I always liked the itemisation in monster hunter games, they all have roughly the same base stats while the secondary stats interact either with skills or a particular monster's weakness. It's perfect horizontal progression, even when you are at max hunter rank there is no one perfect set of gear, and you find yourself hunting weaker monsters because their gear has a skill that is useful in x situation.

However monhan is a action rpg, so it's easier to do this. In a game where encounters are more about rolling your stats against the checks in an encounter, it is hard to stray away from there being an optimal setup and people will min max that to heck. The differences between secondary stats are already incredibly minor but people will talk like your character is unplayable if you went speed over crit. If they were more distinct then this will be more pronounced. I think the design of the game is always going to gravitate it towards vertical progression, and tbh I'm ok with that.