I like Capcom, and I like MH, but they're crazy if they seriously think that MHW is going to sell well in the West without more alterations to the core gameplay.
In addition to a Western MH fanbase of roughly 1 million, they're counting on both the Souls crowd and the more casual ARPG players to give MHW a shot at their 4 million target. Problem is, no other major ARPG has as much ancillary shit going on as MH.
In Souls, you typically only have to worry about your health and your remaining healing items. In MH, you have to worry about your health and healing items + your constantly draining max stamina and max stamina replenishing items + your weapon durability and whetstones + the temperature of the environment and anti heat/cold items + the time limit. In addition, all of the aforementioned upkeep items must be regularly farmed/bought/crafted.
There's no leveling system to cushion the challenge for solo players, a very obtuse crafting and upgrading system that can wind up leaving you immensely underpowered because you accidentally went down a shitty upgrade path, and upgrades often require an insane amount of materials to achieve.
Worse still, those materials are farmed from monsters that can take anywhere from 10-40 minutes to kill, and some have drop rates as low as 2%. The monsters aren't pushovers, either, so it's entirely possible you'll struggle to kill something multiple times over many hours and get absolutely nothing out of it.
Monster Hunter, as it is, is incompatible with the West. There's a reason why it's still a niche franchise after 3 console games and 5 portable games coming over here.
