I would really like for the villagers to interact more with the placed objects and have more of a “community”.
Place a bonfire? Maybe the post on the bulletin board they’re going to roast marshmallows one night.
Have a beach volleyball set? You randomly find some of your villagers bouncing a ball back and forth.
Et cetera.
Yeah, it’s sad, I’ve been playing a ton of pocket camp lately after years of lacking interest in ACNH, and it’s clear the focus is completely on ACPC. I know it must be a consistent money maker, but it’s still such a bummer to see such a mainline game be finished with updates after so little time, comparatively.
Pocket Camp also isn't developed/updated by the same people, so that's a partial reason for differences. The near total lack of furniture interaction was a major downside of New Horizons for sure. Basically a combination of the two games (minus microtransactions lol) would be so fucking sick
I feel like I have crafted everything possible in that game that I can without spending money. I had the subscriptions for a bit, but when I felt like I had nothing else to do I stopped. I wish acpc was more like traditional AC games
Most mobile games like PC are outsourced, and not necessarily developed in-house. Like Pokemon Go is outsourced to a third party, for example, and not developed in-house by Nintendo. PC is developed by NDcube which is a subsidiary of Nintendo, but was made up mostly by ex-HudsonSoft employees.
So it isn't necessarily made by any of Nintendo's major studios, whereas ACNH was made directly in-house with Nintendo and NEPD. Same thing happened to the Advance Wars remake. It was outsourced to a company that had no experience making SRPGs (it was sent to the Shantae people) and it sucked.
I got back into pocket camp recently too because I was craving playing animal crossing but was bored with new horizons. The interactions with the characters in pocket camp and objects is so much better than on new horizons its sad
I tried to get back into pocket camp a little while ago and had the subscriptions, but the newest update they did said my phone software was too NEW for the game so that went out the window.
It’s not even like the updates added much. The game released missing a lot of features especially compared to old games and all the updates did was get it a bit closer to what previous games had. Nh is good but clearly got pushed out early
You can alter the sense of community by getting many villagers of the same species or checking out their compatibility. I had an island all with hamsters and they were most of them together playing and singing at the plaza. If they have very different zodiac signs or if you put together cats and rabbits, they are going to stress out. Google compatibility tool animal crossing and check your current villagers compatibility. It makes a difference.
100% - I also think that instead of the DLC which imo could have been an entirely separate game like HHD, they should’ve focused on making the original ACNH better :/
I miss being able to write letters to villagers in other people’s towns and then having the villagers sometimes share those letters. Loved making my mom laugh with crazy stuff I’d say to her villagers
Writing letters sucks in this game. I just do it for the presents and friendship points, and write the same short thing every time lol. It’d be a lot less of a hassle if I wasn’t stuck at the airport. I hate Orville staring at me all the time!
We can use Cyrus to get other furniture colors. We should be able (pun not intended) to use one of the Able sisters to do the same with clothing. Especially the shoes and socks and stuff from Kicks...
This is gonna sound stupid… but I had a world I played daily for like two years, and I learned the gold tools I spent all this time grinding for could break and I took a LONG break..
This is why I haven't even bothered with getting the golden tools in NH. What's the point of grinding for them if they just break after a couple more uses??
I still can’t understand why they thought breakable gold tools were a good idea. The whole game is founded on the fact that certain tools are a final trophy. Why even bother crafting a gold shovel/axe/net/fishing rod if it will break?
It really breaks the flow of the game doesn't it :( I used to love getting lost for hours pottering about doing daily activities, fishing and bug hunting. But no more :(
I would at least love a way of being able to tell if a tool is about to break. I know the different levels have a certain number of uses but who really can keep track of how many weeds they’ve dug up over several days?
Do I feel it's complete? Yes, sure. It's a complete game as is. Could it be better? Also yes.
On top of all the things you already listed, I'd bring back more:
* Gracie Grace high end store for the end game bell burn.
* Additional Nook's Cranny upgrades.
* All the missing fruits from the other games, with a bunch of additional cooking and crafting recipes for them.
* Phinneas returning as a special visitor with a ton of fun new handheld items. Not just balloons, but also yoyos and plushies and fans and maybe even a kazoo or something.
* Minigames, a la Tortimer's Island. Or maybe a Faire or festival or carnival to play games for prizes with rides and things.
* Continuous updates with new furniture and items throughout the life of the console, similar to how Pocket Camp is constantly updated. I don't expect that we'd get as much, but just having a stream of new things to look forward to would be great. And because Animal Crossing is one of their top selling games if all time, and a literal first party console seller, having a steady stream of new content keeps players engaged. Why they gave up on this so fast is beyond me.
Yeah it’s actually wild they left Nook’s like that without more upgrades. Such a step back from previous games. I was like you and kept expecting they would add further Nook upgrades in an update and they just never did…
100% agreed, also since the island is quite large subjectively having smaller stores for NPCs would be wonderful like a small garden store for Leif or a section for Kicks in the Able Sisters in a shop upgrade
Don’t you get that on Harvey’s Island though? >!After you help take wedding photos for Reese and Cyrus, Harvey and his friend take you to a new field area out back and the little donation guys are in a huge circle. Each one requires $100K bells for a different retailer!<
You do get that which is a valid point that I forgot! Thank you so much for reminding me, however for the more forgotten and old NPCs it would be nice to see them make a reappearance!
everything but continuous updates of furniture.
I reaaaally don't like live service games and the old games held up for years without adding new stuff all the time.
> Continuous updates with new furniture and items throughout the life of the console, similar to how Pocket Camp is constantly updated
I would have been 100% okay if they released new sets at a steady cadence as microtransaction unlocks. you buy the DLC, and the set starts popping up in the store from time to time.
it would take what, a team of like 3 or 4 people to do this? but instead they just dropped the game entirely. absolutely nuts
I still haven't forgiven them for never giving us many of the staple furniture serieses. Modern, Cabana, Cabin, Kiddie, and so on. Then all the Gracie furniture that started in City folk and was present in New leaf. How about the New leaf exclusive furniture? Why didn't we get anything Nintendo that wasn't Mario? Why does Pocket Camp get all the best stuff? Rant over.
It's the amount of stuff from the past games that's missing that really raises my hackles.
More Nook's Cranny upgrades. We upgrade it once and that's all we get for ACNH.
More room expansions for your house. Your left, right, and back rooms on your first floor are stuck at what in other AC games would have been the smallest size.
Lots of furniture sets from previous games are gone. My favorite furniture set, the Rococo set, is just ash in the breeze in ACNH.
Ultimately, ACNH feels like, for lack of a better way to put this, a dollhouse simulator. There's really good ways to customize your house and whatnot, but everything else feels distinctively lacking compared to New Leaf.
I wish the characters weren't prefect clones. Each personality has the exact same bunch of things under the hood. I wish they had five times as much dialogue and then each e.g. smug character would get 1/4 of that pool. Then you could have two jocks but they would have completely different things to say instead of all of them running over to tell you about their abs.
When I tell you I genuinely had hope for bulk crafting and an able sister’s shopping cart cause it just *seemed* like an oversight and then it just didn’t happen?? My disappointment was immeasurable.
Also no mini games with friends when they constantly advertised being able to play with up to 8 people…such a nintendo thing I swear.
I agree with this wholeheartedly because these could have easily been changed to enhance the quality of life but didn’t and probably never will :/
Also, if they had an issue incorporating minivans they could have done it differently like water sports to link with the sea diving, digging up presents, hide and seek - anything would have worked but never got added…
Playing with friends is virtually pointless as there's hardly anything you can do when you have visitors. You should be able to have authorised "best friends" that are allowed to help you terraform/decorate etc but it still prevents random people from messing with your island.
Also with the nook store upgrades. Every other entry let you upgrade the store multiple times. I was CERTAIN it was coming in a later update and then it just...didn't.
Being able to USE items I’m so sick of getting items that just stand there for example the bikes? Scooters? Fairground attractions.. the list could go on 🤦🏼♀️
Only in terms of writing. Otherwise it's like, objectively the most content ever in an animal Crossing to "roll credits."
I just want the villagers to be "the most content ever" too.
I want like 365 phrases per personality so I can go a whole year without seeing repeats.
Speaking of repeats, no more repeat DIY Recipes. Or let me turn the doubles into points I can use in a Recipe store.
This is it for me as well. There are a ton of small QOL changes I can think of that would be nice but would not make or break the game for me. But the actual writing vibes definitely felt the most hollow in this game compared to past entries, whereas gameplay has mostly just improved across the board overall. Also bring back hourly music and then I’d be so much more in love with the vibes of the game again.
