History ScrappyMechanic / MonsterHunter

* Forced multiplayer content. While the series has always had a multiplayer focus, most of the multiplayer-able quests just had higher stats and could be easily soloed [[MarathonBoss even if it took a while]]. ''World'' has six monsters designed ''specifically'' for multiple players -- Kulve Taroth, Behemoth, Ancient Leshen, Safi'jiiva, Alatreon, and Fatalis. Their gargantuan health pools are always scaled for multiplayer and their movesets and/or mechanics require cooperation with other hunters to deal with. Soloing these monsters is a feat that only the best of the best equipped with gear [[Catch22Dilemma obtained from said monsters]] can hope to stand a chance against. The main problem, and the ''real'' scrappy here, is the fact that multiplayer in the console versions is locked behind a premium subscription service. Those who are not willing or able to subscribe or cannot play frequently enough to justify subscribing wind up stuck against insurmountable opponents. The PC version at least has free multiplayer, but if your connection is poor, good luck.
** On a related note, Behemoth in particular has a DPS check where if you fail to inflict enough damage to them, then they'll instantly wipe out your entire team with Ecliptic Meteor and/or end your entire run almost immediately. This severely limits your options and forces you to play aggressive lest you lose instantly because you didn't pass the damage threshold. To make things worse, the other four monsters have incredibly hard-hitting and wide-range attacks that often force hunters to retreat & heal and not many hunters are expert enough to evade their attacks. Behemoth will not summon a Comet to hide during his Ecliptic Meteor Attack and Kulve Taroth will retreat if you did not break enough of her golden mantle off. But nowhere is this more prominent than Alatreon's Escaton Judgment attack where unlike other monsters you need to do ''elemental'' damage, and if you don't break Alatreon's horns then it completely reverses its elemental resistances, severely restricting players to use Elemental-based weapons such as Dual Blades and Bow while rendering weapons like Hammer and Greatsword useless which means that for those who never mastered them, then they're forced to use weapons that are beyond their comfort zone. Not helping matters is that Alatreon tends to zip away and spends half the time flying, away from most melee attackers while having wide reaching and damaging attacks. Said TotalPartyWipe more often than not is almost always the leading cause that led to instant game overs in the first 5 minutes of the hunt.

* The Clutch Claw's tenderizing mechanic in ''Iceborne''. Basically by using the claw, you can attach youself into a monster part before temporarily wounding it for extra damage. However in order to do so, you have the risk of getting hit by a monster's attack head-on, often interrupting the flow of the hunt. Furthermore, some weapons require that you wound the monster parts twice before it's considered tenderized which puts you at further risk of receiving huge amount of damage from their attacks. And it's not like you can ignore this mechanic since Master Rank monsters have a significantly greater amount of health compared to its high rank counterpart while other monsters such as Safi'jiiva or Lavasioth require that you tenderize its parts before its weak points are visible. Granted you're supposed to use the Clutch Claw when a monster has just been exhausted but you're better off using it to flinch shot it to the wall to stun it for free damage or simply just comboing the monster which provides more damage output than how much wounding monster parts can do.

