Monster Hunter Now is running its Lucky Lunar New Year Event to celebrate the Chinese New Year which fell in February. The event is currently well-received by fans, as it provides more Dragon weapons and unique armor designs to the game. Like other mobile games, with events come in-game store bundles that should offer huge savings on premium items as well. However, unlike the event, the bundle itself was instantly slammed by the game’s community.
Just hours after the Lucky Lunar New Year Pack was released, Reddit users instantly swarmed a thread to voice their complaints. This isn’t surprising considering the Lucky Lunar New Year Pack offers its purchasers five Wander Droplets, one Special Carving Knife, and 11 Potions for $14.99.
Reddit Is Not Pleased With This Overpriced Bundle
Redditor mtgface is annoyed that we have to scroll past this bundle’s banner just to claim the daily free Medkit. User S3T0 thought a much better use for the money as they “spent the money gifting a friend MHW” instead. MitsubishiSunshine also added, “My god, they never learn.”
On the Monster Hunter Now Discord, Eto Ranger wrote “complete and absolute trash” when responding to what the Lucky Lunar bundle contains.
While some players thought Niantic was not this greedy before, this kind of move is to be expected from the company. Simply put, this is its modus operandi and not something it does without precedent. One player, Meended, even admits they stopped playing Pokemon Go despite spending “around 20€ ($21) every month” because of the aggressive monetization.
In the case of Monster Hunter Now, players can see the difference in items they get from three different event bundles, which we listed below. Reddit user ShinyPidgy also points out this event pack’s value degradation by saying that the bundles are designed to “get worse from time to time.”
“This how they convince you a bad deal is not that bad, by getting worse deals out there from time to time. ‘Oh, [Descent of the Azure King Pack] wasn’t that bad compared to this one, this must be were the real value resides.’
| Bundle Name | In-game Store | Web Store |
|---|---|---|
| Lucky Lunar New Year | $14.99 (1,980 Gem) – Potion x11 – Wander Droplet x5 – Special Carving Knife x1 | $29.99 – Gem x3,300 – Potion x3 – Paintball x3 – Wander Droplet x5 |
| Descent of the Azure King | $14.99 (1,980 Gem) – Potion x11 – Special Carving Knife x5 – Paintball x1 | $29.99 – Gem x1,540 – Special Carving Knife x2 – Paintball x2 |
| Roars of the Desert | $14.99 (1,980 Gem) – Potion x5 – Paintball x3 – Special Carving Knife x2 | $29.99 – Potion x10 – Paintball x6 – Special Carving Knife x5 |
As a non-hardcore player of Monster Hunter Now, I see the big issue for the Lucky Lunar New Year Pack. The obvious one is that Wander Droplet barely has its uses and paying players don’t get Wander Orb instead, which lasts for 30 minutes. As Distinct_Wrongdoer86 wrote, spending 280 Gems or roughly $3 should let players access “every monster on the screen” instead of a mere three-foot radius expansion.
Second, the main draw of these bundles used to be the Carving Knife which helps reduce the grind by giving more rewards. For some reason, the Lucky Lunar bundle only hands out one of it for the in-game store version. Meanwhile, the web store pack is twice as expensive and you can’t even use the Gems to buy the Knives anyway.
It’s hard to say if the bundle is going to change as Monster Hunter Now raked in $31.44 million in revenue in its first month. The disgruntled global players can complain all day long and I don’t think future events are going to be worth spending money on too. But Niantic can keep pushing this kind of hard-selling, as long as the Japanese player base — 70% of the paying audience — is content.
