Topic: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

@edhe I'll add you in a couple of hours when I get home so I can give you the DIY

I have most of the good diys, looking for pond stone, apple chair, log stool, stone lion dog, raccoon figurine and deer scare recipes

Hi all! I'm new to the forum and I had a question.

I have a Family Online Membership with Nintendo. It has two additional logins, one of which I just used on a new Console.

I've enabled the Island Backup on the primary console with the main account on the membership. And I wanted to the same with one of the additional logins (the one I'm using) on a new console.

Can I do this? Or is it limited to one Island Backup per membership, even if they're different islands?

Thank you!

@mochhug You should be able to enable island backup for both islands/consoles with the one family membership. I have looked it up on Nintendo's support website and I didn't see anything that said "only one backup per membership, individual or family." So I think you're good.

@BrittGOAL14 @Cosmofantasmo @Anti-Matter Great news - I got those 4 gifts today! Seems like they were put on hold until I cleared out space in my mailbox. Glad to see that they weren't lost after all.

@edhe
Hi. Sorry, I haven’t turned my Switch on this entire past week. I will get on either tonight it tomorrow and get you that whiteboard if you didn’t get it from anyone else yet. I have a couple Foosball tables I’m not using if you want them also. Figured a Foosball table would go perfect in your coaches/locker room.
Gretchen

@Anti-Matter Sorry, got back to this one late with all the console hype in other threads For me, personally, the idea of terraforming the island just seems both at odds with everything Animal Crossing, and also with my thinking in real life. Seems the modern way of things is to excavate and "terraform" everything into some idealized vision (of one person or group) when they build things. Nothing is aligned with the natural world. Land developers see the natural world as blight and reshape it into an engineered image. I despise them and their entire mindset. Land developers are an evil that sits even with politicians and bankers. Back in the day things were built in-place along with the natural world without needing to excavate everything into a synthetic paradise. So when I approach Animal Crossing, my mindset is that of mine in the real world. The natural world is there - you build around it, build bridges over it, ramps to reach it......minor edits to accomodate such things....but reshaping nature itself to suit your man-made vision just feels soo...wrong. To me it's like setting up a meat factory on your island full of animals I work with the landscape that's there and adapt my town to it, rather than adapting the landscape to fit some paved paradise vision.

That said I put a little island at a river crossroads because I'm too cheap to pay for 2 bridges while I'm trying to upgrade the house, and I can just hop across

@Xyphon22 I'm glad to hear you're actually playing it the "old" way - but since you've played prior games, are you not finding a lot of that play has been missing, or streamlined to a point of losing it's meaning and charm?

@status-204 I couldn't help but think of this game while watching Ubi Forward and that new xtreme sports game that's just "Steep but also without snow" but they're pretending is a new game as though Steep never existed. It feels like the same audience this is intended for: The social community crowd that just makes their own game in a sandbox of "stuff you can interact with" rather than having one provided by the product. Like Xyphon I'm certainly not playing it that way, and neither are you, but that's the fundamental contradiction. This game seems to cater to the idea of socially interacting with other humans. Traditional AC is inherently about disconnecting entirely from other humans and living in an alternate, nicer world as a replacement, completely, for the world outside the screen.

I did find a few more moments where I could see the characters as I remember them though. It seems they come out more during the day than at night (which is mostly when I get to play.) Which is fine. But apparently the game does very little involving direct interaction with the characters and the player, and the characters rarely instigate the conversation, and when they do, it's always the same activities with the same text. But their personalities seem to be "normal" (for AC) if they're talking to each other and you barge in. That's where the bulk of the fun conversations of old seem to have gone...but then you have to catch them at that moment, and I'm sure there are mostly repeats there too after a while. But what's there is at leas a familiar sort of quirky.

Also, Biff the obnoxious jock left, which is great, he was the only villager I was truly not thrilled with. Unfortunately (same as NL) there are only 8 personality types and 10 villagers, so 2 will always be repeats. Especially unfortunately, (unlike NL) each personality largely repeats the exact same text most of the time, so you end up two pairs of two characters that are clones, spawned in a vat of each other. They do have slightly different flavor text to differentiate, but whoever at Nintendo thought it was a good idea for any two characters to just copy paste text from each other so as to appear like they were assembled on a factory line needs to go. Your village starts feeling like the Twilight Zone. So in my town I replaced the Tad/Biff jock duo (though the smaller flavor text was different between them), with the Apple/Candi combo that repeat each other, and the Rex/Cole combo that mostly do the same. Of the duos there are slight differences, so they're not always exact clones, thankfully, but it's a shocking look behind the curtain that breaks the whole illusion when even half of what they say is a cardboard cutout of someone else. Especially with fewer shops to interact with, those villagers are all that's "alive" in this world. And they're robots.... And Isabelle has lost all personality. She was one of the most developed characters in NL, and it occurred to me the other day that other than telling us what she saw on TV for the millionth time, she has almost no personality or event text at all in this game. She's a face for a menu and not much more. Nook got some additional screen time which is always welcome, but....they definitely rushed out all the dialogue and personality here. I wonder how much of that was tied to delays more than original design?