** Spiribirds usually start off as a novel feature, but are often considered a major nuisance once you've done enough hunts with them, as it means that even if you eat to get more HP/stamina, you'll still need to go on a fetch quest across the whole map just to make sure your stats are maxed out, as opposed to ''World'' where all one had to do was equip a Decoration. Although it's initially not hard to get away without many Spiribirds, the issue is particularly extreme in ''Sunbreak's'' endgame, where not only have players probably done hundreds of bird hunts already, they're practically forced to at least mostly max out their birds just to not get instantly carted. Many of the higher-level Anomaly Investigation quests take place in one-area maps with a Prism Spiribird that instantly increases your parameters to the maximum possible; [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome expect these to comprise the vast majority of the quests you accept via Join Request]].
* Rampages have also caught a lot of flack thanks to being simultaneously tedious and chaotic. Unlike hunts where you can quickly demolish monsters with the right equipment and skills, you can't really speed up the process of unleashing a fixed amount of damage onto hordes of monsters that slowly trickle in and try to attack the main gate. And on top of that, ''any'' damage you take will send you flying off of the ballista/cannon you're operating, and after you've taken your time to get back on, you can easily be thrown off by another monster attack. And this can be devastating when a gate-crusher/apex monster is breaking down the gate, and their backup ''just won't let you'' climb onto a weapon and hopefully stop their assault. Not helping its case is that certain monsters can ''only'' be fought during a Rampage instead of on a normal hunt, such as the Apex monsters and [[spoiler:Ibushi]]. Thankfully the 2.0 update allows you to fight the Apexes on normal hunts, although you still have to clear the corresponding rampages first to unlock them, and update 3.0 allows you to fight [[spoiler:Ibushi by himself either in a dual monster quest along with Narwa or solo in an Event Quest, with Ibushi's Master Rank version also being a solo fight.]]

* For some people, Wyvern Riding is this. While it is generally considered to be fun, the fact that it's not optional means it interrupts the flow of combat for those who would rather keep wailing on a monster, especially since it happened automatically in base ''Rise''. At the same time, it's also seen as invalidating the concept of invading monsters, removing any threat they pose and instead turning them into mere tools the players use for more damage.
* Rampages have also caught a lot of flack thanks to being simultaneously tedious and chaotic. Unlike hunts where you can quickly demolish monsters with the right equipment and skills, you can't really speed up the process of unleashing a fixed amount of damage onto hordes of monsters that slowly trickle in and try to attack the main gate. And on top of that, ''any'' damage you take will send you flying off of the ballista/cannon you're operating, and after you've taken your time to get back on, you can easily be thrown off by another monster attack. And this can be devastating when a gate-crusher/apex monster is breaking down the gate, and their backup ''just won't let you'' climb onto a weapon and hopefully stop their assault. Not helping its case is that certain monsters can ''only'' be fought during a Rampage instead of on a normal hunt, such as the Apex monsters and [[spoiler:Ibushi]]. Thankfully the 2.0 update allows you to fight the Apexes on normal hunts, although you still have to clear the corresponding rampages first to unlock them, and update 3.0 allows you to fight Ibushi outside of rampage, on a dual monster quest with him and Narwa.

* Underwater fighting in ''Tri'' and its {{Updated Rerelease}}s is awkward, especially near the surface of the water where panning the camera above the surface [[CameraScrew horrendously obscures your vision]]. Sure, you can freely move in the three dimensions, and your OxygenMeter is very generous, but your mobility is limited compared to on land while the monsters get to swim circles around you. Thankfully, underwater fighting was scrapped for later generations of games.

* Trying to play the PSP games, where movement is assigned to the analog nub and camera control to the D-pad. The same problem comes back in ''3 Ultimate'' on 3DS, unless you've invested in a Circle Pad Pro for the second Circle Pad and two extra shoulder buttons, or you figure out how to control the camera on the touch screen.

* Some armor designs are gender-locked, and in pre-''World'' games your gender is locked in once you choose it. Did you want butterfly armor, the Guildmarm's clothes, or a [[{{Meido}} maid uniform]], but your character is male, for example? Tough luck. If you're transferring from ''Generations'' to ''Generations Ultimate'', the game will give you one, ''and only one'', chance to change your gender (alongside your name), during the data transfer process.

* The lack of online multiplayer for the portable releases up until ''Monster Hunter 4'' means that if you don't have local friends to hunt with, you may as well pretend that the multiplayer component doesn't exist. This can make some quests [[ThatOneLevel nightmarishly]] [[ThatOneBoss hard]], especially if the target monster is a DamageSpongeBoss and it's not a "slay ''or [[HoldTheLine repel]]''" quest. This may be fine in Japan where the series is popular enough that it's easy to find local hunting buddies, but it was a huge detriment in parts of the world where ''Monster Hunter'' was a niche title at best at the time. ''World'' alleviates this by scaling monster stats to the number of players in the party, but it still has some monsters that necessitate a full party for a fair chance at victory.