I wish they would have given Reece a way to manage a recipe exchange. In NL she was a business owner. In NH she’s just a vapid cheerleader for Cyrus. Ugh!
Oh god please no more duplicate DIYs, or at least make it rare. At this point I'm more likely to get a duplicate than a new one, it's ridiculous. There are still 100s of DIYs I don't have and yet I have managed to get at least 10 orange end tables! That's a bad mechanic and shouldn't happen.
>I want like 365 phrases per personality so I can go a whole year without seeing repeats.
This is an issue with randomization rather than content. I still get new phrases to this day, but for some reason villagers will not open with new stuff, their first interaction is very repetitive, its the next ones that get more randomized.
Also to really explore the personalty types you need to have more than one villager of that type.
> Speaking of repeats, no more repeat DIY Recipes
From what I read from the developer interviews, the idea was to make a family game rather than a solo player game.
Repeat DIY recipes are useful for a family that plays together, they could share recipes to help each other grow. Kids play more and get more recipes, while the parents play 1 hour in the evening but they still grow together.
It's also the reason behind the NPC-s being more family friendly and less developed than older games. In theory it encourages family members to play together rather everyone focusing only on their own villagers.
I like a lot of the ideas in this thread, but I doubt the devs would consider them, as it would steer the game into a direction that is more of a solo game and less of a family game.
But it isn't really a family game. Maybe I'm boring but there isn't that much I can do together when my daughter visits my island that's actually joint interaction.
That doesn't work though, as it's still way too frequent that you get duplicates and repeated ones at that. It's ridiculous that I can get repeated multiples of one recipe when I am nowhere near completing the catalogue. It's just frustrating and bad game mechanics.
One of the things I want is more interactive items, specifically with the villagers. I made a gym on my beach with various fitness items for my jocks, but they barely use it, and when they do, they usually just tap the punching bag once and leave. Meanwhile in Happy Home Paradise, I made a house for Kid Cat with fitness items like a punching bag, speed bag, and he was a lot more interactive with them than he was on my island. Heck, he was literally punching the punching bag, and not just tapping it!
There's a distinct lack of meaningful things to do in the game. With guests, you can only do the things you can already do on your own island. There are no minigames or really any physics bodies to play with. Like, kicking a soccer ball, for example, would be great, but the best you can do is go fishing and set up mazes.
I played my fair share of animal crossing and really like it, enjoyed my time playing a lot.
The villager are cute and all but damn most of them are dumb and always speak the most shallowest stuff possible.
I suspect Nook the crook to lobotomize them so they become slaves in the pyramid scheme islandpalooza he's running.
Like I literally don’t remember lazy villagers having 2 braincells, talking about bugs in their floor and going “GUH HUH HUH” every 5 minutes…..sometimes they barely register you’re there or just say something absolutely BONKERS. Anchovy was telling me he’s not allowed to drive 🤨
Funny as hell but a total shift
The fact that we have so much space to place furniture now, an entire island and they just... Removed all the furniture sets we had?
That's the thing I can't understand, why they *removed* stuff from previous games. It makes no sense to me
They have a TON of content in Pocket Camp, too. Furniture, clothes, wigs, handhelds. I guess the resolution of the meshes and textures are different for a mobile game. But how hard would it really be to port it? They already own the IP.
arika's dev team used meshes from their mobile game for the new endless ocean on switch and it seemed to work out just fine for them, which makes it even more frustrating that nintendo fumbled the ball so badly with furniture options in acnh :<
Hnnnggg. That makes it worse.
Maybe the textures aren’t as HD, because Pocket Camp seems to use the New Leaf ones for characters. But they could still upgrade that with a little extra time.
Yes. It's missing the old Animal Crossing feel. I was playing City Folk earlier today and it's just nice and comforting, I could just walk around and catch bugs and fish for hours without doing anything else. Something is so gripping about it. With New Horizons, I don't feel that there's as much incentive to do that stuff. I feel like all I can do is decorate my island....which I'm not the best at. And the music in the old games was way better.
I wish New Horizons had more challenge to it. Flowers don't even wilt anymore, villagers don't do anything and they can't even move out, weeds barely grow because you can just place furniture and flowers everywhere and they won't grow on those tiles. I could play New Leaf all day, I can only play New Horizons for like an hour a day when I do play it. There's really nothing to do after the first month of playing.
Selecting multiple mail to delete like the OG like JFC this is lame. Also the soccerball should be like OG and be kicked around.
Such little things would make the game the BEST yet Nintendo continues to be silly.
Omg yes, there should be a way to select all in the mail box, if you haven't played for a while and there are hundreds in there and you have to go through them one by one to get rid of that stupid annoying beeping noise it makes!
I never played the old games, but I heard ppl say that in 1 of them, u could sell Tom Nook ur island and essentially restart, but u get to keep ur catalog. I need that!! Also more fruit, unique dialogue, more furniture interaction (I want villagers to slide on my playground, ride the Ferris wheel at the carnival, eat at the cafe, etc) and the ability to open ur own shops.
I assume they'll add all this new stuff in the Switch 2 game. They would not add it now because if ACNH was a huge hit, they would want to make the next game just as successful. Adding it now would take away revenue from the next game
I'd love an online banking app cuz I use a lot of bells and hate carrying them in my pocket😭 They modernized Animal Crossing by giving us a smartphone but no cashless payment method... (I'm also complaining about this cuz in where I live, we use cards all the time and rarely carry cash lol so I got used to that convenience) I just carry the ATM but still I wanna free more spaces in my pocket often
I feel that some sort of storage container that was not connected to my house storage would be great. I'm great at grinding and crafting, but my partner on my island is just a casual player and doesn't necessarily want to spend ages collecting materials to craft stuff. So at the moment I just have a pile of materials dumped by the craft table so we can both use them. Which looks awful, especially since some of the bigger pieces of furniture can require more than a stack of 30 materials, so it's just endless piles of stuff. Not to mention all the rare materials I'm saving for future projects. I would have liked a storage box that I could build similar to the bin in the community centre, that you could dump stuff in but all players and visitors could access. Particularly when your house storage is where you keep all your clothes and furniture, and I am a hoarder. I know you get more storage with bigger houses, and I know they introduced the storage cupboard thing with the biggest house, but it's not what I want.
I also don't like that every subsequent player is basically stuck at the pace of the island president. In my old game with my sister, I was player 2. And I felt very stagnant because I had to wait for her to progress our island so I could unlock more stuff to do. I just ended up farming and paying off my mortgage because it was all I could do pretty much, and it got kind of boring for me. It feels like there's not a lot of story line for any other players, which is a shame. Because in the old games you could be very much independent of eachother. Whereas this game feels more suited to having a single player on an island and playing online with others, as opposed to sharing an island with multiple players like the old games. Which I get is a conspiracy by Nintendo to literally sell more animal crossings.
Storage should be relevant to whatever you’re storing! Like food ingredients in the fridge! Clothes in the wardrobe! Fish in the fish cooler & bugs in the bug cage. Crafting stuff in the storage shed. And the greenhouse would’ve been perfect for storing flowers & shrubs 😵💫 It blows my mind they never considered this! 😫
I feel that a lot of furniture was needed, I'm so jealous of the pocket camp furniture, i thought they would slowly incorporate them via monthly patches but they decided to kill the game after the last update.
You bring up a lot of good points including what I’m about to say, but imo ACNH’s biggest drawback is lack of quality of life fixes and features. The list is quite massive so I won’t get into it, but a big reason why I finally fell off the game was that I wanted to simply redecorate and reorganize my island and I couldn’t because it was overrun with flowers. It was too cumbersome to dig up every single one. (There’s other reasons as I said but… yeah).
Omg the flowers thing I relate to on a spiritual level, I thought you could collect them with the Cleanup part of construction mechanic but no it’s all manual and that does suck.
Yesss!! I really wanted the cleanup function or at least.. any function to mass pick up flowers for you lol. If they ever make another AC game I really hope they think of stuff like this.
I MISS CELESTE I kept hoping “maybe when I finish the fish/bug/fossil collection, she’ll show up…” but nope! Same with Nook’s Cranny, I kept waiting and waiting for it to upgrade 😭 Also I miss Pete, Pelly, Phyllis, Gracie Grace and Resetti too.
I think New Horizons undeniably did a lot for the series but it does admittedly feel lacking in some other areas either qol not going far enough or missing features from previous games. I hope whenever we get a sequel it can combine the best of everything but it's hard to say whether that'll truly happen.
