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[Wiles]

Took 6 hours in queue to get in this time around. The game runs much better than when I managed to log in the other day.

Visually the crafting was pretty neat - killing a Gnasher and then crafting a weapon out of its teeth was satisfying. The combat seems a little flat to me though, fighting giant monsters wasn't really interesting enough for me to want to keep playing. I have never played a Monster Hunter game before so I can't really compare.

[Criptfeind]

I've been playing this game some. The Queue was about 1-2 hours when I woke up in the morning, which worked for me. I just logged in then and have stayed online, playing a bit now and again.

Queue issues and other start of beta bugs aside, it's a decently fun game that I've been enjoying. I'm not really sure if it'll have the longevity to play it for a very long time, or even as long as I played warframe (which wasn't that long in comparison to how long some people play warframe.) Fighting the same monsters in a nondescript arena doesn't feel like it can be kept fresh and interesting, at least not without lots of new (not just color and stat swapped) monsters being introduced, but, I'm not to that point yet, so we'll see.

[sjm9876]

Supposedly now mostly queueless

[Folly]

Bumping for Frostfall event, which just started a few days ago.

I started playing about a week ago. So far no queues, no bugs.
Dauntless definitely feels like a blatant Monster Hunter clone, with less content. Though there is still a respectable variety of monsters, weapons, armors, and mods to keep things interesting for a while.

Dauntless is free to download and play, supported by a Cash Shop. The Cash Shop contains xp boosters, consumable items, and cosmetics. Xp boosters are not necessary, just a small time-saver. Consumables can be crafted with materials found in game, so again buying them is just a small time saver. Cosmetics are interesting enough that if you have some spare money to spend on the game, you can probably find something worth the investment; but still not at all required to enjoy the game.

So yeah, if you have been holding off trying Dauntless, now might be a good time to jump in and enjoy the seasonal event. If you tried back at launch but were turned off by queues and crashes, it's probably worth giving it another shot now.

[Cthulhu]

I didn't have any trouble with performance or crashing when I played, I just didn't find it very compelling.  Felt like a discount monster hunter and it wasn't just the lack of content.  The fights were all pretty easy, monsters only had a couple moves and didn't have the sense of unpredictable dynamism that monster hunter has.  The way crafting worked was also too thin.  Maybe it gets more complex later on, but the monsters all basically had two ingredients and 99% of the stuff you crafted just required various numbers of the basic ingredient.  It wasn't like monster hunter where there's a bunch of shit you've gotta get from various monsters.  Gathering and potion crafting was lame, monster hunter always had a sense of preparing for a hard fight, like going out to gather the stuff you need to take a particular monster down.

I used the hammer, which was pretty fun.  If you were ballsy you could turn around while the enemy was charging and hit your rocket jump at the exact right moment to stun it for huge damage and knock it out of any enrage effects it was in, which always made you feel like a badass.

It just wasn't compelling.

[Folly]

Patch day!

New behemoth Valomyr appears!
I'm not yet strong enough to face him...but I'll get there one day!

[Nighthawk]

I used the hammer, which was pretty fun.  If you were ballsy you could turn around while the enemy was charging and hit your rocket jump at the exact right moment to stun it for huge damage and knock it out of any enrage effects it was in, which always made you feel like a badass.

It just wasn't compelling.

Dauntless suffers from another problem that Monster Hunter doesn't have: lack of contrast in fights. In Monster Hunter fights change as time progresses; there are periods where the monster is enraged and you feel like you're better off running away than trying to attack. There are times when the monster is tired and you try to capitalize on their exhaustion. Then there are times when you (and/or your teammates) are just absolutely in the zone and annihilating the thing, locking it in CC one status after another and beating it into submission. And the monsters in MH react enough to give you the impression that the fights have a sort of ebb and flow to them.

Dauntless feels like it's always the same: Behemoths continue to use the same attack patterns over and over until they fall over. Sometimes they get mad and their attacks become slightly more annoying. They also don't have an unpredictable stagger system like Monster Hunter's; a lot of Behemoths get staggered by "booping" them out of a charge, which is fun the first time but gets repetitive really fast.

