Do you feel pressured to play every day?

[lyradelphie04]

For some reason, I used to feel the pressure to go into New Leaf every day and do the following:

Water all the flowers (when the Beautiful Town Ordinance isn't set)
Dig up all the fossils and the pitfall seed
Find the money rock
Find the fake rock
Buy the fortune cookies
Buy the flowers, bush shoots, and saplings
Check the fossils with Blathers
Sell leftover fossils, ore, extra fortune cookie things
Collect all seashells
Sell seashells except for a giant clam shell
Have Cyrus make a music box and/or complete some random project
Plant flowers and saplings
Store bush shoots
Talk to all my villagers
Buy something from either the Able Sisters or Kicks
Go to the Island and get at least 100k bells worth of stuff
Do an island tour and get at least 20 medals
Put 50k towards the loans
Put 50k towards a PWP
Check both turnips prices every day
Shake all nonfruit trees
Sell any bees/hives I find

For the past 3 days though, I've been very lax and never really go on for more than doing the fossils thing and it's made the game a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. What has your experience been with pressure to do a bunch every day? Is it more of a completionist attitude to get that invested? How has this idea of pressure to play and such effected your experience on other animal crossing titles? Has one game been particularly heavier in pressure than others?

 

[Neb]

Ever since New Horizons has released, I've woken up every morning to play the game while drinking coffee. It's the closest thing I have to a routine anymore. Most days I spend about 30-60 minutes digging fossils, picking fruit, and checking turnip prices. I only talk to villagers if I feel like it.

 

[Chibiusa]

The game is what you want it to be. The minimum amount I do when I get on is find my four fossils, see if Gulliver is here, talk to my villagers, check the shops, and sign off. If I create a bunch of goals for myself I do the amount of work I feel like doing to complete a goal for that day. I used to feel pressured to play daily in past games due to villagers randomly leaving if you didn't catch them at the right time. Since this game doesn't do that, I don't feel like I have to push myself to play literally every day.

 

[LadyDestani]

In New Leaf, I do feel some pressure to play every day to talk to my villagers, make sure I keep up with who is moving out, and complete my daily chores. I feel like I'm missing out if I don't play. But since I find the game relaxing, that's not really a problem. It only becomes an issue if I have real-life events that keep me from having time to log on all day and that's rare.

Initially, I was doing a lot of daily chores and I felt a lot better when I cut down on some of those things. I enacted the Beautiful Town Ordinance so I don't have to water my flowers, except for any hybrids I want to breed. I buried my pitfall seed and fossils on the beach after completing the fossil section of my museum, so I don't have to search for them anymore. I stopped shaking trees and searching for the money rock because it was killing my grass.

Now my daily chores include only the following:
- Talk to all of my villagers and do a few of their requests if I feel like it.
- Dig up any bamboo shoots that spawned.
- Pick any extra flowers or weeds that spawned.
- Find the ore rock and any gyroids if they spawned.
- Look for special visitors like Saharah, Redd, etc.
- Check out the shops for anything new that I need or want to buy.

Everything else that I do in the games like working on badges, landscaping, going to the island, fishing or bug catching is all bonus stuff basically. I do those things as I have time and only when I feel like it.

 

[Clock]

I feel the pressure to play at least every day on NH to check on everyone, but I feel pressure in NL once in a while just to check and stop someone from moving out.

 

[Xara]

kind of. i feel a bit anxious if i don’t complete my daily tasks - i don’t like going more than a day without playing as trying to catch up is a bit overwhelming for me aha

 

[Vextro]

I don't really feel pressured, I like to go at my own pace as I don't like doing huge play sessions at once. I left the game for a week and felt bad that I left my villagers as they were asking where I went, so now I go on daily or once every two-three days to make sure I talk to them because I love my villagers

 

[Chanes]

I can think of lots of games I have played and that became part of the daily routine for a long time but then just faded away, ACNH is taking up a big chunk of my time but I know that there will come a day that it won't, so I am really enjoying it and enjoying the time I spend with it.

 

[Romaki]

Kinda. I want to check in and see what's up. But eventually I always got bored of Animal Crossing and just abandoned it completely after a year.

 

[GalacticGhost]

I play every day to check my shops, hit rocks and all that, but I don't really feel pressured to do it...? It takes a bit of time that could probably be spent doing better things, but I don't really mind. I just really love to play Animal Crossing lol.

 

[Seastar]

I used to feel like this until I learned how to make sure my villagers don't leave during a break.

 

[buny]

there was a lot of pressure to play everyday in New Leaf, which was the one thing that i actually really didn't like about Animal Crossing. I didn't find it motivating, if that was the developers' intention. It only gave me stress, cause no matter how busy i was i had to think about making time for AC, which, when you already have a lot on your mind, is kinda overwhelming.

with ACNH tho, it's very different! I can skip days if i don't have time to play, and the game doesn't punish me. this actually makes me want to play more and has made the game so much more relaxing

 

[Alessio]

Thanks to amiibo cards i don't have the nightmare of losing my villagers even if I take a long break from the game.

 

[Faux]

Thanks to amiibo cards i don't have the nightmare of losing my villagers even if I take a long break from the game.

They can't move out without your permission no matter how long you play. : )

---

Anyway, nope. I have severe ADHD and get hyper-fixated on things, and burn myself out pretty bad and have to put it down for a little while very often.
I don't actively do any hobby every day, barring necessities, without a break. And I remind myself that it's exactly that: a hobby. Not my job.

 

[~Kilza~]

I've never felt pressured to play every day with New Horizons, nor with any of the previous entries in the series. If I play daily it's because I want to (which is still the case with NH right now).

 

[axaniao]

No but I play everyday anyway lol