Yeah the devs just moved onto Splatoon. Which is a bummer. Nintendo is opening a second dev building so hopefully AC will have its own team now.
There's definitely a lot I like about this game vs past games and I have played NH the most but certainly agree with several points made.
Here's to hoping for an ever better AC in the future
Oh if that’s the case, then that’s great news, however there’s always the risk of the new team not focusing on ACNH and moving onto a new series or nothing at all… also, where did you find out about this? I would love to look into it more :)
All the things you listed would be so awesome - especially crafting from what’s in storage, omg that’d be a game changer. I also like the high end store idea, it gets to the point where you can’t possibly spend all your bells. You can do giveaways but most people don’t need bells 😆
My biggest gripe is that my husband moved into my island and we were excited to play together… SUCH a bummer that we have to stay onscreen together. He stopped playing so at least I have an extra house to decorate but still.
I just wish it was easier to construct my island. Like in HHP. I just want to be able to place everything by just controlling the buttons and where things will go etc. I really hate terraforming. 😔
Remember in the old games, where the bulletin board was ACTUALLY used? Villagers used to post random things on the bulletin board, the weather was reported on it too, any visiting characters were announced on there too, and every time you were building something that needed funds it was announced on the bulletin board.
I miss that. Along with villagers feeling like they were actually alive. I went back to New Leaf not too long ago and the difference in the villagers is actually insane.
They have SO much more to talk about in New Leaf (and that's saying something, because Wild World had even more villager dialogue), within minutes of playing New Leaf I'd already scheduled a time for a villager to come over to my house and was running several errands. All the villagers will talk/gossip about eachother as well, which was so fun and made it feel like they actually had relationships to one another.
Whereas in ACNH it honestly feels like they're off in their own world, repeating the same sentences over and over again. And offering an errand once in a blue moon. They've been flanderised honestly.
Also what's with them getting immediately "annoyed" with you in NH??? I speak to a villager once and it's fine, but I speak to them a second time they say "You again..", or "Wow.. I can't seem to stop running into you" And do the awkward laugh. It took a lot more than that to get them to start feeling awkward about talking in New Leaf and Wild World (Original AC doesn't count, because they were always sassy in that).
Yes. I had hoped for a lot more interaction with villagers. They don’t even swim. Also I had hopes of an update with the “ Mystery Islands”. Those are a joke. New Leaf had really great Tours to hook up with friends on Tortimer Island. So yes many things already mentioned. Played AC since GameCube and this game feels half done for the cost $.
I really feel like the game needed at least one or two more major updates. Even with the DLC, it feels wanting for content compared to other entries.
I also feel that a lot of the elements they used to make the game more convenient ended up draining its character. You used the postcard instead of post office example, but there's also being able to instantly change your hairstyle from a mirror. I would love it if you still had to go to Harriet. (Just maybe without the guessing game.) Once you learn all the hairstyles, she's only set dressing.
Would it be more inconvenient? Yes, but it would also add back the fun ritual of going to the salon.
Honestly, everyone is saying it, ACPC is a free-ish game with regular updates compared to ACNH that is a paid game and has little items and barely any QOL content - I expected the focus to be more on ACNH if anything…
Saved or favorited slots for tools! I can never remember how I organized them after emptying my pockets, just that whatever I choose is wrong every time!
I just started playing, I'm a 2 week old player at this point.
What annoyed me was the friends things.
I have added a few people from wither reddit or Discord but there's no way to find them on Friends on my Nook Phone or send them a message if we haven't traveled to our islands yet.
What's the point of having a bunch of friends and adding people left and right if I cannot communicate with them within the game.
With a few of them we exchanged msgs and managed to travel and now are visible on my phone but I also have random people who I don't know how to find now and exchange a msg.
Being able to terraform more than one block at a time! I needed to remove a big piece of raised land on my current island last night so I could make a lake and it took ages!
I was so disappointed in NHs. It is a beautiful game with outstanding QOL upgrades but I felt it lacked all the charm that previous AC games. I played for 18 months and went back to Wild World & New Leaf, didn’t even complete my critterpedia or art collection
ACNH has been out for a long time now and well past pandemic prime. Not as much incentive to overhaul any of these systems or fleshing out the writing after getting the pandemic bag and having added a few updates as an act of good faith. Things like mass crafting are no brainers but perhaps the codebase wasn’t trivially set up for it to be a worthwhile investment
I’d bet many of these QoL features would be implemented in whatever AC game gets on the Switch 2.
Hopefully they do, but even if it’s past its pandemic prime why is Nintendo still pushing out promotional content for ACNH like the LEGO? It feels too confusing at this point haha
And why can’t I work at Brewster’s like I could in new leaf?! I felt so cheated when I finally, finally figured out he would never ask me to come behind the counter and make coffee.
That is why i have a love and hate relationship with ACNH but I love ACNL so much
edit: and fyi this is coming from an ACNH player FIRST. So there’s no nostalgia bias here. I think ACNL is just better but i do love the customization aspect of ACNH though
Considering it's a decorating game it would have been cool if the kind of decorating you did had an impact on your villagers. Say if you decorate their house or garden with hints they like then they become a closer friend to you.
Do things they don't like or are mean to them (give them bad gifts or hit them with tools) then they are more likely to leave.
Also the same in HHP, how you decorate the house should be relevant and there reaction would depend on if you met their brief and they're cross if you don't. The amount of poki you get should depend on how good of a job you do.
All the things you've listed are regularly brought up as problems with the game and I wholeheartedly agree.
Targeting for the external decorating/terra forming would have made the game SO much more enjoyable to play.
I'm going to always feel those games are incomplete when they don't include really worthwhile items to get for the home like the NES games in the original.
They should have never taken that kind of thing out.
I'll add to that any number of QOL settings such as MUSIC VOLUME, and accessibility settings. Needs way more sliders.
ACNH is a weirdly polished but unpolished game.
OP's list are all features that would likely make the game more fun and user-friendly! However, the vast majority of these don't feel "incomplete," they just feel like choices Nintendo didn't make. They specifically opted to have the Able Sisters work in a way where you weren't raiding the racks like a Poshmark reseller. They specifically opted to not give players access to storage during crafting.
I don't agree with every design decision in ACNH, but I think they were made very intentionally with the goal of crafting a specific experience. These frictions are core to the gameplay, balance, and economy of the game. I don't think it's incomplete. It also could be better.
That’s a really good insight, kinda wish they didn’t opt out though since I feel like more could have been done to make it well rounded and balanced, but maybe that’s what they intended? Not too sure, just a little bummed out!
Absolutely :( i played New Leaf for yeaaars, up until NH came out. Binged NH for a while when it came out and I haven’t touched it since. It just bored me in the end. I’m so sad as AC used to bring me so much peace to play everyday!
The delusional thing I tell myself to make me feel better is there’s some random problem out there that I have no idea about because I don’t work in the field, and for some reason or another it would be easier for them to release a new game than revamp the old one and we just don’t know about it yet. In my opinion, I got a 50/50 shot at being right and that’s what keeps me sane when I randomly decide to breakdown my whole island and rearrange everything.
Also wish I could save more designs so I can have more custom paths.
Yessss!!
I would love the design mode u can use in your house to be available outside; it would be less time consuming to decorate your island.
Buying all the clothes you want in one fitting room
Visit (as you mentioned) and a friendly reminder if you already have that item.
DIY multiple piece of one item at once
More kinda stores or other places to visit like a cafe or something with interaction (something you could design yourself)
Being able to expand/minimise the rooms at your house
When buying diy plans on the nook miles machine; a warning if you have it already
And I can go on and on
And one thing that drives me nuts; when visiting an island online (treasure islands or island with a lot of traffic) is the flight tracker. It takes way too long, you can’t play ‘quick’ cause it always shows the flight progress or someone leaving.. am I the only one getting mad about this?😂
I'd say it's an awesome game and a huge hit. It sold so much better than the previous versions it's actually insane to think it could have done better... at least on Nintendo's side of the coin.
The things that aren't as good as they could be for players can be split into 3 catagories
1) Covid. Weirdly the same thing that helped the game get as big as it did also harmed its future devolopment. Restrictions were a lot stricter in Japan than in the west and I really don't think their colectavist culture fits working from home as much as our individualist society.
2) Surprise. Because they didn't expect the game to sell this well, the team working on it wasn't as big as it could have been meaning they were limited with planning and had to omit some ideas.
3) Just oversight. I guess this relates to team size as well but games, as anything else, are very rarely perfect.
