AC switch idea
Alot of people enjoy different aspects of the animal crossing series, some people enjoy the customizations, but don't like being mayor, I think I have a solution to where you technically have all the customization power but you are basically a resident of the village like everyone else (with an amazing resume)
A quick little idea for this is if you were able to send data from new leaf to the switch to have your OC from new leaf as either the mayor or the retired mayor that goes down with Tortimer to the island while your switch OC is the assistant of the new mayor, which I hope to be Isabelle. having a small connected story between the games would be alot of fun.
Jobs!
As a resident to any town, in real life you'd need jobs in order to keep up with Tom Nook's reign of terror he is going to start putting people through (now that I think about it, he bought alot of towns from people, so he may be the mayor himself). A bunch of odd jobs to keep you busy should do the trick!
1. Your main job when you get to the town would be the assistant to the mayor, where you suggest public works projects to them so you can have the same customization feel, if they're not ready for that progression then they'd simply reject it. The town's villagers would tell you when they want a specific PWP, just like how they would tell Isabelle in new leaf.
2. You could also have alittle bit of happy home designer in the mix, as in whenever a villager moved in you would help them find the perfect spot for their house and even decorate it with the furniture they brought plus whatever you are allowed to use under a given budget (furniture isn't cheap, some limitations should be applied, possibly going off of the villager's income). This would solve alot of people's problems in where villagers move, since in happy home designer you also technically tell them where they are gonna move before they do it.
3. Then the other job would be Brewster's cafe (a returning one), where you serve drinks to customers but actually get bells as payment instead of coffee beans and machines. Maybe they can make this job less of a mini game and more of an interaction game. I know alot of people in real life who would serve coffee and talk, you could act like a coffee-bartender, sparking up conversations when you get the chance meaning more times to learn coffee preferences and even what the villager/special guest's favorite items are.
4. The museum would be more of volunteer work, taking care of the creatures you've caught would be fun, a great way to learn about creatures would be to have hands on interaction while blathers continues to ramble as you play with them/feed them.
There are other jobs that the player could have, like stage manager at Club LOL (if that ever returns), jobs at the clothing store, items store, and so on, but it would be nice to have them do little cute things like tomodachi life would do, like have your own villagers be working at some of these places to make ends meet.
Theres so much that could happen with the switch animal crossing, and likely what I think may not happen, but a more mesh of the entire series would be nice to have. there could be other ways to do this, but I think this would be interesting. so for the question do I want AC switch to be a new game or and old game, I would love it for it to be a totally new game.