but having two or all of them can create a "bad" boss that is "artificially difficult".
@@Takin2000to be fair, learning Margit’s timing essentially prepares you for the rest of Elden Ring because other bosses share very similar delay timing to Margit (with some variance to throw you off and force adaptation). If you’ve played the Soulsborne games, you get a sense of roll timing for delayed attacks after a while, Margit’s kinda meant to be a skillcheck that ensures you understand what you’re getting into with the later bosses.
@@skyhighlp1 Oh no, dont get me wrong, I have no issue with delayed attacks. Theyre really good to get players out of panic rolling. My issue was that Margit also has moves where rolling *preemptively* is required instead. That creates a catch 22 where you have to panic roll at every twitch Margit makes (which gets you hit by the delayed attacks) or you have to take a hit from his fast attacks (such as the melee daggers)
5:52 you get 13 s at Evade WIndow 0 for normal rolls. The lowest amount is 10 for step dodges. Keep in mind this data is for 60 fps while games like Dark Souls count i frames for 30 fps. Its still nowhere near "2 or 3" tho. It is true however that it's really hard to roll through many attacks with only base level s
2 or 3 is semi accurate for some moves with lingering hurtboxes or are just slow moving. dodging through the slow moving line of fire is incredibly tight
@Bard2DaBone That's 2 or 3 frames of a dodge window, the time during which you need to input the dodge to successfully avoid an attack with the s you have, but you still have the 13 s. If you actually had 2 or 3 s pretty much every attack would be undodgeable cause attacks have hitboxes that last more than that
He probably got it mixed up with the older games. In monster hunter 4 ultimate, your roll was 36 frames long and had 6 invincibility frames. Im honestly shocked that its now at 13. No wonder its possible to roll through roars at base evade window now.
@@Takin2000 there was a good video for Rise when it came out that calculated dodge frames. I believe World shares the same values, and the skill to increase i-frames only does so by a frame or two per level as a tradeoff. honestly, a lot of the hits he took seem avoidable if you take a level of extender.
"Get good" is a shallow answer to those struggling with the possible. It ignores the process many need to learn by simply aggrevating said person instead of helping. Artifical Difficulty is the buzz word way of saying something isn't hard, but unfair. Which ignores the potential skill ceiling or other possible options that may not have been considered. Furthermore can be used as a slap on "everyone finds this hard, so it's unfair" way of decrediting what may be genuinely good game design. Both by themselves ignore the inherit nuances that video game difficulty or game design is.
"Get good" is truly now meant to be an insult, its short n straight, so theres no point trying to gain any positive insight from that remark cuz in most cases its steeped in negativity or apathy Either position if further replied to would follow up with a "erm who asked" for a double wammy
Artificial difficulty is 100% a thing used way to much in many modern video games an extremely high health pool for instance is artificial difficulty since the devs didnt need to give the target 700 times the hp of other enemies like in Borderland games so it forcefully extending a battle that should last a few minutes to last 30 minutes to an hour or how many games whit resources just give the AI a passive higher income then the player this is not normal difficulty this is artificially inflated you can counter play AI just gets more income
It took me several days and 50 attempts in total in order to defeat fatalis, all the time mixing and upgrading my gear to defeat it as I go. It brought me so much joy being able to defeat it for the first time. But even using the strategies and recommended skills in order to finally kill this beast, the mental fortitude was really being tested.
Artificial difficulty can be used well, it’s just that you can easily tell when it isn’t The only time artificial difficulty spikes can be implemented without much thought is if you’re making an unwinnable fight where the player is meant to lose for the story to progress
Pre nerf consort radahn from elden ring had an attack that only had an 0.01 second of a reaction window to avoid it. You had to have literal superhuman reaction speed and even no hit runs had to break the boss where he wouldn't do that attack because it was in every sense of the word legitimately impossible to dodge under normal circumstances.
Yep. I keep telling people that Sekiro is skill based. DS3 is skill based. Bloodborne is skill based. Elden Ring is memory based. In the former three everything you learn from your first few fights in regards to gameplay mechanics carries over and gets refined with each battle. You can theoretically beat every battle the first time through skill alone because everything is fairly telegraphed. Elden Ring makes bosses with endless combos, delays, and punishments for using openings. It is about dying to each boss and learning them like a textbook. Your previous battle doesn’t matter, because what you learned about that boss was specific for its delays and it’s combos. There is no dance. It is all just a big parody.
This just ...isnt true? Elden rings bosses are very fair. I genuinely feel like people who make these comments are just blinded by nostalgia. Giving waaaaay to much credit to those other games, when elden ring builds uppon and improves these bosses in great ways. Its not perfect, but to act like elden ring is just unfair garbage is just false. @@jacobtrout2303
@@jacobtrout2303 One of the most braindead takes i've ever seen. This is literally just "Skill Issue". Elden Ring is simply harder than the other games. And well... It's not because you suck at the game that the other also suck, bro.
Im a massive fatalis fan and I will die on the hill that Fatty is one of the best bossfights ever. However I do agree with some of your points. Some of his hitboxes are janky especially the tail slam, quick bite, and his flame sweep (i get damaged before fire hits me???). I guess its just personal tolerance. The music, buildup and spectacle along with a tough fight just makes everything else feel fantastic tho, despite the flaws. I really felt like I was fighting the OG Black Dragon, so imo the difficulty felt justified. Its quite fascinating how everyone has such different opinions on the same thing
I think all in all I've grown to like the boss quite a lot. It's not my favorite boss but it holds a very special place in my heart not only for the reasons I went over in the video, but just for the context of it all. Feels really good to finally have this guy crossed off the list of hard bosses I have to beat lol
Also, the timer is great imo. You dont just get scrape by, you will need to know him in and out to beat the clock to the finish. Optimise your dps, get more staggers, avoid damage etc.
I've yet to play a game where hit boxes are perfect. Janky hit boxes are in every video game ever made. And are especially prevalent with huge 3d models. Fatalis hit boxes are fine they're not more janky than any other monster in the game. And MHW in general had pretty good hit boxes not perfect there's jank here and there but pretty good in general.
I remember fighting this boss 4 years ago when I was still new to monster hunter and getting really frustrated at it and eventually quit after 400 hours on that save file. 4 years later after playing all sorts of games, I came back after hearing about Wilds on a new save file but this time,it was different cause now I knew I had to prepare for these sorts of things so when I finally beat it,I screamed. It actually felt like 4 years of experience led up to this and now I absolutely love this boss cause it showed me that I've grown.
I’m in this boat rn. I had about 600 hours in my first mhw file and never beat alatreon or fatalis. I gave up years ago and when sunbreak came out I destroyed mhr and the dlc. But I didn’t feel accomplished because I always had those two monsters in the back of my mind. I started a fresh file a couple months ago with the strict goals of beating ala and fatalis. I’m so happy to say I beat them both in the same night a few days ago. I cried when fatalis went down lol I could see and feel my growth as a gamer and as a person and I’m so content with that. I’m better now than I was before. Now I have a month break until wilds comes out 😏
7:52 What game devs could do to remedy this is to scale the damage with the distance of the player to the center of the AOE. Like, if it was dead on, get 100% of the damage, if you were just barely inside the range, maybe get 5-10% of the damage
This is an amazing summary of how I feel about Fatalis - and a great discourse on what is right on the border of artificial difficulty. Wonderful video.
One thing you didn't mention is that you not only have the Evade Window skill but also the Evade Extender skill (which increases dodge distance). Because, as you mentioned, the size of a lot of Fatalis' attacks feel overtuned it helps you cover enough distance to get out of most of his attacks. Overall Fatalis is a great thematic final fight against the 'strongest monster' and also a good test of skill imo. But he does feel bullshit sometimes.
I used to never use evade extender but I started to in either sunbreak or rise (can't remember, I think it was sb) and I've never looked back. It's actually such a game changer against a lot of bosses
@@mhswoocer I started using it after trying out the Arena quest with Magnamalo on Hammer. Then eventually stopped using extender and just embolden as I got better at timing dodges. Helps a lot in getting used to unfamiliar territory!
If I didn’t see this comment, I was going to make it. I thought that the armor skills and weapon augments that would have been helpful were hardly mentioned as the video went on.
@@Rytifox One of my biggest flaws as a mh player is my inability to think. I almost never prep for hunts and instead go for the more "hold forwards until I win" approach. Even against fatalis I didn't create a new set or augment my weapons (I should have done both) I just used the set I made for alatreon and replaced the element with raw damage. The reason I say this is a flaw is because it often stops me from seeing the game the way a large portion of the player base does and it often leads to me just flat out not mentioning things like skills in videos since I just didn't think about them
You can dodge the cone attack from far away by doing two dives in a row. You'll usually get away with taking a single tick of damage in between the dives, two if you're unlucky but sometimes the i-frames line up just right and you take 0 damage.
OK IM SORRY BUT I NEED TO COMPLAIN. Fatalis has three different chomp attacks. A quick chomp, a fire chomp, and a charge chomp. ONLY THE CHARGE CHOMP HAS A HITBOX THAT COVERS THE BODY, but you used forage of ALL THREE CHOMPS when discussing how to avoid the fire chomp!!!!! So incredibly misinforming!!!! Other than that great vid
Yeah I agree with the general notion of the video that fatalis has some mechanics that are frustrating for newcomers but some of his footage/examples are super frustrating Like when he explains your options with cones, I feel like he completely forgot Superman diving was a thing…the one move you typically use when you know you’re going to get caught in a length aoe.
Another thing with the cone is that you can like... Block it. And if your playing multiplayer hunts you can be the hero and block like the whole cone to protect your team. And it doesn't take away much stamina, still has chip damage tho.
@@deimos4808 I disagree. True, the mechanical information is not correct, but it is only tangentially related to the general claim made in the video. I would agree that it should be corrected, too. However, the general point of the video stands. Especially pointing out how merely telling someone to improve is useless, or even harmful. Players seeking help have made the first critical step towards solving a problem: by recognizing there is one.
Responding specifically to the section on the siege weapons: those are single player traps. They do good damage cause knockdowns easily and proc less aggro than normal attacks, but like you said they lock you in place and take forever to hop off of. So the ideal usage is for two or three members of a hunt to battle a monster normally while the remaining hunter is on a cannon or ballista. Players are supposed to learn this through context from using it in the Zorah Magdaros fights and in the special arena, where using them solo can put you in danger but using them in a team is broken strong, but those are very different spaces from Castle Schrade so the severity of how bad an idea it is to use them solo isn't the same. Capcom also doesn't explain a lot in these games so players are never going to get a tooltip or tutorial telling them they should only be using these weapons while working with other hunters, so if they managed to use those weapons without being punished in those other missions, it's entirely reasonable that they will think they can use them in the Fatalis fight as well. That being said, from the footage you included I feel like there are a couple instances where a player realistically should recognize they need to stay off the siege weapons when solo. For example at 10:40 you hop on a ballista with Fatalis being on the other side of the arena, it begins a charge animation as you are getting on, you immediately hop off and are unable to get out of the way a full 5 seconds after trying to get on. I feel like the average player would have that happen to them and immediately understand that trying to use those weapons is a death trap and would stay off of them for future attempts.
@9:10 there's been multiple hunts against fatalis using lance where I block his fire ball move and it has so much push back on it that he literally kept me locked in a loop of fireball spam until the chip damage killed me
Little tip I got for blocking high push-back explosions and wave attacks. Position yourself to block at an angle to the attack rather than facing it dead on. You’ll be pushed to side instead of backwards into more hits, thus reducing the amount of attacks that you have to block overall. You’ll also avoid certain chain explosion attacks that target a line straight at you.
The timer and HP pool also prohibit using any build that is not designed for maximized damage. Setting yourself up with a build using defense, regen, medicine, divine blessing etc. nearly guarantees you will be right up against the timer if not well past it. Part of what makes this game great is having all these skills and being able to create a build that best suits your personal playstyle.
Tbh Divine Blessing 5 with Gold Rathian is a common recommendation for Fatalis because it let's you play more aggressive since you can actually take multiple hits and be more greedy
And the problem is that bottlenecking a player into one playstyle is something that could be an issue. Why should I be forced to play these couple of builds just to be able to beat the game?
@@KitsuneYojimbobecause you’re seeing Fatalis as “beating the game” instead of treating him as he is. A post-game challenge boss that is intended to be purely a challenge in exchange for the strongest gear in the game. You beat the game after Shara Ishvalda; everything after that is just challenges to push yourself further. You SHOULD have to adapt to the challenge, otherwise it’s not really a challenge is it?
Not true, i play 75% defensive skills and 25% offensive skills. Weakness Exploit, Critical Boost, Speed Eating, Divine Blessing, stun resist, and Health Boost, and only some evade window. First clear, 9th try solo only, was 28 min. I got 19 minutes with the same build in the 3rd clear. Defensive Skills are there to reduce your downtime, but if you are not aggressive enough, you will lose to time.
That was also a thing Elden Ring kinda suffered from. A lot of the difficulty late in the game came from really bloated enemy and boss stats. And a lot of people got around it by switching to status builds, because they dealt percentage damage to enemies, instead of just flat damage. So they ended up being so much more powerful against foes with huge healthbars that it just bottlenecked a lot of character variety, despite being an RPG. Kind of a shame as there's so much character variety on paper but a lot of them end up hitting like a wet noodle at the late part of the game.
I love the musical progression in this video. As soon as Fatalis introduces itself The Forest and Hills theme starts to play. That might not seem like it makes much sense but this theme is basically the old school Fatalis theme without the choir. Then the actual Fatalis theme kicks in. Specifically the phase 2 version. You would think this is the end of the road but no there is a nother Fatalis theme. One that was also used in the Alatrean video. White Fatalis‘s music having a banger intro really helps elevate what‘s being talked about. Anyway, it‘s Proof of a Hero time, a little earlier than I expected to be honest. It makes sense though since the final phase is currently being discussed. It fits great with where the video‘s at right now but what’s gonna play at the ending now? Well, I’m glad you asked. It‘s a succession of different melodies that make you think of a sunny summer day in Seliana. What melodies? I think you already know. It‘s Succession of Light.
I think you know this already, but in case you don't, I absolutely love these comments. I put a crazy amount of work into these videos and so to have someone notice the little things like the forest and hills theme being a reference to old school fatalis makes me so happy
extremoth tho wasnt really built for solo hunts it doesnt scale HP with solo/duo, so you have to basically put out as much DPS solo as 4 hunters. safi'jiiva on release/HR kulve taroth iirc werent scaled as well
@@JerkTheHuman doesn't matter if he's not meant for solo or not his moveset is just bs, and not to mention the damage check he'll just spam his one shot over and over again if you dont meet it even if you already carted and just entered the arena he'll do that immediately so that practically means you already lost despite having more chances left also I'm a ps user and I refuse to give money on that shty subscription so I have to beat everything solo...which I have except for that mofo
Amazing video. Your analysis is always so shrewd and insightful, and your videos are both coherent and entertaining. Can't wait to play Wilds and see your opinions on it!
i personally think a lot of the problems in iceborne are due to it being designed around the clutchclaw to the point that playing without it cripples you so much to the point some simple hunts take up to 30 minutes sometimes, a good way to show this is the health numbers lets take rathian for example: MHGU Hub Rathian: low rank 2745-3285 hp, High rank 4770-5310 hp, G rank 9225-9765 hp. MHW ICEBorne Rathian: low rank 3500 hp, High rank 5700 hp, Master rank 18300 hp. the insane jump in Icebornes master rank monster HP makes it so you essentially don't have a choice but to use the clutchclaw or suffer. and no weapons don't do a disproportionate amount more damage either, iron bow (hunters stoutbow) GU: first upgrade 90 damage, last upgrade 340 damage iron bow world: first upgrade 96 damage, Last upgrade 312 damage. Not to mention half the weapons don't weaken on the first clutch and you have to double up, the entirety of Master rank is built around the clutchclaw and it's genuinely the biggest thing that stops me from enjoying the game as much as i could as i have to remember to do my chores mid combat essentially.
I’m glad I play hammer because I get huge hits in weakened parts (up to 700 dmg) but weapons like bow or dual blades that need to weaken multiple times unless you have that one decoration is annoying. Rocksteady is my best friend because of that lol
this is just objectively wrong lol. 9K hp in mhgu is far higher effective hp than 20k hp in iceborne. Your dps is 2x ed in MHWI and monster hunts are designed for solo in mind there, while in MHGU they're designed for 4 hunters. you can see this with the average speedrun time for mhwi being a lot faster than in GU
Something i havent seen people mention much is how annoying his ai can be most of the time, mostly just in phase 1. In my experience he only uses the super fireball into flying move which takes up so much time, which especially hurts when im trying to speedrun him. He quite literally did it 3-4 times in a row when i tried him a little while ago. His tendency to just spam the same stupid attacks that dont do anything but waste time is incredibly annoying and kinda dampers the fight imo.
Update! I managed to finally beat Fatalis a week or two after my first comment here! I can't believe I managed to finally solo him and get to use his gear!
9:39 The cone attack doesnt actually cover the whole length of the arena in front of Fatalis. You can actually run away from it even without climbing up the elevations as long he doesnt use it in the middle of the map.
You did a very good job of considering different sides to the fight here, great video! Personally, I liked that this monster was as hard as it was because it is the first time it felt lore accurate in the franchise. Fatalis is the world-ending dragon world-ending dragons are afraid of because he(or at least a member of its species) actually did end the world once before, it's the reason why we have rockets attached to weapons but still travel by sail boats and blimps, we are starting over but have some scraps of technology from the time before. As a final boss you need to use all the mechanics to their fullest: clutch claw shots, mantles, wall ramming, build crafting, part breaking, item pouch set, capitalizing on openings, positioning, etc. and the time limit is there to ensure that you can't outlast the monster by restocking at camp as much as you want, you have to really be better than the monster at dealing damage while avoiding/tanking it.
@Akrilloth I agree, the timer mechanic has been unchanged pretty much since the beginning, adding a lore reason, or at least one for this fight specifically, would have been awesome!
Fatalis is definitely a skill check for all players compared to other monsters and is a satisfying challenge to overcome, it requires a more in depth learning of the fight and also of your weapon. You can just start the quest and instead of fighting you can stop to analyze his behaviour, when you manage to understand his attacks you will start to see what he would possibly do next and prepare yourself for it, just as how you can bait his cone attack. But baiting out just one attack is not really necessary to beat him, there are plenty of small openings you can take advantage of to hit his head, even if they are small openings they all count towards breaking his head. Also, you have 2 binders, the roaming ballista and the dragonator, thats 4 ways of knocking him down with plenty of time to do a lot of damage to his head, the game gives you all the tools you need, but you gotta learn how the boss works first. Aside from all this, Capcom really made a big mistake here to make him available at FUCKING MR24!!!!!! THATS FUCKING STUPID!!!! HE SHOULD AT LEAST BE PAST MR100 WHERE YOU'D BE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE GOLD RATH SET TO GET FULL DIVINE BLESSING AND HAVE MORE WINDOW FOR MISTAKES AND LEARN THE FIGHT BETTER
You didnt mention the two other options for the cone fire, you can dive spam, repeatedly doing the dive will keep you relatively safe, and guarding with any weapon with a shield will block the flame too.
