Did you tell yourself you’d never time travel, but still end up doing it?

[Snek]

I won't hide it...I don't make promises not to TT because I end up breaking them. However, I'm only TT'ing to get my hands on gyroids fast. Once I have a good collection of them I won't have to TT anymore. Before 2.0 I was always TT'ing because the game made it hard for me to play daily since there was hardly anything to do. Now there is plenty to do and there's no reason for me to TT too much.

 

[Darcy1978]

I have been steadfast so far and haven't tt at all yet.

 

[Luna Tsukino]

So I tt a lot. Although for the most part I've mostly behaved myself with this new update. Except harvs island's stalls I tt to unlock them all ^^;. Once HHP came out though I've only tt'ed once, and the only reason I did was because my 3 year old daughter was getting upset she couldn't see any fireworks out the window on Nov 5 (UK bonfire night) so I time travelled to august so she could cuddle and watch fireworks on the island then I went right back to local time.

 

[Loriii]

I always say that I wouldn't TT every time I start a new Animal Crossing game, but it never ends well, since I get really impatient filling up my villager roster (campsite resetting, moving villagers in from the mystery island, etc.).

 

[Millysaurusrexjr]

YES lmao.
When the game first came out, I didn't time travel for a month.. then I did it one day, to get through some major landscape changes (moving villager houses, building bridges and inclines, etc) and then.. never stopped

And with this update, I sorta thought "maybe don't time travel" but now I've got all the RVs and lots of gyroids.. so... mission failed lol

 

[Jhine7]

I told myself I wouldn't time-travel, at least when first playing the game. That lasted for a couple months but as soon as I got into trading online, all bets were off.

 

[Sheando]

I TT very lightly, but only to catch up when I’ve taken a break. So if I stop playing on August 1 for two weeks, and I have a villager birthday on August 6th, the next time I pick up the game, I’ll set the date to the 6th and then continue forward about 5 in-game days at a time until I reach real time, usually over several play sessions. This helps me not feel stressed and overwhelmed about missing events if something comes up in real life. I never TT past the real date or TT to move villagers out, change building locations, build projects, or basically do anything faster. That would ruin the game for me. I only use it to make sure I can experience recent holidays and special events on my own schedule if I need to.

 

[Envy]

I have never time traveled in NH.

 

[Sweetley]

I never managed to stop completely with the tting. I got so much used to it over the years that it became a normal part of my playthrough now. I don't exaggerate however, most of the time I just skip a few days since I'm a bit of a impatient person.

 

[moon_child]

For those who say that time travelling is not cheating, here some food for thought though.
(I'm not actively taking a stance either way).

Animal crossing is a social game that encourages trading.
Items and materials can take a lot of work and or irl time to get.

When someone time travels, they get huge advantages in this field.

Such as being able to time travel back and forth to easily get all the gulliver items multiple times a day.

That could easily take a non time travelling player over a year to do.

So this pushes people who don't time travel out of the online economy.

I've seen this many times myself where people have gone to sell something they have worked really hard on, just to find that it is so common place that it's basically worthless.

As I said, I'm not taking a stance either way on if it should or should not be done, and you can certainly say that the community is not a part of the game so it doesn't count, but I personally can't say time travelling is a completely harmless thing to do that affects no one else

I still don’t see it as a problem because of the following reasons :
- Time traveling to get items catalogued still requires a lot of time, work and in game money. People who do that so they could trade items invest those things in their game too. Instead of leisurely enjoying their game, they chose to TT excessively to amass the items they could sell / trade to others. They invested time and effort and legitimate in game money to buy all those items and if they want certain compensation for that and other people are willing to pay them whether in in game money or other in game items, then for me that is legitimate. Now duplicating things and hacking…that’s another story.
- I understand some people do overpricing and such but it’s more of a them problem rather than a problem arising from time traveling. In any case, if we’re talking about trading then the buyers will have to weigh their options whether they think what the seller is asking for is fair or not.
- For people who want to sell but are pushed out of the economy because other people got their chances sooner, well then that’s real life and that’s business. It is but natural that the one who offers ahead gets the profit. But like I said, I don’t see it as a TT problem because whether they got their stocks in days vs months vs years, as long as they legitimately got it (by investing time and effort because it’s not easy to keep loading the game over and over to just buy stuff I personally don’t even have the patience for that) and they didn’t get it through hacking and duplicating then I see no problem at all.

