Since its first arrival on PC with Monster Hunter World, series fans have been introduced to the magic of PC modding. Pretty much everything you could change, some intrepid modder managed to.
This continued with the recent release of Monster Hunter Wilds, of course, but some mods are taking things too far, and Capcom has put those players on notice. The problem is, not everyone playing realises that they’re playing a modded quest.
Capcom doesn’t appear to have an issue with mods like the ones that change the game’s visuals, swap character models, tweak outfits and so on. The developer, however, is very concerned about mods that change the way quests work to allow for things not supported by the game.
More specifically, players have been able to mod High Rank quests, Investigations, and Field Surveys to not only increase the number of possible monsters within each, some mods can also increase the number of players who can participate in each one, too. This massively affects the game’s balance, not to mention change the reward structure of a core component of Monster Hunter.
The idea of modding a game to create a more rewarding environment obviously isn’t exclusive to Monster Hunter, but because of the way the co-op hunting game is structured, going beyond the designed parameters completely destroys the experience.
What’s more frustrating here is that new players, who may not be familiar with how many monsters/players are allowed per quest – or even those not paying attention – could end up in games where the host has modified the quest to allow for more rewards or more hunters. Without knowing what’s standard for each, you may not be able to detect that something looks off.
This is why Capcom published a list of the standard parameters of quests that you should look at so that it’s harder for you to join modded games.
“We have confirmed the unauthorized modification of game data in Monster Hunter Wilds for High Rank environment Investigations, Field Surveys, and more,” said Capcom. “Modified data can interfere with normal gameplay and even render the game unplayable. If you suspect a quest has been modified, please do not play it, or stop playing it immediately.”
Unfortunately, Capcom is currently unable to determine whether a specific quest had been modified, but the developer is working on implementing “additional countermeasures” in future updates to detect players who modified their games, and hopefully warn other players not to join them and get themselves implicated.
While Capcom has previously deleted unrealistic times from Wilds’ Challenge Quest leaderboards, the developer hasn’t said whether the players responsible for them had been banned. From the looks of things, the process of identifying cheaters may not be as straightforward as it is in other games.
In case you missed it, the next batch of Monster Hunter Wilds Event Quests and Challenge Quests has been published. Many of them are currently live, available through the end of the week of April 28.