** The Kulve Taroth weapons, ''especially'' the Kjarr weapons, take this UpToEleven. They are [[RandomNumberGod randomly obtained]] after successfully defeating this MarathonBoss, and the ones that aren't outright terrible outclass the majority of craftable weapons if not being outright the best in their class. It's bothersome enough when you have access to multiplayer and decent teams, but for those who don't, Kulve Taroth is an hours-long, incredibly boring slog just for one attempt at the weapons.

''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'' is well-known for any number of oddball mechanics that many players, [[AmericansHateTingle especially outside of Japan]], may find [[ScrappyMechanic clunky or unintuitive]]. It's rather telling that a lot of these mechanics were done away with from ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' onward.

* ''World''[='=]s event quests are {{temporary|OnlineContent}}, which creates headaches for those who cannot play during the event period or decide to take a hiatus only to realize upon coming back that they missed an event quest. Granted, event quests are not gone ''permanently'' and will eventually come back, but it doesn't solve the problem of having to play during a specific period. This is in contrast to "classic" ''[=MonHun=]'', where event quests are always available to be played on your own time once they've been downloaded, even when playing offline. After the Fatalis update, aside from the Kulve and Saji siege quests - which indefinitely rotate every two weeks - every event quest was made available online, but not offline.
* For Gunlance users there are ''no'' craftable Gunlances with Wide Level 4 shelling. Normal and Long have craftable Gunlances with Level 4 shelling (Royal Burst and Earthshaker Magda Lahat, respectively), but for Wide, the only options come from Kulve Taroth.
* While having Astera's normal BGM replaced with the VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV theme until you complete the normal Behemoth slaying quest (the final quest in the Collaboration's storyline) is a nice touch, there's just one problem. Thanks to Behemoth being ThatOneBoss, the quest usually ends in failure.

!!''Rise''

* For some people, Wyvern Riding is this. While it is generally considered to be fun, the fact that it's not optional means it interrupts the flow of combat for those who would rather keep wailing on a monster. As it stands, you will automatically ride a monster if you hit it in its mountable state. Thankfully, if you so desire, you can easily press Y to [[UseYourHead send the monster charging head-first into the nearest wall]], immediately dismounting you and toppling the monster.

* The Gunlance's Heat Gauge mechanic is a large contributor to the weapon's [[ScrappyWeapon low-tier status]]. The gauge has three levels: yellow, orange, and red. Yellow reduces damage by 15%, orange is baseline, and red increases damage by 5%. Shelling raises the Heat Gauge, attacking normally reduces it, and using Wyvern's Fire reduces the gauge and stops it from increasing until Wyvern's Fire cools down. To use the weapon to the fullest, you have to constantly shell to build up the Heat Gauge, which eats Sharpness quickly. But not too much, because if you overfill the gauge, it resets to zero and locks, lowering your damage and locking you out of Wyvern's Fire, then forcing you to go through the process all over again once the Gunlance cools down. When the gauge is getting too high, you're forced to either waste your Wyvern's Fire, stop shelling, or risk the damage debuff. And even then, if you use Wyvern's Fire at the wrong gauge level, you might end up ''reducing'' the meter to orange when the meter goes down. The Artillery skill is ''supposed'' to help out, but the reduced Heat build makes it harder to get the gauge to usable levels and the reduced time between cooldown forces you to deal with this mess sooner. As one could imagine, dealing with this mechanic was an exercise in frustration. The gauge was removed from ''World'' onward, to Gunlance mains' relief.