Personally I don't like the term "artificial" when it comes to difficulty. There's difficulty that is fun, and difficulty that is unfun. Having hitboxes that don't match the animations is unfun because it leaves you feeling ripped-off. Taking damage for small errors (or no errors) that is disproportionately punishing is unfun because it feels unjustified. It's not artificial because it's very real, and the natural result of a boss's design. However, regardless of if the difficulty is fun or not, the difficulty will fade as you improve at a game. Chalking it up to being a skill issue isn't enough, though. Think of the fight holistically from the first time you fight it to the last time. Ideally, it should be fun every time, where the challenge is fair enough to enjoy the early runs, but it doesn't get boring even if you master it. At the same time, there's people that enjoy an unfair challenge. It makes you hate the dragon, and feeds into your desire to kill it. It makes it feel like the dragon isn't just pile of 3D animations and code designed to fall over dead for you. It's a genuine threat because it's not playing fair. This is all to say unfun difficulty is subjective.
"Ideally, it should be fun every time" Thats the key. People dont complain about difficulty while theyre having fun, because difficulty isn't inherently frustrating. Only badly designed difficulty is frustrating. From my experience, most badly designed difficulty comes from situations where the player is unable to come up with a solution to the presented challenge. This can be the players fault, but its usually not. In the case of fatalis chomp, the player is not to blame for assuming that the attack can be rolled in some way. Lots of monsters have (dodgeable) chomp attacks, and fatalis doesnt have a particularly unique body type either. Its not the only boss monster either. There is absolutely no reason to assume it plays by special rules. So the game beats a lesson into you for dozens of hours only to present a challenge that can only be overcome when you ditch the lesson. Thats not the players fault, its just bad game design.
The best example i can think of artificial difficulty is Vincent the Frostbringer from VRising on max difficulty: 1) he has a permanent ice aura that damages you constantly when you fight him and you can't prevent it 2) he can parry your attacks with no windup animation, and it does a lot of damage. Also your summuns can hit it - outside of your control - and you'll get damaged if you're near lol 3) he has attacks that stun you so if you fail to dodge those he'll combo you, also he does high damage You would be tempted to say "Why don't you play ranged, it seens easier", well yes but no. If you try to avoid him too much and keep your distance, he'll just leave the fight and regen all the HP without any warning, that's why you have to keep fighting in a limited space and that makes keeping range harder. Also you can't use ranged spells easily because he has one problematic ability 5) He resets all his HP if you go too far from his initial position 6) He has a big attack that he dashes and hits you 4 times, you can't dodge by just walking, so you need to use your dash that has 4s cooldown. So you're forced to pick 2 defensive abilities to deal with the rest of the 3 dashes + attack that you can't dodge. Making so you can't use ranged combat properly. That's why we distract him with summons also, but if you remember summons are bad because he can parry then and we get damaged lol 7) if you take too much time to kill him, it becomes day time and you take damage from sunlight (you're a vampire afterall) Fuck there's no way to beat this guy on a fair fight, instead you have to overlevel and overpower him, which is cringe
I disagree, I just think the game has failed to teach you. Which I say because it failed to teach me for the first like 70 hours. First thing to know is that all bosses have cooldowns on their abilities, and they tend to use whatever abilities they can at any given moment. Using this information, you can get a good feel for when a particular attack (in this case Vincent’s parry) will come out and avoid hitting it. Second thing is that all roaming V bloods have a circular aggro range, so as long as you loop back at some point they won’t de aggro. Some roaming v bloods like Vincent also have stops in their route, with Vincent stopping in a small fort near the iron mines that is pretty spacious and good for fighting in. Vincent is also a boss that pushes you to use weapon abilities as utilities, his big attack is fast and requires you to either dash out of the way, become invincible, or block. You can get the great sword before Vincent, and it’s a really good weapon for him as it’s the second longest melee weapon with very high damage output, and has both a dash ability and a dodging ability. Wraith spear is also worth mentioning as an offensive spell with a built in dash. The game doesn’t really tell you any of what I just said.
@9:52: To be fair, there are technically 3 ways to not die there. 1. Is as you said in the video. 2. You have a shield to block it with. 3. You can spam Superman dives. This one probably won't save you all the time, but it definitely works if you're full health. Honestly, for me, this boss was peak BECAUSE of how bullshit he was sometimes. Idk if it's cause of being used to playing Monster Hunter or not, but no other monster in world and iceborne besides fatalis made me zero in and try everything from farming some gear, to actually using the radial menu optimally, and to actively panic/internally read the situation to make sure I never get combo'd to death, to get my first kill. It was the grueling experience I missed from older generations' endgame content. But I can definitely see your point throughout the video and can honestly appreciate hearing opinions that may differ somewhat from my own in a calm fashioned manner. Good show!
@@Oniichan880 There's one more. Stay on his ass. Always. If you get combod and he pulls range, its kind of on you. Why did you get hit in the first place? :D I know it's easier said than done but with time and practice it's actually one of the best attacks he can pull against you. If you're positioned right it's guaranteed damage on the head.
@@caliginousmoira8565 I wouldn’t say dogwalked, but I already had elemental DB sets on standby when he was announced, so it was just the usual trial and error until the kill. So from my experience, not really a wall, but not a pushover either.
yeah, why didn't he just block with his SWITCH AXE? or take a few seconds to sheathe his SWITCH AXE while the monster waited patiently for him so that he could dive out of the way? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think in monster hunter specifically what defines difficult is the gear and skill you use. A perfect example is the breath attack. In world I mained gunlance and used a decoration called “Guard Up”, it allows you to block normally unblockable attacks along with “Guard” which reduced the knockback and stamina taken while guarding. This allowed me to mostly ignore his attacks during the first phase and really only have to be a little more careful when his flames powered up. The only other weapons that can do this are greatsword, lance, heavy bowgun, charge blade, and sword and shield. Most of the discussions I see online about difficulty try to lock themselves into using one option to beat whatever challenge they set their sights on, while not using everything at their disposal. An example is a comment I saw saying they didn’t want to have to use more effective elemental weapons for Alatreon. Several times I’ve seen that people have the knowledge and know what they need to beat the boss, but they refuse to utilize or try to get what they need to be more effective.
I really do agree on the time limit. It's meant to be more of an aggression check than a gear check, as well as a call back to OG fatalis having that 30 minute timer. But if there's one thing I find to embody the soul of monster hunter, it's when you're struggling against a monster you haven't fully understood yet, 2 carts down 45 minutes in, and you clutch victory in those last 5 minutes. That's real heroics. I generally found most of the attacks to be otherwise reasonable with the exception of charged fireball AOEs (I know how to roll out of those but brother, those can fly past you, explode offscreen and still hit you) and getting combo'd into the breath cone attack. A lot of veteran hunters really like fatalis because it feels oldschool hard and I love it for that same "no holding back" feeling, but I didn't like getting knocked over by kushala then getting run over by a slow orbiting black tornado back then, and I don't like the same thing happening now with fatalis. I will say though, it's still a hundred times better than primordial malzeno.
I like PriMal personally :( His final phase may be a bit unconventional for MH fights since he starts throwing out scripted combo sequences you can't interrupt. But considering you can memorize them, find easy ways to dodge around them on any weapon, and he ultimately rewards your survival with a solid 10-15 second window to attack him, it still feeds into the typical combat loop of Sunrise. Contrast Risen Shagaru, who has no such predictable patterns, a dozen hitboxes on most of his attacks that hard shut down block/counter builds, nonstop huge movements and incredibly tiny punish windows that make slower weapons useless, and one small weakspot that's always wiggling out of reach of the faster and shorter weapons. That fight is absolute nonsense that feels like it invalidates several entire playstyles, in a game that can do a shockingly decent job making as many options as it has feel viable for a thousand hours. That screams "artificial" to me.
To be fair, there are indeed bosses where “Get Good” is quite literally the only solution, they’re just not as common as the frequency of “Get Good” as advice would suggest. A prime example is Deathstroke from Batman: Arkham Origins. With Deathstroke, the fight is best described as hard but fair. The arena is a neutral, flat plane with no objects or spots that favor either side. Deathstroke has a randomized attack pattern, but all of his attacks can be countered. However, Deathstroke can also counter _your_ attacks if you become reckless. There’s also random QTE’s where you must counter Deathstroke that vary in length: some require one input, others require 2 or more and there’s no way to tell which is which except by being precise. Additionally, the QTE’s can happen at any time and you’ll only have a short time to react. All these factors combined mean there is no exploit, strategy, or gimmick to the fight; you _must_ beat him by skill and mastery of the game’s combat system. You, the player, must know when to attack, when to counter, and have perfect timing for both. In this regard, the game forces you to improve your skill as a player, regardless of what upgrades or playstyle you have.
I agree with you but knowing “when to counter” and “when to attack” IS strategy that you can learn from a tutorial. Sort of like Sekiro, where enemies also counter you and have seemingly random moves.
I think the timer is what makes this fight excellent. In my very first time soloing Fatalis in Iceborne, the timer was around 29, making me very stressed out. But then when I beat it with only few seconds remaining, I felt a satisfaction I never felt before in the whole game, I screamed "Hell yeah!" The tight timer made it sure that anyone who's beating Fatalis for the first time would have a very close finish. Thus, making the fight as memorable as ever.
In my opinion the biggest thing that a lot of people who say “skill issue get better then it’s easy” don’t realize or just completely ignore is that not only can fair fights can apply to that, unfair ones can too. Just because you can learn to not get hit by doing a very specific thing doesn’t make an unfair artificially hard boss a skill issue, it’s still artistically unfair. Both can technically be true at the same time, but in my opinion only one of them actually matters: if it’s a skill issue only the player will get better or go level up, but if the fight is artificially difficult so many things just feel bad, like he explained in the video: the fight felt good till he lost due to an unnecessarily low time limit for the final boss. Tldr: not all “skill level” bosses are flawed like he said but just about all “flawed” bosses can be beaten with enough skill
Really nice video literally sums up my problem with fatalis like I wouldn't have minded him having really high damage if the hitboxes were clean like alatreon and that's why I prefer it over him also all of the people online defending his nonsense didn't help as well but at the end of the day these types fight have to happen so that the game improves as long as we don't repeat the same mistakes also I really like how you say get or got better instead of the usual useless git gud that does not help anyone and it's actually an indirect insult to player
Death by a thousand cuts sums up fatalis and alatreon fight perfectly. If there's thing to adjust on fatalis, it'll be removing the horn breaking adjustment, followed closely by removing tenderizer requirement to break horns
I would like to nominate Terraria's Elements Awoken mod's Awakened mode. +75% HP, Damage and Defense on EVERYTHING with like 3 mode specific drops(that aren't even that good) is only fun if you like self flagellation.
i think terraria in general has that problem. on the higher difficulties the fights basically end with "make sure you have enough health and gear to tank the basically unavoidable attacks for the last 10% of the fight😊"
@@nullnull637 yes but also defense is hilariously broken, so most high difficulty mods are like, nerfing defense super duper hard, making defense builds significantly worse, forcing evasion.
I have to say, if it took you only 8 attempts to solo Fatalis blind with the additional restrictions you mentioned, you're either really damn good, or you've just made me realize I'm really damn bad. As a GS player it took me around 2 days of attempts (probably ~50 attempts) to solo Alatreon, and I've yet to attempt Fatalis since I've heard he's way more difficult, not to mention I studied Alatreon's moves and looked at builds beforehand aswell.
This is such a well illustrated and narrated video. I do however have one single complaint. Calling out specifically the insect glaive above any other weapon for underperforming in this hunt? Having soloed Fatalis with ALL melee weapons multiple times, I can confidently say that IG is the best weapon to bring to this fight.
I think you are the only person who managed to come up with a convincing argument against the 30 minute timer. I feel like any other time I've heard complaints about it, it just boils down to people not being good enough to kill Fatalis fast enough, and while that may be true... The first fight against him, at least, shouldn't have that timer. They clearly want the odds to be more in your favor for that first story clear. It's the only quest that gives you more than the standard 3 carts by default, and the first time you do it you get carried through phase 1 by a NPC that's helping you heal. Once you clear that initial story quest though, all you have is a standard 3 cart quest. I feel like that first one for the story should've had either a longer, or an unlimited timer, specifically for the reasons you mentioned in this video. Now, onto the topic of difficulty, there's something very important that isn't touched on in this video, but I think it's key to really understanding a discussion about how fair Fatalis' difficulty is: He was the final monster added to the game. He is, for all intents and purposes, your final challenge. He's the thing you build up to, and if you played Iceborne from launch to his release (like I did), then that's exactly what happened. People went into his fight with super augmented gear that had insanely high defense and health regen on hit, along with super optimized sets that can shred through normal monsters in less than 10 minutes easily. As a result, Fatals _had_ to be balanced around that fact, and that on its own wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but the biggest mistake Capcom made with Fatalis in World is that you have the ability to fight him almost as soon as you beat Shara Ishvalda. You don't have to do the hours and hours of grinding to gather good decorations, or level up the guiding lands to unlock crazy strong augments. You don't have to fight Safi Jiiva or Kulve Taroth to get their really powerful equipment options. You don't have to do the preparation that Fatalis is designed for, and as a result, it's very easy for people to waltz into that fight wholly unprepared and get mollywhopped for it. The timer of the Fatalis quest didn't matter to me, even without a single piece of Fatalis gear, because I had a damn good set and weapon I could use to take him down. He hit hard, but that was alright because I had a health regen augment and augmented defense to help with those mistakes, which also ties into the time limit issue because I had the liberty of being more comfortable with taking risks. But someone who's just fresh off Shara Ishvalda, and the handful of other title update quests that lead up to Fatalis, will not have that luxury. Hell, someone who has only done a _little_ bit of grinding won't have that luxury, or maybe someone simply doesn't like to play with some of those tools (like the absence of health regen stipulation mentioned in the video.) I acknowledge that it's a lot to ask from the player just so they can fight a single boss, but at the same time, is it really the fault of the boss if _you_ decided to walk into something undergeared and prepared and found it to be unreasonably difficult? Is it the boss' fault if you, personally, decided you didn't like to use a specific tool or option, but the boss expected you to make use of it? The latter question definitely lends itself to an entirely different discussion regarding game balance and why it absolutely does matter in PvE games despite people claiming it doesn't, but that's not the discussion going on here.
On the Alatreon video I told you I'd go back to World to take on Alatreon and Fatalis (and AT Velk but she's more of a bonus) I can now happily say I've bested all three on my own, and they are some of my favourite bosses ever. Now it's time to grind another 200 hours to get an atk 4 decoration!
Just yesterday I was struggling with the Phantasm and Dying Fire boss in DQ3 (absolutely sisyphean nightmare if done a bit early like I did and I've played my fair share of bullshit Dragon Quest bosses), took me 4-5 tries. See this video, notice DQ mention in the description, stay around (despite me not having played a single MH game) to see if there's allusions to DQ and which boss from which game, *oh my god it's the boss from yesterday.* Needless to say good to know I wasn't the only one. Great video! Loved listening through it. I'd consider it artificial difficulty when the challenge primarily revolves around factors that aren't skill, to reference said DQ boss, fighting six enemies all of them with the ability to summon another copy of themselves at will. At that point, it's not about beating them, it's a war of attrition and desperate race to murder them all before they randomly decided to summon a bazillion extra copies because they're immune to any kind of stun or debuff. Then it's no longer skill, you can beat the first wave but you won't beat the fight if you're unlucky.
Haven't seen the rest of the video yet, but I was watching the cone part and you're mistaken here. The cone itself can be dodged anywhere in the arena, you can dodge it by spamming superman flawlessly without taking a single point of damage. You can also block it using weapons that have block features though that takes damage. When using the siege weapons and you see a cone coming it's unlucky but usually still survivable if you react fast enough.
Fatalis is so impressive on many levels, and while there are things I dislike about it, that doesn't stop me from saying this is my favorite boss in a video game. The main problem is that timer, and not for the reason of "artificial difficulty." No, that timer exists for a reason both in universe, and to encourage you to take more risks. To be aggressive. My problem is the timer *feels* artificial. You touched on this in the video, but I wanted to get my own feelings out. All it would take is a cutscene of Fatalis flying up and burning the whole castle down. Perhaps a gradual rise of flames as the timer approaches zero. Something to tie the timer into the context of the fight. So yeah I have no problem with the existence of the timer besides the way it feels as a gamified mechanic. I love this fight despite this (and yeah I also don't think it should be considered artificially difficult as a whole). That's just it. You can love things while still critiquing them. Hate things while still understanding and respecting those who don't. It's about maturity, everyone. We will always have different perspectives and experiences. We will never understand them by throwing others' to the side.
Just to be clear, World and Iceborne (and most of the games pre Rise) have a TON of I-frames, almost five times as many as you said in the video. Slot in some evade window and you'd be hard-pressed to find an attack you can't roll through. Base I-frames in World for example are 10-12 for rolls, I forget exactly which
note that neither of you mentioned if it was in the context of 30fps or 60fps, so you're both kinda right from internet base world has ~7 at 30fps and 13 at 60fps evade window 5: ~13 at 30fps and 25 at 60fps for comparison, elden ring datamining puts light/medium dodge rolling at 13 at 30fps and 26 at 60fps So base for world is about half of a souls game, EW5 putting it on par. I don't know rise numbers, only did datamining stuff for elden ring, iirc rise roll is ~4 30fps and ~8 60fps
The "ton" of s in question is fucking 13 at 60fps without any EW slotted. That is barely usable for the majority of things (barring roars and other very brief hitboxes). I adore fatalis but acting like your roll is just a one button solution to issues is stupid
@@earthnugget7881 13 is a pretty reasonable amount to get through quick attacks. Fatalis' bite is a quick attack. I trust you to put two and two together here. If I can I-frame through attacks with Lance's hop (which has even less than 13), then you can do it with a roll
@@praseetharae8815 Rise has so few I-frames without Evade Window I think I've rolled through attacks less than 10 times in my 600 or so hours of playtime (without that skill investment). World is very generous in that regard, to the point it feels like I'm cheating sometimes
i reached for my phone like three different times while listening to this podcast style ready to "um actually" you back to the stone age. all three times i pulled my hand away and said fuck it let's see where he goes. at the end of the video i subbed. 🤘
I think something you completely overlooked would help this discussion. Its not that the stuff combo kills you, its that there is no recovery from a mistake that makes it feel bad. Let me panic and clutch a heal by escaping mid combo. That cant happen if the boss true combos you.
