Board Thread:MH4U General Discussion/@comment-25966281-20151214080332/@comment-2123858-20151216203925

Okay, to preface this is my opinion, and should be taken as such. I am not trying to criticize CJwatt or anyone on this board, however I think that recovery options after being hit would bring the give way too much preferance towards the Hunter then there already exists. The one big thing the MH series has been grapling with since it's creation is balance, and it has gone back an forward quite often. Skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want to listen to a bais version of the history of the series.

In my opinion, the first two generations struggled with weapon balancing and, more often then not, favored the monster over the hunter. Movement was difficult, some monsters had "larger then average" hit boxes, had huge amounts of health, and often dealt an absurd amount of damage. This is not to say that it was impossible or super hard all the time, hunters did have exploits and other methods, especially with online play, traps, and certain weapon classes, but you get the idea.

Recently, that balance has shifted, though Generation 4 has been a lot better then the 3rd. A lot of great changes were added, but I feel like the balance shifted in favor of the player/hunter. Monsters now can get exhausted, have less health, deal less damage, and thankfully the hitboxes were edited, along with some of the AI. The hunter can move much faster, making things less risky and making it easier to escape being punished for messing up. That's not to say the newer games are bad, Monster Hunter is still very much harder then the average game, and the balance between the player and monster were pretty even in Four Ultimate, making things rather interesting at times (Frenzy/Apex, Guild Quests, Pinning, Powerful Armor Skills, Mounting, and Relics).

Anyway, getting on to the point, a method of recovery from getting hit by an attack would be too overpowered, even if the method took some skill to pull off. Most monsters (but not all *cough* apex rajang) have a hard time dealing with the new evasion skills, mounting, extended get-up, and weapon mechanics. If you could just get up and walk away from a monster every time it hit you, where would the challenge be? The whole design of monster hunter is to learn how a creature behaves, it's attack and defence patterns, the noises it makes, the fluids/status it releases, where it goes, and most importantly, how to respond in kind to the monsters you come across. Yeah, stun rng can be a pain sometimes, but it has counter measures, just like any other status in the game. You can already do so much to monster, but taking away the monster's ability to knock you down is a bit extreme. They should be hard to beat, they're monsters afterall, that's how you learn and grow, by failing and eventually overcoming something really powerful. It's what seperates Monster Hunter from a typical RPG, you don't fight everything the quite same way.

On a side note, Hunter Arts already seem really powerful, so hopefully we'll get some creatures capable of being strong enough for it to be a great challenge in the future...