I beat the story, which is not really the end of the game. Now I start fighting tempered monsters and building even better gear. I guess I had good timing because the game was patched the other day to fix certain effects that were causing big FPS drops, and the last couple boss monsters would do them all the time, so I didnt have to deal with that. Also finished up their connection issue fixes and I've played a bunch online without issue. If I want to hunt a monster for parts I tend to just search for SOS flares for that monster and join others already hunting it.
This game is great.