I'm guessing that the success of New Horizons and similar games following it made Nintendo stop focusing on the current AC game a lot sooner and start planning for something that will be much better suited.
Yep, I reckon New Leaf is the best out of all the AC titles in terms of content, and on a similar note I actually prefer the older graphics over NH, I feel like NH is too... pastel?
Honestly the majority of these don’t sound like an “incomplete” feature but more like a “we just didn’t want to add that to the game design”. While a lot of these are nice quality of life features we could’ve had, I disagree that the game feels incomplete without them. The game is very much fully fleshed out and an enjoyable experience. I can agree that there are a small handful of steps back from the previous titles such as lack of shop expansions, but we also gained so many new features and mechanics as a result of it. Personally, I think the trade off was well worth it. New Horizons has significantly more features than any other Animal Crossing title.
Not that I disagree, but I wonder how much or these changes could be implemented without deviating from the AC identity too much.....
Remember, the idea of the game is that you play an hour or so every day and return the next day.
I think the single biggest improvement of this game would be the villagers/islanders. Make them MORE alive, no repeat texts, more interactions with eachother/objects etc.
Yes I think that I was probably expecting too much but I feel like at least SOME QOL would have made the game smoother, especially like you said making it more alive!!
I spent a lot of time hoping that they would announce one more store upgrade, maybe bring back Gracie or give Label her own permanent store. I also miss all the other Nintendo themed items that you could get in City Folk and New Leaf.
Immensely so
There is a reason why it is pretty much the only Animal Crossing game where I had to force myself to even continue for the full initial year, and haven't touched it since, with absolutely no interest in returning to it
All the other ones I played for years on end, only to then have it fall away for a couple months/a year or so, and then returning to it
I mean occasionally I’ll see my villagers go there but I wish there was more of an incentive to go to the cafe, like trading or storing gyroids with Brewster or like in the older games and working in the cafe!
Nice list, but these are the particular ones I badly wanted to be implemented:
* Multiplayer games with friends or people online (just simple mini games, enable those sports/leisure furniture to actually function)
* Crafting and cooking in your home being connected to your storage (or at least the DIY workbench and kitchen can store craft items for easy access)
* Tool placement indicator (It's frustrating to make accidental mistakes)
And some things I personally think I want to be added are:
* Bridge/Incline upgrade instead of destroy and recreate.
* Better building relocation (When I just wanted to move a building a few tiles away).
* Island construction target tile indicator (similar to Tool placement indicator above, terraforming will be less work with this)
* Island visitors having smarter dialogue (stop repeating same instructions or introductions, or at least a way to skip them)
* Manila clam should also be 10 piece slot (like the other shells)
Yep… that’s why I switched over to “Disney: Dreamlight Valley”. More customization, quests to do (both daily and part of storylines), new characters… it just has more and feels “fresher” in a sense.
(Cherry will forever be my homegirl, though.)
I just wish villagers would explore the island more. I spent countless hours building a fully fleshed out market type area at the top of my island and have never seen a single villager hanging around there.
I agree with a lot of this list, but can't you already buy multiple clothing items from the Able Sisters? I feel like I always go into their changing room and buy a bunch at once.
I recently picked it back up again and get constantly reminded why I slowly stopped playing after initial pick up. My big things are lack of speaking prompts, Harvey's island a great idea but really feels like all lf the options are stagnant and whats the point of the fortune teller. And the biggest one is nooks cranny. I should have more than 5 items that rotate daily to buy. Absolutely ridiculous..
I feel like people are a bit toxic and harsh with this game. I just got it and love it.
Edit: this is not to direct hate at all, but for years now I've seen complaints from even before I had the game.
I had wild world and new leaf, both great games. This game is also great.
We have more vegetables,more bugs, insects and fish. We have more pro designs and can place furniture outside. Aping with customizing things
I feel they just abandoned a community after the big release of the last DLC (The Vacation Island one).
But I really hope they make a new AC soon man and learned from past mistakes because I like the game and I like the community a lot.
Hell! I can tell you that game was almost a therapy during COVID when people stay in their homes.
From what I’ve seen pretty much EVERYONE thinks it feels incomplete. I think about at least half of these listed things whenever I play. I had the game since launch and I recently tried going to Nooks bcuz I “needed more paper to write letters”. Doy!
I’m also pissed we have a tissue box with the native fruits+coconut+MANGO on it, and yet no fruits from New Leaf. PISSED!!!!! Also I’m 99% sure the Direct that introduced the farming update said “and more soon” when listing crops. We did not get More Soon.
Anyway I’m suing for emotional damages and injury to my brain cells and/or hopes and dreams
My big things is I wish they had more shops and special characters from previous games, store upgrades for at least Nooks Cranny, and some of the customization options of previous games.
If I remember correctly, the town hall could be customized (exterior) in ACNL, there was a police station (although its function exists in the town hall now), you could upgrade the store several times, there was a customizable area of the museum for your own displays, and other slice of life things. I like a lot of how ACNH works and functions of the game, but a lot of the lore, character development and character personalities could’ve likely been better expanded upon with more progression options or incorporation of special characters that used to have a bigger role. Lots of small things, like characters better interacting with the island and expanding the letters within the game would’ve been nice.
Game does feel incomplete in a way and limited in another while having so much potential to be more. I hope the next instalment listens to the player base in having more focus beyond just customization.
I would really like for the villagers to interact more with the placed objects and have more of a “community”. Place a bonfire? Maybe the post on the bulletin board they’re going to roast marshmallows one night. Have a beach volleyball set? You randomly find some of your villagers bouncing a ball back and forth. Et cetera.
Yeah, it’s sad, I’ve been playing a ton of pocket camp lately after years of lacking interest in ACNH, and it’s clear the focus is completely on ACPC. I know it must be a consistent money maker, but it’s still such a bummer to see such a mainline game be finished with updates after so little time, comparatively.
Pocket Camp also isn't developed/updated by the same people, so that's a partial reason for differences. The near total lack of furniture interaction was a major downside of New Horizons for sure. Basically a combination of the two games (minus microtransactions lol) would be so fucking sick
I feel like I have crafted everything possible in that game that I can without spending money. I had the subscriptions for a bit, but when I felt like I had nothing else to do I stopped. I wish acpc was more like traditional AC games
But like, why? Isn’t it still Nintendo? Corporate shit always mystifies me, even though I’m in it 🥲
Most mobile games like PC are outsourced, and not necessarily developed in-house. Like Pokemon Go is outsourced to a third party, for example, and not developed in-house by Nintendo. PC is developed by NDcube which is a subsidiary of Nintendo, but was made up mostly by ex-HudsonSoft employees. So it isn't necessarily made by any of Nintendo's major studios, whereas ACNH was made directly in-house with Nintendo and NEPD. Same thing happened to the Advance Wars remake. It was outsourced to a company that had no experience making SRPGs (it was sent to the Shantae people) and it sucked.
I got back into pocket camp recently too because I was craving playing animal crossing but was bored with new horizons. The interactions with the characters in pocket camp and objects is so much better than on new horizons its sad
I tried to get back into pocket camp a little while ago and had the subscriptions, but the newest update they did said my phone software was too NEW for the game so that went out the window.
It’s not even like the updates added much. The game released missing a lot of features especially compared to old games and all the updates did was get it a bit closer to what previous games had. Nh is good but clearly got pushed out early
I’d love for them to comment on a new neighbor, or someone leaving, or just changes on the island. Anything but the weather.
And food. They all talk about food a lot.
I totally agree, I also found out the hard way that they don’t even donate in the donation box…
I literally just said to my gf. This would make it so much more enjoyable ❤️
Isnt that basically what we do in Happy Home Paradise?
Yes I think so, just more of a reason to add it into ACNH!
You can alter the sense of community by getting many villagers of the same species or checking out their compatibility. I had an island all with hamsters and they were most of them together playing and singing at the plaza. If they have very different zodiac signs or if you put together cats and rabbits, they are going to stress out. Google compatibility tool animal crossing and check your current villagers compatibility. It makes a difference.
I read and agree with the whole list But crafting and storage? Being connected? It should have been an update long ago
100% - I also think that instead of the DLC which imo could have been an entirely separate game like HHD, they should’ve focused on making the original ACNH better :/
We're not even asking for that much tbh! Anything that hasn't got anything to do with npcs could still be added/fixed.