 

[Jessi]

I usually don't time travel, but I do when I want to get villagers out. Waiting for a bubble makes me impatient lol

 

[Vintage Viola]

Yes, LOL! I still didn’t do it as much as I normally use to though.

 

[SirQuack]

I used to time-travel but not as much anymore. I just like taking things slowly, day by day, especially after the 2.0 update came out. No need to rush!

 

[Bizhiins]

Yes, I decided on a complicated layout for my villager’s home and got really impatient waiting every day for the reconstruction to happen. So I time traveled just so that would get done faster.

 

[SnowHunterWing]

I time-traveled back in the days of Wild World and City Folk, but I never do anymore and I never feel the need to either. I have nothing against people that do time travel, but I feel like it takes the fun out of the game. I've since learned that Animal Crossing (for me, at least) should be a game about patience. I like to play it every day for about half an hour or an hour or so and just leave it at that. Every other game that I play is very intense and is built around you playing that game all day, every day for the rest of your life, so I think having a game like New Horizons where I can take my time with it is a fun change of pace. I just think that if I tt'd all the time, I'd be done with everything too quickly.

 

[StarlitGlitch]

I think starting with CF (or at least NL) it's the same for me. At first, I won't TT at all. Then, after several months if I miss something I'll go back a few hours if I really want to. After like a year I may go back a few days if I missed something. E.g. Recently it was my birthday and Halloween but I went out on a trip and didn't bring my Switch. After the trip I went back to be able to play both of them. But, I can't think of any instances where I've TT'd forward...

In WW after years of playing I remember messing with TT and going to New Years on 2099 etc. and afterwards it definitely felt different. It's still the only one I feel comfortable doing such intensive TTing for (like when I've made YT videos on it).

 

[ladyphantomofmusic]

The only time I have time traveled for through more then a day. And yes I am being specific, as I don't see re-setting the time to earlier in the day real TT as I do it if I missed something, or wanted to have it light out. But the only time I have done over multiple days is when I have missed a day or few (at one point several months), when back to the last day I played, and then moved the time forward every day until I got caught up. For example, had a I not been on today, tomorrow I would go on, set the date to today, play it out, then reset it to tomorrow and keep playing. I never go back and forth for stuff, I just use it to catch up.

 

[AquaMarie]

Generally I don't TT, but is an exception.

I work three 12 hour shifts a week, so I might adjust the clock so that I have a little more time to play on holidays if necessary. Like this year Christmas is on a Saturday and I'll be working. I plan to not turn on my Switch at all on that Saturday and Sunday, then when I have my day off on Monday I'll turn the clock back to Christmas and play. My husband and I will be celebrating our Christmas that day, so it will still "feel" like Christmas.

I NEVER tt in order to accomplish things faster. I love the anticipation of taking the game one day at a time.

 

[heartdrops]

Yes, I failed in NL and failed again in NH. It started with just TTing backwards because I missed an event then I became impatient and did it to move villagers in/out. After the update though, I've been refraining from TT.

 

[ranch]

I've been playing AC since the gamecube one (minus lew leaf) and for some reason I was really determined not to TT, ever since I was a kid. idk really why not, I just decided it and got stubborn I guess. and I literally never ever TT'ed until about a year into NH, and honestly I'm actually pretty glad I did? it's changed the way I play the game, but in a way that I find just as fun, so I don't mind.

I usually TT by moving forward a day at a time for about a week, then I snap back to the real day/time and restart the cycle, so my island is always on real time aside from those "time flexes" where I replay a single week several times. I like to imagine my villagers spot me in multiple places at once and it's just a science fiction "multiple timelines converging" plotline haha

as for why I started doing it, I think being able to see so many people's cool ideas online this time around made a difference - I'd get an idea and be excited to implement it ASAP and just got tired of waiting when I had the motivation now, haha.
honestly it's also just because I have way less free time than I used to, so now I kinda play in big bursts on the weekend and make up for the lost week with TT. I think I used to see TT as "defeat"somehow, but I definitely just embrace it these days