I just did the data bosses for KH2, and this really hits. While they were hard, most of them were pretty fair. You just had to know how to block for most of them. And then you f*uck*ing have Demyxs' DM (desperation move.) He comes with a timer where you have to kill 99 water clones in 30 seconds. This happens at the end of the fight. You can not kill him until he does it. If you don't kill them all on time, you just lose. While the rest of the fight is fairly easy. dAnCe WaTeR dAnCe
As cb player i never enjoyed fatalis he's coded in a way that makes him unfun to fight with heavy weapons since you can't stagger him or make him fall which turns the fight to hit and pray he doesn't use a one shot attack
I personally enjoyed him with most heavy weapons, just CB and lance felt very uncomfortable, and awkward, but hammer, GS, SwAx, and HH felt pretty enjoyable, but I can only really speak for myself.
As im playing Elden Ring now, this came to my recommended page, and i agree with the points here. Im stuck on Malenia now, and in the 2nd phase, she can do her infamous Waterfowl Dance anytime she wants. And also just leap up, and string another combo together. What i feel like is articificial difficulty is when the boss ignores core concepts of the game. Example nr.1 is the combo strings. She can do waterfowl dance, followed up by scarlet summons, into a few normal attacks into another waterfowl dance. Emphasis on the "CAN" part. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesnt, whenever she feels like it, and there's no tell when she will stop, and when she will continue the attack. Nr.2 is her hyperarmor. When you break the posture bar of a boss (every boss has it) You mostly do it by attacking with heavy attacks, and then you get a punish window for a critical hit. But sometimes its 4 charged heavy attacks , and sometimes she hyperarmors the 4th attack and resets her posture bar, so you cannot even count on the punish you worked hard for. For me, that is articificial difficulty. Not even mentioning the 1 shots at 1500 hp. Relentless attacking, unreliable punish windows, tremendous damage and ignoring core concepts of combat makes the fight absolutely unbearable so much that i dont even feel like bothering with that crap.
Artificial difficulty: - speed of NPC faster than your character can ever achieve - hitbox and hurtbox that do not match the model of the weapon and/or attack - attack patterns and areas of effect that are literally undodgeable and the game gives you no tools to block the damage completely - grab attacks that are too fast and not correctly telegraphed, which bypass any sort of defense except a dodge, but since it's too fast you will get hit most of the time - inflated stats (attack, hp, damage reduction) - invincibility frames that are much shorter than the attack's frame data, so you end up being hit anyway - dodge, jump and sprint button being on the same keybind (which makes absolutely no sense), which ends in you having at least a 1 second delay from your button press for a dodge input to be "calculated" by the game - attacks that hit through walls or spawn a hurtbox on the other side of a wall - NPCs that are so fast and so big that your locked camera becomes a carrousel (essentially camera issues which makes a lot of these games a joke; they force you to play locked off just so you can play, which renders camera lock-on feature useless) - animation locking of the player on attack for more than 0.75s on every single attack (which ends up in clunky gameplay and you getting hit most of the time unless you make up for it by animation cancelling where possible) - NPCs that phase in and out of existence or go immune to damage - NPC aoe attacks that have too much visual clutter and obscure vision for prolonged periods of time - timed bosses with inflated stats and all of the above We see these in most games because for whatever reason developers refuse to improve NPC AI. The difficulty we should be having is AI that is better at reading player movement and acting accordingly, with higher difficulties the AI should be flat out better than on easier difficulties by expanding moveset, dodging more and being less predictable, etc. And before you say "Git Gud", there's literally no point in doing that. And even though most of us will push through, most of these are single player games and not competitive so there's no real point in getting good.
Material shiny drops you can pick up and you can guarantee certain parts drops by breaking corresponding parts (which includes its rarest part). Once they're broken, you abandon the quests and keep the parts.
Yeah it's actually not that hard to craft the full fatalis set without killing him once. Breaking the horn is suprisingly easy if you focus on that and don't pay attention to the timer. It's not possible with Velkhana for instance.
All righty... you reminded me I didn't beat him because I didn't beat Alatreon... because I never like the DPS builds and focus more on learning to dodge, survive and play the game as an old game hunt and not speedrun. So I need to go back and beat Alatreon now... HOWEVER you reminded me as well about the last Malzeno in Rise and to me that was perfect, if you have the knowledge by previous battles and you can win by skill and knowledge while using the core mechanic of the game it is fine, but sometimes it just isn't, being forced to achieve a DPS mark on a 50min hunt that doesn't matter because you die before if you don't reach the DPS mark is absurd. Also Monster Hunter as well other games sometimes FORCES you to use specific stuff to beat some bosses, there are combos from monsters or situations that can't be avoided by skill, like Vaal Hazak blight and many stuff like that, there is where I think to myself "Is it fine that the game is forcing me to play like this and cutting my freedom?" Being said that... as far as those elements are easy to obtain and implement on your gameplay/build then it is OK for specific situations, but when it is hard to do or you must grind/sacrifice many hours to do that because skill alone and knowledge are not enough then it is really bad design.
I love that you bring up primordial malzeno since I feel like it's the perfect example of capcom responding to the community's complaints about fatalis and alatreon. It's still an incredibly challenging fight not because it has any auto lose mechanics, but instead because it's just fundamentally hard. The monster feels extremely skill heavy and when you lose it really does feel like you have no one to blame but yourself. You didn't lose to a timer or a hydrogen bomb that you failed to defuse, you lost the the boss you're fight, and I really like that
A couple of quick notes, though it's worth noting I haven't done this specific fight. When talking about defensive options, you never mentioned blocking or parrying, which would be options for numerous weapons against some of his attacks. I would imagine that fire cone attack can be blocked, protecting you from the "cone combo", since you can block the second you stand up, though you might take a ton of chip damage. You could also easily block or parry the fire chomp. It was mentioned that Glaive would struggle to break his horns, though Glaive can jump, so it can hit his head at times when other weapons can't. Of all the things in the video, the fireballs look the most like BS, though hitboxes that hit way beyond the range where they appear to hit is common for the series.
The issue with 'difficulty' in video games is that it encapsulates two separate things: challenge, and fairness. Challenge is the actual skill a game is asking of a player. That is to say, challenge is a test of dexterity, mechanical ability, coordination, and strategy. Fairness is a measure of how that challenge is presented to the player. In many RPGs, higher difficulty setting usually only changes damage output or input, health values, etcetera. The challenge the player needs to overcome doesn't change, it is simply more or less fair. I would say that a game is artificially difficult when the fairness is not in line with the actual challenge the game asks the player to overcome (the skill and execution which they need to succeed)
Which one do you mean? I've enjoyed every boss in ultrakill more than every other fps I've played, and the only one I can think of that fits this description is the Leviathan (rocket riding is not an excuse for that boss it's still kinda boring)
@Bolt2049 sisyphus and the gauntlet before him. I could explain why I think so, but ive learned from experience that arguing with ultrakill players is a waste of time.
@@officialregirock4021This reeks of "I tried to argue with people, I lost, now I insult them in other videos that have nothing to do with them". Both Sisyphus prime and the gauntlet before him are incredible tests of complex mechanical skills, so of course players would push back against you.
@@yanribeiro7108 yeah, you are right, they are complex tests of skill, does that mean that they are flawless tests of skill? No, they are not, but this fandom refuses to accept that their favorite game has flaws. This makes me wonder if you even watched the time stamp in my original comment.
@@officialregirock4021 Never said they were flawless, my point was that your comment reeks of someone who made bad arguments then decided to vent about those pesky Ultrakill fans elsewhere. Every fanbase is bad, deal with it. And good luck pointing out flaws in Ultrakill, there's very few of them, it's a very tightly designed game.
That timer is the sole reason I hate the Fatalis fight. I'm in agreement with all of the points you made here, however because of that stupid timer, I'm striped of my player agnecy and fored to play in a way I *hate* to beat him. For example, if you don't use meta skills, you're gonna fail. If you don't use the cluch claw, you fail. The one reason I loved Alatreon is that it *didn't* have a stupid timer, i wasn't forced to use tenderizer or any offensive skills like agitators. Me succeeding was based on how I fought the monster. With Fatalis, if I fought the way I wanted to fight, I would always fail the quest. Imagine being forced to do something you hate to do in a game you really like. That's how I feel about Fatalis. Is why whenever I replay Monster Hunter world I always stop when I get to fatalis.
Can this argument just die already? Players are meant to change their playstyle to fit the boss, not the other way around. Having a boss be easily beatable with ANY playstyle is ridiculous, it can't even be called a test at that point. The whole point of monster hunter is to adapt to the monster, to learn and overcome them. If the time you spent being a massive weenie because the game didn't let you play an arbitrary way, was instead spent on learning how he works and how to beat him, then you and many other people still bitching to this day, wouldn't be anymore. Hopefully the devs don't stop designing fights like this due to you people complaining about it. A key, fundamental aspect of monster hunter has always been preparing, and adapting to any monster. It would cease to be this series if this were the case.
@yanribeiro7108 No. This argument won't die because it's why the vast majority of us even play games to begin with. You're trying to argue that people shouldn't try to be creative and/or prep for hunts. People should be forced to play like everyone else... As if people somehow plays and thinks the same way. You can try to defend terrible game mechanics, but that won't make it true. You are no different than people trying to defend loot boxes being sold to kids.
@@AntonioCunningham Damn, what a shit reply. Where do I even start? First off, people don't play games so that they can play any way they want. Games have limits, and that's what make them games. You can't play doom eternal as if it's Ultrakill and vice versa, you will die. Limitations and mechanical creativity is what creates skill ceilings and floors. This is an argument people only apply to monster hunter and never realize how arbitrarily awful it is when applied to anything else. As for your second paragraph, I didn't argue for any of that, so keep beating that strawman if you want. There's a TON of freedom when fighting fatalis, for defense or offensive builds. I play exclusively solo and most of my fights against him are sub 20 minutes. All you're doing with your comment is disguising your lack of skill and mechanical understanding of the fight as a criticism about player freedom, when the fight offers plenty of freedom, you just need to be better at the game to be able to express that freedom. You yourself admitted to stopping your playthrough when tou reach him, that's a direct admission of not understanding him, by your own words. I'm quoting you with what I said. Are you now disagreeing with yourself? As for your third paragraph, there's nothing to say here. It's just a glorified "Nuh uh" coming from a bad player lacking basic Game design literacy. I could easily say the reverse to you with about as much Oomph. As for your last paragraph, there's literally not a single connection between those two concepts you buffoon. Not a single bit of connecting tissue. Thank you for proving that nobody on the internet can use comparisons accurately.
@@AntonioCunningham wtf you thought "challenging final boss meant" in a monster hunter game? You really thought that going into known hard content meant you could play however you wanted and still win without adopting new way of dealing with it. If they introduce something to help you fight just use it. I can understand not wanting to optimize against weaker monster and go the way you want. But we're talking about the final boss of a dlc meant to give challenge.
@hjmp6236 Given that I've beaten virtually all in-game bosses in the series, Fatalis is the only one I hate. Hazard Primordial Malzeno is infinaly better than Fatalis. Even back in MHGU where monsters are scaled for four players, they were still better fights. You still had agency with the fights. That's not the case with Fatalis. If you don't play the borning meta, you can't win. This is terrible game design
I am one of those Fatalis haters. I also hate Alatreon. Both for completely different reasons. It's a shame that MHW couldn't have just ended at Raging Brachydios and Furious Rajang. I'm not lying when I say it took me weeks to beat Alatreon and after 3 months of farming gear and doing attempts I gave up on Fatalis. I've just continued playing the game without ever beating him. It sucks that 2 of my top 5 least favorite fights across all of MH just so happen to be the final monsters of MHWIB. But it is what it is.
never beat Fatty solo too, did join other and atleast be able to hold myself and help them break head part, I just don't like the fact that it have move that force you to take damage, forcing you to use potion or next time you getting hit it's gonna be one shotted, I have no problem with any monster because they always have something that we can exploited or punished, Fatalis is just overtuned for no reason than to be hard.
Thank god the developers didn't end at raging brachy, despite it also being an amazing fight. Removing 2 incredible fights from the game because a certain group of people have shit opinions on great fights would be awful. Fatalis is straight up one of the best dragon fights in any game ever.
@@yanribeiro7108 We can have a difference in opinion. You don't have to be rude about it. I could just as easily say you have a shit opinion because you like gimmick fights. The road goes both ways buddy.
@@albinofroggy Thank you for the permission for being able to disagree, I don't know what I would've done without it. Now that Internet Jim bob gave me permission to have a difference of opinion, I can move on. I suppose you could say I have a bad opinion for liking "Gimmick" fights, whatever that means to you. And that would be an abysmal take too, similar to your other one. So, I suppose it would make sense that it came from the same guy, in that regard.
@@yanribeiro7108 Brother you gotta take your meds. You're speaking to the hallucinations again. It's just incoherent rambling from you now. Calm down grandpa.
I think a key component to all of this is how it fits in with the story. A final boss can and should feel "unfair" in ways that a midgame or early game boss should not (unless there's a certain mechanic or technique that they're meant to teach, and once you do it they no longer feel unfair).
I personally think the fight is balanced how it should be. The cone attack is actually dodge-able by spamming dives. if you time them perfectly you can even survive a cone without taking any damage. as the boss is post game and monster hunter is all about preparation, the devs want you to have all upgrades available. I noticed you dont have augments, or at least not the healing augment, but those are very important for beating fatalis and the healing augment counters some of the crazy damage he puts out. also not sure if you augmented armor but that will allow you to have a good bit more defense. I see where the point of him being too hard is coming from but there is a counter to everything he does and you have to gain that knowledge in order to beat him, which i think is very cool
I don't think this video really addresses "artificial difficulty", it's just a video about how the Fatalis fight is balanced. The fight isn't perfect, and sometimes it's frustrating. It's also pretty fair in the sense that there's a balance between risk and reward, as you pointed out. Skill is the determining factor rather than luck. I feel like "artificial difficulty" is just something people say when they feel like something is too hard but want to sound smarter about it. Technically all difficulty in video games is "artificial" in the sense that it's a challenge manufactured by the devs. The question should really be "is the result reasonably within the players control" or in simpler words "is it skill based" and I think the answer for Fatalis is clearly yes. This fight is the final challenge of a very long game, the absolute pinnacle. I doubt the devs designed it with the expectation that everyone would even make it that far, let alone solo the fight. You're meant to bring your absolute best for Fatalis. If you don't have enough i-frames (13 at base, not 2 or 3) then consider using evade up. If you don't want to evade, use a shield with guard up. If you don't want to do either of those then you'll just have to position yourself better. If you restrict yourself from using all the tools available to you then it's not the games fault that you struggle. As far as the timer goes, yes you can look at it as a gear check, but it also serves the purpose of preventing you from playing too passively. Time pressure is a useful tool to push the player into interacting with the risk/reward rather than just sitting back and waiting for big openings.
Thank you. The term "artificial difficulty" is inherently nonsens since every thing in a game is artificial. Even worse it gets used to discredit the developers when the player fails to adapt. It generally shows a lack of understanding whenever this term gets brought up.
As a game dev, I think you're both slightly incorrect. Some forms of difficulty *feel* much more artificial than others. I think the main difference is the gap between intent and result. If you intend to do something, but the game stops you from doing it in a way that doesn't feel like a predictable outcome of an enemies behavior, it will feel frustrating. This is why even very difficult games like Celeste have quality of life features like coyote time where it lets you jump for a split second after you've ran off a ledge. This aligns the player's intents with their results, we try to squeeze out every inch of distance possible on a jump, and coyote time let's us feel like we've done that. It doesn't mean the game is easier, it just makes it feel more fair and fun. In boss fights there are many comparable quality of life features: I frames Wind-up animations The visual size of the attack relative to its hitbox Attacks dealing less damage if you *mostly* dodge them Implementing these things reduces the difficulty of the boss, but you can increase the difficulty with things like faster attacks and it will still feel more fair than it did before they were added.
@StellaByLuna Of course you can't bring player intent too close to their results because then even mindless button mashing could win a fight, but I think fair difficulty comes from when the gap between intent and result comes from predictable results of your opponent's behavior as much as possible. If a hitbox is as large or larger than the attack looks visually, that breaks the illusion of you fighting an opponent, it now feels like you're fighting the developers. When the hitbox is a little smaller than the attack is visually, it always feels like you're dodging by the skin of your teeth. Of course you can overdo this too and create "artificial ease", where players learn they can go pretty far into attacks and not take damage, and this makes it confusing to tell where the hotboxes actually are
Margit and Morgott are the same person anyway. Just don't confuse them with his twin brother Mohg the Omen, who is also Mohg the Blood Guy. You probably should also know about their DLC exclusive siblings Morrow, Mogli and Margret.
the hitbox is larger than the visual it's a visual clarification design problem. sure the red circle in typical MMO might ruin the emmersion but they can just use a fire ember vfx instead seem the dev were just kinda lazy and it's not even fatalis it's many many monsters that have this problem how the fux are u gonna predict that without knowing in the first place then? u don't it's a knowledge check😂😂😂
"the cone" can be dodged by using farcaster. If you see fatty going for the cone and you are in the "danger zone" with no way out, just use faecaster from the radial menu to get out. Main problem with this method is that it is rather time consuming in a fight with an already tight time limit. (Not sure if it can get you out of an combo cone)
Or, "Why you shouldn't play Monster Hunter". Seriously, this video turned me off every playing this game. A half hour fight on a timer with a bunch of bullshit attacks? Nah, I'm out. I like challenging games, but sometimes devs seem to not care about our time.
@maynardburger Yeah but the thing that wasn't talked about is that this is basically the only fight in the game that is like this (which makes it even worse IMO)
The timer is there, so you have to actually learn the fight, instead of playing it supersafe. It's not artificial, it's in almost every quest type and has a reason to exist. All of your video comes off like a Reddit essay.
I am pretty deep in the "Git Good" camp when it comes to Fatalis because getting better at Monster Hunter isn't just I frame better. The older games really emphasized preparation and knowledge going into a boss, most of the mechanical difficulties are fixed with game knowledge, not playing better. -Big Hitboxes: Evade Extender level 1 totally changes the fight -30min timer and 60k health: to beat Fatalis is somewhere around 35dps, if you use heavy artillery and eat for bombardier it drops to around 25. -Cone Bad: going into the cone is normally done when you are far away, stay close. You can block it for chip damage. Also 2 dragon pods flinch and cancel the cone (Shaver jewel). -Cone Good: It only does the cone while standing (enraged) you the player control that with the flinch shot. You can also bait it by standing under the head, leave the Palico home for more control. -Flying: smoke bombs, Fatalis lands when it can't see you. This also make siege weapons safe to use. -Hits too hard: swap off pure glass cannon builds and find room for fire resist and divine blessing. -Head breaks: partbreaker Fatalis has a ton different ways to make the fight easier through preparation. Most of them are compromising on pure dps skills and actually building an armor set to counter it. There is plenty to complain about. The final theme surges at like 5% health which is still 3k and can take a couple of minutes, it always kinda feels like it kicks on too early. The head isn't a weak spot for gunners making breaks on the head a lot harder. But these are pretty minor. Most of the "unbeatable cheap artificial difficulty" is players wanting to smash through a brick wall with their heads instead of going to grab a hammer and chisel, like yeah it is still hard with the right tools, but it is do-able.