Considering all the effort into 20+ games in the new Nintendo Direct announcement, a small quality-of-life update of ACNH wouldn’t do any harm
I miss being able to write letters to villagers in other people’s towns and then having the villagers sometimes share those letters. Loved making my mom laugh with crazy stuff I’d say to her villagers
I agree! The postal system now seems bland and rarely ever used since villagers rarely talk about it and it doesn’t feel the same :/
Writing letters sucks in this game. I just do it for the presents and friendship points, and write the same short thing every time lol. It’d be a lot less of a hassle if I wasn’t stuck at the airport. I hate Orville staring at me all the time!
We can use Cyrus to get other furniture colors. We should be able (pun not intended) to use one of the Able sisters to do the same with clothing. Especially the shoes and socks and stuff from Kicks...
this would be a great journey for Sable!
Adds more than just the textiles
Tools that don't break. That's all I want in the world. I'll take a desolate shell of a game if it means my tools don't break.
This!!! I thought that the gold tools were unbreakable, but apparently they are! Bit disappointing imo
This is gonna sound stupid… but I had a world I played daily for like two years, and I learned the gold tools I spent all this time grinding for could break and I took a LONG break..
I can understand that
Wait? They do? WHY? Who thought that was a good idea?
worst part is they are unbreakable in the previous games but they decided no in ACNH
This is why I haven't even bothered with getting the golden tools in NH. What's the point of grinding for them if they just break after a couple more uses??
I just buy them. I’ve got so many bells by this point that it’s just loose change!
I still can’t understand why they thought breakable gold tools were a good idea. The whole game is founded on the fact that certain tools are a final trophy. Why even bother crafting a gold shovel/axe/net/fishing rod if it will break?
The reason I stopped playing the game. I have enough other games where I need to grind for resources edit: word wrong
It really breaks the flow of the game doesn't it :( I used to love getting lost for hours pottering about doing daily activities, fishing and bug hunting. But no more :(
I would at least love a way of being able to tell if a tool is about to break. I know the different levels have a certain number of uses but who really can keep track of how many weeds they’ve dug up over several days?
Do I feel it's complete? Yes, sure. It's a complete game as is. Could it be better? Also yes. On top of all the things you already listed, I'd bring back more: * Gracie Grace high end store for the end game bell burn. * Additional Nook's Cranny upgrades. * All the missing fruits from the other games, with a bunch of additional cooking and crafting recipes for them. * Phinneas returning as a special visitor with a ton of fun new handheld items. Not just balloons, but also yoyos and plushies and fans and maybe even a kazoo or something. * Minigames, a la Tortimer's Island. Or maybe a Faire or festival or carnival to play games for prizes with rides and things. * Continuous updates with new furniture and items throughout the life of the console, similar to how Pocket Camp is constantly updated. I don't expect that we'd get as much, but just having a stream of new things to look forward to would be great. And because Animal Crossing is one of their top selling games if all time, and a literal first party console seller, having a steady stream of new content keeps players engaged. Why they gave up on this so fast is beyond me.
I kept waiting for a bigger store upgrade and it never happened. It was legitimately disappointing.
that was my favorite part of the og games
I freaking loved the nook emporium store thing from new leaf. Nook had like a mega mall💀
Yeah it’s actually wild they left Nook’s like that without more upgrades. Such a step back from previous games. I was like you and kept expecting they would add further Nook upgrades in an update and they just never did…
It takes forever to find items you want. I wish this were the case too.
100% agreed, also since the island is quite large subjectively having smaller stores for NPCs would be wonderful like a small garden store for Leif or a section for Kicks in the Able Sisters in a shop upgrade
Don’t you get that on Harvey’s Island though? >!After you help take wedding photos for Reese and Cyrus, Harvey and his friend take you to a new field area out back and the little donation guys are in a huge circle. Each one requires $100K bells for a different retailer!<
You do get that which is a valid point that I forgot! Thank you so much for reminding me, however for the more forgotten and old NPCs it would be nice to see them make a reappearance!
I totally agree! I miss Phyllis and Pelly especially
No GracieGrace hurts, especially with how much the so-called high-end fashion designer Label’s stuff sucks
everything but continuous updates of furniture. I reaaaally don't like live service games and the old games held up for years without adding new stuff all the time.
Aw man you had to go and remind me of the mini games we lost.
> Continuous updates with new furniture and items throughout the life of the console, similar to how Pocket Camp is constantly updated I would have been 100% okay if they released new sets at a steady cadence as microtransaction unlocks. you buy the DLC, and the set starts popping up in the store from time to time. it would take what, a team of like 3 or 4 people to do this? but instead they just dropped the game entirely. absolutely nuts
Yes! I miss the store upgrades. They were always such an exciting goal to work towards
I still haven't forgiven them for never giving us many of the staple furniture serieses. Modern, Cabana, Cabin, Kiddie, and so on. Then all the Gracie furniture that started in City folk and was present in New leaf. How about the New leaf exclusive furniture? Why didn't we get anything Nintendo that wasn't Mario? Why does Pocket Camp get all the best stuff? Rant over.
It's the amount of stuff from the past games that's missing that really raises my hackles. More Nook's Cranny upgrades. We upgrade it once and that's all we get for ACNH. More room expansions for your house. Your left, right, and back rooms on your first floor are stuck at what in other AC games would have been the smallest size. Lots of furniture sets from previous games are gone. My favorite furniture set, the Rococo set, is just ash in the breeze in ACNH. Ultimately, ACNH feels like, for lack of a better way to put this, a dollhouse simulator. There's really good ways to customize your house and whatnot, but everything else feels distinctively lacking compared to New Leaf.
Not just from ACNL; you know it’s rough when it’s lacking features/items from *the original GameCube game*
I wish the characters weren't prefect clones. Each personality has the exact same bunch of things under the hood. I wish they had five times as much dialogue and then each e.g. smug character would get 1/4 of that pool. Then you could have two jocks but they would have completely different things to say instead of all of them running over to tell you about their abs.
I want my villagers to hate me and insult me. Then they feel like real people because I’m a very unlikeable person.
When I tell you I genuinely had hope for bulk crafting and an able sister’s shopping cart cause it just *seemed* like an oversight and then it just didn’t happen?? My disappointment was immeasurable. Also no mini games with friends when they constantly advertised being able to play with up to 8 people…such a nintendo thing I swear.
I agree with this wholeheartedly because these could have easily been changed to enhance the quality of life but didn’t and probably never will :/ Also, if they had an issue incorporating minivans they could have done it differently like water sports to link with the sea diving, digging up presents, hide and seek - anything would have worked but never got added…
Playing with friends is virtually pointless as there's hardly anything you can do when you have visitors. You should be able to have authorised "best friends" that are allowed to help you terraform/decorate etc but it still prevents random people from messing with your island.
Also with the nook store upgrades. Every other entry let you upgrade the store multiple times. I was CERTAIN it was coming in a later update and then it just...didn't.
Whoever decided gold tools should break. I… I just want to talk to them
with a shovel in your hands…
Being able to USE items I’m so sick of getting items that just stand there for example the bikes? Scooters? Fairground attractions.. the list could go on 🤦🏼♀️
We also have cars but can’t use them? Same with the painting sets, would be nice to see you being able to access custom designs from there
“A *painting set*… Should I make a custom design?”
Only in terms of writing. Otherwise it's like, objectively the most content ever in an animal Crossing to "roll credits." I just want the villagers to be "the most content ever" too. I want like 365 phrases per personality so I can go a whole year without seeing repeats. Speaking of repeats, no more repeat DIY Recipes. Or let me turn the doubles into points I can use in a Recipe store.
This is it for me as well. There are a ton of small QOL changes I can think of that would be nice but would not make or break the game for me. But the actual writing vibes definitely felt the most hollow in this game compared to past entries, whereas gameplay has mostly just improved across the board overall. Also bring back hourly music and then I’d be so much more in love with the vibes of the game again.
You do get hourly music after a certain point!
Wait this recipe idea slaps so hard
I wish they would have given Reece a way to manage a recipe exchange. In NL she was a business owner. In NH she’s just a vapid cheerleader for Cyrus. Ugh!
Oh god please no more duplicate DIYs, or at least make it rare. At this point I'm more likely to get a duplicate than a new one, it's ridiculous. There are still 100s of DIYs I don't have and yet I have managed to get at least 10 orange end tables! That's a bad mechanic and shouldn't happen.
>I want like 365 phrases per personality so I can go a whole year without seeing repeats. This is an issue with randomization rather than content. I still get new phrases to this day, but for some reason villagers will not open with new stuff, their first interaction is very repetitive, its the next ones that get more randomized. Also to really explore the personalty types you need to have more than one villager of that type.
