since it's come up again in recent conversation, i've reflected on the design of game systems that are generally long and winding but successfully avoid feeling that way to the player.

monster hunter rise has been a big thing for me lately and, coming from the previous game in the series, monster hunter world, i've had a lot of comparisons to keep track of. a staple of both of these monster hunter games is setting up a grindy endgame where the player is expected to chase various equipment sets while gradually working towards harder and harder endgame bosses. this tends to be frustrating for players who aren't interested in collecting new equipment, but are interested in beating the last available boss to improve their own gear.

world had an interested mechanic: a variation of a quest that was specifically called a "Raid." similar to any other fight, you could construct your own weapon from the monster you fought in the raid — but in addition to that, other materials dropped that let you customize that raid weapon with special passive skills. this was a really nice system. the player always got some upgrade materials from the raid, the weapon could surpass the strength of other available weapons and upgrading made the fight easier. progress was guaranteed.

in rise, like many aspects of the game that couldn't live up to world's incredible precedent, there is nothing like this feature. harder bosses are introduced that don't provide any improvements to the players weapons, yet players are still expected to spend upwards of 30 hours grinding monsters. the only progress is in an XP bar. i think this is a huge oversight in designing a grind when world had an elegant solution.