The Monster Hunter Wilds Beta isn't so great, but Capcom claims that the full game has already been improved.

As a MonHun card-carrying sicko, I find it difficult to say that the Monster Hunter Wilds Beta does not bode well for an easy launch.

The beta is certainly attracting a lot of attention, as it attracts hundreds of thousands players. Unfortunately, this attention hasn't all been positive. The Forbidden Lands isn't exactly a happy place for players. They've reported widespread performance issues, and the LOD (level-of-detail) transitions seem to be bugged. This results in ghastly NPCs and monsters that look like they came straight out of an old PS1 game.

The Monster Hunter subreddit's front page is currently filled with players sharing the bizarre graphics problems that plagued the beta. In one video from the introductory hunt, the giant Tetsucabra monster appears as a hulk without any identifiable features or limbs. In another, a LOD-crunched Rey Dau appears looking like a Morrowind cliff racer.

Just beat the Demo it was fun but I think the graphics from r/MonsterHunter could be a little better

Monster Hunter PS1 remake from r/MonsterHunter

In another thread on Reddit about the beta's players, users from a range of PCs began to share their experiences with the beta. Redditor: "I have a Ryzen 5/5600/RTX3060, which is decent mid-range hardware, and I'm barely hitting 30FPS a majority of the time, even with DLSS on medium settings." "With it, I can hit 50-60 FPS but the world appears to be smeared with vaseline. Not a great exchange!"

Another user with an AMD Ryzen 5800X, and an Nvidia RTX3080 said that changing the graphics settings did not make much difference. (I gained only 10FPS by going from High/Ultra/Low).

While I haven’t seen any monsters turn into polygonal Frankensteins, I’ve had my own performance problems with the Wilds Beta. The game has a bleary ghosting, in addition to the low framerates, frequent LOD pop-ins, and frequent pop-ins of the LOD. This is true even when I disable any upscaling. I can tweak things until I'm able to hunt a creature, but it's not a level of performance I'd call enjoyable.

This is not a surprise, as much as I would like to claim otherwise. Capcom's announcement that Monster Hunter Wilds' recommended system specs only target 1080p/60fps on medium settings with frame generation enabled, after Dragon's Dogma 2's performance issues earlier this year didn't inspire confidence. Dragon's Dogma 2 received a patch six months after its release to improve "frame rate in areas with many NPCs such as town centres" which were reportedly suffering from "CPU overload." Both games are powered by Capcom's RE Engine.

Capcom appears to be aware of the beta problems. The official Monster Hunter account for X tweeted this morning that the full version of the game is "already in a better state than the beta test." Capcom has also provided a guide to troubleshooting the beta. The usual suggestions include updating your GPU drivers, and--let's look at this--ensuring your Windows Media Player codes are up-to-date? It can't hurt I guess. It can't hurt, right?

I'd like to know exactly what is "in a better state" but we won't find out until the full Monster Hunter Wilds launches on February 28. Capcom will have to squeeze a lot of optimization into the next 4 months. Until then, i'll be calculating how many PC upgrades i'm willing invest in swordfights with dinosaurs.