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As PS5 players double-check how to access the Monster Hunter Wilds beta ahead of the incoming PlayStation Plus-exclusive early access period, developer Capcom released a handy little breakdown of the features in the beta and in the game itself, and the promise of 100-player lobbies has perked some ears right up.
"In multiplayer, players join lobbies, which are used to connect them with other players," the Monster Hunter Wilds beta one-pager reads. "Each lobby can hold up to 100 people, and belonging to the same lobby as someone else allows you to interact with them more closely."
If you've been around since the Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate or Generations Ultimate days of much, much tinier lobbies, this news may rightly send your heart soaring. That said, there are a few important caveats here. Just like Monster Hunter World, Monster Hunter Wilds will only display 16 players at once, just as Monster Hunter World did in Gathering Hub lobbies. Barring raid-style hunts, like World's Kulve Taroth siege event, game parties will be limited to four hunters as usual, and even then it may be more like a bunch of groups of four working together asynchronously.
"In Monster Hunter Wilds, 16 players are shown at base camps!" the official Monster Hunter Twitter account said earlier this month. "Recently announced at [Tokyo Game Show] by [Monster Hunter Wilds] director Yuya Tokuda, up to 16 of the players in a lobby will be displayed at the same time in each of the various base camps. Meet friends, chat, form hunting groups and more!"
After playing a whole heck of a lot of all the recent Monster Hunter games, I'm picturing 16-player instances in Wilds united under one big lobby. We still need to see this in action, and thankfully the Monster Hunter Wilds beta should give us a good showing, but the massive pool of 100 players seems to work more like a background server list loosely corralling groups of interested hunters and making it easier to find or share hunts you're interested in.
On this front, the more interesting feature is arguably Link Parties, which Monster Hunter Wilds uses as a bridge between lobbies and a way to keep close-knit groups together between quests "once you meet other hunters you get along with."
"Normally, only players in the same lobby are able to join your quests, but if a player is in your Link Party, they can join from a different lobby," a separate explainer reads. Capcom points to a few key features of Link Parties:
- Link Parties stay together after returning from a quest, making it easier to do consecutive quests together.
- It's easy to get back together with Link Members if you decide to temporarily go your separate ways.
- If a member starts a quest, other members will automatically be notified and given a chance to join.
- You have access to a dedicated, members-only Link Party chat and voice chat.
- Using Environment Link, you can invite other members into your environment so you can explore together.
Shaking hands and sharing steaks with 99 other hunters at once sounds cool, and frankly it is, but with Capcom pushing seamlessness above all with Monster Hunter Wilds, these are the kind of social features that really raise my eyebrows. After the breakout success of Monster Hunter World, I know more people than ever who are interested in playing Wilds, and Link Parties ought to make it much easier to wrangle multiple friend groups.