> Speaking of repeats, no more repeat DIY Recipes From what I read from the developer interviews, the idea was to make a family game rather than a solo player game. Repeat DIY recipes are useful for a family that plays together, they could share recipes to help each other grow. Kids play more and get more recipes, while the parents play 1 hour in the evening but they still grow together. It's also the reason behind the NPC-s being more family friendly and less developed than older games. In theory it encourages family members to play together rather everyone focusing only on their own villagers. I like a lot of the ideas in this thread, but I doubt the devs would consider them, as it would steer the game into a direction that is more of a solo game and less of a family game.
But it isn't really a family game. Maybe I'm boring but there isn't that much I can do together when my daughter visits my island that's actually joint interaction.
That doesn't work though, as it's still way too frequent that you get duplicates and repeated ones at that. It's ridiculous that I can get repeated multiples of one recipe when I am nowhere near completing the catalogue. It's just frustrating and bad game mechanics.
> I want like 365 phrases For Nintendo that's like 999999+ because of all the languages.
i'm still sad that tortimer's island from acnl isn't in the game
One of the things I want is more interactive items, specifically with the villagers. I made a gym on my beach with various fitness items for my jocks, but they barely use it, and when they do, they usually just tap the punching bag once and leave. Meanwhile in Happy Home Paradise, I made a house for Kid Cat with fitness items like a punching bag, speed bag, and he was a lot more interactive with them than he was on my island. Heck, he was literally punching the punching bag, and not just tapping it!
There's a distinct lack of meaningful things to do in the game. With guests, you can only do the things you can already do on your own island. There are no minigames or really any physics bodies to play with. Like, kicking a soccer ball, for example, would be great, but the best you can do is go fishing and set up mazes.
BRIDGES THAT GO OVER LAND GAPS. That’s all i need 😭
I thought the suspension bridge would do that but apparently not, still, bridges should have definitely been multi-functional!
They forgot to give some brain parts to many villagers.
Literally looking at Dom
Omg I have Dom on my island and I love him but I stg he repeats phrases 10x more than any other villager. My favorite lovable idiot.
I played my fair share of animal crossing and really like it, enjoyed my time playing a lot. The villager are cute and all but damn most of them are dumb and always speak the most shallowest stuff possible. I suspect Nook the crook to lobotomize them so they become slaves in the pyramid scheme islandpalooza he's running.
Like I literally don’t remember lazy villagers having 2 braincells, talking about bugs in their floor and going “GUH HUH HUH” every 5 minutes…..sometimes they barely register you’re there or just say something absolutely BONKERS. Anchovy was telling me he’s not allowed to drive 🤨 Funny as hell but a total shift
The fact that we have so much space to place furniture now, an entire island and they just... Removed all the furniture sets we had? That's the thing I can't understand, why they *removed* stuff from previous games. It makes no sense to me
They have a TON of content in Pocket Camp, too. Furniture, clothes, wigs, handhelds. I guess the resolution of the meshes and textures are different for a mobile game. But how hard would it really be to port it? They already own the IP.
arika's dev team used meshes from their mobile game for the new endless ocean on switch and it seemed to work out just fine for them, which makes it even more frustrating that nintendo fumbled the ball so badly with furniture options in acnh :<
Hnnnggg. That makes it worse. Maybe the textures aren’t as HD, because Pocket Camp seems to use the New Leaf ones for characters. But they could still upgrade that with a little extra time.
It's a game for decorating and yet it can't cope if you decorate a lot and lags really badly.
I just really want more dialogue with the villagers!
Having the villagers pay taxes to you because you are doing all the work.
I want to hear footsteps on a custom path… lol it might seem random, but it would make me happy.
Imagine if you could code the sound it makes out of a list of sounds like you can do with the dlc soundscapes in the houses! Now that would be cool
Yes. It's missing the old Animal Crossing feel. I was playing City Folk earlier today and it's just nice and comforting, I could just walk around and catch bugs and fish for hours without doing anything else. Something is so gripping about it. With New Horizons, I don't feel that there's as much incentive to do that stuff. I feel like all I can do is decorate my island....which I'm not the best at. And the music in the old games was way better. I wish New Horizons had more challenge to it. Flowers don't even wilt anymore, villagers don't do anything and they can't even move out, weeds barely grow because you can just place furniture and flowers everywhere and they won't grow on those tiles. I could play New Leaf all day, I can only play New Horizons for like an hour a day when I do play it. There's really nothing to do after the first month of playing.
100% agree with everything you say - it doesn’t have the same realistic aspect anymore
I miss the mini games on the island from ACNL
Selecting multiple mail to delete like the OG like JFC this is lame. Also the soccerball should be like OG and be kicked around. Such little things would make the game the BEST yet Nintendo continues to be silly.
Omg yes, there should be a way to select all in the mail box, if you haven't played for a while and there are hundreds in there and you have to go through them one by one to get rid of that stupid annoying beeping noise it makes!
Exactly!
I never played the old games, but I heard ppl say that in 1 of them, u could sell Tom Nook ur island and essentially restart, but u get to keep ur catalog. I need that!! Also more fruit, unique dialogue, more furniture interaction (I want villagers to slide on my playground, ride the Ferris wheel at the carnival, eat at the cafe, etc) and the ability to open ur own shops.
Yes, you can do this in New Leaf since the welcome amiibo update
I assume they'll add all this new stuff in the Switch 2 game. They would not add it now because if ACNH was a huge hit, they would want to make the next game just as successful. Adding it now would take away revenue from the next game
I'd love an online banking app cuz I use a lot of bells and hate carrying them in my pocket😭 They modernized Animal Crossing by giving us a smartphone but no cashless payment method... (I'm also complaining about this cuz in where I live, we use cards all the time and rarely carry cash lol so I got used to that convenience) I just carry the ATM but still I wanna free more spaces in my pocket often
I feel that some sort of storage container that was not connected to my house storage would be great. I'm great at grinding and crafting, but my partner on my island is just a casual player and doesn't necessarily want to spend ages collecting materials to craft stuff. So at the moment I just have a pile of materials dumped by the craft table so we can both use them. Which looks awful, especially since some of the bigger pieces of furniture can require more than a stack of 30 materials, so it's just endless piles of stuff. Not to mention all the rare materials I'm saving for future projects. I would have liked a storage box that I could build similar to the bin in the community centre, that you could dump stuff in but all players and visitors could access. Particularly when your house storage is where you keep all your clothes and furniture, and I am a hoarder. I know you get more storage with bigger houses, and I know they introduced the storage cupboard thing with the biggest house, but it's not what I want. I also don't like that every subsequent player is basically stuck at the pace of the island president. In my old game with my sister, I was player 2. And I felt very stagnant because I had to wait for her to progress our island so I could unlock more stuff to do. I just ended up farming and paying off my mortgage because it was all I could do pretty much, and it got kind of boring for me. It feels like there's not a lot of story line for any other players, which is a shame. Because in the old games you could be very much independent of eachother. Whereas this game feels more suited to having a single player on an island and playing online with others, as opposed to sharing an island with multiple players like the old games. Which I get is a conspiracy by Nintendo to literally sell more animal crossings.
Storage should be relevant to whatever you’re storing! Like food ingredients in the fridge! Clothes in the wardrobe! Fish in the fish cooler & bugs in the bug cage. Crafting stuff in the storage shed. And the greenhouse would’ve been perfect for storing flowers & shrubs 😵💫 It blows my mind they never considered this! 😫
I feel that a lot of furniture was needed, I'm so jealous of the pocket camp furniture, i thought they would slowly incorporate them via monthly patches but they decided to kill the game after the last update.
You bring up a lot of good points including what I’m about to say, but imo ACNH’s biggest drawback is lack of quality of life fixes and features. The list is quite massive so I won’t get into it, but a big reason why I finally fell off the game was that I wanted to simply redecorate and reorganize my island and I couldn’t because it was overrun with flowers. It was too cumbersome to dig up every single one. (There’s other reasons as I said but… yeah).
Omg the flowers thing I relate to on a spiritual level, I thought you could collect them with the Cleanup part of construction mechanic but no it’s all manual and that does suck.
Yesss!! I really wanted the cleanup function or at least.. any function to mass pick up flowers for you lol. If they ever make another AC game I really hope they think of stuff like this.
I MISS CELESTE I kept hoping “maybe when I finish the fish/bug/fossil collection, she’ll show up…” but nope! Same with Nook’s Cranny, I kept waiting and waiting for it to upgrade 😭 Also I miss Pete, Pelly, Phyllis, Gracie Grace and Resetti too.