I feel like this summarizes exactly how I felt about the fight. As someone who beat iceborne when it came out, but didn't keep up with the constant grinding, this final hunt became too much. It took me a lot of time to get back into the swing of things and learn the fight, I looked up how to bait the cone as a greatsword main, but on my best attempts I got to the final stretch multiple times just to get hit with the timer. I hadn't played perfect, but getting hit with a timer multiple times and knowing that wasting hours grinding for the perfect set/dectoration/augment would have been enough to win, completely shattered my interest in playing. This final boss felt more like an MMO raid boss than anything I'd experienced in monster hunter before, and it felt that way because of all the dark patterns of designs those sort of bosses implement. What a shame.
artificial difficulty is really when a "hard mode" of the boss is really just the same boss but with 2x hp and half the time to complete it.
That's why terraria's higher difficulty is great (not master mode), it's actually different
@feeplemurphy4618yea I love expert mode but despise master mode, anytime I want a vanilla challenge I go play ftw expert mode, not master because it has changes beyond just pure stats
@@k1llsh0t_87 yeah, but I rarely ever play vanilla, so my go-to is Infernum
@feeplemurphy4618 I didn't mention modded because that's its own beast but yea my go to is normally just Eternity mode, would much rather have something that changes the AI of all bosses rather the bloated stats that is master mode
Do you mean double the time to complete it, not half? 🤔
If you want examples of "artificial difficulty," look no further than Forza Horizon. Instead of coding the braindead AIs to actually drive properly in higher difficulties, they just get a speed boost. Skill doesn't matter if the roads are straight and everyone else gets double your horsepower
I got well adjusted to this once I got into playing the limited time multiplayer driving events where it places you against a team of the most difficult AI. Anyone not in first or second watches all the AI just rubber band to catch up to the person on first, making it so they can’t even ride their draft to attempt to catch up.
In fact, the game was so bad, it was more beneficial for the people in last to flat out leave, as then the AI would get less points due to technically not being in front of anyone.
Complete garbage game for multiplayer, good casually.
I recently played one (I think 4) and despite easily get first place in most street races I struggled to win the off road races because despite having one of the best off road vehicles the other would simply fly past me unless I could find a super shortcut.
@@Pallysilverstarthe ai on high difficulty settings has artificial downforce and grip
In Hotshot Racing even in normal difficulty the way the AI becomes a challenge is by mercilessly ramming you so you lose control and then you time out or leave you way behind, racing games are notoriously bad because the AI is not programmed to act as if their characters have to win, only to make you lose.
As far as I'm aware, every single racing game since the 90s has "rubber banding" where the back of the pack gets a boost to keep up. Some give you an option to turn it off, but it makes for a much better experience imo.
To anybody wondering why the hell this quest has a 30 min timer instead of 50 it's because in Monster Hunter 1 (2004) where fatalis was the final online boss battle, there was a mechanic in place where the dragon would flee if you did enough damage but no enough to kill him, this was because in those times final bosses where meant to be hunted by a group of four and had a fixed gargantuar health pool meant for those 4 players, well if they flee the next time you fought them they would come back with the remaining health and also any broken body part that you managed to break in your last attempt, guess Capcom forgot about this last part lol
@@carlosescamilla5260 I remember them doing a similar thing with yian garuga in mhf1 he had a 15 mins timer and damage was kept each run. I remember it took me around 4-6 runs to kill him for his armour.
sieges exist but yeah they seemed to have "reinvented the wheel" and had it worse.
fascinating
Capcom forgetting about basic things seems like a real Capcom move, they screw up the most basic and easy things to fix sometimes. Like ultrawide in their pc ports.. Or an FOV slider.
My Headcanon is that as we fight Fatalis in MHW:IB the Flames are getting hotter and hotter so much that Schloss Schrade becomes unbearably hot that we need to leave after 30min.
Funny enough I think presentation is one of the important factors here. A strict time limit on a boss with super punishing mechanics that require good pre positioning and reactions while also executing a high enough degree of damage to beat the time limit. That sounds brutally punishing, but that's also pretty much exactly the structure of raid bosses in mmos. You'll have fights that are 10, sometimes 20 minutes of difficult mechanics where one or two players in the party doing it wrong can cause everyone to die, but even if you do all of the mechanics perfectly if your damage is too low you hit enrage and die. The structure of enrage as a time limit feels less arbitrary because it's just another part of the boss's pattern, rather than being an interruption to the flow of a fight.
It doesn't "fix" the problem with the fight, but tying the timer in mechanically can change the feel a lot. Maybe fatalis is slowly destroying the arena as you fight and if you don't defeat it in time the ground is destroyed, or flooded with lava, or otherwise made intraversible for the player. Then it feels like the time limit is something the boss is doing, rather than the hand of the game itself pulling you from the fight.
Tying into the second part: it's also less frustrating to fail if it looks cool when you do it. Funny/cool death animations was something older difficult games often used to make frequent deaths more palatable.
I know why the monster hunter time limmit exists (to prevent the player from just stallling for an hour and just do chip dama, aka saving them from themselve and the "given the oppertunity a player will optimize all fun out of a game" rule), but using a shortened time limmit which is shorter for no reason to force the players to be aggressive is just bad... not only does the player have to deal with a change to the core mechanics in a fight which is ment to test those mechanics, but this really just feels once again like one of those "teehee, damage check" moments
As the person above said, if there was some reason or animation for the time limmit instead of a "it is what it is", then it would be a little bit less frustrating... well maybe... the monster you unlock right before fatalis is a fantastic example of how not to do a good time limmit by game mechanics xD
But if instead of a shortened time limmit fatalis had something like an ability which would continually boost its power or attack speed after the 30 min time limmit, that would make it feel less unfair and more of a desparation act on its side
The ground is burning in 3rd phase and fatalis becomes so hot that his chest glows like molten steel. The reason you fail after 30 minutes is because the hunter would literally combust while just standing nearby after that time. Unfortunately the devs didn't bother to make that evident. Also they didn't use the heat mechanic (luckily) which makes kt even less obvious
If only monster hunter used monster hunter mechanics for it's hardest challenges instead of a different genres. Also, you autolose alatreon's fight through what is effectively a time limit but baked in (it's escuton judgement) and that was the most controversial fight in the entire series, much more so than fatalis so I don't think that actually helps much.
@@AWanderingSwordsman There's definitely a question to be asked about if time limits and dps checks have a place in the game. I think the major alternative to point to is souls game boss design. Time is never a factor, it's just the player, the boss, and their ability to get some amount of damage in while staying alive. I don't think anyone would really argue that those bosses would be made better by the introduction of enrage or a time limit of any kind. Doing more damage in those games just means you have to dodge less and have fewer opportunities for mistakes and that works for them. I'm mostly just trying to workshop how you make a fight like this feel less frustrating without fundamentally changing the challenge being presented to players.
The problem with “get good” is while it is true, it isn’t constructive. How can I get better? What am I doing wrong? Never try and tell someone to fix their ways without offering a solution
I mean most people that dont clap him do not post a video of their Fight nor their Equipment. and without it you csnt make any good comments outside the meme of get gud
@@otrikas So just ignore it then. You're not obligated to respond.
most people who receive "get good" are not posting whole vods of their 10+ attempts. if you want constructive feedback on a part of your gameplay, you need to show people the gameplay.
@@jacoblockett390 still you should be asking the likely mistakes they might be making or giving advice on things they should be doing instead of saying "git gud" or just ignoring them
@justenoughrandomness8989 there is no way for whoever a post sees on the internet to know what mistakes a random player is making unless they're showing their gameplay. get over yourself.
if you want someone to give deep and meaningful analysis of your mistakes, that person has to be able to see them.
Just saw the title & the thumbnail and here's my answer:
Difficulty becomes artificial when the complexity & engagement of the enemy is no longer the force pushing the player to be better, but is rather the very high(sometimes unavoidable) damage along with possibly too much health. This causes the players to beat the enemy via pure war of attrition rather than by purposeful adaptation
Good answer!
100% the correct answer. When the enemy becomes a damage sponge with the devs just increasing the numbers on their resistances or damage or hp then it’s artificial
Couldn’t have said it better myself 👍
This is why I can play Souls and MH, but dislike playing other games on "hard" because it becomes annoying @@ska187
Pretty much just world Fatalis and the risk & reward system is fair and world Kushala roaring then attacking before you recover is unfair
For me artificial difficulty is when the game breaks established rules, changes things that have been uniform, or makes things harder first arbitrary reasons like disabling core mechanics or giving an asinine time limit or instant kill mechanic that can rob a player of a victory for no other reason aside from “because I said so”
it's so wierd when they give you 40% less time to defeat strongest monster they trippin fr
Pokémon Stadium and Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories: *back away slowly*
@@Rat_Fบcker It's entirely weirder because it's literally just doing the MH1 thing where you have 30 minutes to kill the monster, and if you don't it just runs away and returns with all the broken parts you gave it and all the HP you took away from it, and was meant to be fought with 4 players. Crapcom essentially forgot the most important part of that.
That's why I hate the FF7 remake trilogy's hard mode. They take away item use, something that been a core mechanic from the first fucking game, and also rest points dont restore your hp/mp. And the cherry on top is that THERE IS PROGRESSION LOCKED BEHIND IT! Not story progression, it's stat progression but still. I shouldn't have to bang my head against a wall for hours to max out my stats. In fact, I'd argue that maxing stats should be a good thing to do before taking on a challenging difficulty
@@Rat_Fบcker the final fight designed for you to have mastered the game and have all the equipment in you would ever need hell they even give you the weapons that counter him in the fight before him
Artificial difficulty is when you're punished in a way that pretty much feels like there's no lesson.
When you beat a boss not because you got better, but because you got lucky.
I agree that beating a boss simply due to beating your head against the wall until you finally got lucky isn't meaningful or satisfying or a good type of challenge.
But at the same time, if a game has any random elements at all, then increasing difficulty past a certain point inevitably increases the odds that luck will be what finally wins it. The harder a boss is, the less the player is in control, and the less control a player has, the less the player is able to offset the influence of luck alone, which is otherwise a constant. Furthermore, the harder a boss is, the more tries it takes, and the more time you roll the dice, the more chances you have to get that lucky roll.
Quite honestly, I'd say that almost every time I've EVER finally beaten a boss after say, twenty or more tries, if not less, it has been luck that ultimately made the difference, not increased skill. I know that because I consciously noticed that the boss just randomly didn't use their worst moves as many times that time, or I button mashed parries at just the right time through sheer blind luck, etc, and if that wasn't enough, I've proved that by refighting the boss after winning on try 37 and finding that I'm once again doing no better than the last 20 tries. And on the rare occasion it wasn't sheer luck that made the difference, it still wasn't so much that my own personal skill improved, as that I simply memorized the boss's moves enough or noticed some exploitable quirk to its AI, that meant my current otherwise insufficient skill level could get the job done with the very cheap added benefit of knowing exactly where to stand where the hit detection breaks for some reason, or finally noticed that a grab attack never, ever follows a fireball. And personally, I don't think that simple memorization of move sets or level layouts has ever been a legitimate or meaningful test of skill.
So this is all to say that I truly believe that in order for a boss to be a proper, meaningful test of raw skill, rather than luck and/or very specific memorization (that could never be justified in-story since your character shouldn't be getting multiple tries,) bosses should never go past a certain level of difficulty or total expected tries. A true, meaningful victory is the one that comes from properly reacting on the fly because you've gotten that good, not from simply trying until you get lucky, or replacing/supplementing legit skill with knowing exactly what the boss will do, and the more tries you take, the more likely the latter two things are what will make the difference instead of real skill.
Which means that yes, I feel like the proper game design job of bosses isn't training, or otherwise making you better. Bosses should be about testing the skills you should have ALREADY developed. You should get good enough to beat the boss by fighting the common enemies in the preceding area, and as long as you did that, the boss itself, as long as it's properly balanced, should take only a few tries at most. Ideally only one. Bosses should be like the final test at the end of a class: there only to provide confirmation of the learning that was intended to have already happened on the way there, not a teaching point in and of themselves.
Though I will make a small exception for bosses that appear multiple times, getting more difficult each time. In that case, it is okay to expect you to learn a thing or two in the fight itself, because that experience should then build for the next time when the boss is tougher/uses more moves/etc. Like with common enemies that show up over and over, training actually applies to multi-encounter bosses since there are future battles to apply that specific training to. (That's why I think recycling bosses is actually a good thing, it makes them skill-building stepping stones instead of hard pass/fail only walls.) Though even then, the final encounter with a boss should still follow the previous rules of being a skill check only.
@@Alloveck a boss having a "worst move" is bad design. That's why malenia is so bad because she has one singular move that is way harder than her others so the luck of how much she uses that one move plays a large factor in your success. If the difficulty of all the moves is relatively equal then there is less luck involved and the fight overall feels more enjoyable and balanced.
It always feels bad to get killed by the one super hard attack and then have to redo all the easy attacks at the start of the fight just to get back to the one hard one.
@@NihongoWakannai In regard to your last point, I'd say that in a larger sense, any time games make you redo a bunch of easy stuff just to retry the only part that actually gives you problems is bad design. A classic example is "Do X perfectly 100 times in a row," where it gradually gets harder and only the last, say, 20 times are where you actually start screwing up at all. So redoing the first 80 rounds that aren't a problem proves nothing you didn't prove the first time you passed the first 80 rounds, making them a pointless waste of time on the way to the actually meaningful challenge. And yeah, that somewhat applies to multi-phase bosses too, but they're complicated by variable resources like HP and MP and so on being a factor, meaning that redoing early easy phases can still be relevant because doing them even better next time means you go into the hard phase with more HP, heal potions left, etc. But yeah, if you could theoretically do the early phases perfectly anyway, then there's definitely no point in redoing them just to retry the final phase.
More on topic though, I agree: Waterfowl Dance alone really is 95% of Malenia's effective challenge right there, and that's just not good design. The other 4% is knowing not to get Scarlet Aeonia nuked in the second phase, but as damaging as it is, its so easy to deal with once you've seen it even once that it's only 4% of her challenge. Still not cool that it's an attack that basically requires preemptive positioning to successfully avoid though, and thus is nearly impossible to avoid if you haven't already experienced it once to know a massive AoE you can't simply dodge roll out of like usual is coming. Also, the first one is guaranteed after the phase change, so its luck factor is reduced.
But while you're very right that having one randomly used, outstanding super attack is basically intentionally making luck a factor, I'd say that it's a bad thing even regardless of luck. Like you said, a severely imbalanced move set just makes the rest of the fight seem like a waste of time. If the point of Malenia is dealing with her signature move, then just cut to the chase and have her do nothing but Waterfowl dance, since that's clearly the only real test or challenge there anyway. That one attack is on such a different level from everything else that you can't even make the argument that the lesser attacks function as warmups or training to help ready the player for when she finally busts out her best attack, so the rest of her moveset truly is pointless padding. Just halve her HP to compensate and go all in on Waterfowl Dance.
And finally, as far as random boss luck goes, singular "worst attacks" not coming up are only one example of many. There's also attacks that aren't clearly worse on their own, but extremely difficult to deal with for positioning reasons if the boss randomly chooses them both back to back, so a lucky win would be the boss AI simply rarely if ever doing the worst possible sequence of attacks. If a stamina system is involved, and boss AI has randomness to how often it attacks, or the amount of stamina needed to dodge/block/outrun attacks varies, you can get lucky by the boss randomly giving you breathing room between attacks more than usual, or never stringing together high-stamina attacks back to back. Maybe level geometry makes certain attacks more or less difficult to deal with in certain boss arena locations and hey, what luck, the boss consistently only did its big AoE fire breath when you were already near cover. Or got you in a tight spot but then randomly didn't do the melee combo that's nearly impossible to dodge without some open space.
Point is, there are many, MANY ways that boss design can make luck a factor, so many that I'd say it's basically inevitable. Which is why I say that luck ultimately being the deciding factor gets closer to inevitable the more tries a boss battle takes, and therefore bosses shouldn't be designed so that a lot of tries are expected to begin with. Every try is another chance for the luck factors to finally come through instead of skill.
Agreed fully here
Beating a boss because you got lucky instead of just getting better can feel good in certain situations. A desperate fight that left you at the edge of death and improvement you one because you just happened to get the killing blow to land first can be such a rush as it confirms you can do it, now you just need to work on making it consistent.
I hate when boss attack animation doesn't line up with the hit boxes because the animation is supposed to teach me timing of attack or dodge. I'm talking about you radhan phase two from shadow of the erdtree! That boss had so much screen cluster it was Impossible to actually learn how to dodge the attacks
Oh yeah dlc Radahn phase two was so overstimulating, though some moves were similar to some phase 1 attacks they were still different enough (also light beams attack spam catching you mid roll 😄)
That's the tricks FromSoft uses to make their games look hard, because they can't make good gameplay mechanics and enemy AI to create actually hard content.
FromSoft's games are like a very basic and easy rhythm game with good music, that has atrocious HUD, they only show you the notes barely 0.1s before you miss them, and on top of that the songs have weird rhythm changes and timings just to throw you off.
Yes.
Design-wise, visuals give the player information. They say what behavior is happening, and theoretically where attacks and stuff are hitting.
Oversized hit boxes unfortunately send the message of "ignore the information I'm giving you visually and just figure it out by dying unexpectedly"
@@OnigoroshiZero that was an elden ring problem, not a from problem. Ds3 bosses have very little visual clutter so its much more intuitive to dodge attacks, even without having seen them before. That was helped by fantastic animations wich clearly communicated and attacks speed and area. Elden ring has all the flashy bs
Awful example. Let me guess. You just saw a clip of someone slowing down the attack's and exclaimed the attack is bullshit because the hitboxes don't perfectly align?
That awful way of analysing games is plaguing video game discussion. It strips away all of the context of a scenario in an attempt to justify their own, subjective dislikes.
Radahn's hitboxes are slighty larger than his swords, but that literally dosn't matter, because he swings his swords so fast, in-turn the hitboxes move extremely fast too. Do you know what that means? Of course not, because the cherry-picked examples don't give any context what so ever. It means, the amount of frames that the hitbox would be in a given, player sized location, are much, much lower. There by increasing the margin of error, and making the hitboxes not being exact, negligible.
The only other reason the hitboxes could come into effect is if you tried to strafe the attack, and were clipped because the hitboxes were too wide. But this also, dosn't happen because Radahn's tracking is very very strong.
But of course, its much easier to just parrot a video you saw online, than actually applying some critical thinking.
Just level ADP, bro.
Edit: wait, wrong game.
Just use evade window and evade extender. Which is literally adp
Right game, evade window is basically ADP lol
That’s kind of what I love about MH. It’s the kind of game that’s as hard as you want it to become because there are a LOT of defensive skills to keep you alive if you need them.
