Discussion: Do you think people are less attached to their save files than in New Leaf?

[Pondo]

Overall, i think i’m just not attached to the game itself anymore. The thought of booting up my save file doesn’t bring me excitement or joy, nor does restarting the save file. I’d have to find someone who i know won’t steal the items i’d want to keep (and there’d be a few trips), and by the time i’d find another island layout i liked, i wouldn’t even want to keep playing.

Spoiler: incoming rant:

It’s only been out for 2ish years and i’m already bored of it.
I’ll summarize it in one word: milquetoast. NH is bland, flavourless. They give you your canvas (blank island) and tell you to go buck wild. But what then? Your villagers all tell you the same thing, and no personality seems different from another. If you pay off your loans, you get the biggest house and… nothing! Nothing else. No grand prize. You get everything for the museum and you get… a poster? First time you get the 5-star island, and you get!! A K.K. Slider cutscene that some of your villagers can miss out on if they’re still moving in and unpacking boxes. It’s… disappointing. What else is there to say?

 

[VanitasFan26]

Thank you so much for writing this, I couldn’t agree more. I really think that most likely neither the tone of the game nor the way people in general engage with it have changed much at all. The same complaints happened with new leaf, and the same unfavorable comparisons to new horizons and other prior games will occur with the next game no matter what changes.

Yeah that goes the same for all communities in general and from what I understand they seem to be scared about change. I know some people in these communities want change, but the problem is that they are scared of change when its done in either a good way or a bad way.

This similar topic reminds me of Pokémon since I remember there was a lot of heated debates and controversy about Pokémon Legends Arceues not looking good because of the graphics but when the actual game came out they enjoyed the gameplay despite the issues with the graphics. So I wanna give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt that they might be doing something new that will change Animal Crossing in the future for better or for worse. Me personally I will go in with a open mind and try my best not to expect so much because given how many times in the past that I critized ACNH I come to realize that expecting so much will only lead to disappointment

 

[-Blue-]

I'm definitely not as attached to NH as I was with NL or the other games. Someone will tell me it's nostalgia or whatever, but it's still how I feel. I would never delete my island just because I'm not as attached to the game as the previous versions.

I've said it on a few other threads, but the main things I miss the most are...

1. (mostly for NL) How progression based the game was. So that right there gave me a lot of charm/attachment. With NH there wasn't much of that outside of the tutorial script and the villagers, Nook, and game rarely acknowledge the success/milestones and or your island's anniversary.

2. Multiplayer is kind of weak compared to what was offered with Club Tortimer. So since I've never really played with my friends (they ditched the game early 2020) I can't form any attachments there either.

3. And the villagers are just as watered down as they were in NL. Only a bit more because they don't have as many activities to do with them and their dialogue is less engaging. It wasn't as noticeable with NL because there was so much at the start to take my attention away how weak the villagers were. That wasn't the case with NH. It was glaringly obvious for me and it bothered me a lot. The games weren't carried by the villagers, but with decorating being the sole focus and that not being my thing for why I got NH, the lack of character depth hurt the game for me.

These are the three things that gave me such good memories with the other games and they are lacking or nonexistent in the game (at least in my opinion) So my attachment to the game/my island is not as strong as the other versions.

The QoL updates definitely make the game have less headaches and random probability. Which is great.

 

[Laliluli]

For me, yeah. There are 2 reasons. 1. New Horizons isn't around as long as New Leaf, 2. New Leaf was more focused on the dialogue, it seems like. New Horizons is focused on decorating, and it's ok, but people overall get more attached to something that speaks to them. And for me, it was I didn't have a lot of friends irl, so I replaced the real social contact with my animal friends.

 

[Corrie]

I agree. I remember the island signatures on this forum during NL that had their town name, fruit, villager list, dreamy list, etc and people were working toward that goal.

I feel like the lockdown affected this in NH. Everyone binged the game cause there was nothing else to do and therefore completed their towns faster than they did in NL. Therefore they got bored and deleted their island to work on another theme.

 

[Mr_Persona]

More attached to NL towns than NH island. I wouldn't want to restart the island though because how everything is expensive in game.