Bottom line is, it feels like you're whacking at a predictable brick wall rather than a monster, and instead of remaining thrilling no matter how many times you do it, fighting Behemoths ends up feeling formulaic.

[Folly]

Dauntless suffers from another problem that Monster Hunter doesn't have: lack of contrast in fights. In Monster Hunter fights change as time progresses; there are periods where the monster is enraged and you feel like you're better off running away than trying to attack.

Dauntless Behemoths enrage exactly as you describe, changing their movesets and increasing their general speed and damage output. And the mid-to-high tier monsters actually enrage is greatly varied and creative ways. And of course you can break/sever body parts to cripple their attacks, which is something you really want to do before they enrage, else the battle could get interesting quickly. All of this creates a dynamic battle flow that I feel easily matches and in some instances exceeds that of Monster Hunter.

[Nighthawk]

Dauntless suffers from another problem that Monster Hunter doesn't have: lack of contrast in fights. In Monster Hunter fights change as time progresses; there are periods where the monster is enraged and you feel like you're better off running away than trying to attack.

Dauntless Behemoths enrage exactly as you describe, changing their movesets and increasing their general speed and damage output. And the mid-to-high tier monsters actually enrage is greatly varied and creative ways. And of course you can break/sever body parts to cripple their attacks, which is something you really want to do before they enrage, else the battle could get interesting quickly. All of this creates a dynamic battle flow that I feel easily matches and in some instances exceeds that of Monster Hunter.

My complaints were badly directed due to haste. I don't really have beef with the rage mechanic, but with the underlying systems in Dauntless making the game less interesting and rewarding for players. Let me elaborate.

... The elaboration will be in a spoiler for the sake of not taking up hella space.

Spoiler: Rant (click to show/hide)

You can in fact break parts in Dauntless, but you can only get a stagger from a broken part one time (or at least that was the case back when I played) which means that a large part of the feedback you get from doing damage later in a hunt is basically gone outside of boops (which as I've already noted are formulaic and quickly become dull) and of course damage numbers, but if you get 100% of your gaming satisfaction from seeing numbers go up you might as well play a clicker game.

ANYWAY. If you want to stagger more times after breaking the parts, you have to do it through Dauntless's equivalent of stun, which is best done with a hammer or axe, making the other weapons less satisfying in the later parts of a lot of fights.

Compare this to Monster Hunter, where staggers can happen multiple times to multiple parts and any weapon can inflict them, which allows you to challenge monsters' most deadly attacks with your own well-timed attacks and get an epic stagger/dunk/knockdown that you feel proud of and want to put in a montage.

I don't see people challenging attacks often in Dauntless outside of designated boops, and that's because it's just never worth it. In Dauntless, the rule is dodge away or get punished. There's little room for playing gutsy, and it starts to feel like a soulsborne game: dodge, attack, dodge, attack, dodge, attack. I'm not saying that's a terrible system; if you like those games, then it's fine. I'm just saying that MH, despite everything being based on numbers, has this unpredictability built into its systems that encourages aggression and leads to lots of fun and hype moments while Dauntless, for me, ends up being forgettable.

Even with my bias as a long-time MH fan, I feel like it's objectively a lot less fun to do the same thing to interrupt the same attack five to ten times during a fight when I could have a more flexible system. MH is fun because well-timed aggression is often rewarded, either by the monster staggering or being awesomely dunked out of the air, sometimes at unexpected moments (let's just say I've seen a lightning monkey get knocked on his butt by a literal paintball).

... Sadly, this is less applicable in regard to Monster Hunter World.. Monster Hunter World ruined dunking monsters out of the air, as well as multiplayer stagger scaling, and I will never forgive it for that. But that's a rant for another time.

Maybe I'm too biased, having played Monster Hunter for years before trying Dauntless, but back when I played Dauntless months ago, I went into it with an open mind and left feeling disappointed. When I go back to Monster Hunter Generations (Ultimate) I have fun even if I'm fighting Rathian for the 50th time. And damn if I don't try to understand why that is by arguing about it on the internet.

Thanks for listening to me rant.