The Hunters Killing 3U on the Wii U

[Draculestia]

No, it's not cheaters. No, it's not inexperienced hunters. And no, it's not social toxicity - it's a lot more innocent than that.

Those of you who play or have recently played 3 Ultimate on the Wii U will know that it's a very small community. Peak player numbers these days are between 15 and 20 people, but very rarely beyond that. It's also common to see only 10 people at peak times, but I tend to play closer to the off-peak, because I live in Australia. I've noticed that 3U seems to attract people who choose to hunt alone with their friends in locked rooms requiring a password rather than actively participating in the community. I have seen several resurgences of interest in 3U over the years, but because of that constant percentage of people who refuse to participate, it makes it much harder for the community to flourish.

I went online some days ago, and there were only two people online. Pretty rough, but better than nothing I thought. Well, it turned out they were sitting in a locked room together, refusing to allow others to join them. In my opinion, that kind of behaviour (given how small the community is) is selfish and tone-deaf. I totally get wanting to only play with your friends, but how about giving back a little bit to the server which we all thought was going to get shut down long before this point? I don't want the twilight years of this server to be ruined by these people.

[Jo_]

I'm going to disagree here. I can think of a plethora of good reasons to hunt in a private lobby, even if nobody else is online. Randoms are loose cannons. Maybe they don't want to deal with carrying or being carried, maybe they like the pace of the fights better with just the 2 of them, maybe they're goofing off and don't want to worry about etiquette, maybe they've got more friends on the way and don't want the spots taken before they arrive. In fact, I can discern the likely reason right there in the screenshot. The lobby's name is "ttv/pocket". They're almost certainly twitch streamer who only wants to play with their viewers.

Nobody has any obligation to participate in the wider online community. Shaming hunters for minding their own business is unproductive and a bit mean, in my opinion.

[Lutyrannus]

It has to do with the type of game. MH3G/U is a 3DS game at its core. It was built around local multiplayer, not online. Because of that, they decreased the lobby size from 10 players (which is what the Japanese version of Tri had) to 4 players, because it makes no sense to have a higher player count than that if you're designing the game around local play. This is why people have locked lobbies, and it makes sense when you think about it. If you have a party you want to play with, then you're gonna lock the lobby. Meanwhile MH1, MHG, MH2, and MH3 all have completely open "free" lobbies that instead have passwordable quests, because they were designed around online multiplayer, not local multiplayer. This means that even if you have a pre-chosen hunting party that you want to go out with, you have to join a lobby (8 player lobby in MH1, 10 player in everything else) to hunt within, and as such you'll interact with (or at least see interacting) other hunters outside of your party. It's a more social online experience than MH3G, since MH3G was designed assuming that the folks you're playing with, are with you in real life.

[BabyRath]

Mmmh, I play 3U on the 3DS emulator with online capabilities and I never lock my room, though i don't even think it is possible on 3DS. I usually have two brothers to play with, but even with the one slot some players can be wild cards. Overall I still wouldn't ever lock my rooms but I can get why some people with a set hunting party would lock theirs, sometimes you just want to make progress. And try conveying to people that you are doing crown size runs through the in game chat lmao
But yeah, personally after having to solo 3U on the 3ds when I was a kid, I now value too much the ability to play with people online to lock rooms

[Draculestia]

I'm going to disagree here. I can think of a plethora of good reasons to hunt in a private lobby, even if nobody else is online. Randoms are loose cannons. Maybe they don't want to deal with carrying or being carried, maybe they like the pace of the fights better with just the 2 of them, maybe they're goofing off and don't want to worry about etiquette, maybe they've got more friends on the way and don't want the spots taken before they arrive. In fact, I can discern the likely reason right there in the screenshot. The lobby's name is "ttv/pocket". They're almost certainly twitch streamer who only wants to play with their viewers.

Nobody has any obligation to participate in the wider online community. Shaming hunters for minding their own business is unproductive and a bit mean, in my opinion.

The concept of locking rooms is perfectly fine, and that's not what I'm displeased about. I agree with all of what you've said, but not in the context of a community where you can often count the number of players on one hand. That's why I said it's tone-deaf and selfish, and knowing that it's someone streaming on Twitch doesn't change that opinion. For me, the only acceptable scenario for a person to lock a room in 3U these days is if they have a group of four people who want to play together. Cheaters can be kicked and blocked, and if you want to hunt with less people to control pacing, you can set a maximum of 2 or 3 hunters to join, which is a common thing for higher-ranked people to do.

[Draculestia]

It has to do with the type of game. MH3G/U is a 3DS game at its core. It was built around local multiplayer, not online.

I disagree with this premise, because as you suggested, this change was already made in Tri when it was released internationally, so I don't think the online experience of 3 Ultimate on the Wii U is "3DS at its core". It plays like a stationary console MH when you play online, just as Tri did (free typing on the keyboard in and out of quests, short messaging, etc), but rooms are organised differently to MH1, G and Dos. As of Tri, you can now make your objective for a room very clear, and then you know that everyone joining that room is joining to do whatever you wrote in the room details. Capcom could see the merits of a maximum hall size of 4 people outside of portable games.

Obviously not everyone is going to agree with my frustrations here, but:
It's a small community, and some people come online and struggle to find people to play with because a small percentage of hunters refuse to participate, and I think that's a sad thing, and that people should care more about it.

[Lutyrannus]

I disagree with this premise, because as you suggested, this change was already made in Tri when it was released internationally, so I don't think the online experience of 3 Ultimate on the Wii U is "3DS at its core". It plays like a stationary console MH when you play online, just as Tri did (free typing on the keyboard in and out of quests, short messaging, etc), but rooms are organised differently to MH1, G and Dos. As of Tri, you can now make your objective for a room very clear, and then you know that everyone joining that room is joining to do whatever you wrote in the room details. Capcom could see the merits of a maximum hall size of 4 people outside of portable games.

Obviously not everyone is going to agree with my frustrations here, but:
It's a small community, and some people come online and struggle to find people to play with because a small percentage of hunters refuse to participate, and I think that's a sad thing, and that people should care more about it.

No, you misunderstand what I mean. What I'm saying is that MH3G was designed to be a 3DS game, not a Wii U game. The Wii U version came out much later in Japan and is called "Monster Hunter 3 (tri-) G HD Version" because it's just that, an HD port of the game to Wii U (and given online play). MH3U is as much a Wii U game as MHP3 is a PS3 game.

The western version of Tri only had it's multiplayer lobbies reduced to four players because of Wii Speak support, which the Japanese version doesn't have. Bandwidth is a bitch when you have 10 people in a lobby all trying to use voice chat. Also, you are able to set the name of the lobby to be hunting something specific all the way since Monster Hunter G, Tri didn't add that. MHG, MH2, and MH3 all share that feature.