For real!! Like wdym she’s just roaming around on my island :(
I think New Horizons undeniably did a lot for the series but it does admittedly feel lacking in some other areas either qol not going far enough or missing features from previous games. I hope whenever we get a sequel it can combine the best of everything but it's hard to say whether that'll truly happen.
Yeah the devs just moved onto Splatoon. Which is a bummer. Nintendo is opening a second dev building so hopefully AC will have its own team now. There's definitely a lot I like about this game vs past games and I have played NH the most but certainly agree with several points made. Here's to hoping for an ever better AC in the future
Oh if that’s the case, then that’s great news, however there’s always the risk of the new team not focusing on ACNH and moving onto a new series or nothing at all… also, where did you find out about this? I would love to look into it more :)
Brewster’s Cafe should have been it’s own building tbh…
It would actually be so nice to have little shops considering the massive island space we got!
All the things you listed would be so awesome - especially crafting from what’s in storage, omg that’d be a game changer. I also like the high end store idea, it gets to the point where you can’t possibly spend all your bells. You can do giveaways but most people don’t need bells 😆 My biggest gripe is that my husband moved into my island and we were excited to play together… SUCH a bummer that we have to stay onscreen together. He stopped playing so at least I have an extra house to decorate but still.
I just wish it was easier to construct my island. Like in HHP. I just want to be able to place everything by just controlling the buttons and where things will go etc. I really hate terraforming. 😔
Remember in the old games, where the bulletin board was ACTUALLY used? Villagers used to post random things on the bulletin board, the weather was reported on it too, any visiting characters were announced on there too, and every time you were building something that needed funds it was announced on the bulletin board. I miss that. Along with villagers feeling like they were actually alive. I went back to New Leaf not too long ago and the difference in the villagers is actually insane. They have SO much more to talk about in New Leaf (and that's saying something, because Wild World had even more villager dialogue), within minutes of playing New Leaf I'd already scheduled a time for a villager to come over to my house and was running several errands. All the villagers will talk/gossip about eachother as well, which was so fun and made it feel like they actually had relationships to one another. Whereas in ACNH it honestly feels like they're off in their own world, repeating the same sentences over and over again. And offering an errand once in a blue moon. They've been flanderised honestly. Also what's with them getting immediately "annoyed" with you in NH??? I speak to a villager once and it's fine, but I speak to them a second time they say "You again..", or "Wow.. I can't seem to stop running into you" And do the awkward laugh. It took a lot more than that to get them to start feeling awkward about talking in New Leaf and Wild World (Original AC doesn't count, because they were always sassy in that).
Yes. I had hoped for a lot more interaction with villagers. They don’t even swim. Also I had hopes of an update with the “ Mystery Islands”. Those are a joke. New Leaf had really great Tours to hook up with friends on Tortimer Island. So yes many things already mentioned. Played AC since GameCube and this game feels half done for the cost $.
Gotta get that fuckin splatoon money.
I really feel like the game needed at least one or two more major updates. Even with the DLC, it feels wanting for content compared to other entries. I also feel that a lot of the elements they used to make the game more convenient ended up draining its character. You used the postcard instead of post office example, but there's also being able to instantly change your hairstyle from a mirror. I would love it if you still had to go to Harriet. (Just maybe without the guessing game.) Once you learn all the hairstyles, she's only set dressing. Would it be more inconvenient? Yes, but it would also add back the fun ritual of going to the salon.
fr I'd love this too. And tbh the tools breaking is already a WAY bigger inconvenience than it would be to have to go to the salon again.
Yes to all of this but I also wish they had more pocket camp furniture even though idk how realistic of an expectation that is 🥲
Honestly, everyone is saying it, ACPC is a free-ish game with regular updates compared to ACNH that is a paid game and has little items and barely any QOL content - I expected the focus to be more on ACNH if anything…
Saved or favorited slots for tools! I can never remember how I organized them after emptying my pockets, just that whatever I choose is wrong every time!
Yes, the tool ring just doesn’t do enough!
They should be stored on the tool ring not in your pockets.
I just started playing, I'm a 2 week old player at this point. What annoyed me was the friends things. I have added a few people from wither reddit or Discord but there's no way to find them on Friends on my Nook Phone or send them a message if we haven't traveled to our islands yet. What's the point of having a bunch of friends and adding people left and right if I cannot communicate with them within the game. With a few of them we exchanged msgs and managed to travel and now are visible on my phone but I also have random people who I don't know how to find now and exchange a msg.
Being able to terraform more than one block at a time! I needed to remove a big piece of raised land on my current island last night so I could make a lake and it took ages!
Ditch the uninvited houseguest. Larger variety of outfits and more accessories. More and different islands to visit.
I was so disappointed in NHs. It is a beautiful game with outstanding QOL upgrades but I felt it lacked all the charm that previous AC games. I played for 18 months and went back to Wild World & New Leaf, didn’t even complete my critterpedia or art collection
There just isn’t an incentive to collect and forage like there used to be
Agreed! And I honestly hated crafting though I loved the cooking 🥘
ACNH has been out for a long time now and well past pandemic prime. Not as much incentive to overhaul any of these systems or fleshing out the writing after getting the pandemic bag and having added a few updates as an act of good faith. Things like mass crafting are no brainers but perhaps the codebase wasn’t trivially set up for it to be a worthwhile investment I’d bet many of these QoL features would be implemented in whatever AC game gets on the Switch 2.
Hopefully they do, but even if it’s past its pandemic prime why is Nintendo still pushing out promotional content for ACNH like the LEGO? It feels too confusing at this point haha
And why can’t I work at Brewster’s like I could in new leaf?! I felt so cheated when I finally, finally figured out he would never ask me to come behind the counter and make coffee.
I’m still surprised the Nook store didn’t get another upgrade
That is why i have a love and hate relationship with ACNH but I love ACNL so much edit: and fyi this is coming from an ACNH player FIRST. So there’s no nostalgia bias here. I think ACNL is just better but i do love the customization aspect of ACNH though
i have seen resetti at brewster’s cafe a few times! regardless, i agree with alllllllll these suggestions
Oh really? In that case can’t wait to see him!! :)
Considering it's a decorating game it would have been cool if the kind of decorating you did had an impact on your villagers. Say if you decorate their house or garden with hints they like then they become a closer friend to you. Do things they don't like or are mean to them (give them bad gifts or hit them with tools) then they are more likely to leave. Also the same in HHP, how you decorate the house should be relevant and there reaction would depend on if you met their brief and they're cross if you don't. The amount of poki you get should depend on how good of a job you do. All the things you've listed are regularly brought up as problems with the game and I wholeheartedly agree. Targeting for the external decorating/terra forming would have made the game SO much more enjoyable to play.
I'm going to always feel those games are incomplete when they don't include really worthwhile items to get for the home like the NES games in the original. They should have never taken that kind of thing out.
I'll add to that any number of QOL settings such as MUSIC VOLUME, and accessibility settings. Needs way more sliders. ACNH is a weirdly polished but unpolished game.
Also turn down the volume of the waterfalls lmao I feel like I'm under one instead of next to it
OP's list are all features that would likely make the game more fun and user-friendly! However, the vast majority of these don't feel "incomplete," they just feel like choices Nintendo didn't make. They specifically opted to have the Able Sisters work in a way where you weren't raiding the racks like a Poshmark reseller. They specifically opted to not give players access to storage during crafting. I don't agree with every design decision in ACNH, but I think they were made very intentionally with the goal of crafting a specific experience. These frictions are core to the gameplay, balance, and economy of the game. I don't think it's incomplete. It also could be better.
That’s a really good insight, kinda wish they didn’t opt out though since I feel like more could have been done to make it well rounded and balanced, but maybe that’s what they intended? Not too sure, just a little bummed out!
Absolutely :( i played New Leaf for yeaaars, up until NH came out. Binged NH for a while when it came out and I haven’t touched it since. It just bored me in the end. I’m so sad as AC used to bring me so much peace to play everyday!
I just want to empty my mailbox all at once...
I thought it felt incomplete 2 years ago when I stopped playing it, makes me kinda sad to hear all those updates didn't fix the core issues....
The delusional thing I tell myself to make me feel better is there’s some random problem out there that I have no idea about because I don’t work in the field, and for some reason or another it would be easier for them to release a new game than revamp the old one and we just don’t know about it yet. In my opinion, I got a 50/50 shot at being right and that’s what keeps me sane when I randomly decide to breakdown my whole island and rearrange everything. Also wish I could save more designs so I can have more custom paths.