OTOH, the "identity crisis" you mentioned put it very well. Unfortunately that's a growing trend across many Nintendo games this generation. Kind of like WiiU itself embodied, they seem to never want to commit to who their audience is so they try to please everybody across incompatible groups. The result is this kind of shell experience where it's up to you to make it what you want it to be. Breaking up the old teams was going to be trouble for a game like this that can't be clearly defined. But I think it was trouble in general. The old teams knew their content intimately and what it was going to do, creatively. The new "one giant team for all games" is more about fast tracking and streamlining production. That it became something of a content mill as a result shouldn't have been surprising. Nobody's connected to one particular game world, they're just on a schedule to crank out product. AC this week, Zelda next week, MP4 the following week....just another asset to produce in the queue. That might work for Zelda because what Zelda is is quantifiable and formulaic, even if it's an all new formula, there's a formula to it. ACNH clearly tried to apply a formula to a series that was all about going "off script" from what appeared to be formula. All the pieces of NL are there....copied dutifully, reproduced in HD. But the heart of it isn't there. The character personality, the sense of place, the unpredictability at times. If we were to consider "what is the core gameplay loop, and the primary player motivation' is for ACNH, we would probably arrive at the main loop being "Collect resources/react to task lists for resource aquisition" and the primary motivation being "placing items/decorating space." Not even terraforming. Much is made of that but that's not a core mechanic. Placing items is. Very streamlined, cut to the very basics, like mobile design (Did DeNA have a hand in this, I wonder?)

If we were to ask the same of NL and prior games, the main loop would be closer to "interact with the town space/population and engage daily with random events" Primary motivation (functional, not emotional motivation), would probably be "upgrade the town, and your house to maximize the number of unique touch points, activities, and obtain more sandbox space to place items/decorate."

As @Xypon22 said, fundamentally, you catch bugs, fish, upgrade your house.....it's the same, right? But what's different is what ELSE is there and what that loop represents. In this game, that's it. You go in a circle, do your chores, get your resources, all for the purpose of getting them, so you get get more items to place in ways that are aesthetically pleasing to you, and that's to be its own reward. The characters are "there" but they're not tremendously varied or interactive, there's no "market" area. It's really just collect, deploy. But the same fishing/gathering in other games was ancillary to interacting with the town, the townsphole, the venues and locations in the town. Decorating was limited to your house, so the use of those items, and the importance of adding house space, made each one significant. You could never use all of it. So you had to choose what you wanted to use to make it stand out. But that was also not the primary focus of the game, as the decorating occupied only the interior of the one building. The rest of the game was, therefore, about something else. Adding exterior decorating space is great (and is something I wanted, myself in the game), though I imagined it more as decorating your own "yard" more than placing anything anywhere, where the game items are responsible for creating the actual town itself. Some of it is psychological. In a town where everything is movable and disposable at your whim at any time, none of it really matters very much, and none of it is very permanent.

But, then, by Nintendo's own comments, they intended this game for children and "very young girls." That's probably the big thing we're overthinking. AC original was a very very Japanese game with a lot of deep subtleties we all enjoyed, and even NL trended with mostly adults as a "better life than reality." The first AC was to be Japan-only and was filled with only Japan-centric references. They reworked it on N64 at NoA's request after realizing it would be big here too. It seems like they set out with this one to re-demographic it for a young market as a kids toy. The streamlining of everything probably made sense by their internal concepts as a playground to play with objects in like a big doll house. They never intended it to take off with Nintendo Karen at the rooftop party.....which is who ended up buying it. But of course, only Nintendo could assume that a series that was already popular with adults would suddenly not be popular with adults and would be consumed mostly by kids. And anecdotally, they missed the mark and it's too slow for modern kids. Kids don't play with doll houses. They play Fortnite.

So they're left with us playing with their doll house wondering why our talking animals no longer have unique personalities. Adult problems.

@NEStalgia
You overthinking about ACNH too much.
Terraforming was a feature that have nothing to do with real life.
Shaping the island in game is not a SIN.
Just ignore the connection between terraforming in game with something really damaging in real life.
There was nothing corelated about.
If the gameplay of old AC was about being lonely, nothing to change the environment lookings and the animals moving away, i will not buy Animal Crossing for those ideas.
It doesn't sound very interesting idea.
If i really like with certain villager (example Apollo) i will try to get him and will never let him go. You might think it was insane to keep the villagers stay forever and never let them go but this is a game, not a reality world. Do i have to let them go to feel the old way of Animal Crossing? I will not buy AC for that idea.