@@meepmeep9943 this. I slowly take off the survival skills as I get better in the given MH title I'm playing. Usually starts with none, realize I'm not quite him like I said I was, then revert back to my former prowess by the time G rank rolls up lmao.
Can't wait to do it for the 6th time in Wilds~
10:30 that one shot binder hitting the vigorwasp is the most painful part of the video
oh wow... I just realized *that's* why it didn't bind. That's... that's rough LMAO
The amount of sonic gongs that flinch a monster at a bad time is astounding. Turns a perfectly good clutch claw window into a insta mantle shred, insta pin and into a one shot. Thanks AT Velkhana.
@@hasten4435 this is why I dont bring palicos
It would make the most manlius of hunter cry
@@falenchan7999 Just don't equip that Palico skill
Honestly, this was perfectly explained. It took me 40 plus carts for me to finally solo Fatalis. And now I can solo it with Defender weapons just because I simply gotten much better than I was 4 years ago.
I'm glad you mention that timeline actually, since originally when I planned to write this script it was going to be *much* more negative lol. However I thought "ya know, it really wouldn't be fair to write this considering I've only beaten the monster 2 or 3 times, and without even having proper endgame gear so lemme see what the fight is like if I have full fatalis and weapons augmented a bit" and I'm really glad I did since in doing so not only did I get a much better understanding of the fight, but I also just got a whole lot better at it! It's crazy how much more fun this fight becomes as you improve
hi uno
MHW:IB is my first MH game. Played it on 2019 and I admit, I use cheats just to solo World and Iceborne content. My dad bought me a NSW since it's pandemic that time and I don't have a pc. Played MHGU and MHR and got very good at it. I replayed MHW and I soloed all my hunts up to Fatalis using only defender armor and weapon. There really is no such thing as hard games, you just try and try and familiarize yourself to the mechanics. That's why I just roll my eyes whenever a veteran would say "waaah monster hunter is so easy now" like bro ofc it would be easy, you've been playing the game for almost a decade. Some of my friends started playing MH when they ported Rise on to pc and I watched them get bodied by great izuchi lol.
@@boangsiate7701 they are veterans because they have a lot more hours and knowledge than you. Thats why they are right when they say the game has gotten easier. You have no idea what they are comparing to. Go back and beat every hunt in mhfu then you can have 1 piece of what they are using as relative judgement. No cheats allowed you filthy casual.
@@LeetTron5000dude I’ve been playing since freedom 1 on the psp and am currently on 4U in my 6th full playthrough of the games, so I feel like I am what you’re calling a veteran. I have no issues with people using cheats on their first solo playthrough of a game. It’s a hard game series. Especially if it’s your first time playing something like it. If they’re cheating in multiplayer using one shots or something like that then it’s an issue, but that’s pretty rare.
They also said they went back and implied they beat it normally after learning more about the games and getting better in gu and rise. And GU isn’t one of the easiest games at least by endgame.
I think the most harmful people for this community are ones like you attacking someone for lnot being good enough” and not having played the games you played. Let people play how they want if they’re doing it solo. I have a friend who doesn’t like the endgame material grind so he has a mod to change the drop rates so there are less trash gems. I have another who just edits his save and adds them, also increasing his rank so he doesn’t have to grind the guiding lands to fight ruiner. Not everyone has the time to no life these games and ultimately they’re not hurting anyone other than themselves with that hacking in of decos and ranks.
I hate the gaming nomenclature where the second someone suggests a boss might be overtuned in a game they are immediately met with hordes of people just telling them to get gud and they're stupid. It's cancerous and had always annoyed me.
They r the 99% but we not 🎉 so be happy to not be a (favourite offence) 😊
The one bit that annoys me most is when they then suggest that you must be a newcomer to the series and therefore you just "don't understand" the game's design. But to me, it's actually the opposite. I have such strong feelings because I've played and enjoyed a game series for so long, that I feel like such strange difficulty is going against the series' previous ideas of difficulty.
Okay i'll play devil's advocate a little here. Because while i agree that what you say is true, i'll also say that most of the time, the solution against the boss is just that: getting better.
I didn't watch the video in it's entirety yet, but fatalis IS supposed to be challenging. He is, and was always (at least in the games he appeared in) the final boss, and he was always the ultimate test for you, the hunter. For example, in mhfu, the white fatalis gets an armor that makes all attack bounce, an increase in attack and defense when at 50% hp. This armor gets only removed when it's at 20% hp. Is that a bit much? Maybe, but he is also doable with a few tries and the correct equipment.
Same with alatreon in world. Is he hard? Yeah of course, the horn breaks and elemental threshold forces you to be aggressive all the time, while he can two shot you at full health, and even if you pass the elem. Threshold you can still faint during the judgement if you mess up your heal timing.
But he is also very easy to read, and has a lot of openings to allow for some quick hits. And building an elemental build is not that bad as you are not forced to do the safi hunt (contrary to what i could read on the net) to have a decent build.
Those are hard encounters sure. And they can seem like absurd increase in difficulty, and require a lot more preparation time than the rest of the roster, but two things: like I said, it's the culmination of the game, the ultimate skillcheck to everything you've learn until that very moment, the time to put to use everything you've learnt to master.
And second, the satisfaction you get after you beat them is unrivalled. You finally overcame the wall. You did it, and only with your own skill
It's normally people who are trolls and couldn't care less about anyone else's success then themselves
@@Hugolaste then i'll play devils advocate for your devilish avocation.
The "solution" is ALWAYS to "get better".
Boss does too much damage? Get good enough to never get hit. Boss has terribly mapped hitboxes? Get good enough to never be in a bad position. Boss has too much hp? Get good enough to hit him more.
Obviously, if you're good enough you can beat anything at all. But that doesnt excuse poor design. "Erm, actually you just need to get good enough to not get hit!" Doesnt make up for a boss having a hitbox in the place that the visuals of the attack arent.
Just because its possible to beat something by getting good enough doesnt mean that ascension of skill should be necessary, nor does it mean developers should just be able to ignore quality control because they have a ton of dick riders that will hard defend their poor decisions with copious amounts of "git gud"s instead of actually looking into other players complaints to see if they have some merit.
Getting good should definitely be a large factor in a player beating a boss. But that doesnt mean the primary hurdles of that boss to overcome can just be at best cringe, at worst dogshit, issues like a timer running out or poor hitboxes.
I agree that fatalis is a great final boss of world, but the amount of dogshit combined in it means that when i finally solo it, i wont feel elation or happiness, im going to feel relief thay i wont have to do it again
I’ve heard a lot of people point to Alatreon over fatalis when arguing about the artificial difficulty, which I think makes a lot more sense. Fatalis in general can *kind of* be just get good. But Alatreon is quite literally “bring this weapon and build, or you will lose.”
There are tons of ways to beat alatreon. If you are really good you can even brute force him without using element.
@ sure, but I could technically wipe my ass with a pine cone. The trick to game design is making the most fun parts of your game be the path of least resistance, and for anyone who isn’t turbo sweating Alatreon forces you to play hyper aggressive with an elemental build.
@@hunterkinsella5303 A final dlc endboss should NOT be "least resistance" and trying to be overly aggresiv makes noobs fail. The trick is to play clean and reactive and that takes skill.
@ so you think a passive playstyle doesn’t require clean play and reactions? As a hbg player, I’d beg to differ. And also, a final DLC that you can beat your way is much more interesting than forcing a build onto you. Who cares about optimization, the game Is supposed to be fun
@@hunterkinsella5303 Please define for me what a "passive" playstyle is. All playstyles are active in mh. Even support playstyles are first about doing dmg and only secondly about support. I have played enough hh and sns to know that.
And I disagree on the second part. Mh since mh1 has always been about finding monsters weaknesses and then prepping against that. A final boss shouldnt be one against which you should be able to go in with "whatever" and then expect to have it easy. The game has always been about optimization against hard bosses. If you dont find that fun then mh isnt for you. For me that is the most fun part of mh. Coming up with new builts and strategies and then prepping to beat bosses.
I've found one of the most valuable tools in your kit when it comes to Fatalis is the superman dive (dodge away from the monster while sprinting, give crazy i-frames). You have to put your weapon away for it, but if you're reading his movements you should be able to just barely get it. Also it might get you comboed. But you can survive a fire cone dead on if you have fullish health by spamming it.
I think a big problem with MHW's later fights is that they unlock way too early. You fight the Icebotne DLC final boss and then are thrown against monsters right away designed for the players who have been grinding post-game content for weeks or months as originally these monsters were released 1 by 1. Fatalis and Alatreon feel like they should be minimum MR 100 monsters, but you can fight them before you have that skill and equipment which makes many players bounce off them saltily.
Best point I've seen brought up so far in these comments. Fatalis is far and away my absolute favorite fight in Iceborne, yet had I not played this game since day one, and perhaps picked it post Fatalis update, my opinion may have been different. I can 100% see how plenty of, fresh out of shara and the guiding lands, not even to ruiner yet, fresh fifth fleeters eagerly fighting one or both of the black dragons, and getting their teeth kicked in so hard they quit. However closed of a mindset that may be, I'd understand why to a point. I feel like it should at the very least MR 125 and 150 for alat and fatty, that gives players some REAL time to break into the endgame and hone themselves and their gear.
Personally I liked knowing what I was preparing for in the endgame. I gave up on MH Rise because it just turned into a bunch of endgame grind and there wasn't an obstacle I felt I was readying myself to deal with.
I personally like that they're unlocked so early. They act as walls so you know what challenges you cannot overcome, encouraging you to go back out into the rest of the game to get what you need. Go earn some decorations, new armor and weaponsets, augments, maybe some missing mantles, farm some strong consumables.
However, for me, this does come with some hindsight because I played after the last patch of the game. Maybe people expect to be able to beat new bosses the day of release? Idk.
They definitely should be tackled after MR100, but I understand why they unlock them immediately. The title updates are meant to entice people to return to or even pick up the game, and those same people are less likely to stick around if they’re met with a MR100 requirement to see the new monster they’re excited for.
It is indeed too easy.
The 1st alatreon fight isn't required
Only the cutscene is
Leave the quest and obtain the 2nd fight for some reason
Beat that 2nd one with or without elemental weapons it doesn't matter it only has about 1/4 of its max hp. It should be dead before or just a little after 1 judgment.
Then you have fatalis.
No augments at all cause whoops I'm not mr100 to have the def minimum I need for fatalis
0:33 he missed the hidden option: dodging upwards
insect glaivers stay winning
i still get hit lol the game hates me
Who needs to dodge when you have a shield?
God I love gun lance
A friend of mine got lock out of the gate when fatalis does the 2nd sea of fire attack and he survived by flying over the top.
Monster Hunter Rise has entered the chat.
Insect Glaive Master Race!
You can actually continually dive the cone attack. If your able to get the timing right you can make it with enough health/defense.
Facts. Superman dives are SO underrated in the Monster Hunter games. A lot of people only use them to dodge a select few attacks because they think the recovery time makes them too vulnerable to use the dive consistently. But the recovery actually isn't as long as it looks and using Superman dives can make a lot of monsters MUCH more manageable to defeat.
If executed perfectly you can avoid all damage
Realistically you'll take like 2 ticks of damage which is like a third/half of ur HP
The cone isn't really too bad, if your close, it's actually a really good damage opportunity, and if your near a pillar, they block it.
If you do get caught in the open with max health, you can spam dice to survive.
The only time this move is a garuntees cart, is if your missing health, AND far from the monster, AND not near a pillar....at that point, it's kinda your fault, every time I have died to it, it's been my dumb xD
I should add too, I hunted with a group, and once we got into the swing, we went 15+ hunts without a single cart, not just no fails, no carts....
If there really were unavoidable tng deaths, we would have had some, but everything is avoidable, not easily avoidable, but avoidable.
@@jameslough6329 the one prolonged invincibility move every player has access to by default is absolutely not underrated in any meaning of the word. how often you use the dive is influenced by how quickly you can sheathe your choice of weapon.
Rule of good presentation: If you turn your title into a question, do clearly give the answer by the end. If you can not give a definite and conclusive answer, don't pose the question.
better rule of good presentation: never ever turn your title into a question. It will ALWAYS be more succinct and honest if you simply state your deductive conclusion, and then defend it in the content.
I think the best way to know if a boss was bullshit vs when its a skill issue, is when most people beat the boss do they have a"that was epic" feeling or a "glad thats over" feeling
I agree. The "just get good" crowd seems to forget that boss fights arent just about beating the boss, but about having FUN while doing it.
I was super disappointed with Margit from Elden Ring. He has both un-telegraphed quick attacks and delayed attacks. To dodge the former, you need to roll preemptively but to dodge the latter, you need to wait before you roll. Before I noticed this obvious catch 22, I tried to learn his patterns for hours. After still not making any significant progress, I decided to simply trade hits with him. I legit just ran at him with no regard for his attacks and just spammed the one long sword attack that often staggers enemies. Guess what, got him on my second try. Didnt feel rewarding at all though.
This is just completely subjective and not a good metric whatsoever. I've seen plenty of comments from individuals who trash on bosses otherwise beloved by the community by saying it was a slog. The same comments have been levied torwards all the souls games at some point. Get a better metric. A better metric to know whether a boss is bs is when the difficulty comes from the boss having many jank elements(animation canceling, overlapping animations, clipping into the arena), as well as most of the difficulty coming from something outside of the boss ai itself(bad hitboxes, absurdly high health without the variety to compensate) and/or the boss has a mechanic that keeps you from actually playing the game and engaging with its mechanics(for example colonel pluck from dkc requiring you to just stand dead still doing nothing for over 5 seconds). None of these by themselves will be a deal breaker but having two or all of them can create a "bad" boss that is "artificially difficult".
@@Takin2000my feeling on elden ring as a whole, essentialy.
@@Takin2000to be fair, learning Margit’s timing essentially prepares you for the rest of Elden Ring because other bosses share very similar delay timing to Margit (with some variance to throw you off and force adaptation). If you’ve played the Soulsborne games, you get a sense of roll timing for delayed attacks after a while, Margit’s kinda meant to be a skillcheck that ensures you understand what you’re getting into with the later bosses.
@@skyhighlp1 Oh no, dont get me wrong, I have no issue with delayed attacks. Theyre really good to get players out of panic rolling. My issue was that Margit also has moves where rolling *preemptively* is required instead. That creates a catch 22 where you have to panic roll at every twitch Margit makes (which gets you hit by the delayed attacks) or you have to take a hit from his fast attacks (such as the melee daggers)
5:52 you get 13 s at Evade WIndow 0 for normal rolls. The lowest amount is 10 for step dodges. Keep in mind this data is for 60 fps while games like Dark Souls count i frames for 30 fps. Its still nowhere near "2 or 3" tho. It is true however that it's really hard to roll through many attacks with only base level s
2 or 3 is semi accurate for some moves with lingering hurtboxes or are just slow moving. dodging through the slow moving line of fire is incredibly tight
@Bard2DaBone That's 2 or 3 frames of a dodge window, the time during which you need to input the dodge to successfully avoid an attack with the s you have, but you still have the 13 s. If you actually had 2 or 3 s pretty much every attack would be undodgeable cause attacks have hitboxes that last more than that
He probably got it mixed up with the older games. In monster hunter 4 ultimate, your roll was 36 frames long and had 6 invincibility frames. Im honestly shocked that its now at 13. No wonder its possible to roll through roars at base evade window now.
@@Takin2000 there was a good video for Rise when it came out that calculated dodge frames. I believe World shares the same values, and the skill to increase i-frames only does so by a frame or two per level as a tradeoff.
honestly, a lot of the hits he took seem avoidable if you take a level of extender.
Yep; people wouldn't be consistently rolling roars with base s if it was just 2-3.
"Get good" is a shallow answer to those struggling with the possible. It ignores the process many need to learn by simply aggrevating said person instead of helping.
Artifical Difficulty is the buzz word way of saying something isn't hard, but unfair. Which ignores the potential skill ceiling or other possible options that may not have been considered. Furthermore can be used as a slap on "everyone finds this hard, so it's unfair" way of decrediting what may be genuinely good game design.
Both by themselves ignore the inherit nuances that video game difficulty or game design is.
Imagine your marriage counselor just telling you to "get good." 💀 lol 😂
"Get good" is truly now meant to be an insult, its short n straight, so theres no point trying to gain any positive insight from that remark cuz in most cases its steeped in negativity or apathy
Either position if further replied to would follow up with a "erm who asked" for a double wammy
@@pixelbro99 and then you complain back to the counselor saying that "this marriage has artificial difficulty"
In my day git gud was said to people who refuse advice and plug their ears saying x/y is impossible or artifical difficulty.
Artificial difficulty is 100% a thing used way to much in many modern video games an extremely high health pool for instance is artificial difficulty since the devs didnt need to give the target 700 times the hp of other enemies like in Borderland games so it forcefully extending a battle that should last a few minutes to last 30 minutes to an hour or how many games whit resources just give the AI a passive higher income then the player this is not normal difficulty this is artificially inflated you can counter play AI just gets more income
It took me several days and 50 attempts in total in order to defeat fatalis, all the time mixing and upgrading my gear to defeat it as I go. It brought me so much joy being able to defeat it for the first time. But even using the strategies and recommended skills in order to finally kill this beast, the mental fortitude was really being tested.
Artificial difficulty can be used well, it’s just that you can easily tell when it isn’t
The only time artificial difficulty spikes can be implemented without much thought is if you’re making an unwinnable fight where the player is meant to lose for the story to progress
Pre nerf consort radahn from elden ring had an attack that only had an 0.01 second of a reaction window to avoid it. You had to have literal superhuman reaction speed and even no hit runs had to break the boss where he wouldn't do that attack because it was in every sense of the word legitimately impossible to dodge under normal circumstances.
Yep. I keep telling people that Sekiro is skill based. DS3 is skill based. Bloodborne is skill based. Elden Ring is memory based.
In the former three everything you learn from your first few fights in regards to gameplay mechanics carries over and gets refined with each battle. You can theoretically beat every battle the first time through skill alone because everything is fairly telegraphed.
Elden Ring makes bosses with endless combos, delays, and punishments for using openings. It is about dying to each boss and learning them like a textbook. Your previous battle doesn’t matter, because what you learned about that boss was specific for its delays and it’s combos. There is no dance. It is all just a big parody.
This just ...isnt true? Elden rings bosses are very fair. I genuinely feel like people who make these comments are just blinded by nostalgia. Giving waaaaay to much credit to those other games, when elden ring builds uppon and improves these bosses in great ways. Its not perfect, but to act like elden ring is just unfair garbage is just false. @@jacobtrout2303
@@jacobtrout2303 One of the most braindead takes i've ever seen.
This is literally just "Skill Issue". Elden Ring is simply harder than the other games. And well... It's not because you suck at the game that the other also suck, bro.
People were no-hitting him first-day, bro. And if you're talking about the cross slash, literally just dodge into him lmao
@@mercylavigne you couldn't just "dodge into" the attack they're talking about.
