User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Discussion of the Week: Lords of the New World/@comment-24734669-20191027165902

1) I really like it! When you want to focus a bit more on ecology, you have to have something that dominates the food chain.

2) I'm fine with it. Competiton and/or niche partitioning exist as real life phenomena, so two unique apex monsters in a single region is good. I just wish the other apex monsters actually fought lower-tier monsters...

3) Terrible. Elder Dragons are a thing of their own and should not be counted as part of the natural food chain. This shouldn't go without mentioning that Blackveil Vaal Hazak appears in the Ancient Forest as well as the Rotten Vale, meaning its title of "Lord of the Rotten Vale" now means nothing.

4) I would; it worked just fine in base World, so assuming they can keep that up, it'd be just fine.

5) It pretty much was; see my answer to #1.

6) TBH, for the most part, there should only be about 2 unique apex monsters in a single region at most. Endgame areas can have 3 unique apex monsters due to being home to stronger monsters, but that's the biggest exception I'm willing to give.

7) Yes, they should. If you want to show that a monster is stronger than other monsters, have it destroy them in a turf war! Iceborne missed that point so hard it's unbelievable.

8) I would have all the apexes inhabit 1-2 areas at most (except Tigrex, which can go in 3-4 areas), give them 1-3 turf wars with smaller monsters (depending on what they can fight), and have them just fight with any apex they can feasibly encounter.

9) Ecology-wise, Barioth and all the base World apexes are really good, as they all interact with the environment in many ways and have an appropriate variety of turf wars with other monsters.

Gameplay-wise, Legiana and Odogaron take the cake, as they are fun, fast-paced monsters that get in your face quite a bit and have highly-punishing but avoidable attacks that tell you to play smart; Yian Garuga wasn't really given a big spotlight in this DotW, but I just really love its Iceborne incarnation due to the fact that all the changes it got made it go from "terrible" to "awesome".

10) Ecology-wise, all the non-Barioth Iceborne apexes suck Kelbi balls. They are just like "I am the rival of the resident apex monster. I will challenge the resident apex monster. Fighting against the apex monster is my goal." They just don't do anything else other than fight with the apex monster. As well as this, their interactions with the environment are really unsatisfactory; why does everything have to prey on Aptonoth or Raphinos?

Gameplay-wise, Vaal Hazak is a mediocre punching bag that provides way less challenge than many other Elder Dragons; even Teostra is a much more fun and challenging fight than it is. Diablos also gets many points docked for becoming cancer in Master Rank (a shame, as its pre-World incarnation was a really good monster), as does Glavenus for not changing a single bit since Generations.

11) Apex monsters should be powerful monsters with designs that fit their home locale, a wide variety of attacks that can screw the hunter over relatively quickly, and an appropriate variety of turf wars with other monsters in their home locale.

12) Overall, World handled this concept in an OK manner. Although all the Iceborne apexes could've done with some more interactions with their environment, World pretty much laid down the foundations for how this kind of monster should function, and I fully look forward to seeing it being improved in future titles.