* The Gunlance's Heat Gauge mechanic is a large contributor to the weapon's [[ScrappyWeapon low-tier status]]. The gauge has three levels: yellow, orange, and red. Yellow reduces damage by 15%, orange is baseline, and red increases damage by 5%. Shelling raises the Heat Gauge, attacking normally reduces it, and using Wyvern's Fire reduces the gauge and stops it from increasing until Wyvern's Fire cools down. To use the weapon to the fullest, you have to constantly shell to build up the Heat Gauge, which eats Sharpness quickly. But not too much, because if you overfill the gauge, it resets to zero and locks, lowering your damage and locking you out of Wyvern's Fire, then forcing you to go through the process all over again once the Gunlance cools down. When the gauge is getting too high, you're forced to either waste your Wyvern's Fire, stop shelling, or risk the damage debuff. And even then, if you use Wyvern's Fire at the wrong gauge level, you might end up ''reducing'' the meter to orange when the meter goes down. The Artillery skill is ''supposed'' to help out, but the reduced Heat build makes it harder to get the gauge to usable levels and the reduced time between cooldown forces you to deal with this mess sooner. As one could imagine, dealing with this mechanic was an exercise in madness. The gauge was removed from ''World'' onward, to Gunlance mains' relief.

* The Gunlance's Heat Gauge mechanic is a large contributor to the weapon's [[ScrappyWeapon low-tier status]]. The gauge has three levels: yellow, orange, and red. Yellow reduces damage by 15%, orange is baseline, and red increases damage by 5%. Shelling raises the Heat Gauge, attacking normally reduces it, and using Wyvern's Fire reduces the gauge and stops it from increasing until Wyvern's Fire cools down. To use the weapon to the fullest, you have to constantly shell to build up the Heat Gauge, which eats Sharpness quickly. But not too much, because if you overfill the gauge, it resets to zero and locks, lowering your damage and locking you out of Wyvern's Fire, then forcing you to go through the process all over again once the Gunlance cools down. When the gauge is getting too high, you're forced to either waste your Wyvern's Fire, stop shelling, or risk the damage debuff. And even then, if you use Wyvern's Fire at the wrong gauge level, you might end up ''reducing'' the meter to orange when the meter goes down. The Artillery skill is ''supposed'' to help out, but the reduced Heat build makes it harder to get the gauge to usable levels and the reduced time between cooldown forces you to deal with this mess sooner. The gauge was removed from ''World'' onward, to Gunlance mains' relief.

* North American and European copies of the game are compatible with each other for multiplayer purposes, but ''not'' with the Japanese or Korean versions, and likewise there's two separate servers for each online-enabled game, one for the NA and EU versions and one for the Asian versions. Do you have an NA copy and want to hunt with your friend in Japan playing the Japanese version, for example, or want to go to a ''[=MonHun=]'' meet in Japan with your NA copy and socialize with fellow Hunters there? Sorry, no.[[note]]An interesting caveat is made apparent with the PC emulated versions of ''Freedom Unite'' (international) and ''Portable 2nd G'' (Japanese), as both versions are revealed to be '''perfectly compatible''' with each other in multiplayer via a tunneling app--which raises questions about the region-locked multiplayer of later titles.[[/note]] ''World'' and ''Rise'' finally fixed this, making all regions able to play with each other.

* The Fancy Spit allows you to cook 10 Raw Meats at once at the Street Cook's booth, eliminating the tedium of using the BBQ Spit to cook them one at a time out in the field. It does have one irritating drawback: You can't use the Fancy Spit when in a multiplayer room, as the Street Cook's services are closed until you go back offline. This means if you run out of Rare Steaks and Well-Done Steaks, you'll have to leave the room to produce more, or cook them one at a time online, most likely to the ire of your hunting partners. Mass-cooking was overhauled in ''Generations'' with Rife Roasts, where you can use up to 10 pieces of Raw Meat to turn into steaks (mostly Well-Done, with a few Rare or Burnt Steaks showing up sometimes); a Rife Roast may be ordered from and claimed from any kitchen, including the ones in the Hunters Hub and Hunters Pub.
* The multiplayer chat in the [=3DS=] online games is easily this, due to making you use the clumsy 3DS keyboard (except on ''Generations Ultimate'' on Switch, where you can plug in a USB keyboard, but only if you're docked or have a USB-A to USB-C adapter) and locking that out once the hunt begins, only allowing you to use one of your 18 pre-made macros. ''Generations'' gives you 24 macro slots, and ''Generations Ultimate'' gives you ''72'', but it doesn't account for every single thing you wanna communicate to your teammates. While this is meant to curb the [[ForumSpeak G.I.F.T]] factor of online multiplayer, even if you're in a party that's strictly composed of players from your friends list you still won't have an in-game way to chat freely. This is why some players will only do multiplayer hunts via local multiplayer and / or online with friends using third-party apps for text chat and especially voice chat.

