Capcom has shared new updates about the game Monster Hunter Wilds, which instantly made the community very excited and even a little bit skeptical at the same time. The official account of Monster Hunter mentioned that the winning designs from the MHWilds Design Contest would be part of the game through the February update. The winners are the Shatterseal Great Sword by Nolan Lu and the SOS Meating Pendant by ikei. Isn’t it better? Players’ ideas could actually become loot. Nevertheless, the online reaction is… not exactly a unified celebration.
Let’s first of all talk about the winners. The Shatterseal Great Sword looked very nice in the promotional picture—sharp and all jeweled as if it had been taken from the center of a glacier. In contrast, the SOS Meating Pendant is not only adorable in its design but also in the way it is described; it’s a mini meat-on-a-bone charm, a pendant on top. What a nice and whimsical idea! Capcom is doing the thing that is good in theory—bringing the community into their plans. Players will soon be able to not only swing that fan-made blade during the hunt but also rock that pendant as the update is close.
Here’s where it gets messy. Many gamers going through the comments are not literally throwing confetti. A considerable part of the community of players thinks that the winners, let’s say, were a little bit weak? BlasiaCrossplay, one of the players, straightforwardly remarked, ‘Wow these are some weak winners compared to all of the entries lol.’ Ouch. But they aren’t alone. A recurring theme of the comment section is wanting Capcom to have selected more than just one weapon design. Why not have the company declare a winner for every weapon type? StratosF8 suggested it maybe would be better to have a design for each different weapon instead, and that feeling got echoed a lot. ‘It should’ve been multiple winners imo,’ said ReplicantArk. Even a self-proclaimed Greatsword main, Sub5tep, gave his opinion saying not even the top 3 got in and every weapon type should have one design. It’s real when the main of the winning weapon is like, ‘share the love, please.’
Then comes the drama. There’s always drama. One user, tamonowo, came up with some serious accusations stating it’s ‘kinda insane’ half a year is required for incorporating them and not adding the top 3 while ‘stealing the void hammer design to make it a paid layered.’ Whoa there things just got heated. That started a whole back-and-forth. BagelBackpack retorted with ‘Steal 🤡’ and argued it wasn’t a unique enough design to call it theft likening it to saying League injured the nine-tailed fox from Naruto. But tamonowo was not going to let that drop insinuating that Capcom had seen the excitement for the Void Hammer in the contest and then made their own paid version. Warfarer97 added a layer of corporate reality, noting that ‘Capcom now legally owns all of their designs so you might see forms of them in paid dlc.’ Yikes. Makes you think.
The controversy did not prevent some players from reacting in a way that was absolutely pure gamer energy. nee_VONtay said they ‘Might just start playing great sword just for this skin.’ That is the potency of a cool design! On the other hand, ReasonableChoice gave us the bitter, hard truth: ‘I’m betting that sword isn’t going to do 90% of that stuff in the image.’ Probably right, dude. The promo art usually looks more lively than the in-game model. And tornbtwn was caught in the weapon-loyalty dilemma: ‘Design so good it makes me want to learn GS, but my blood and soul is the Insect Glaive 😭’ We feel you.
Others had comments that were just… bizarre requests and vibes. fixchargeblade took the opportunity to ask for Charge Blade fixes, which, to be fair, is a reasonable request. chillinskey asked to ‘layer over akuma,’ a deep cut for the Street Fighter crossover fans. And WiseOldStranger exulted with ‘once more longsword BTFO life is good,’ which is a mood for the non-longsword players and a reflection of how it feels to be in that category.
Then what is the conclusion? The February update from Capcom for Monster Hunter Wilds has been the biggest the community- created content for the prize exchange, which is really smart. The Shatterseal Great Sword and SOS Meating Pendant are coming soon. Yet, the announcement has also sparked a debate about the fairness of contests, about the need for more weapon diversity in the winners, and even some talk about design inspiration. All of this is very typical of the gaming community—passionate, opinionated, and the PlayStation and Xbox crowds are no different.
