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Topic: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Posts 7,781 to 7,800 of 10,545

johnvboy

@Anti-Matter,

And what an awesome job you have done.

" Never argue with an idiot,all they will do is bring you down to their level and beat you with experience"

My AC:NH Island: Evietania
Switch Username: Johnvboy

Switch Friend Code SW-8223-9981-3607

johnvboy

@status-204,

What would you actually want the decorating to change?, surely it was always going to be cosmetic more than anything else, and my issue is people always want new features with games, but then complain when things are missing, not at this point who knows what Nintendo will add to the game in the future, and also people also want change but then are upset when things change to much.

To be honest the term "Caught between a rock and a hard place" springs to mind.

Edited on by johnvboy

" Never argue with an idiot,all they will do is bring you down to their level and beat you with experience"

My AC:NH Island: Evietania
Switch Username: Johnvboy

Switch Friend Code SW-8223-9981-3607

Cosmofantasmo

@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.

FC: SW-3787-0301-2906
Profile name: cosmo
ACNH island: Kansai
Dreams: DA-3170-6137-9903

foxyflimflam

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! (:

Switch FC ~ 4044-1861-3916
SN ~ * foxy *
Please identify who you are if you send me a friend request, or I will not accept!
Thanks! <3
ACNH Island ~ Lush Oasis
Dream Address ~ DA-7685-8135-7036

NEStalgia

@johnvboy Exactly. I'm not interested in the designing the island mechanic. I don't buy AC with the intention of designing an island for the heck of it. I've never been particularly interested in that mechanic in any game. I don't "get" Minecraft - it's dead and lifeless and is just digital legos. It's not my thing.

But that's not what the AC series has really been about until now. That's why I say it's not AC, it's a spinoff, wrongly not marketed as such. It's a genre shift into a genre I explicitly don't enjoy.

AC has always been a more or less structured town that you live in. you can make some changes here or there, but ultimately, it's a place you "go" and appreciate for what is there. This one, though, if you try to enjoy what is there, you're "doing it wrong" - you don't actually have anything to do at all, if you are appreciating what's there. That's a monumental shift.

Most of the changes they implemented are things back during ACNL I thought would be cool. Crafting/resources, putting items outside. But they implemented it in a way that they didn't add that to the game. They made it the game.

Beyond that I think @status-204 nailed my thoughts very precisely in posts #8031 and 8033. They didn't just add the features. They replaced both features and the entire gameplay concept with these new features, but the new features are both basic and incomplete (the one idea I did have to at least craft something would have involved a subtractive element to lower altitudes, or sloped elevations rather than full cliffs. Or moving the town hall. Or moving some other things without grinding 30 hours for the bells to do it. It was a fun little idea, not something worth grinding for.

If the animals were more interactive and interacted with what you did it would be more encouraging. But they're kind of lifeless too. You build something and they might sit on a bench. You talk to them and they just tell you how sometimes you have to rest, or there's space over there. There's not much personality. The town doesn't really evolve and keep being fresh...in fact it's wholly streamlined.

Or look at the "streamlining" like this to see how hollow it is:
In ACNL if you remove the idea of crafting and decorating - what is there in the game? Well there wasn't crafting, and decorating was limited to your home and a few pre-determined build sites. So you have the whole rest of the game! Main street and all the stores. Watching the stores upgrade and change. Talking to the varied personalities and mini-events from villagers. Re-tail and seeing what used items show up (and fun dialogs with villagers in there), finding bugs on Tortimer Island, Watching your villagers doing some funny things with various locations, KK on saturdays in the theater, etc. etc. etc.

In ACNH: If you remove the crafting and decorating what is in the game? Fairly static generic messages from animals who don't interact with much. In fact there's almost nothing else beyond the town hall. The whole game takes place on that one square plus your two stores, and I find the clothing store is of almost no value, while I visited it often in NL because there's just less reason to change clothes around, and other than crafting and decorating...that's really it. The game is the crafting and decorating, and prior AC wasn't. And that's a problem if you're an AC fan and not a Minecraft fan. The reasons you buy AC games are gone, and it was replaced with a fairly shallow building sandbox. They replaced most of AC with an empty building box. Even in Anti-Matter's town video which is a thoroughly designed town from head to toe, it's impressive work (and I can't imagine the time spent grinding bells for that) - but it's also so....lifeless..... Not Anti's fault. It's the game's fault. Now I expect Minecraft to produce lifelessness...that's what it is. That's why I hate it. But an AC game should be the opposite of lifeless! The "life" is what makes AC AC!