Old AC still have same chores as New AC.
Fishing, digging, catching bugs, chop down trees, etc for same purposes : Collecting.
Old AC have same thing to do, Buying the furnitures as on New AC.
Same activity on both Old AC and New AC, talking with villagers. I will not buy Old AC just only for finding Conversation 101.
It's boring and not interesting at all for me. Sometimes i don't really care with whatever they said as almost every games, the NPC has been designed to talk very limited.
I don't feel mad for other games which doesn't have conversations 101 like Old AC.
I don't buy games with very Yada Yada Yada long conversations.
You know, i'm glad Resetti is not presented in ACNH as i hate his Wrath with his Yada Yada Yada conversations.

Here, play ACNH without overthinking about Old AC. Old AC idea was primitive and not interesting at all.
I don't want to feel the loneliness as the games was designed like that used to be.
I want to play AC as a Doll house like The Sims. Get the favorite villagers and keep them forever, furnish my island with furnitures, shaping my island like making sand castle.
I think the changes of Old AC to become New AC was like old final Fantasy with ATB style suddenly changed into FF XII / FF XIII style. I learn to adaptate with their changes and it worked.

@Anti-Matter It's more of a mindset thing for the terraforming. I don't see a reason to do it, if ACNH is about building the town you'd want to live in, I wouldn't want to terraform it. I like my island. It's pretty, it's rustic, it's nice the way it is. I guess I'm a nature-ist (not confused with an environmentalist...those people annoy me as much as land developers ), I just like appreciating nature as it is (which real life seems to enjoy decimating more...) To me, it's a beautiful tropical island...why would anyone want to terraform it when you can build your town into the beautiful island as it already is? The tools are handy for minor edits to fit things in like ramps and bridges....changing a corner here or there, but I just couldn't imagine devastating the beautiful island from the way you find it. That's not to say that it's a bad thing they gave those tools....it's just that I can't imagine why anyone wants to use them for more than some tweaks here or there.

I absolutely agree about animals moving away though. Favorite villagers moving away is what made me eventually stop playing ACNL. I hadn't played in a while and when I came back, my favorite was gone....and it was just sort of "meh, nothing matters there anymore" So I'm grateful for that, but that's among the few majorly positive changes in the game, to me. It's a big one though, as it will keep me willing to jump in during holidays and seasonal events over the year, whereas villagers moving out would make me not want to see what I'm missing.

Still, you're not as against all the conversations in AC as you say. You want to keep your villagers after all, so you value them a lot....the conversations are a big part of that. And you're a DQB and FF fan which has plenty of dialogue 101 to go around!

I think the new additions are fine, but they aren't quite enough. It doesn't go as far into being a building game as it should have to make it fully compelling and engaging (like if they made it more like DQB), but it takes too much out of what it used to be to be fully compelling with that play style as well. They went for a sort of "just enough" middle ground that broke some of what was without providing enough with the new stuff. If they were going to go into the building genre, like you, I wish they'd made it a lot more sophisticated with a lot more control and freedom.... A total reboot like with BotW into something different. I think as-is, much as I love ACNL, they leaned too hard on being "just like ACNL" while streamlining everything that made ACNL special out of the game. So it mostly just reminds you what isn't there, while not going deep enough into new systems to be very exciting with them.

It's a kind of middle ground that I can enjoy aspects of it, but it leaves me wishing for either more of what used to be there, or more new stuff to play with. Kind of like BotW, much as I love that game, it almost feels like a partially incomplete prototype game so we could pay $60 to focus test the product and they could decide what the game should really be next time. They showed us new mechanics, charged us full price to test them, and then the next $60 game they'll use that feedback to build the complete game on top of it.

Although the "drip feed" as DLC is probably part of the problem. We don't know what they're adding, but imagine the more complete experience somebody gets out of the box if they first get the game Christmas 2021 instead of March 2020?

This game might last longer than NL for me. (Even though I’m close to finishing the Critterpedia and never caught them all in NL) Making slight changes to the island plus their updates... Here we go again.

@NEStalgia
Here the thing.
Have you ever played The Sims games ?
If you have ever played, how did you feel when you can terraform the place ?
Maybe not as huge as dqb2 but it still felt same.
Changing the environment in games was okay and no need to feel guilty as i will chop down all the trees on ACNH if i saw the placement was wrong. Don't you love to see the island that has been terraformed into beatiful place as you boot the game rather than being too natural with no interesting things to see ?

Btw, i can pretend DQB2 as a New Harvest Moon game as it has planting crops and taking care farm animals (and you can kill them to get their meat) in Full 3D environment + Minecraft style and it looks Million times better than Harvest Moon the Lost Valley 3DS.

@Anti-Matter I thought you left?

