Village is actually considered a large tutorial for the game while Hub is the default. Its not that Hub is bloated, its that village cuts the HP of the monsters in less than half, IIRC. 15 minutes is an okaish time considering duo scaling and that your friend is not a very good player. You should try to check if he is upgrading his gear and playing properly tho, as you should be pushing for at least around 10 minutes clear times.
The bowguns basically turn the game into a third person shooter, maybe he has a problem aiming while the monster is moving? He could switch to the light bowgun for more mobility or even try something like hammer since its a quite simple weapon.
If he's doing zero damage with a bowgun, then he's going about it all wrong. It's possible to go disastrously wrong on weapon and ammo choice with either bowgun type. Early in the game for LBG, guns with rapid fire normal 2, or guns that shoot normal 3 with lowest recoil/fastest reload are the way to go. For HBG, early game is dominated by normal 3 ammo. There's guides out there that recommend which bowguns are good for progressing through the story. HBG can hold their ground with the counter shot move on big attacks that only hit once (Rajang's beam attack, Mizu's spinning or sliding beam, etc), and getting 1 or 2 points in evade extender really helps a lot with moving out of the way of attacks. Counter shot is better replaced with counter charge later on.
I havent into sb yet but It shows truly the complaints about boring endgame are now backed up by numbers. Im wondering whether the upcoming last update would actually revert this tendency.
Iceborne is just overall better, and the numbers suggest as much. I wouldn't expect the last title update to change that. Rise will see an expected boost in activity shortly after the new title update, same as always, but I wouldn't expect it to last.
It's not that different from MHG/U which is what the Rise team worked on previously. Arts and styles provided all kinds of iframe abusing abilities and maneuvers.
I think this really says it all right here about which of these 2 games is going to sustain a higher player base long term.
What even defines a good fight in monster hunter any way? Odogaron is one of my favourites because he plays really well into Dual blades and you're constantly attacking/dodging. While a lot of the popular ones seem to be big things you hit in the ankles until they flop over. Monster hunters best fights seem to be early on when you're fighting smaller creatures and you're constantly moving and so are they.
