Monster Hunter Wilds director confirms my suspicions: a bug made monsters run away too frequently in the beta and the full game doesn't have this problem

A bug in the outdated build used for the Monster Hunter Wilds beta caused monsters to run to new areas too frequently, Capcom has confirmed, and the full game won't have this annoyance.

As VGC reports, Monster Hunter Wilds director Yuya Tokuda discussed the beta at a recent press event. "The open beta test was an earlier version that actually had some bugs in it, and one of them was that the monsters were moving more often than intended," he confirmed.

"It wasn’t actually a design intention to have them be so rapidly moving, it was just that every X amount of seconds they just were moving on, and it wasn’t something we were planning for. So we’ve gone ahead and fixed that bug, so we’ve now seen since the beta test lots of feedback, and that and many other things are being improved for the final game, and also just the general processing of how monsters decide where to go next and what to do – that’s being refined towards the full game."

I was in a separate session during this same press event at Capcom's Osaka, Japan headquarters, and as noted in my big Monster Hunter Wilds hands-on preview, the improved monster behavior in an updated build stood out to me. Monsters ran away noticeably less frequently than in the beta, and I was able to kill most of them within just one or two areas.

At the time, I wasn't sure if this was caused by the maps having fewer large monsters or just my weapons being stronger. Those were both likely factors, but it turns out this was also the result of a good old-fashioned bug fix, which is a relief. My friends and were I pretty peeved by how frequently monsters skipped town in the beta, so it's nice to have confirmation on this detail.

Monsters running away all the freakin' time can go on the list of huge post-beta improvements right below dramatically enhanced weapon hitstop. Check out our Monster Hunter Wilds Big Preview hub for more details on this huge action RPG.