@Anti-Matter The Sims is a very different scenario because it generally takes place within an already urban space. It's a spinoff from Sim City, and has the sense of an industrial and urban landscape incorporated to it by default. In that context, rearranging an urban terrain like that feels "natural" to the environment it exists in. Brutalizing a beautiful tropical jewel covered with nature seems tremendously destructive rather then editorial

I love nature and hate hardscape. I thought it was a beautiful place when I first booted it. I tried to arrange any buildings in ways that work within the nature as best as possible rather than trying to rearrange nature. Sure, I've moved a few trees, changed some cliff edges to accommodate natural ramps and a waterfall and such. But fields and grass and natural surfaces, trees all over, water everywhere....that's what I'd want my island to be. It's a Deserted Island Getaway Package after all....anything else is just Disney World.

Besides, all the villagers are animals, they should love wilderness

@status-204 I'm starting to get a sense between the player bases and opinions that the for/against camps seem to fall between the naturalists that want to work within a natural environment and the Monday-morning urban planners that want to build a humanized hardscape over nature, and their idea of "roughing it" is a 5 star resort by the beach. Though it's equally interesting that despite your architectural training, you'd be in the naturalist camp instead of the urban planning camp! To me, the peak of development would be Hobbiton. The houses are built right into the hills themselves....it's all a part of the natural environment and built around and within it. The inverse is the retrograde self imprisonment projects that are traditional cities.

And an interesting, and poignant statement that "limitations foster creativity" since that's very explicitly Nintendo's traditional internal design philosophy, and a reason for their leaning toward unusual or held back hardware.

We (and Octane) are definitely playing with the same mindset in design philosophy. Which is probably why we're also the ones running out of things to do. The game doesn't offer much for working within the environment. It seems the people finding the most play are the ones that want to flatten it and redesign a fully engineered environment. I also ran into the same limitations with needing overhang bridges, tunnels, etc. I'd love to see a broader poll on people's opinions of the game, along with their viewpoint on naturalist/urbanist design in the game. We'd probably see a lot of correlation.

Hey all, meteor shower happening now on my island. Dodo code is M54D3

@NEStalgia
ACNH is just a game so don't bring your philosophy against the terraforming into playing.
I tore down the cliff, i cut the river way and make a new one, i make a tiny pond, i built the inclines and bridges, just like my whole map i designed by CorelDraw. I recreate the nature because player is a builder, just like in DQB. You given with permit to create and destroy the landscape, use it, own it like you have no regret feeling when you sculpt your island. It just only a game with terraforming feature.

Anyway, let's NOT bring your philosophy against terraforming and Old fashion way AC into this conversation.
There are some peoples here still playing ACNH, DON'T even care with anti-terraforming philosophy and Old fashion way AC. Old AC was history, i'm glad i played ACNH and ACNL with new looking and better ideas than Old AC (Original, Wild World, City Folk)

@NEStalgia

Regarding my "philosophy" when it comes to creating my island, I do wish I'd gone the natural route, save for clearing enough land for my centrepiece (soccer pitch). Instead, I spent many hours during the early days of lockdown trying to create something that, ultimately, didn't turn out as I liked.

What I'd really like is the ability to experiment a bit more freely - terraforming is such a chore.

@Anti-Matter
Please stop telling people what they can/cannot or should/shouldn't like or talk about. The philosophies of others in no way affect your playing your way.

@edhe
Visited your island like you asked some time ago and it was fun to see your soccer pitch not on pictures but on my own. Liked your village in the valley and your house among the villagers. You should stick to that. The only thing that irritated me were the walls everywhere. I’m currently changing some things too so I was curious what’s going on on your island.

@Cosmofantasmo

I'll most likely keep the layout around the Residents Services as it is, but I've since taken down every fence in preparation for when I level the raised areas. I'm going to try and recreate it in its natural state - I was missing out on easy access to rivers and ponds, but it was hard to fit in once I laid out all those walls.

I might tinker with the village a little, because it'd be nice to customise everyone's front yards a bit more than I was able to with the limited space I gave myself.

I'll go and check your island out, and I'll send you my thoughts.

@Gret8888

Whenever's best for you. I'm available all week. As for that foosball table (I think they're called something else in my version), that might be a good idea. I have at least one variety of table myself though, so it wouldn't be neccesary for you to send me another one.

Funny, i have ever found foosball furniture from Nook Cranny / Redd but i never want to buy it as my bold statement "NO SOCCER ALLOWED" on my island.
If i got any soccer related stuffs from villagers, i will immediately throw to trash bin.

@edhe

Definitely check it out! It’s pre-changes status and I only want to do minor tweaks at the moment. It’s very natural and I want to keep the overall topography intact as it’s almost the same from the start. But my main goal from the very beginning was to get a good balanced mix between an urban part around the plaza and a natural backland and I only now feel I have the experience to accomplish this!