Im a massive fatalis fan and I will die on the hill that Fatty is one of the best bossfights ever. However I do agree with some of your points. Some of his hitboxes are janky especially the tail slam, quick bite, and his flame sweep (i get damaged before fire hits me???). I guess its just personal tolerance.
The music, buildup and spectacle along with a tough fight just makes everything else feel fantastic tho, despite the flaws. I really felt like I was fighting the OG Black Dragon, so imo the difficulty felt justified. Its quite fascinating how everyone has such different opinions on the same thing
I think all in all I've grown to like the boss quite a lot. It's not my favorite boss but it holds a very special place in my heart not only for the reasons I went over in the video, but just for the context of it all. Feels really good to finally have this guy crossed off the list of hard bosses I have to beat lol
Also, the timer is great imo. You dont just get scrape by, you will need to know him in and out to beat the clock to the finish. Optimise your dps, get more staggers, avoid damage etc.
I like Safi'jiiva the most.
this. he was supposed to be a difficult fight.
I've yet to play a game where hit boxes are perfect. Janky hit boxes are in every video game ever made. And are especially prevalent with huge 3d models. Fatalis hit boxes are fine they're not more janky than any other monster in the game. And MHW in general had pretty good hit boxes not perfect there's jank here and there but pretty good in general.
I remember fighting this boss 4 years ago when I was still new to monster hunter and getting really frustrated at it and eventually quit after 400 hours on that save file. 4 years later after playing all sorts of games, I came back after hearing about Wilds on a new save file but this time,it was different cause now I knew I had to prepare for these sorts of things so when I finally beat it,I screamed. It actually felt like 4 years of experience led up to this and now I absolutely love this boss cause it showed me that I've grown.
4 years ago… damn.
@@imagecko9997Feels like the Fatalis trailer came out yesterday...
Never give up brother 💪
I’m in this boat rn. I had about 600 hours in my first mhw file and never beat alatreon or fatalis. I gave up years ago and when sunbreak came out I destroyed mhr and the dlc. But I didn’t feel accomplished because I always had those two monsters in the back of my mind.
I started a fresh file a couple months ago with the strict goals of beating ala and fatalis. I’m so happy to say I beat them both in the same night a few days ago. I cried when fatalis went down lol
I could see and feel my growth as a gamer and as a person and I’m so content with that. I’m better now than I was before.
Now I have a month break until wilds comes out 😏
7:52 What game devs could do to remedy this is to scale the damage with the distance of the player to the center of the AOE. Like, if it was dead on, get 100% of the damage, if you were just barely inside the range, maybe get 5-10% of the damage
Cone is made specifically to punish playing ranged, making it so easy to dodge at range would be totally contrary to the idea
@@SomeCookie-gs1oy Not really. It's a triangle. The back half is still bigger. They'd need to get at least a bit closer to not get fried
This is exactly why the rise of saying “skill issue” in the face of literally every kind of complaint has been disastrous for gaming culture
The funniest part is people saying "skill issue" when the person complaining already beat the game
This is an amazing summary of how I feel about Fatalis - and a great discourse on what is right on the border of artificial difficulty. Wonderful video.
One thing you didn't mention is that you not only have the Evade Window skill but also the Evade Extender skill (which increases dodge distance). Because, as you mentioned, the size of a lot of Fatalis' attacks feel overtuned it helps you cover enough distance to get out of most of his attacks.
Overall Fatalis is a great thematic final fight against the 'strongest monster' and also a good test of skill imo. But he does feel bullshit sometimes.
I used to never use evade extender but I started to in either sunbreak or rise (can't remember, I think it was sb) and I've never looked back. It's actually such a game changer against a lot of bosses
@@mhswoocer I started using it after trying out the Arena quest with Magnamalo on Hammer.
Then eventually stopped using extender and just embolden as I got better at timing dodges.
Helps a lot in getting used to unfamiliar territory!
I want the final fight to be at least a little bs. I would be disappointed of it wasn't
If I didn’t see this comment, I was going to make it. I thought that the armor skills and weapon augments that would have been helpful were hardly mentioned as the video went on.
@@Rytifox One of my biggest flaws as a mh player is my inability to think. I almost never prep for hunts and instead go for the more "hold forwards until I win" approach. Even against fatalis I didn't create a new set or augment my weapons (I should have done both) I just used the set I made for alatreon and replaced the element with raw damage. The reason I say this is a flaw is because it often stops me from seeing the game the way a large portion of the player base does and it often leads to me just flat out not mentioning things like skills in videos since I just didn't think about them
You can dodge the cone attack from far away by doing two dives in a row. You'll usually get away with taking a single tick of damage in between the dives, two if you're unlucky but sometimes the i-frames line up just right and you take 0 damage.
I was seeing this so much! The regular dodge is nigh useless most of the time but the superman dive is just flat out immortality.
yea that whole part of the video felt like he just gave up the moment he was far from the cone, forgetting he could dive more than once
OK IM SORRY BUT I NEED TO COMPLAIN.
Fatalis has three different chomp attacks. A quick chomp, a fire chomp, and a charge chomp. ONLY THE CHARGE CHOMP HAS A HITBOX THAT COVERS THE BODY, but you used forage of ALL THREE CHOMPS when discussing how to avoid the fire chomp!!!!! So incredibly misinforming!!!!
Other than that great vid
Yeah I agree with the general notion of the video that fatalis has some mechanics that are frustrating for newcomers but some of his footage/examples are super frustrating
Like when he explains your options with cones, I feel like he completely forgot Superman diving was a thing…the one move you typically use when you know you’re going to get caught in a length aoe.
Another thing with the cone is that you can like... Block it. And if your playing multiplayer hunts you can be the hero and block like the whole cone to protect your team. And it doesn't take away much stamina, still has chip damage tho.
For reasons like the ones just mentioned, I feel like this is a bad video misinforming people about a good final boss fight.
@@deimos4808 I disagree. True, the mechanical information is not correct, but it is only tangentially related to the general claim made in the video. I would agree that it should be corrected, too.
However, the general point of the video stands. Especially pointing out how merely telling someone to improve is useless, or even harmful. Players seeking help have made the first critical step towards solving a problem: by recognizing there is one.
Responding specifically to the section on the siege weapons: those are single player traps. They do good damage cause knockdowns easily and proc less aggro than normal attacks, but like you said they lock you in place and take forever to hop off of. So the ideal usage is for two or three members of a hunt to battle a monster normally while the remaining hunter is on a cannon or ballista. Players are supposed to learn this through context from using it in the Zorah Magdaros fights and in the special arena, where using them solo can put you in danger but using them in a team is broken strong, but those are very different spaces from Castle Schrade so the severity of how bad an idea it is to use them solo isn't the same. Capcom also doesn't explain a lot in these games so players are never going to get a tooltip or tutorial telling them they should only be using these weapons while working with other hunters, so if they managed to use those weapons without being punished in those other missions, it's entirely reasonable that they will think they can use them in the Fatalis fight as well.
That being said, from the footage you included I feel like there are a couple instances where a player realistically should recognize they need to stay off the siege weapons when solo. For example at 10:40 you hop on a ballista with Fatalis being on the other side of the arena, it begins a charge animation as you are getting on, you immediately hop off and are unable to get out of the way a full 5 seconds after trying to get on. I feel like the average player would have that happen to them and immediately understand that trying to use those weapons is a death trap and would stay off of them for future attempts.
@9:10 there's been multiple hunts against fatalis using lance where I block his fire ball move and it has so much push back on it that he literally kept me locked in a loop of fireball spam until the chip damage killed me
Little tip I got for blocking high push-back explosions and wave attacks. Position yourself to block at an angle to the attack rather than facing it dead on. You’ll be pushed to side instead of backwards into more hits, thus reducing the amount of attacks that you have to block overall. You’ll also avoid certain chain explosion attacks that target a line straight at you.
The timer and HP pool also prohibit using any build that is not designed for maximized damage. Setting yourself up with a build using defense, regen, medicine, divine blessing etc. nearly guarantees you will be right up against the timer if not well past it. Part of what makes this game great is having all these skills and being able to create a build that best suits your personal playstyle.
Tbh Divine Blessing 5 with Gold Rathian is a common recommendation for Fatalis because it let's you play more aggressive since you can actually take multiple hits and be more greedy
And the problem is that bottlenecking a player into one playstyle is something that could be an issue. Why should I be forced to play these couple of builds just to be able to beat the game?
@@KitsuneYojimbobecause you’re seeing Fatalis as “beating the game” instead of treating him as he is. A post-game challenge boss that is intended to be purely a challenge in exchange for the strongest gear in the game.
You beat the game after Shara Ishvalda; everything after that is just challenges to push yourself further. You SHOULD have to adapt to the challenge, otherwise it’s not really a challenge is it?
Not true, i play 75% defensive skills and 25% offensive skills.
Weakness Exploit, Critical Boost, Speed Eating, Divine Blessing, stun resist, and Health Boost, and only some evade window. First clear, 9th try solo only, was 28 min.
I got 19 minutes with the same build in the 3rd clear.
Defensive Skills are there to reduce your downtime, but if you are not aggressive enough, you will lose to time.
That was also a thing Elden Ring kinda suffered from. A lot of the difficulty late in the game came from really bloated enemy and boss stats. And a lot of people got around it by switching to status builds, because they dealt percentage damage to enemies, instead of just flat damage. So they ended up being so much more powerful against foes with huge healthbars that it just bottlenecked a lot of character variety, despite being an RPG. Kind of a shame as there's so much character variety on paper but a lot of them end up hitting like a wet noodle at the late part of the game.
I love the musical progression in this video. As soon as Fatalis introduces itself The Forest and Hills theme starts to play. That might not seem like it makes much sense but this theme is basically the old school Fatalis theme without the choir. Then the actual Fatalis theme kicks in. Specifically the phase 2 version. You would think this is the end of the road but no there is a nother Fatalis theme. One that was also used in the Alatrean video. White Fatalis‘s music having a banger intro really helps elevate what‘s being talked about. Anyway, it‘s Proof of a Hero time, a little earlier than I expected to be honest. It makes sense though since the final phase is currently being discussed. It fits great with where the video‘s at right now but what’s gonna play at the ending now? Well, I’m glad you asked. It‘s a succession of different melodies that make you think of a sunny summer day in Seliana. What melodies? I think you already know.
It‘s Succession of Light.
I think you know this already, but in case you don't, I absolutely love these comments. I put a crazy amount of work into these videos and so to have someone notice the little things like the forest and hills theme being a reference to old school fatalis makes me so happy
If you think fatalis have an artificial difficulty then oh boy....try soloing extreme behemoth that mofo ain't artificial he's borderline bs
Facts,day 1 hunters know the real pain of soloing extremoth and ancient Leshen.
extremoth tho wasnt really built for solo hunts
it doesnt scale HP with solo/duo, so you have to basically put out as much DPS solo as 4 hunters.
safi'jiiva on release/HR kulve taroth iirc werent scaled as well
@@JerkTheHuman doesn't matter if he's not meant for solo or not his moveset is just bs, and not to mention the damage check he'll just spam his one shot over and over again if you dont meet it even if you already carted and just entered the arena he'll do that immediately so that practically means you already lost despite having more chances left also I'm a ps user and I refuse to give money on that shty subscription so I have to beat everything solo...which I have except for that mofo
@@lanzzallen2000 memories of Charybdis. Jesus christ
@@lanzzallen2000A clear example of a monster that would be EZ pezy if it wasn't for the BS conditions that includes its horrible fight.
Amazing video. Your analysis is always so shrewd and insightful, and your videos are both coherent and entertaining. Can't wait to play Wilds and see your opinions on it!
that closing statement is what i try to do myself being bi-polar and ADHD does make it more difficult but that wont stop me from trying
i personally think a lot of the problems in iceborne are due to it being designed around the clutchclaw to the point that playing without it cripples you so much to the point some simple hunts take up to 30 minutes sometimes, a good way to show this is the health numbers lets take rathian for example:
MHGU Hub Rathian: low rank 2745-3285 hp, High rank 4770-5310 hp, G rank 9225-9765 hp.
MHW ICEBorne Rathian: low rank 3500 hp, High rank 5700 hp, Master rank 18300 hp.
the insane jump in Icebornes master rank monster HP makes it so you essentially don't have a choice but to use the clutchclaw or suffer.
and no weapons don't do a disproportionate amount more damage either,
iron bow (hunters stoutbow) GU: first upgrade 90 damage, last upgrade 340 damage
iron bow world: first upgrade 96 damage, Last upgrade 312 damage.
Not to mention half the weapons don't weaken on the first clutch and you have to double up, the entirety of Master rank is built around the clutchclaw and it's genuinely the biggest thing that stops me from enjoying the game as much as i could as i have to remember to do my chores mid combat essentially.
You may be interested in the Iceborne Community Edition mod for World. One of its core goals is de-emphasizing clutch-claw use.
I’m glad I play hammer because I get huge hits in weakened parts (up to 700 dmg) but weapons like bow or dual blades that need to weaken multiple times unless you have that one decoration is annoying. Rocksteady is my best friend because of that lol
Clutchclaw posting once again...
mhgu g-rank rathian: 3 armor skills active
mhwi g-rank rathian: 15 armor skills active
this is just objectively wrong lol. 9K hp in mhgu is far higher effective hp than 20k hp in iceborne. Your dps is 2x ed in MHWI and monster hunts are designed for solo in mind there, while in MHGU they're designed for 4 hunters. you can see this with the average speedrun time for mhwi being a lot faster than in GU
Something i havent seen people mention much is how annoying his ai can be most of the time, mostly just in phase 1. In my experience he only uses the super fireball into flying move which takes up so much time, which especially hurts when im trying to speedrun him. He quite literally did it 3-4 times in a row when i tried him a little while ago. His tendency to just spam the same stupid attacks that dont do anything but waste time is incredibly annoying and kinda dampers the fight imo.
Beating Fatalis in only 8 attempts is insanely good. Still haven't beaten him with probably 50 attempts
Yep, it's a very good number.
Update! I managed to finally beat Fatalis a week or two after my first comment here! I can't believe I managed to finally solo him and get to use his gear!
21:10 I see, this was all just a call to be hyped for Wilds and hope it'll do better than Worldborne
9:39 The cone attack doesnt actually cover the whole length of the arena in front of Fatalis. You can actually run away from it even without climbing up the elevations as long he doesnt use it in the middle of the map.
artificial difficulty is when difficulty happens to me specifically
You did a very good job of considering different sides to the fight here, great video! Personally, I liked that this monster was as hard as it was because it is the first time it felt lore accurate in the franchise. Fatalis is the world-ending dragon world-ending dragons are afraid of because he(or at least a member of its species) actually did end the world once before, it's the reason why we have rockets attached to weapons but still travel by sail boats and blimps, we are starting over but have some scraps of technology from the time before. As a final boss you need to use all the mechanics to their fullest: clutch claw shots, mantles, wall ramming, build crafting, part breaking, item pouch set, capitalizing on openings, positioning, etc. and the time limit is there to ensure that you can't outlast the monster by restocking at camp as much as you want, you have to really be better than the monster at dealing damage while avoiding/tanking it.
It's still kind of lame how it just takes you out of the fight tho, rather than making Fatalis nuke the map with a cinematic attack.
@Akrilloth I agree, the timer mechanic has been unchanged pretty much since the beginning, adding a lore reason, or at least one for this fight specifically, would have been awesome!
Sees fatalis outline with primordial malzeno switchaxe: so fuckin confused but excited too
Fatalis is definitely a skill check for all players compared to other monsters and is a satisfying challenge to overcome, it requires a more in depth learning of the fight and also of your weapon. You can just start the quest and instead of fighting you can stop to analyze his behaviour, when you manage to understand his attacks you will start to see what he would possibly do next and prepare yourself for it, just as how you can bait his cone attack. But baiting out just one attack is not really necessary to beat him, there are plenty of small openings you can take advantage of to hit his head, even if they are small openings they all count towards breaking his head. Also, you have 2 binders, the roaming ballista and the dragonator, thats 4 ways of knocking him down with plenty of time to do a lot of damage to his head, the game gives you all the tools you need, but you gotta learn how the boss works first. Aside from all this, Capcom really made a big mistake here to make him available at FUCKING MR24!!!!!! THATS FUCKING STUPID!!!! HE SHOULD AT LEAST BE PAST MR100 WHERE YOU'D BE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE GOLD RATH SET TO GET FULL DIVINE BLESSING AND HAVE MORE WINDOW FOR MISTAKES AND LEARN THE FIGHT BETTER
You didnt mention the two other options for the cone fire, you can dive spam, repeatedly doing the dive will keep you relatively safe, and guarding with any weapon with a shield will block the flame too.
Personally I don't like the term "artificial" when it comes to difficulty. There's difficulty that is fun, and difficulty that is unfun. Having hitboxes that don't match the animations is unfun because it leaves you feeling ripped-off. Taking damage for small errors (or no errors) that is disproportionately punishing is unfun because it feels unjustified. It's not artificial because it's very real, and the natural result of a boss's design. However, regardless of if the difficulty is fun or not, the difficulty will fade as you improve at a game. Chalking it up to being a skill issue isn't enough, though. Think of the fight holistically from the first time you fight it to the last time. Ideally, it should be fun every time, where the challenge is fair enough to enjoy the early runs, but it doesn't get boring even if you master it.
At the same time, there's people that enjoy an unfair challenge. It makes you hate the dragon, and feeds into your desire to kill it. It makes it feel like the dragon isn't just pile of 3D animations and code designed to fall over dead for you. It's a genuine threat because it's not playing fair. This is all to say unfun difficulty is subjective.
"Ideally, it should be fun every time"
Thats the key. People dont complain about difficulty while theyre having fun, because difficulty isn't inherently frustrating. Only badly designed difficulty is frustrating.
From my experience, most badly designed difficulty comes from situations where the player is unable to come up with a solution to the presented challenge. This can be the players fault, but its usually not. In the case of fatalis chomp, the player is not to blame for assuming that the attack can be rolled in some way. Lots of monsters have (dodgeable) chomp attacks, and fatalis doesnt have a particularly unique body type either. Its not the only boss monster either. There is absolutely no reason to assume it plays by special rules. So the game beats a lesson into you for dozens of hours only to present a challenge that can only be overcome when you ditch the lesson. Thats not the players fault, its just bad game design.
I feel like artificial difficulty is randomness. Where if you don't get lucky, you lose no matter how good you are.
