Topic: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

@johnvboy

I second your last posts. Couldn’t have chosen better words. As I said I didn’t play NL but was big into Population growing. And I got all the vibes from back then with the new one, too. The only reason I engaged in this discussion is because I feel sad that fans of the series don’t get a connection to the new entry and wanted to add a different (more positive?) view to the complaints. I experienced a sort of life sim in NH, there’s enough of interaction with my villagers (even if it seems to be no comparison to NL) and at last I want to say, maybe the two parts - the designing and the life sim - are too strongly interwoven so you need to design to get your town life going and when you get more connected to the animals you even want to make the island nicer for them.

Updated my dream!!!! If you visit, let me know!!! (:
DA-7685-8135-7036
Still a few areas I eventually wanna spruce up, but overall pretty content (for now) with how it has turned out! (: I'd love to check out some of the islands of those in this forum so tag me with your dream address if you like! I'm not on as much these days with a newborn to tend to, so this is a great alternative to still feel like I'm socializing with yall! (:

@Anti-Matter you spent 7 hours doing that? I'm sorry, we all have things to do, so we can't be that devoted to a video game.

@Apportal
I really committed in ACNH so i planned my island map before terraforming.
Every single buildings and residential area size i measured up.
Last time i wasted more 20 hours by accumulate just only for finding Raymond from Campsite by doing Time Travel.

@foxyflimflam
My dream adress is right below this post. Definitely will visit, I think even today to finally see what’s changed.

@foxyflimflam I checked out your dream address. Your island is really good! I'm also gonna be busy soon since I have an animation class coming up (I'm likely gonna do some tutoring too), so I'll post my dream address later on.

@NEStalgia

Okay, now I think we don’t play the same game. My villagers interact with all the things on my island except those I can’t use myself e.g. they don’t use a pool to swim. But they use all the sitting furniture, all the bed-ish things to lay down, when theirs a music source they dance or sing, they play on music instruments, they try to catch critters and have dialogues with each other. You can meet them in the stores and in the museum with special dialogue. And almost every day I get a mini-event like deliveries or treasure hunts. All this happens not only on my plaza but all over my island and when we talk to each other near a new object they talk about it. Didn’t you encounter any of these things or is this not enough? And again, I fear if you want interaction you have to create places where they can interact and have things to interact with.

Saw this and thought I’d share it with you lovely people

@status-204 I do find it interesting, we seem to have the same thoughts on ACNH despite you actually being a fan of the new genre and me being the opposite. It definitely says something that no matter which end of the "building sandbox" spectrum you fall, you can arrive at the same view of ACNH.

I do agree. While I'm not a building sandbox fan, like with DQB, the right sandbox can still entertainm me. Minecraft is too unstructured to work for me. I build my lego kits according to the instructions. Give me an empty field and I'll put a few trees on it and declare it perfect. But if you saw my minetown in DQB you'd both think "wow this guy sucks at builiding stuff" and "he must have spent a lot of time building that" and you'd be right on both counts. Not sure why it hooked me but it did, and I spent a lot of time building, even as someone that sucks at building games and is usually not entertained by them.

But ACNH....I can't lower elevation, I can't tunnel under higher elevation, try making a diagonal (curved stairstep edges) of pavers, and put water next to it.....can't do it. A waterfall on a diagonal? Can't do it. Any elevation other than "mountain" or "flat land" - can't do it. Can't put water within 2 tiles of a tree....but I can pave right up to it. I can't build a building - at all(!!) It's a veeery limited toolset next to DQB, let alone Minecraft, while DQB has a whole story driven RPG built right into it, and construction goals in a totally freeform building game. ACNH....removed all the AC environmental stuff that was unique. There's not really a life sim inside at all, just a building game.

I think one limiting factor is the bells. They made it a freeform building and resource gathering game....but tried to keep the bell economy. If I could just make rivers and bridges at whim and make my own sandbox that way maybe i'd be more engaged. But if I add a river, or a cliff, I break the whole island, and the only way to fix it requires more bells than upgrading my house. Which requires hours and hours of grinding to accumulate. And there's no Tortimer Island where you can go rack up 100k in a night if you hunt all the gold scarabs. So I just don't build the river or cliff. Not worth breaking what's there.

And yeah, that issue with the drip feed is....if I've run out of things to build because I really can't think of what I can really do with it at this point, or at least not anything that doesn't require tremendous amounts of time grinding for bells to do....I wait. Maybe they'll add The Roost....that'll give me a few hours of enjoyment...and then...what? I just have one more store that doesn't really change much from the prior lack of things to do. And if they add that whole Harvest Moon farming sim aspect some rumored, it kind of confirms they'd given us an empty shell of a time waster all this time before starting to include the actual intended gameplay and are using us as sort of "freemium whales" for marketing purposes.

You're tempting me to go start a new NL island. That game was so magical. It was truly stepping into another world with these.....ok, entirely neurotic anthropomorphic animals. It was escape from reality by living in this delightfully insane little town of misfits. Versus NH where they all just have slightly different worded versions of the exact same 5 text boxes. Birthday parties are the one highlight where their old personalities tend to shine. Tad, the gym bro frog is hysterical, and classically neurotic at birthdays. That's half of what's missing. You no longer feel like you've gone down the rabbit hole to Wonderland in this game. You're the Queen of Hearts.

