Monster Hunter World is one of Capcom's most successful titles in recent history and the Iceborne expansion has added a massive and difficult endgame. While the game is excellent by most standards, it has several hiccups, some of which have only become more apparent with the latest expansion.
These hiccups vary in size and frustration but all of them share the common theme of being annoyances in an otherwise fantastic game. There is no doubt a very long amount of time until the next expansion but hopefully, Capcom can implement these fixes much sooner.
10 Cutscenes
A problem present in the story quests for both base Monster Hunter World and Iceborne, players cannot join others on a story quest until they see the cutscene by themselves in their quest first. Once the cutscene has been viewed at least once you are free to join others. This is very frustrating and adds a huge hurdle to trying to play through the game with friends. The only way to play the story together is to both load into the quest, get to the cutscene and then quit and start the quest over, which is a massive waste of time. Even an option to watch the cutscene from the base instead of in the quest would make this much better.
9 Beginner's Guide
Monster Hunter World is just the latest in a long-running series of games and it is not always welcoming to new players, but with its runaway success, it needs to be a little more forgiving at the start of the base game in explaining mechanics.
Specifically, the combat guides are fairly tucked away and are fairly simple. Another example is the equipment, specifically how to acquire them and what they do. Many new players don't know that some of the hunter equipment and Palico equipment can only be acquired from doing extra quests found during expeditions.
8 Better Cosmetic Options
While Iceborne has started dabbling in more layered armor (armor that is cosmetic only) locking these options behind the expansions endgame is a bit annoying. An option like transmogrification to use the physical appearance of any armor that you have crafted would give a ton more freedom in armor selection without forcing players to choose fashion over function, which usually results in a cart more often than not.
7 Party System
In tandem with the cutscene issue, this game lacks a traditional party system for playing with friends. It's not as simple as getting into a party and going from quest to quest as it should be. You can join the online session of your friends, and then if one person posts a quest everyone else can join via the quest board. This system adds extra downtime between hunts and introduces unnecessary complications to an already complicated game. Having a party leader be able to start hunts and the game automatically adds the party to that quest would make life that much easier. For a game meant to be played with other people, it makes it pretty hard.
6 Tempered Fights Near Impossible With SOS
Tempered monsters are the juiced-up versions that are hard to beat and drop the highest tier materials and decorations. In Iceborne, these tempered hunts are brutal and extremely challenging.
They require solid preparation which isn't being properly conveyed since sending an SOS flare and inviting random hunters to help out just results in them using your carts. These fights are meant to be brutal but adding in additional people, which even with scaling makes the fights easier, is just making it impossible.
5 Hard Frame Drop When People Join
This issue may be limited to Xbox, but since the addition of Iceborne, the game's framerate dies whenever people join a quest in progress. Regardless of the locale or fight type, whenever people join in late, the game loses frames like crazy. This issue did not exist before Iceborne but it has continued ever since, resulting in some frustrating carts due to loss of frames. You can rarely blame the game for your failures, but this is one of those times.
4 Picture Mode
Iceborne added the surveyor set, which is a fancy name for a camera. Along with this camera comes a list of challenges for a researcher that involves taking pictures of certain things happening in the game. The issue here is that even in a solo quest, the game does not pause when you enter surveyor mode, making it incredibly difficult to get photos. The game requests action shots so you either need to avoid getting attacked while playing solo or actively not help in multiplayer, both of which are not ideal.
3 Better Weapon Tree Starting Points
Monster Hunter World added master rank with the Iceborne expansion, which introduced near tiers of weapons in the weapon tree. It also introduced entirely new sections for the new monsters in the game. That said, the way weapons work in the game is that there are a select number of starting points for weapons and they have to be upgraded from there.
Some of the new MR weapons have starting points using MR materials, but some require you to start so low you may have to go back to high rank or even low rank to get materials. This might be the whole loop of the game but going back to those tiers at MR is more tedious than anything else.
2 Picking Up Materials Vs. Slinger Ammo
Materials and slinger ammo dropped by monsters are easy enough to visually distinguish, but whenever they are close to each other the game tends to prioritize the slinger ammo over the materials, which is usually the opposite of what people are going for. This problem because extra frustrating in the Guiding Lands, the endgame area for Iceborne, where monsters drop materials at a much higher rate during combat. This makes it difficult to quickly grab materials during a fight.
1 Acquiring Decorations
Iceborne lets you decorate your room with a pretty high amount of freedom. With this comes new unlockable decorations, the many types of furniture you can place in there. The game is pretty stingy with these and doesn't make it clear the best way to get more. Occasionally you will receive delivery requests that reward them, but they are triggered sporadically. Unlocking decorations is tied to two achievements in the game and would be fun to collect if you knew how.