The best example i can think of artificial difficulty is Vincent the Frostbringer from VRising on max difficulty:
1) he has a permanent ice aura that damages you constantly when you fight him and you can't prevent it
2) he can parry your attacks with no windup animation, and it does a lot of damage. Also your summuns can hit it - outside of your control - and you'll get damaged if you're near lol
3) he has attacks that stun you so if you fail to dodge those he'll combo you, also he does high damage
You would be tempted to say "Why don't you play ranged, it seens easier", well yes but no. If you try to avoid him too much and keep your distance, he'll just leave the fight and regen all the HP without any warning, that's why you have to keep fighting in a limited space and that makes keeping range harder. Also you can't use ranged spells easily because he has one problematic ability
5) He resets all his HP if you go too far from his initial position
6) He has a big attack that he dashes and hits you 4 times, you can't dodge by just walking, so you need to use your dash that has 4s cooldown. So you're forced to pick 2 defensive abilities to deal with the rest of the 3 dashes + attack that you can't dodge. Making so you can't use ranged combat properly. That's why we distract him with summons also, but if you remember summons are bad because he can parry then and we get damaged lol
7) if you take too much time to kill him, it becomes day time and you take damage from sunlight (you're a vampire afterall)
Fuck there's no way to beat this guy on a fair fight, instead you have to overlevel and overpower him, which is cringe
I disagree, I just think the game has failed to teach you. Which I say because it failed to teach me for the first like 70 hours.
First thing to know is that all bosses have cooldowns on their abilities, and they tend to use whatever abilities they can at any given moment. Using this information, you can get a good feel for when a particular attack (in this case Vincent’s parry) will come out and avoid hitting it.
Second thing is that all roaming V bloods have a circular aggro range, so as long as you loop back at some point they won’t de aggro. Some roaming v bloods like Vincent also have stops in their route, with Vincent stopping in a small fort near the iron mines that is pretty spacious and good for fighting in.
Vincent is also a boss that pushes you to use weapon abilities as utilities, his big attack is fast and requires you to either dash out of the way, become invincible, or block. You can get the great sword before Vincent, and it’s a really good weapon for him as it’s the second longest melee weapon with very high damage output, and has both a dash ability and a dodging ability. Wraith spear is also worth mentioning as an offensive spell with a built in dash.
The game doesn’t really tell you any of what I just said.
@9:52: To be fair, there are technically 3 ways to not die there. 1. Is as you said in the video.
2. You have a shield to block it with.
3. You can spam Superman dives. This one probably won't save you all the time, but it definitely works if you're full health.
Honestly, for me, this boss was peak BECAUSE of how bullshit he was sometimes. Idk if it's cause of being used to playing Monster Hunter or not, but no other monster in world and iceborne besides fatalis made me zero in and try everything from farming some gear, to actually using the radial menu optimally, and to actively panic/internally read the situation to make sure I never get combo'd to death, to get my first kill. It was the grueling experience I missed from older generations' endgame content. But I can definitely see your point throughout the video and can honestly appreciate hearing opinions that may differ somewhat from my own in a calm fashioned manner. Good show!
There's actually 1 more.
If you have 6000 defense and have fireproof mantle you can facetank the whole thing
so you dog walked escaton?
@@Oniichan880 There's one more. Stay on his ass. Always. If you get combod and he pulls range, its kind of on you. Why did you get hit in the first place? :D
I know it's easier said than done but with time and practice it's actually one of the best attacks he can pull against you. If you're positioned right it's guaranteed damage on the head.
@@caliginousmoira8565 I wouldn’t say dogwalked, but I already had elemental DB sets on standby when he was announced, so it was just the usual trial and error until the kill. So from my experience, not really a wall, but not a pushover either.
yeah, why didn't he just block with his SWITCH AXE? or take a few seconds to sheathe his SWITCH AXE while the monster waited patiently for him so that he could dive out of the way? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is a wonderfully crafted video, great job!
I think in monster hunter specifically what defines difficult is the gear and skill you use. A perfect example is the breath attack. In world I mained gunlance and used a decoration called “Guard Up”, it allows you to block normally unblockable attacks along with “Guard” which reduced the knockback and stamina taken while guarding. This allowed me to mostly ignore his attacks during the first phase and really only have to be a little more careful when his flames powered up. The only other weapons that can do this are greatsword, lance, heavy bowgun, charge blade, and sword and shield. Most of the discussions I see online about difficulty try to lock themselves into using one option to beat whatever challenge they set their sights on, while not using everything at their disposal. An example is a comment I saw saying they didn’t want to have to use more effective elemental weapons for Alatreon. Several times I’ve seen that people have the knowledge and know what they need to beat the boss, but they refuse to utilize or try to get what they need to be more effective.
I really do agree on the time limit. It's meant to be more of an aggression check than a gear check, as well as a call back to OG fatalis having that 30 minute timer. But if there's one thing I find to embody the soul of monster hunter, it's when you're struggling against a monster you haven't fully understood yet, 2 carts down 45 minutes in, and you clutch victory in those last 5 minutes. That's real heroics. I generally found most of the attacks to be otherwise reasonable with the exception of charged fireball AOEs (I know how to roll out of those but brother, those can fly past you, explode offscreen and still hit you) and getting combo'd into the breath cone attack. A lot of veteran hunters really like fatalis because it feels oldschool hard and I love it for that same "no holding back" feeling, but I didn't like getting knocked over by kushala then getting run over by a slow orbiting black tornado back then, and I don't like the same thing happening now with fatalis. I will say though, it's still a hundred times better than primordial malzeno.
I like PriMal personally :( His final phase may be a bit unconventional for MH fights since he starts throwing out scripted combo sequences you can't interrupt. But considering you can memorize them, find easy ways to dodge around them on any weapon, and he ultimately rewards your survival with a solid 10-15 second window to attack him, it still feeds into the typical combat loop of Sunrise.
Contrast Risen Shagaru, who has no such predictable patterns, a dozen hitboxes on most of his attacks that hard shut down block/counter builds, nonstop huge movements and incredibly tiny punish windows that make slower weapons useless, and one small weakspot that's always wiggling out of reach of the faster and shorter weapons. That fight is absolute nonsense that feels like it invalidates several entire playstyles, in a game that can do a shockingly decent job making as many options as it has feel viable for a thousand hours. That screams "artificial" to me.
To be fair, there are indeed bosses where “Get Good” is quite literally the only solution, they’re just not as common as the frequency of “Get Good” as advice would suggest. A prime example is Deathstroke from Batman: Arkham Origins.
With Deathstroke, the fight is best described as hard but fair. The arena is a neutral, flat plane with no objects or spots that favor either side. Deathstroke has a randomized attack pattern, but all of his attacks can be countered. However, Deathstroke can also counter _your_ attacks if you become reckless. There’s also random QTE’s where you must counter Deathstroke that vary in length: some require one input, others require 2 or more and there’s no way to tell which is which except by being precise. Additionally, the QTE’s can happen at any time and you’ll only have a short time to react.
All these factors combined mean there is no exploit, strategy, or gimmick to the fight; you _must_ beat him by skill and mastery of the game’s combat system. You, the player, must know when to attack, when to counter, and have perfect timing for both. In this regard, the game forces you to improve your skill as a player, regardless of what upgrades or playstyle you have.
I agree with you but knowing “when to counter” and “when to attack” IS strategy that you can learn from a tutorial. Sort of like Sekiro, where enemies also counter you and have seemingly random moves.
a lack of skill doesn't imply a poorly designed boss fight, and vice versa too. well said!
I think the timer is what makes this fight excellent. In my very first time soloing Fatalis in Iceborne, the timer was around 29, making me very stressed out. But then when I beat it with only few seconds remaining, I felt a satisfaction I never felt before in the whole game, I screamed "Hell yeah!"
The tight timer made it sure that anyone who's beating Fatalis for the first time would have a very close finish. Thus, making the fight as memorable as ever.
In my opinion the biggest thing that a lot of people who say “skill issue get better then it’s easy” don’t realize or just completely ignore is that not only can fair fights can apply to that, unfair ones can too. Just because you can learn to not get hit by doing a very specific thing doesn’t make an unfair artificially hard boss a skill issue, it’s still artistically unfair.
Both can technically be true at the same time, but in my opinion only one of them actually matters: if it’s a skill issue only the player will get better or go level up, but if the fight is artificially difficult so many things just feel bad, like he explained in the video: the fight felt good till he lost due to an unnecessarily low time limit for the final boss.
Tldr: not all “skill level” bosses are flawed like he said but just about all “flawed” bosses can be beaten with enough skill
Really nice video literally sums up my problem with fatalis like I wouldn't have minded him having really high damage if the hitboxes were clean like alatreon and that's why I prefer it over him also all of the people online defending his nonsense didn't help as well but at the end of the day these types fight have to happen so that the game improves as long as we don't repeat the same mistakes
also I really like how you say get or got better instead of the usual useless git gud that does not help anyone and it's actually an indirect insult to player
I would still prefer to fight fatalis more than alatreon. I think alatreon restrict my builds too much.
Death by a thousand cuts sums up fatalis and alatreon fight perfectly. If there's thing to adjust on fatalis, it'll be removing the horn breaking adjustment, followed closely by removing tenderizer requirement to break horns
Beating iceborne fatalis solo is one of my 2020 quarantine achievement
I would like to nominate Terraria's Elements Awoken mod's Awakened mode. +75% HP, Damage and Defense on EVERYTHING with like 3 mode specific drops(that aren't even that good) is only fun if you like self flagellation.
i think terraria in general has that problem. on the higher difficulties the fights basically end with "make sure you have enough health and gear to tank the basically unavoidable attacks for the last 10% of the fight😊"
@@nullnull637 yes but also defense is hilariously broken, so most high difficulty mods are like, nerfing defense super duper hard, making defense builds significantly worse, forcing evasion.
I have to say, if it took you only 8 attempts to solo Fatalis blind with the additional restrictions you mentioned, you're either really damn good, or you've just made me realize I'm really damn bad. As a GS player it took me around 2 days of attempts (probably ~50 attempts) to solo Alatreon, and I've yet to attempt Fatalis since I've heard he's way more difficult, not to mention I studied Alatreon's moves and looked at builds beforehand aswell.
This is such a well illustrated and narrated video. I do however have one single complaint.
Calling out specifically the insect glaive above any other weapon for underperforming in this hunt? Having soloed Fatalis with ALL melee weapons multiple times, I can confidently say that IG is the best weapon to bring to this fight.
I think you are the only person who managed to come up with a convincing argument against the 30 minute timer. I feel like any other time I've heard complaints about it, it just boils down to people not being good enough to kill Fatalis fast enough, and while that may be true...
The first fight against him, at least, shouldn't have that timer. They clearly want the odds to be more in your favor for that first story clear. It's the only quest that gives you more than the standard 3 carts by default, and the first time you do it you get carried through phase 1 by a NPC that's helping you heal. Once you clear that initial story quest though, all you have is a standard 3 cart quest. I feel like that first one for the story should've had either a longer, or an unlimited timer, specifically for the reasons you mentioned in this video.
Now, onto the topic of difficulty, there's something very important that isn't touched on in this video, but I think it's key to really understanding a discussion about how fair Fatalis' difficulty is:
He was the final monster added to the game.
He is, for all intents and purposes, your final challenge. He's the thing you build up to, and if you played Iceborne from launch to his release (like I did), then that's exactly what happened. People went into his fight with super augmented gear that had insanely high defense and health regen on hit, along with super optimized sets that can shred through normal monsters in less than 10 minutes easily. As a result, Fatals _had_ to be balanced around that fact, and that on its own wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but the biggest mistake Capcom made with Fatalis in World is that you have the ability to fight him almost as soon as you beat Shara Ishvalda.
You don't have to do the hours and hours of grinding to gather good decorations, or level up the guiding lands to unlock crazy strong augments. You don't have to fight Safi Jiiva or Kulve Taroth to get their really powerful equipment options. You don't have to do the preparation that Fatalis is designed for, and as a result, it's very easy for people to waltz into that fight wholly unprepared and get mollywhopped for it.
The timer of the Fatalis quest didn't matter to me, even without a single piece of Fatalis gear, because I had a damn good set and weapon I could use to take him down. He hit hard, but that was alright because I had a health regen augment and augmented defense to help with those mistakes, which also ties into the time limit issue because I had the liberty of being more comfortable with taking risks. But someone who's just fresh off Shara Ishvalda, and the handful of other title update quests that lead up to Fatalis, will not have that luxury. Hell, someone who has only done a _little_ bit of grinding won't have that luxury, or maybe someone simply doesn't like to play with some of those tools (like the absence of health regen stipulation mentioned in the video.)
I acknowledge that it's a lot to ask from the player just so they can fight a single boss, but at the same time, is it really the fault of the boss if _you_ decided to walk into something undergeared and prepared and found it to be unreasonably difficult? Is it the boss' fault if you, personally, decided you didn't like to use a specific tool or option, but the boss expected you to make use of it? The latter question definitely lends itself to an entirely different discussion regarding game balance and why it absolutely does matter in PvE games despite people claiming it doesn't, but that's not the discussion going on here.
the finale of this video is a great callout against toxicity in both MH and general gaming community, good job
On the Alatreon video I told you I'd go back to World to take on Alatreon and Fatalis (and AT Velk but she's more of a bonus)
I can now happily say I've bested all three on my own, and they are some of my favourite bosses ever. Now it's time to grind another 200 hours to get an atk 4 decoration!
I remember that!!! Great job, that's sick!
Just yesterday I was struggling with the Phantasm and Dying Fire boss in DQ3 (absolutely sisyphean nightmare if done a bit early like I did and I've played my fair share of bullshit Dragon Quest bosses), took me 4-5 tries.
See this video, notice DQ mention in the description, stay around (despite me not having played a single MH game) to see if there's allusions to DQ and which boss from which game, *oh my god it's the boss from yesterday.*
Needless to say good to know I wasn't the only one. Great video! Loved listening through it. I'd consider it artificial difficulty when the challenge primarily revolves around factors that aren't skill, to reference said DQ boss, fighting six enemies all of them with the ability to summon another copy of themselves at will. At that point, it's not about beating them, it's a war of attrition and desperate race to murder them all before they randomly decided to summon a bazillion extra copies because they're immune to any kind of stun or debuff. Then it's no longer skill, you can beat the first wave but you won't beat the fight if you're unlucky.
Haven't seen the rest of the video yet, but I was watching the cone part and you're mistaken here. The cone itself can be dodged anywhere in the arena, you can dodge it by spamming superman flawlessly without taking a single point of damage. You can also block it using weapons that have block features though that takes damage. When using the siege weapons and you see a cone coming it's unlucky but usually still survivable if you react fast enough.
9:41 The thing is this depends on the weapon. A lot of them have a block, and that trivializes cone
Fatalis is so impressive on many levels, and while there are things I dislike about it, that doesn't stop me from saying this is my favorite boss in a video game.
The main problem is that timer, and not for the reason of "artificial difficulty." No, that timer exists for a reason both in universe, and to encourage you to take more risks. To be aggressive. My problem is the timer *feels* artificial. You touched on this in the video, but I wanted to get my own feelings out. All it would take is a cutscene of Fatalis flying up and burning the whole castle down. Perhaps a gradual rise of flames as the timer approaches zero. Something to tie the timer into the context of the fight. So yeah I have no problem with the existence of the timer besides the way it feels as a gamified mechanic. I love this fight despite this (and yeah I also don't think it should be considered artificially difficult as a whole).
That's just it. You can love things while still critiquing them. Hate things while still understanding and respecting those who don't. It's about maturity, everyone. We will always have different perspectives and experiences. We will never understand them by throwing others' to the side.
Just to be clear, World and Iceborne (and most of the games pre Rise) have a TON of I-frames, almost five times as many as you said in the video. Slot in some evade window and you'd be hard-pressed to find an attack you can't roll through. Base I-frames in World for example are 10-12 for rolls, I forget exactly which
note that neither of you mentioned if it was in the context of 30fps or 60fps, so you're both kinda right
from internet base world has ~7 at 30fps and 13 at 60fps
evade window 5: ~13 at 30fps and 25 at 60fps
for comparison, elden ring datamining puts light/medium dodge rolling at 13 at 30fps and 26 at 60fps
So base for world is about half of a souls game, EW5 putting it on par.
I don't know rise numbers, only did datamining stuff for elden ring, iirc rise roll is ~4 30fps and ~8 60fps
The "ton" of s in question is fucking 13 at 60fps without any EW slotted. That is barely usable for the majority of things (barring roars and other very brief hitboxes). I adore fatalis but acting like your roll is just a one button solution to issues is stupid
@@earthnugget7881 13 is a pretty reasonable amount to get through quick attacks. Fatalis' bite is a quick attack. I trust you to put two and two together here. If I can I-frame through attacks with Lance's hop (which has even less than 13), then you can do it with a roll
@@praseetharae8815 Rise has so few I-frames without Evade Window I think I've rolled through attacks less than 10 times in my 600 or so hours of playtime (without that skill investment). World is very generous in that regard, to the point it feels like I'm cheating sometimes
i reached for my phone like three different times while listening to this podcast style ready to "um actually" you back to the stone age. all three times i pulled my hand away and said fuck it let's see where he goes. at the end of the video i subbed. 🤘
I think something you completely overlooked would help this discussion. Its not that the stuff combo kills you, its that there is no recovery from a mistake that makes it feel bad. Let me panic and clutch a heal by escaping mid combo. That cant happen if the boss true combos you.
I just did the data bosses for KH2, and this really hits.
While they were hard, most of them were pretty fair. You just had to know how to block for most of them.
And then you f*uck*ing have Demyxs' DM (desperation move.)
He comes with a timer where you have to kill 99 water clones in 30 seconds.
This happens at the end of the fight.
You can not kill him until he does it.
If you don't kill them all on time, you just lose.
While the rest of the fight is fairly easy.
dAnCe WaTeR dAnCe
As cb player i never enjoyed fatalis he's coded in a way that makes him unfun to fight with heavy weapons since you can't stagger him or make him fall which turns the fight to hit and pray he doesn't use a one shot attack
I personally enjoyed him with most heavy weapons, just CB and lance felt very uncomfortable, and awkward, but hammer, GS, SwAx, and HH felt pretty enjoyable, but I can only really speak for myself.
As im playing Elden Ring now, this came to my recommended page, and i agree with the points here. Im stuck on Malenia now, and in the 2nd phase, she can do her infamous Waterfowl Dance anytime she wants. And also just leap up, and string another combo together. What i feel like is articificial difficulty is when the boss ignores core concepts of the game. Example nr.1 is the combo strings. She can do waterfowl dance, followed up by scarlet summons, into a few normal attacks into another waterfowl dance. Emphasis on the "CAN" part. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesnt, whenever she feels like it, and there's no tell when she will stop, and when she will continue the attack. Nr.2 is her hyperarmor. When you break the posture bar of a boss (every boss has it) You mostly do it by attacking with heavy attacks, and then you get a punish window for a critical hit. But sometimes its 4 charged heavy attacks , and sometimes she hyperarmors the 4th attack and resets her posture bar, so you cannot even count on the punish you worked hard for. For me, that is articificial difficulty. Not even mentioning the 1 shots at 1500 hp. Relentless attacking, unreliable punish windows, tremendous damage and ignoring core concepts of combat makes the fight absolutely unbearable so much that i dont even feel like bothering with that crap.
