Four Players and Fifteen Villagers, or Eight Players and Ten Villagers

[Alolan_Apples]

Back in the GameCube Version, we were able to have as many as 15 villagers, only to be shortened to eight in Wild World. Starting with City Folk, we consistently had ten villagers in every game.

Then in New Horizons, we were able to have eight players in one island, breaking a long trend when you can have at most four players.

Which would you rather have? More players, or more villagers?

 

[moonford]

Definitely four players and fifteen villagers.

I've never really made alternative player characters and stuck with them but I do usually have trouble with narrowing down 10 villagers for New Leaf and now New Horizons. Additionally, I feel like we'd need more land mass to accommodate 15 villagers; I'm in favour of increasing the size of the map in future games.

 

[Alolan_Apples]

I prefer having 15 villagers and four humans over 10 villagers and eight humans. I like creating alternative characters to give me more room for decoration, but eight characters is too much for me to take care of, especially with how time traveling works in ACNH. As for more or less villagers, 10 has hardly been enough villagers for the town or island. I would prefer to have more.

 

[Paperboy012305]

I'm going to be the person who chooses the lesser option and vote for more humans and less animals. I think what New Horizons did with the amount of players you can have is a great thing. Meaning you can make their houses become a thematic part of your island's theme with whatever you have on mind without letting the other villagers take up that spot with less room to decorate around.
And you don't even have to make up to 8 at a time either, just go with how many your heart desires.

While I'd love 15 villagers, it would make our maps feel overcrowded as we're going to need more acres of land if 5 more villager slots were ever added.

 

[Snek]

Its called Animal Crossing for a reason. Having more villagers would also be better for me personally because there is overlap in personalities and hobbies with some of my favourite villagers. 8 player characters is too much honestly. I prefer just 4 like in NL.

 

[Xara]

More animals and less players. I never share AC with anyone irl and usually never have more than 2-3 characters max, so being able to have 8 characters is a useless feature for me.

I've always wished that the player slots we don't use could be filled by villagers instead. For example, in New Horizons, if you only use 2/8 player slots, you can have 16 villagers instead of 10. Choosing how many player and villager slots you have could be something you do at the start of the game, and you can change it later in your game's settings or something. That way, people who want the player slots can have them, and people who want more villagers can have them.

 

[rocketspruggs]

I think having more players than villagers in a town at a time would be useful for storage purposes.

 

[Halloqueen]

While I am someone who makes as many player characters as possible in the games, whether it's 4 in the earlier games or 8 in New Horizons, I would much prefer for them to bring back the 15 villager allowance from the GameCube days. 10 villagers just feels too limited and, both in New Leaf and New Horizons, there are some villagers I've wanted to have as residents of my towns/island that simply didn't make the cut due to the limit.

The 8 player characters on the Switch are admittedly nice for someone like me, between making the island feel more lived in, letting me come up with characters with personalities and limited backstories, allowing for more opportunities to design homes (though that's unfortunately not up to snuff compared to the previous games due to the small room sizes in New Horizons) and granting me more storage space. However, I realize that I'm not really the average player; most people are probably only making one character for themself and maybe have extra characters in their town/island from family members or friends. Though, certainly, some subset of the playerbase probably makes multiple characters for the same, or other, reasons.

It's a shame that we haven't been able to have 15 villagers since the GameCube game. Maybe they don't want more than 10 nowadays since it would lead to more dialogue repeating, which would draw attention and criticism. I mean, there's already criticism at the current level, so more villagers would just make it more apparent. I don't know. Whatever the case, I wish they'd allow us to have more villagers in future games.

 

[DarthGohan1]

Either way is alright, but I think I prefer the original Gamecube mix of having up to 15 villagers. It was fun having a bigger mix of characters. Sometimes in ACNH I don't want anyone to move out, but with 15, there'd always be at least a couple I'd be ok booting for someone new to move in!

 

[AccfSally]

This is something that I had in my head for ages now:

Eight players (I guess) and 10 villagers on our islands.
I always thought that, what if Nintendo have gave us 17 villagers but only if you're the only human who lives on the island.
The amount of villagers you can have decreases if you add multiple characters to your game.

Something I said a while back on the Random thoughts thread (New Horizons). I want more villagers, I can't stand moving out villagers (that I still want) for villagers I want. (if that make sense)

I'm the only one who runs the town.

 

[Yoshi155]

More animals. I see no real reason to have that many humans unless you’re using them for… decoration, I guess. 8 is already kind of pushing it. Though, I think the amount of villagers a town can have in New Horizons is fine.

 

[DarthGohan1]

While I am someone who makes as many player characters as possible in the games, whether it's 4 in the earlier games or 8 in New Horizons, I would much prefer for them to bring back the 15 villager allowance from the GameCube days. 10 villagers just feels too limited and, both in New Leaf and New Horizons, there are some villagers I've wanted to have as residents of my towns/island that simply didn't make the cut due to the limit.