@Cosmofantasmo Oh....ALOT has changed since your visit I believe! (: And those beautiful white streetlamps you and @Gret8888 helped me out with are coming in handy! I will def check yours out later on today!!!!

@MarioLover92 Ah thank you so much! I'm pretty proud of it! (: Can't wait to check yours out when you let us know your dream address! I love seeing how different everyone makes their islands!!!!

@Cosmofantasmo That's kind of it. They sit on things. They sit near things. They don't do much beyond that. I talk to my characters near object, and they mostly just talk about the need to rest and relax sometimes. That's kind of cool that they dance to music or play instruments. I haven't put any sound generating or musical objects outdoors, so I wasn't aware of that. It's limited, but a nice touch.

You can't meet animals in stores much because you only have 2 stores, and I rarely ever see someone else in there. When I do, they have one of several variations (personality based) dialogues that more or less repeat. They don't have whole dialog trees that they can surprise you and make you laugh like in ACNL - they're kind of placeholders. (PERKY)(M)(LOCATION=Cranny)(RANDOM(3 dialog options))....they're not so unique.

Deliveries are rare, and I've had all of one treasure hunt. That was a highlight. But if you compare to ACNL, characters would come up to you with "crises" and questions. They'd actually complain about things they didn't like (and react in general to the changes you made in terms of approval or disapproval, relating to the "Mayor" role. Because it was a life sim, not a building sandbox.) Or hysterical random things with neurotic character and story attached even just to give you a shirt. This game is limited to "there's this thing I want and I'm even thinking of selling (FURNITURE_OBJECT)..." {CHOICE: How much; No thanks} - there's no personality, it's just there. I think you said you didn't play older AC games, right? If you want a taste in NH of what we mean by what's missing from old games, wait until you get your birthday party. The player birthday parties are the one and only place the spark of the old games still lives. It's wonderful. And afterward you'll understand what we mean and why we're so devastated about what's missing here. You'll want more of it too. More building freedom is cool and all, but not at the cost of losing "that". AC was the only place "that" will ever exist. Like may Nintendo games in the post-Iwata era, this is kind of the NSMB of AC. They're focused on streamlining everything into a paint by numbers experience. The moments when the old charm shows through the cracks, it reminds you of what you feel in the back of your mind is missing the whole time.

@foxyflimflam
Visited Lush Oasis. Enjoyed the paradise! 😎
I’m especially impressed by your orchard area which looks lovely and your villager neighbourhood with an arrangement I haven’t seen anywhere else. Finally I must agree that black lamps would not have fit by any means.😉

@Cosmofantasmo Its funny that you just visited my island....I literally just typed in your dream address to pay yours a visit while the babe naps on me! (: Thank you so much! I have a couple more ideas Im gonna work on still, but I am pretty proud of it for now. Lol Black lamps would have looked AWFUL so I am forever grateful that you came to my rescue when you did!

@Cosmofantasmo Your island is absolutely AMAZING! I LOVE your entrance and you have so many creatively made areas that I would have never thought to do! This is why I LOVE visiting islands like this! So cool to see everyone's personalities shine through with how they go about decking it all out! (:
I DID notice you have the wild log bench diy which I have been looking for! Is there something I could send you to trade for that, perhaps!?

@foxyflimflam
Hi. 😀
Have you added my FC ?
I have ever visited @Cosmofantasmo Island.
The things i remembered he put the camper vehicles on the road.
Aw... So cute ! 😄

@Anti-Matter You're crossing quite a few uncalled for lines. There is no need to be offended or angrily rant when others are discussing criticisms of a video game in a thread about that video game. Nor is anyone tell you you're not allowed to like it - in fact it's a given you would like it - it's a game a genre you like.

Though I do find it absurdly hilarious your pillorying me me for criticizing a game that you like, while you take many, many, many opportunities across forum to criticize games others like. If Portal Knights 2 changed genres into an M rated FPS you'd be the first to be upset. Allow Animal Crossing fans to be upset that they changed the unique genre of the game into a building sim, and to discuss why they're disappointed. Nobody is saying it's a "bad" game - we're upset that it took away things from the series that were the keystones of why existing AC fans liked the series, and replaced it with a different system, and it's not even as full featured (by far) as other games in that genre, such as DQB, to offset the loss.

You don't like Animal Crossing prior to this game. That's fine - but you have to remember, it's an Animal Crossing game. Existing fans were looking forward to a new Animal Crossing game, and we were given something pretty different.

I've got a '£30 off £60 spend' voucher with Very.co.uk and was thinking about getting AC:NH with it. Not because I especially want it, but it is kinda an essential part of the Switch library. So I thought I'd drop in on this thread to see if it could suck me in.

Turns out World War 3 is breaking out.

I'd been wanting AC to go more along the lines of DQB, but if it's done it at the expense of the interactions (which I never thought were that good anyway, admittedly) then that's a bit of a downer. I wanted the life sim aspect to be develop too, not go downhill.

@Anti-Matter you need to stop this. We aren’t exactly die-hard Animal Crossing fans, so we don’t need to have the same love for it as you do. Some of us have better things to do then to play it all day and be care-free about everything else in this world. Stop getting so defensive about a stupid game when others clearly state why they don’t like it. It’s annoying, and I’m sure a moderator will tell you the same thing.