 

[Balverine]

I'm the opposite, actually lol
I reset my NL town constantly with no issue, but I've only reset once in NH and it took a lot of thought and consideration

 

[Speeny]

I'll only speak for myself and honestly say that I have more nostalgia for New Leaf. It was the first AC game that I invested a significant amount of time into despite no longer having a save file.

 

[Tindre]

The fact that you can change everything to your liking means that you can do the same to a new island. Whereas New Leaf was more unique and you had to make the best of what you got, so you would also get more attached to it because if that. And you could never have the same again without insane amount of work.

 

[-Raven-]

I agree that New Leaf has that progression gating but if you like setting goals for yourself then New Horizons has something like that too. It doesn’t feel the same because it’s intrinsic rather than extrinsic but getting enough bells, resources, and looking through enough items to get inspiration for and design chunks of your island. To me the “building main street” equivalent came from designing different areas of my island and realising how I wanted it to look. To me it really does feel like I built something. I just had to decide what it was myself, and sure, it isn’t the same or realised the same by the game, and there are less NPCs, but the progression is still there and if anything it’s more uniquely mine.

I’m very attached to my island because of that progression. It’s like a culmination of all the inspiration I’ve taken from things I like and I made areas I just love jumping and climbing around. To me New Leaf is actually in a more awkward position- great game but it definitely started moving toward town customisation… and yet really couldn’t go all the way. Why can’t I move certain buildings after placing them? Why can’t I nudge houses around at all, like I don’t care if they MOVE IN on an awkward spot, but there’s NO way to suggest where villagers should go unless you’re willing to place tons of patterns (and that only came after WA update which is even worse). That doesn’t make me more attached to my NL towns for their imperfections. Villager hunting was DEFINITELY a thing during NL, there were a few villagers people went nuts for. People definitely wanted specific villagers in their town. Yet if you had them and they moved out you were pretty out of luck. Don’t get me started on plot resetting. As unfun as villager hunting is in NH it’s leagues better than what you had to do if you weren’t buying/trading for a certain villager in NL. God forbid you wanted all your villagers in good spots in NL.

My NH town is imperfect too, but in NL the imperfections are more frustrating and it makes me want to reset my town, yet honestly any NL layout is never going to be good enough. My second town has a layout I’m pretty happy with as far as NL goes and yet I still get bored of it, not being able to do just a bit more there, not being able to just lay out plots for houses so I can relax instead of having to lay out patterns (seriously, why was that not a feature by NL). In my NH town I can work around the imperfections in my own design, size limitations, beach/rock shapes and the unmoveable river mouth/services/airport. In GC/WW I can get attached to town maps because they aren’t giving me any illusion of more control or distracting from the life sim aspect, it’s somewhere I was plonked down and I make my own stuff up within that. I think CF maps are way too large and I hate them for that but that’s its own issue.

For me NL is in an awkward spot, and always has been, where I wanted to make a nice town with the PWPs but the limitations of what you can’t change, villagers moving to totally random spots, where you can place PWPs and limits of custom paths have always made it seem strained. It isn’t much like the game thrust you in its own world as the old games, since they started giving customisation in NL and that makes me want to go wild, but when it comes to the outdoors NL is also very limited in that respect compared to NH. I’ll be real, the limitations of NL decoration bothered me since the start. It’s not something that’s just annoying me in retrospect. In my original town I really wanted a bridge next to my house but it was just ONE tile too close to the river and I can’t do ANYTHING about that. Some people made amazing towns in NL, but I’ve seen amazing towns even in WW (no hacks- look up Suncombe or that classic video where someone made space patterns and made their town look like a space station). NL is in an awkward spot, it’s much better as a life sim than NH, still missing some things from the older games so it doesn’t capture everything from them, but obviously isn’t as free as NH.

This just turned into me ranting about why NL is in a bit of a weird position and I honestly kept repeating some points, but what I mean to get at is that this is why I’m not very attached to any NL town. They’re all too imperfect for me, but not really in the fun way the old games were, where you kind of made do- NL gives you too many tools for me to be immersed like that and attached the way I am to GC/WW towns. It’s weird, because I think the game is great and I have a lot of fond memories of it, I just honestly wouldn’t be upset to lose any of my NL towns.

 

[skarmoury]

Definitely depends on the player, but my opinion may be an unpopular one: I love my save file in ACNH way more than ACNL exactly because of how accessible and customized things are now.