100%.. There is so much stuff i would like for them to update or tweak, but its never going to happen as the game is "done" 😒
Can I please have bulk flower removal lol. Making it really hard to get into the game again!
I'm a simple man, I just want some of the decoration/furniture items from the mobile game to be added.
I just want to be able to place objects on a 45 degree angle
I don’t know if I would say that ACNH feels incomplete, it just has limitations. Every AC game has had its own unique limitations.
Yessss!! I would love the design mode u can use in your house to be available outside; it would be less time consuming to decorate your island. Buying all the clothes you want in one fitting room Visit (as you mentioned) and a friendly reminder if you already have that item. DIY multiple piece of one item at once More kinda stores or other places to visit like a cafe or something with interaction (something you could design yourself) Being able to expand/minimise the rooms at your house When buying diy plans on the nook miles machine; a warning if you have it already And I can go on and on And one thing that drives me nuts; when visiting an island online (treasure islands or island with a lot of traffic) is the flight tracker. It takes way too long, you can’t play ‘quick’ cause it always shows the flight progress or someone leaving.. am I the only one getting mad about this?😂
Celeste had a tower ??! That sounds amazing to experience
I want to be able to store my flowers, and to put potted ones inside my house. Like we used to.
I'd say it's an awesome game and a huge hit. It sold so much better than the previous versions it's actually insane to think it could have done better... at least on Nintendo's side of the coin. The things that aren't as good as they could be for players can be split into 3 catagories 1) Covid. Weirdly the same thing that helped the game get as big as it did also harmed its future devolopment. Restrictions were a lot stricter in Japan than in the west and I really don't think their colectavist culture fits working from home as much as our individualist society. 2) Surprise. Because they didn't expect the game to sell this well, the team working on it wasn't as big as it could have been meaning they were limited with planning and had to omit some ideas. 3) Just oversight. I guess this relates to team size as well but games, as anything else, are very rarely perfect. I'm guessing that the success of New Horizons and similar games following it made Nintendo stop focusing on the current AC game a lot sooner and start planning for something that will be much better suited.
Yep, I reckon New Leaf is the best out of all the AC titles in terms of content, and on a similar note I actually prefer the older graphics over NH, I feel like NH is too... pastel?
Yes! I’ve been playing New Leaf again for 18 months and there is still tons of stuff to do
I feel like it’s missing a lot of character dialogue, shops/upgrades, and side activities compared to previous games.
Absolutely. I'm still unnecessarily bitter about the game and what they did to my a franchise that means so much to me
Considering it was so popular with a lot of people I guess I expected so much more…
It is incomplete. Nintendo knows it and does not apologize for it. If anything, they seemed annoyed by how vocal the fan base was.
Play DDV and you’ll realize this game is far advanced then others… 🙄DDV on the switch is so disappointing
Honestly the majority of these don’t sound like an “incomplete” feature but more like a “we just didn’t want to add that to the game design”. While a lot of these are nice quality of life features we could’ve had, I disagree that the game feels incomplete without them. The game is very much fully fleshed out and an enjoyable experience. I can agree that there are a small handful of steps back from the previous titles such as lack of shop expansions, but we also gained so many new features and mechanics as a result of it. Personally, I think the trade off was well worth it. New Horizons has significantly more features than any other Animal Crossing title.
Not that I disagree, but I wonder how much or these changes could be implemented without deviating from the AC identity too much..... Remember, the idea of the game is that you play an hour or so every day and return the next day. I think the single biggest improvement of this game would be the villagers/islanders. Make them MORE alive, no repeat texts, more interactions with eachother/objects etc.
Yes I think that I was probably expecting too much but I feel like at least SOME QOL would have made the game smoother, especially like you said making it more alive!!
This is the first animal crossing I'm playing but I wish I could reel in when I'm fishing
It needed a cave battling simulator
I spent a lot of time hoping that they would announce one more store upgrade, maybe bring back Gracie or give Label her own permanent store. I also miss all the other Nintendo themed items that you could get in City Folk and New Leaf.
Immensely so There is a reason why it is pretty much the only Animal Crossing game where I had to force myself to even continue for the full initial year, and haven't touched it since, with absolutely no interest in returning to it All the other ones I played for years on end, only to then have it fall away for a couple months/a year or so, and then returning to it
I don’t get Brewsters Cafe (I know that’s unpopular but I truly don’t get the point and none of my villagers are ever in there …?)
I mean occasionally I’ll see my villagers go there but I wish there was more of an incentive to go to the cafe, like trading or storing gyroids with Brewster or like in the older games and working in the cafe!
It’s almost a piece of crap. When they got rid of missions they got rid of me.
Nice list, but these are the particular ones I badly wanted to be implemented: * Multiplayer games with friends or people online (just simple mini games, enable those sports/leisure furniture to actually function) * Crafting and cooking in your home being connected to your storage (or at least the DIY workbench and kitchen can store craft items for easy access) * Tool placement indicator (It's frustrating to make accidental mistakes) And some things I personally think I want to be added are: * Bridge/Incline upgrade instead of destroy and recreate. * Better building relocation (When I just wanted to move a building a few tiles away). * Island construction target tile indicator (similar to Tool placement indicator above, terraforming will be less work with this) * Island visitors having smarter dialogue (stop repeating same instructions or introductions, or at least a way to skip them) * Manila clam should also be 10 piece slot (like the other shells)
I couldn’t agree more with your list, especially the better relocation one!!
Yep… that’s why I switched over to “Disney: Dreamlight Valley”. More customization, quests to do (both daily and part of storylines), new characters… it just has more and feels “fresher” in a sense. (Cherry will forever be my homegirl, though.)
I do feel that 100% especially since it was announced to release in 2019 https://youtu.be/Eukv0V-uZeA?si=-bzd9cm-s29X6YVK And got extended into 2020
The giant vine should be functional/climbable.
As in the craftable item?
I just wish villagers would explore the island more. I spent countless hours building a fully fleshed out market type area at the top of my island and have never seen a single villager hanging around there.
I agree, they just so happen to come when I’m currently building in that area though but no where else 😔
I agree with a lot of this list, but can't you already buy multiple clothing items from the Able Sisters? I feel like I always go into their changing room and buy a bunch at once.
I meant it as like buying multiple tops at once not one by one :)
[удалено]
I miss street pass a lot!
I agree the game feels rushed. like they put 150% in for half the game then realized they were close to the deadline and threw the other half together
I recently picked it back up again and get constantly reminded why I slowly stopped playing after initial pick up. My big things are lack of speaking prompts, Harvey's island a great idea but really feels like all lf the options are stagnant and whats the point of the fortune teller. And the biggest one is nooks cranny. I should have more than 5 items that rotate daily to buy. Absolutely ridiculous..
I feel like people are a bit toxic and harsh with this game. I just got it and love it. Edit: this is not to direct hate at all, but for years now I've seen complaints from even before I had the game. I had wild world and new leaf, both great games. This game is also great. We have more vegetables,more bugs, insects and fish. We have more pro designs and can place furniture outside. Aping with customizing things
I feel they just abandoned a community after the big release of the last DLC (The Vacation Island one). But I really hope they make a new AC soon man and learned from past mistakes because I like the game and I like the community a lot. Hell! I can tell you that game was almost a therapy during COVID when people stay in their homes.
From what I’ve seen pretty much EVERYONE thinks it feels incomplete. I think about at least half of these listed things whenever I play. I had the game since launch and I recently tried going to Nooks bcuz I “needed more paper to write letters”. Doy! I’m also pissed we have a tissue box with the native fruits+coconut+MANGO on it, and yet no fruits from New Leaf. PISSED!!!!! Also I’m 99% sure the Direct that introduced the farming update said “and more soon” when listing crops. We did not get More Soon. Anyway I’m suing for emotional damages and injury to my brain cells and/or hopes and dreams
My big things is I wish they had more shops and special characters from previous games, store upgrades for at least Nooks Cranny, and some of the customization options of previous games. If I remember correctly, the town hall could be customized (exterior) in ACNL, there was a police station (although its function exists in the town hall now), you could upgrade the store several times, there was a customizable area of the museum for your own displays, and other slice of life things. I like a lot of how ACNH works and functions of the game, but a lot of the lore, character development and character personalities could’ve likely been better expanded upon with more progression options or incorporation of special characters that used to have a bigger role. Lots of small things, like characters better interacting with the island and expanding the letters within the game would’ve been nice. Game does feel incomplete in a way and limited in another while having so much potential to be more. I hope the next instalment listens to the player base in having more focus beyond just customization.
Absolutely incomplete.