Small tip, you can make the throwing freeze pots and if you react quick enough it stuns her out of waterfowl, makes the fight so much more bearable
@@connorh2215 Tried that, it works. Beat her using parries and Ripostes finally. But i dont look forward to it on my 2nd playthrough
Artificial difficulty:
- speed of NPC faster than your character can ever achieve
- hitbox and hurtbox that do not match the model of the weapon and/or attack
- attack patterns and areas of effect that are literally undodgeable and the game gives you no tools to block the damage completely
- grab attacks that are too fast and not correctly telegraphed, which bypass any sort of defense except a dodge, but since it's too fast you will get hit most of the time
- inflated stats (attack, hp, damage reduction)
- invincibility frames that are much shorter than the attack's frame data, so you end up being hit anyway
- dodge, jump and sprint button being on the same keybind (which makes absolutely no sense), which ends in you having at least a 1 second delay from your button press for a dodge input to be "calculated" by the game
- attacks that hit through walls or spawn a hurtbox on the other side of a wall
- NPCs that are so fast and so big that your locked camera becomes a carrousel (essentially camera issues which makes a lot of these games a joke; they force you to play locked off just so you can play, which renders camera lock-on feature useless)
- animation locking of the player on attack for more than 0.75s on every single attack (which ends up in clunky gameplay and you getting hit most of the time unless you make up for it by animation cancelling where possible)
- NPCs that phase in and out of existence or go immune to damage
- NPC aoe attacks that have too much visual clutter and obscure vision for prolonged periods of time
- timed bosses with inflated stats and all of the above
We see these in most games because for whatever reason developers refuse to improve NPC AI. The difficulty we should be having is AI that is better at reading player movement and acting accordingly, with higher difficulties the AI should be flat out better than on easier difficulties by expanding moveset, dodging more and being less predictable, etc.
And before you say "Git Gud", there's literally no point in doing that. And even though most of us will push through, most of these are single player games and not competitive so there's no real point in getting good.
This man convinced me to actually play Monster Hunter World.
Thank you. Just have to finish my other 10 games though 😅
the end game is peak, enjoy!
2:13 I'm already confused. How can anyone beat the boss with the gear that it drops without having already beaten it?
Material shiny drops you can pick up and you can guarantee certain parts drops by breaking corresponding parts (which includes its rarest part).
Once they're broken, you abandon the quests and keep the parts.
Yeah it's actually not that hard to craft the full fatalis set without killing him once. Breaking the horn is suprisingly easy if you focus on that and don't pay attention to the timer. It's not possible with Velkhana for instance.
All righty... you reminded me I didn't beat him because I didn't beat Alatreon... because I never like the DPS builds and focus more on learning to dodge, survive and play the game as an old game hunt and not speedrun. So I need to go back and beat Alatreon now... HOWEVER you reminded me as well about the last Malzeno in Rise and to me that was perfect, if you have the knowledge by previous battles and you can win by skill and knowledge while using the core mechanic of the game it is fine, but sometimes it just isn't, being forced to achieve a DPS mark on a 50min hunt that doesn't matter because you die before if you don't reach the DPS mark is absurd.
Also Monster Hunter as well other games sometimes FORCES you to use specific stuff to beat some bosses, there are combos from monsters or situations that can't be avoided by skill, like Vaal Hazak blight and many stuff like that, there is where I think to myself "Is it fine that the game is forcing me to play like this and cutting my freedom?" Being said that... as far as those elements are easy to obtain and implement on your gameplay/build then it is OK for specific situations, but when it is hard to do or you must grind/sacrifice many hours to do that because skill alone and knowledge are not enough then it is really bad design.
I love that you bring up primordial malzeno since I feel like it's the perfect example of capcom responding to the community's complaints about fatalis and alatreon. It's still an incredibly challenging fight not because it has any auto lose mechanics, but instead because it's just fundamentally hard. The monster feels extremely skill heavy and when you lose it really does feel like you have no one to blame but yourself. You didn't lose to a timer or a hydrogen bomb that you failed to defuse, you lost the the boss you're fight, and I really like that
Skill and knowledge are enough. You can beat alatreon with a blast weapon and its not even that hard.
0:27 i frame it with window extend
Correct
A couple of quick notes, though it's worth noting I haven't done this specific fight.
When talking about defensive options, you never mentioned blocking or parrying, which would be options for numerous weapons against some of his attacks. I would imagine that fire cone attack can be blocked, protecting you from the "cone combo", since you can block the second you stand up, though you might take a ton of chip damage. You could also easily block or parry the fire chomp.
It was mentioned that Glaive would struggle to break his horns, though Glaive can jump, so it can hit his head at times when other weapons can't.
Of all the things in the video, the fireballs look the most like BS, though hitboxes that hit way beyond the range where they appear to hit is common for the series.
The issue with 'difficulty' in video games is that it encapsulates two separate things: challenge, and fairness.
Challenge is the actual skill a game is asking of a player. That is to say, challenge is a test of dexterity, mechanical ability, coordination, and strategy.
Fairness is a measure of how that challenge is presented to the player. In many RPGs, higher difficulty setting usually only changes damage output or input, health values, etcetera. The challenge the player needs to overcome doesn't change, it is simply more or less fair. I would say that a game is artificially difficult when the fairness is not in line with the actual challenge the game asks the player to overcome (the skill and execution which they need to succeed)
20:21 don’t let any ultrakill players hear you say this…
Which one do you mean? I've enjoyed every boss in ultrakill more than every other fps I've played, and the only one I can think of that fits this description is the Leviathan (rocket riding is not an excuse for that boss it's still kinda boring)
@Bolt2049 sisyphus and the gauntlet before him. I could explain why I think so, but ive learned from experience that arguing with ultrakill players is a waste of time.
@@officialregirock4021This reeks of "I tried to argue with people, I lost, now I insult them in other videos that have nothing to do with them". Both Sisyphus prime and the gauntlet before him are incredible tests of complex mechanical skills, so of course players would push back against you.
@@yanribeiro7108 yeah, you are right, they are complex tests of skill, does that mean that they are flawless tests of skill? No, they are not, but this fandom refuses to accept that their favorite game has flaws. This makes me wonder if you even watched the time stamp in my original comment.
@@officialregirock4021 Never said they were flawless, my point was that your comment reeks of someone who made bad arguments then decided to vent about those pesky Ultrakill fans elsewhere. Every fanbase is bad, deal with it. And good luck pointing out flaws in Ultrakill, there's very few of them, it's a very tightly designed game.
That timer is the sole reason I hate the Fatalis fight.
I'm in agreement with all of the points you made here, however because of that stupid timer, I'm striped of my player agnecy and fored to play in a way I *hate* to beat him.
For example, if you don't use meta skills, you're gonna fail. If you don't use the cluch claw, you fail.
The one reason I loved Alatreon is that it *didn't* have a stupid timer, i wasn't forced to use tenderizer or any offensive skills like agitators.
Me succeeding was based on how I fought the monster.
With Fatalis, if I fought the way I wanted to fight, I would always fail the quest.
Imagine being forced to do something you hate to do in a game you really like. That's how I feel about Fatalis.
Is why whenever I replay Monster Hunter world I always stop when I get to fatalis.
Can this argument just die already? Players are meant to change their playstyle to fit the boss, not the other way around. Having a boss be easily beatable with ANY playstyle is ridiculous, it can't even be called a test at that point. The whole point of monster hunter is to adapt to the monster, to learn and overcome them. If the time you spent being a massive weenie because the game didn't let you play an arbitrary way, was instead spent on learning how he works and how to beat him, then you and many other people still bitching to this day, wouldn't be anymore. Hopefully the devs don't stop designing fights like this due to you people complaining about it. A key, fundamental aspect of monster hunter has always been preparing, and adapting to any monster. It would cease to be this series if this were the case.
@yanribeiro7108 No. This argument won't die because it's why the vast majority of us even play games to begin with.
You're trying to argue that people shouldn't try to be creative and/or prep for hunts. People should be forced to play like everyone else... As if people somehow plays and thinks the same way.
You can try to defend terrible game mechanics, but that won't make it true.
You are no different than people trying to defend loot boxes being sold to kids.
@@AntonioCunningham Damn, what a shit reply. Where do I even start? First off, people don't play games so that they can play any way they want. Games have limits, and that's what make them games. You can't play doom eternal as if it's Ultrakill and vice versa, you will die. Limitations and mechanical creativity is what creates skill ceilings and floors. This is an argument people only apply to monster hunter and never realize how arbitrarily awful it is when applied to anything else.
As for your second paragraph, I didn't argue for any of that, so keep beating that strawman if you want. There's a TON of freedom when fighting fatalis, for defense or offensive builds. I play exclusively solo and most of my fights against him are sub 20 minutes. All you're doing with your comment is disguising your lack of skill and mechanical understanding of the fight as a criticism about player freedom, when the fight offers plenty of freedom, you just need to be better at the game to be able to express that freedom. You yourself admitted to stopping your playthrough when tou reach him, that's a direct admission of not understanding him, by your own words. I'm quoting you with what I said. Are you now disagreeing with yourself?
As for your third paragraph, there's nothing to say here. It's just a glorified "Nuh uh" coming from a bad player lacking basic Game design literacy. I could easily say the reverse to you with about as much Oomph.
As for your last paragraph, there's literally not a single connection between those two concepts you buffoon. Not a single bit of connecting tissue. Thank you for proving that nobody on the internet can use comparisons accurately.
@@AntonioCunningham wtf you thought "challenging final boss meant" in a monster hunter game?
You really thought that going into known hard content meant you could play however you wanted and still win without adopting new way of dealing with it. If they introduce something to help you fight just use it.
I can understand not wanting to optimize against weaker monster and go the way you want. But we're talking about the final boss of a dlc meant to give challenge.
@hjmp6236 Given that I've beaten virtually all in-game bosses in the series, Fatalis is the only one I hate.
Hazard Primordial Malzeno is infinaly better than Fatalis.
Even back in MHGU where monsters are scaled for four players, they were still better fights.
You still had agency with the fights. That's not the case with Fatalis. If you don't play the borning meta, you can't win. This is terrible game design
I am one of those Fatalis haters. I also hate Alatreon. Both for completely different reasons. It's a shame that MHW couldn't have just ended at Raging Brachydios and Furious Rajang. I'm not lying when I say it took me weeks to beat Alatreon and after 3 months of farming gear and doing attempts I gave up on Fatalis. I've just continued playing the game without ever beating him. It sucks that 2 of my top 5 least favorite fights across all of MH just so happen to be the final monsters of MHWIB. But it is what it is.
never beat Fatty solo too, did join other and atleast be able to hold myself and help them break head part, I just don't like the fact that it have move that force you to take damage, forcing you to use potion or next time you getting hit it's gonna be one shotted, I have no problem with any monster because they always have something that we can exploited or punished, Fatalis is just overtuned for no reason than to be hard.
Thank god the developers didn't end at raging brachy, despite it also being an amazing fight. Removing 2 incredible fights from the game because a certain group of people have shit opinions on great fights would be awful. Fatalis is straight up one of the best dragon fights in any game ever.
@@yanribeiro7108 We can have a difference in opinion. You don't have to be rude about it. I could just as easily say you have a shit opinion because you like gimmick fights. The road goes both ways buddy.
@@albinofroggy Thank you for the permission for being able to disagree, I don't know what I would've done without it. Now that Internet Jim bob gave me permission to have a difference of opinion, I can move on.
I suppose you could say I have a bad opinion for liking "Gimmick" fights, whatever that means to you. And that would be an abysmal take too, similar to your other one. So, I suppose it would make sense that it came from the same guy, in that regard.
@@yanribeiro7108 Brother you gotta take your meds. You're speaking to the hallucinations again. It's just incoherent rambling from you now. Calm down grandpa.
I think a key component to all of this is how it fits in with the story. A final boss can and should feel "unfair" in ways that a midgame or early game boss should not (unless there's a certain mechanic or technique that they're meant to teach, and once you do it they no longer feel unfair).
I personally think the fight is balanced how it should be. The cone attack is actually dodge-able by spamming dives. if you time them perfectly you can even survive a cone without taking any damage. as the boss is post game and monster hunter is all about preparation, the devs want you to have all upgrades available. I noticed you dont have augments, or at least not the healing augment, but those are very important for beating fatalis and the healing augment counters some of the crazy damage he puts out. also not sure if you augmented armor but that will allow you to have a good bit more defense. I see where the point of him being too hard is coming from but there is a counter to everything he does and you have to gain that knowledge in order to beat him, which i think is very cool
I don't think this video really addresses "artificial difficulty", it's just a video about how the Fatalis fight is balanced. The fight isn't perfect, and sometimes it's frustrating. It's also pretty fair in the sense that there's a balance between risk and reward, as you pointed out. Skill is the determining factor rather than luck.
I feel like "artificial difficulty" is just something people say when they feel like something is too hard but want to sound smarter about it. Technically all difficulty in video games is "artificial" in the sense that it's a challenge manufactured by the devs. The question should really be "is the result reasonably within the players control" or in simpler words "is it skill based" and I think the answer for Fatalis is clearly yes.
This fight is the final challenge of a very long game, the absolute pinnacle. I doubt the devs designed it with the expectation that everyone would even make it that far, let alone solo the fight. You're meant to bring your absolute best for Fatalis. If you don't have enough i-frames (13 at base, not 2 or 3) then consider using evade up. If you don't want to evade, use a shield with guard up. If you don't want to do either of those then you'll just have to position yourself better. If you restrict yourself from using all the tools available to you then it's not the games fault that you struggle.
As far as the timer goes, yes you can look at it as a gear check, but it also serves the purpose of preventing you from playing too passively. Time pressure is a useful tool to push the player into interacting with the risk/reward rather than just sitting back and waiting for big openings.
Thank you. The term "artificial difficulty" is inherently nonsens since every thing in a game is artificial. Even worse it gets used to discredit the developers when the player fails to adapt. It generally shows a lack of understanding whenever this term gets brought up.
As a game dev, I think you're both slightly incorrect. Some forms of difficulty *feel* much more artificial than others. I think the main difference is the gap between intent and result. If you intend to do something, but the game stops you from doing it in a way that doesn't feel like a predictable outcome of an enemies behavior, it will feel frustrating. This is why even very difficult games like Celeste have quality of life features like coyote time where it lets you jump for a split second after you've ran off a ledge. This aligns the player's intents with their results, we try to squeeze out every inch of distance possible on a jump, and coyote time let's us feel like we've done that. It doesn't mean the game is easier, it just makes it feel more fair and fun. In boss fights there are many comparable quality of life features:
I frames
Wind-up animations
The visual size of the attack relative to its hitbox
Attacks dealing less damage if you *mostly* dodge them
Implementing these things reduces the difficulty of the boss, but you can increase the difficulty with things like faster attacks and it will still feel more fair than it did before they were added.
@StellaByLuna Of course you can't bring player intent too close to their results because then even mindless button mashing could win a fight, but I think fair difficulty comes from when the gap between intent and result comes from predictable results of your opponent's behavior as much as possible. If a hitbox is as large or larger than the attack looks visually, that breaks the illusion of you fighting an opponent, it now feels like you're fighting the developers. When the hitbox is a little smaller than the attack is visually, it always feels like you're dodging by the skin of your teeth. Of course you can overdo this too and create "artificial ease", where players learn they can go pretty far into attacks and not take damage, and this makes it confusing to tell where the hotboxes actually are
Margit and Morgott are the same person anyway. Just don't confuse them with his twin brother Mohg the Omen, who is also Mohg the Blood Guy. You probably should also know about their DLC exclusive siblings Morrow, Mogli and Margret.
Also Malenia, Marika, Post Malone and Pre Malone, Maliketh and Melina don't like their names mixed up aswell.
the hitbox is larger than the visual it's a visual clarification design problem. sure the red circle in typical MMO might ruin the emmersion but they can just use a fire ember vfx instead seem the dev were just kinda lazy and it's not even fatalis it's many many monsters that have this problem how the fux are u gonna predict that without knowing in the first place then? u don't it's a knowledge check😂😂😂
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, skill issue."
"the cone" can be dodged by using farcaster.
If you see fatty going for the cone and you are in the "danger zone" with no way out, just use faecaster from the radial menu to get out.
Main problem with this method is that it is rather time consuming in a fight with an already tight time limit.
(Not sure if it can get you out of an combo cone)
Alternate video title: Monster Hunter Fatalis Boss Design Good or Bad?
Or, "Why you shouldn't play Monster Hunter". Seriously, this video turned me off every playing this game. A half hour fight on a timer with a bunch of bullshit attacks? Nah, I'm out. I like challenging games, but sometimes devs seem to not care about our time.
@maynardburger Yeah but the thing that wasn't talked about is that this is basically the only fight in the game that is like this (which makes it even worse IMO)
The timer is there, so you have to actually learn the fight, instead of playing it supersafe. It's not artificial, it's in almost every quest type and has a reason to exist. All of your video comes off like a Reddit essay.
I am pretty deep in the "Git Good" camp when it comes to Fatalis because getting better at Monster Hunter isn't just I frame better. The older games really emphasized preparation and knowledge going into a boss, most of the mechanical difficulties are fixed with game knowledge, not playing better.
-Big Hitboxes: Evade Extender level 1 totally changes the fight
-30min timer and 60k health: to beat Fatalis is somewhere around 35dps, if you use heavy artillery and eat for bombardier it drops to around 25.
-Cone Bad: going into the cone is normally done when you are far away, stay close. You can block it for chip damage. Also 2 dragon pods flinch and cancel the cone (Shaver jewel).
-Cone Good: It only does the cone while standing (enraged) you the player control that with the flinch shot. You can also bait it by standing under the head, leave the Palico home for more control.
-Flying: smoke bombs, Fatalis lands when it can't see you. This also make siege weapons safe to use.
-Hits too hard: swap off pure glass cannon builds and find room for fire resist and divine blessing.
-Head breaks: partbreaker
Fatalis has a ton different ways to make the fight easier through preparation. Most of them are compromising on pure dps skills and actually building an armor set to counter it. There is plenty to complain about. The final theme surges at like 5% health which is still 3k and can take a couple of minutes, it always kinda feels like it kicks on too early. The head isn't a weak spot for gunners making breaks on the head a lot harder. But these are pretty minor.
Most of the "unbeatable cheap artificial difficulty" is players wanting to smash through a brick wall with their heads instead of going to grab a hammer and chisel, like yeah it is still hard with the right tools, but it is do-able.
I feel like this summarizes exactly how I felt about the fight. As someone who beat iceborne when it came out, but didn't keep up with the constant grinding, this final hunt became too much. It took me a lot of time to get back into the swing of things and learn the fight, I looked up how to bait the cone as a greatsword main, but on my best attempts I got to the final stretch multiple times just to get hit with the timer. I hadn't played perfect, but getting hit with a timer multiple times and knowing that wasting hours grinding for the perfect set/dectoration/augment would have been enough to win, completely shattered my interest in playing.
This final boss felt more like an MMO raid boss than anything I'd experienced in monster hunter before, and it felt that way because of all the dark patterns of designs those sort of bosses implement. What a shame.
Beautiful analysis. Bravo!