I played Dauntless a little bit in the early days. It was extremely simplified Monster Hunter with little of the charm.

I remember Dauntless before the Epic store. It was like Monster Hunter but stripped down to the same 3 moves you could chain together to attack a monster that had 3 different attacks. There was simply less of each aspect of Monster Hunter in Dauntless and no cooking. Now Dauntless has removed some more features, weapons, and damage types. I don’t rightly know what is left.

Why are the devs so confident that “less is more” is what the players of this genre want?

Absolute braindead idols.