Let me clarify that I’m a huge decorating fan, so I’m obviously more biased towards customization than anything else. The difficulty of customization in ACNL didn’t feel rewarding for me; it dragged my enjoyment down and eventually exhausted me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved ACNL, but I have never finished a town simply because I couldn’t execute my vision of it well enough. To roughly compare my experiences between ACNL & ACNH:

500 hours into ACNH: I have a vision for my island, good layout, good progress. My villagers are concerned with me but are still here. Overall happy.
500 hours into ACNL: I have some (??) vision for my town, but Kid Cat has moved right in the middle of my road and bushes so now my layout is ruined. Fuchsia has still not given me the waiting shed PWP and it’s the one I desperately need. My villager houses are scattered and I don’t know what to do with this. I need another character to store custom paths. Oops, I went on hiatus for a bit and now Diana is gone forever.

The little inconveniences just piled up on me and I felt I was making very little progress with my town in ACNL. I always envied the beautiful towns and felt frustrated with my town because I couldn’t seem to get things decorated my way. I do love my villagers dearly and the game gives me major nostalgic vibes, but its customization features felt rigid and inaccessible. At some point I just went ’heck it‘ and poured myself more into HHD, because at least there I could edit to my heart’s content.

In essence, I never really had a proper town I could say I’m attached to when it comes to ACNL. Out of all my attempts, there was never a town I completed, so I essentially don’t have anything to come back to (and even if I did come back to my saved file in ACNL, I’m sure one of my beloved villagers has left). It feels pretty high maintenance and some features I really liked were locked behind random chance, so instead of wanting to play more for the feeling of achievement, it just exhausted me. In ACNH I saw major, major progress with my island and I’m very dearly attached to my first island (Milkiss) as it was the first proper layout I’ve completed in the whole AC series. I still think ACNL is a great game, it was definitely revolutionary and nostalgic, but content-wise I much prefer what I’ve done in ACNH.

(To be frank, ACNL was my first proper introduction to Animal Crossing so I have little to no reference what it was like the past games. I’m not fully big on life simulation games unless there’s big customization, like in Sims.)

 

[Belle T]

After thinking about it, I'd have to say that the only thing really keeping me from starting over on New Leaf is that I really like the selection of villagers that I have and wouldn't trade them for anything. I was skeptical about getting New Horizons because of the (admittedly deserved) cynicism towards the game which described it as essentially New Leaf but worse. While I wouldn't entirely disagree with that notion, I dare say that New Horizons rekindled my affection for the game. My first time playing felt both familiar and fresh, and I've been having more fun putting my island together than I ever did putting my town together in New Leaf.

Part of me wonders if it's the simple act of allowing players to place furniture outside. I was never particularly appreciative of New Leaf's decision that every single PWP must take a full day in order to complete, even if you have the necessary funds, and while I enjoyed downloading and putting down custom paths, it was very clear that how the playerbase was using them was not how they were intended to be used, and having to off-load additional patterns onto other player characters was rather daunting.

There is still a multitude of things I prefer about New Leaf, of course, which I do so wish could be brought over to New Horizons, but I found New Horizons much easier to pick up and play from the very beginning compared to New Leaf. However, this isn't to say that I prefer New Horizons to New Leaf overall. Each game is good at one thing and less good at another. It's mostly that I wouldn't say I'm less attached to my current save file than I am for New Leaf.

(There's also the fact that restarting my island in New Horizons means getting the DIY recipes again, which I just do not want to do.)

 

[Imbri]

I've played all the games in turn, as they came out and was invested in each of them. Was I proud of my NL town at the time? Yes, I put a lot of work into it and was happy with it, though dreamers/visitors criticized aspects of the layout. Still, it was for me to play, so I did it my way (within the confines of the game).

Am I pleased with my NH island? Absolutely. It has taken me 2 years to get it the way I want it - layout, decorations, villagers, etc. I have talked about it a good bit, but I don't do so as much, because there is so much pushback that NL is a better game (not what I think people here are saying, but we've all seen the arguments elsewhere and how it never ends well).

Maybe it's that I'm an older player, but I don't feel the need to talk about it all the time. I still play every day - I've only missed 2 days since launch, I am working on completing my catalog and finding new items I can swap out to tweak decorations, and I have my original set of villagers, whom I am very attached to.