!!4th Generation

* Some of the unlocks via the Request Log quests (like new armor set designs and kitchen ingredients) are hidden behind Hub quests, which means unless you want these quests to last a tediously long time you ''have'' to play with others. Worse yet, some of these quests are ''[[FakeLongevity gathering quests]]'', and very few if any players care to do these, even in four-player groups to divvy up the amount of effort needed.[[note]]The one exception is "Coal Hearted", and that's because people use that quest to abuse a GoodBadBug that lets them rack up a lot of charms in a single run of the quest.[[/note]].

* The lobby system has a lot of problems as a result of trying to have traditional four-person lobbies and Join Requests coexist. While you are only shown lobbies with open slots, nothing stops a player from opening up a lobby and then starting a quest with Join Request enabled, allowing people from outside of the lobby to join the quest. This often leads to a frustrating experience where you join someone's lobby, try to join the quest that the host posted, only to be denied entry because it's already full. Or worse, a player hosts a lobby and then uses Join Request to join a quest hosted by someone outside the lobby, in which case the quest they're in doesn't even show up on the quest board.

* The Gunlance's heat gauge mechanic is a large contributor to the weapon's [[ScrappyWeapon low-tier status]]. The gauge has three levels: yellow, orange, and red. Yellow reduces damage by 15%, orange is baseline, and red increases damage by 5%. Shelling raises the heat gauge, attacking normally reduces it, and using Wyvern's Fire reduces the gauge and stops it from increasing until Wyvern's Fire cools down. To use the weapon to the fullest, you have to constantly shell to build up the heat gauge, which eats Sharpness quickly. But not too much, because if you overfill the gauge, it resets to zero and locks, lowering your damage and locking you out of Wyvern's Fire, then forcing you to go through the process all over again once the Gunlance cools down. When the gauge is getting too high, you're forced to either waste your Wyvern's Fire, stop shelling, or risk the damage debuff. And even then, if you use Wyvern's Fire at the wrong gauge level, you might end up ''reducing'' the meter to orange when the meter goes down. The Artillery skill is ''supposed'' to help out, but the reduced heat build makes it harder to get the gauge to usable levels and the reduced time between cooldown forces you to deal with this mess sooner. The gauge was removed in ''World'', to Gunlance mains' relief.

* Speaking of Gunner weapons, if you attempt to fire a Bowgun with an empty magazine, you'll be immobilized for a second as you fire nothing and your avatar attempts to take a closer peek at the gun to check it. It's meant to discourage the player from just going [[ButtonMashing trigger-happy]], but in practice it can easily put the player in a dangerous situation because the no-ammo animation left them helpless against a monster's attack. ''World'' onwards simply makes you reload (as if you had pressed X/Triangle) if you try to fire with no ammo, alleviating much of the frustration.

* Speaking of Gunner weapons, if you attempt to fire a Bowgun with an empty magazine, you'll be immobilized for a second as you fire nothing and your avatar attempts to take a closer peek at the gun to check it. It's meant to discourage the player from just going [[ButtonMashing trigger-happy]], but in practice it can easily put the player in a dangerous situation because the no-ammo animation left them helpless against a monster's attack.