Monster Hunter Wilds Charges For Character Edit Vouchers Again, and Players Are Frustrated

Monster Hunter Wilds is out and millions of players are making their hunters. It might be worth spending some extra time in the character creator though, as frequent extensive edits can run up a tab.

Character Edit Vouchers make a return in Monster Hunter Wilds (as pointed out by VGC), adding a microtransaction for returning to the creator screen. While smaller edits to your character — say, hair color or voice pitch — won't consume a voucher, more extensive edits will require a voucher.

"You can edit hair, eyebrow color, facial hair, makeup and clothing from the Appearance Menu in tent without using a voucher," the description on the Steam page states. More extensive edits, anywhere from changing the actual voice to swapping from a male to female hunter, will however eat up one voucher.

Capcom is handing out one free voucher for players, but anything beyond that will require purchasing a new one. The same rules apply to your Palico, which will also need a voucher for any extensive edits. The vouchers are sold in various denominations, including three-packs for character edits at $6.99 and a bundled Character & Palico Edit Voucher three-pack for $9.99.

It's worth noting that this is not the first time Monster Hunter has had this particular microtransaction. Both Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise had their own Character Edit Vouchers. That's not to say they're a particularly beloved facet of the series, though.

A Monster Hunter subreddit thread from three years ago lamented the Vouchers in Monster Hunter Rise, for example. "Worst part of gen 5 for sure," one user replied at the time. "I hate the introduction of completely unnecessary [microtransactions]."

Even in the days leading up to Monster Hunter Wilds' launch, players voiced disdain for this system. As some in a recent thread noted, other games like Elden Ring offer character edits for free, and an unlimited amount. With Capcom's current system, there's a hard cap to how many times a player can return to the creator and edit their hunter.

"On top of having to pay in MH, there's a hard limit where you can never customise that character again once you've used all the available vouchers. What purpose does this serve?" one player asked. "When I return to a game I haven't played for a while I like to change my character's looks to keep it fresh, but I just don't bother in Monster Hunter and whack a helmet on lmao."

The system itself is fairly reminiscent of some MMOs where making a "new character" might require an additional sub or added cost. Yet the Voucher system has been a routine point of frustration, to the point that some PC players have found ways to get around it with mods.

Users also left negative feedback in the Steam reviews for Character Edit Vouchers for both Monster Hunter World and Rise. Even the Character Edit Voucher - Free Trial Version for Monster Hunter Wilds has garnered nearly 200 reviews as of the time of writing, sitting at a "Mixed" overall rating. On the negative side, the complaints seem clear: "It's not ideal, but I can live with cosmetics 'DLC', but limiting character edits is a bit much, should be free and unlimited."

As for the rebuttal, the positive reviews stress how little the Vouchers impact the game itself: "The amount of people that will never actually read, or actually use the in-game feature that allows this shocks me. But then again, it's the internet here we're talking about."

The whole kerfuffle feels reminiscent of Dragon's Dogma 2, where a legion of microtransactions rolled out at launch and immediately garnered frustration. Those particular exchanges offered in-game goods; ones still acquireable through gameplay means, but players still found ways to work around them anyways. In the case of Monster Hunter Wilds, there's one free Edit Voucher, and everything after has to be bought out-of-game.

It remains to be seen how the community will react to this, long-term. Monster Hunter Wilds is only just now getting into many, many people's hands, and I do think that other concerns like difficulty and PC performance will take precedence over microtransactions, especially since these aren't a new problem. Whether they remain a problem, or players learn to live with — or work around — the Voucher limit, we'll see in the coming weeks and months.

To help get your Monster Hunter Wilds adventure started, take a look at what Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t tell you, and a guide to all 14 weapon types in the game. We’ve also got a detailed Monster Hunter Wilds walkthrough in progress, a Monster Hunter Wilds multiplayer guide to explain how to play with friends, and if you’ve played one of the open betas, here’s how to transfer your Monster Hunter Wilds Beta character over.

IGN’s Monster Hunter Wilds review returned an 8/10. We said: “Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off the rougher corners of the series in smart ways, making for some extremely fun fights but also lacking any real challenge.”

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.