If we compare the building aspects with a game Anti-Matter brought up, Dragon Quest Builders, I actually spent a good deal of time in the minetown chapter of DQB2 building. Partly because the game gave you REASONS to build. It wasn't an empty sandbox to stand back and say "ok I made that...now let me demolish and make something else." The world had a sense of purpose, the townsfolk interacted with your creation quite heavily, and the game had a ton of tools to actually build something interesting....I'm not good a it, but I actually used the land and built a bunch of 2-floor buildings (and had to re-do one of them because for whatever rating some spot was missing and the rating system didn't give me my "complete" evaluation.) I used to 2 floor structure of the land to actually have a lower and upper town, and kept improving my stairway connecting them. The game rewarded building up to a point, yes, but I also did it to look nice. Normally building games don't hook me like that, but that one, somehow does something magically (the war torn castle level, though, lost me, and I not only didn't build much but dropped the game there.)

I WANT to love ACNH. Because I love AC. I keep trying.... But there's so little AC here. And so much sandbox. I keep making little sandbox trinket areas....but it's so shallow. It doesn't have the tools to do what I really would want, and even then I'm not sure why I would because it's all static. I build it, and that was that. The townfolk, all 10 of them, might sit on the ground or a chair near it.....and that's about all they'll do. I now have a row of 3 fountains in front my plaza. I made the paved area under them a little more decorative. But....it's just....there. It doesn't affect the world at all. It's just there. It doesn't evolve, or make anything interesting, or start new conversations, or upgrade anything...it's just there.

I thought of dividing the cliffs to the back port where Redd docks.....but that would require a bridge connecting the 2 cliff sides and I can't do that - only over water. I thought of kind of putting a reflecting pool around the town hall....but it looks awkward and can't do diagonals around the fountain plaza...looks weird, can't do that. I could make town hall's landscape more interesting....but I can't lower elevations which would have been required. Can't even put town hall on raised elevation if I wanted to.

I never did visit your dream - I hadn't unlocked Luna at that point when you mentioned it. I'm not sure how that system works - I.E. how is it different from the "multiplayer" of visiting someone's island? I never used Luna in ACNL either.

NEStalgia

porto

@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.

porto

Switch Friend Code: SW-2940-3286-4610 | My Nintendo: Pikmin4 | Twitter:

Anti-Matter

@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.

Anti-Matter

Cosmofantasmo

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

Edited on by Cosmofantasmo

FC: SW-3787-0301-2906
Profile name: cosmo
ACNH island: Kansai
Dreams: DA-3170-6137-9903

MarioVillager92

@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.

"Give yourself the gift of being joyfully you."

ACNH Name/Island: D-Pad/D-World
Dream Address: DA-1613-1378-1995

Also known as MarioLover92. Please ask for my Switch FC if you want to play online with me. Thanks!

My Nintendo: MarioLover

Cosmofantasmo

@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.

Edited on by Cosmofantasmo

FC: SW-3787-0301-2906
Profile name: cosmo
ACNH island: Kansai
Dreams: DA-3170-6137-9903

porto

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

porto

Switch Friend Code: SW-2940-3286-4610 | My Nintendo: Pikmin4 | Twitter:

NEStalgia

@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.

NEStalgia

foxyflimflam

@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!!!!

Switch FC ~ 4044-1861-3916
SN ~ * foxy *
Please identify who you are if you send me a friend request, or I will not accept!
Thanks! <3
ACNH Island ~ Lush Oasis
Dream Address ~ DA-7685-8135-7036

foxyflimflam

@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!!!!

Switch FC ~ 4044-1861-3916
SN ~ * foxy *
Please identify who you are if you send me a friend request, or I will not accept!
Thanks! <3
ACNH Island ~ Lush Oasis
Dream Address ~ DA-7685-8135-7036

NEStalgia

@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.

NEStalgia

Cosmofantasmo

@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.😉

Edited on by Cosmofantasmo

FC: SW-3787-0301-2906
Profile name: cosmo
ACNH island: Kansai
Dreams: DA-3170-6137-9903

foxyflimflam

@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!

Switch FC ~ 4044-1861-3916
SN ~ * foxy *
Please identify who you are if you send me a friend request, or I will not accept!
Thanks! <3
ACNH Island ~ Lush Oasis
Dream Address ~ DA-7685-8135-7036

foxyflimflam

@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!?

Switch FC ~ 4044-1861-3916
SN ~ * foxy *
Please identify who you are if you send me a friend request, or I will not accept!
Thanks! <3
ACNH Island ~ Lush Oasis
Dream Address ~ DA-7685-8135-7036

Anti-Matter

@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

NEStalgia

@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.

NEStalgia

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