The 8 player characters on the Switch are admittedly nice for someone like me, between making the island feel more lived in, letting me come up with characters with personalities and limited backstories, allowing for more opportunities to design homes (though that's unfortunately not up to snuff compared to the previous games due to the small room sizes in New Horizons) and granting me more storage space. However, I realize that I'm not really the average player; most people are probably only making one character for themself and maybe have extra characters in their town/island from family members or friends. Though, certainly, some subset of the playerbase probably makes multiple characters for the same, or other, reasons I stated.

It's a shame that we haven't been able to have 15 villagers since the GameCube game. Maybe they don't want more than 10 nowadays since it would lead to more dialogue repeating, which would draw attention and criticism. I mean, there's already criticism at the current level, so more villagers would just make it more apparent. I don't know. Whatever the case, I wish they'd allow us to have more villagers in future games.

I never really thought about the dialogue repeating as an issue, but that's a fair point. On the other hand,with 15 villagers, there's more variety in your town, so at least for me, I probably wouldn't see each villager as often. So it could make the repetitive aspect improve.

 

[TN4U]

Is there anyone here on TBT that has taken full advantage of 8 human players on an island offline? I've never seen anyone do it to my knowledge. The most I've ever seen is 4, which is what it's been since the beginning.

Reducing to 8 animal villagers in Wild World was understandable given hardware limitations, but I honestly think that if they were to ever increase the animal villager limit past 10, it would have to happen on the next Nintendo console with upgraded hardware. I'm pretty sure we've all encountered lag spikes in populated areas of islands, even when offline. Heck, I'd rather leave the graphics the way they are (HD and not 4K), and use the next console's updated hardware capabilities on instead improving performance for more things on-screen, such as more animal villagers. I've mentioned this before in other threads, but if the City Folk concept for the next mainline game were to become expanded upon, I'd like to see more animal villagers living in a town, and they can do more than just walk around and do stuff outside. Blend in the facilities from the Happy Home games, and they can even get jobs (Nintendo, take notes if you're reading).

Having 8 human players in a town when playing online is fine, but there doesn't really need to be 8 local human players sharing a town. 4 is perfectly fine for most, and it can even be raised a bit to 6 for larger families.

 

[Holla]

I have 5 humans on my island due to my theme and it quite the chore to keep up with them all so I’d prefer more animals and less humans. 4 or 5 humans is plenty imo. I can never see myself having 8 that’s for sure.

 

[Bulbadragon]

Definitely 15 villagers. I have only had multiple player characters once or twice in AC, and I never really got into it. I like having more villagers to interact with instead. I do like the idea of having additional player character slots that can be swapped for more villager spots. I think that would make everyone happy.

 

[Sheando]

I was pretty bummed when it was revealed that we'd be doubling our island size but inexplicably not increasing the villager count at all. I don't understand why I'd want to make 8 player characters--the whole premise of the series is living in a village of talking animals. I really hope the next installment leans harder into making animal villagers more lifelike and varied, with more interactivity and more participation in the town, which would in turn make it possible to have 12-15 villagers without the dialogue becoming overwhelmingly redundant.

I agree that being able to choose between player and villager slots would be ideal, but I'm not sure how they'd design such a thing on the switch, given that the 8 potential player accounts are tied to the 8 potential accounts you can add to the switch. I don't know how you'd "block" additional player characters, particularly as multiple people might be sharing one console, and if the first person chose to max out the animals in town, the second person just wouldn't be able to sign into the game or play at all, which could become frustrating and confusing very quickly. Maybe the next game will approach player character creation differently?

 

[azurill]

I would love to have more villagers than playable characters. I would love to be able to have all penguin villagers on one island. I have only ever had four playable characters. My main island right now has 3 playable characters and my second has two. I did have plans on making two more playable characters on my second island but not sure if I will. It’s too bad you can’t use the extra playable characters plots for villagers instead.

 

[McRibbie]

I generally don't think having 15 villagers per village is a good idea even with the personality increase (you could potentially have 3 of a certain personality back in GC!), because having 10 villagers with 8 personalities is just about manageable. There's only 2 repeat personalities, you've got more of a feeling of a small, close-knit community than you would with 15... and honestly, I'm over the whole "keeping the same villagers forever and ever" thing, I wanna keep a couple of the villagers I like and cycle out the rest to keep things fresh.

I don't need to have 8 players (and I can barely come up with enough concepts to furnish 2 houses, let alone 4 or 8) but imo, I think the fact that the most popular AC games have been on handhelds has massively obscured the fact that it's always been a game designed to be shared between family members (this is also why there's 1 island per Switch!).

I think having enough space for even bigger families to have their own player character on the family Switch is more important than having more villager slots, personally. If they increased personalities even further then 15 villagers would potentially work, but let's face it, increasing personalities is an easier said than done thing (and it's not as if adding the two new personalities back in NL ended up being a net positive, given it's at least 25% of the reason for Dialogue Discourse).

While I'm admittedly just one guy talking about a hypothetical tradeoff that he doesn't even need here, yeah, I'm gonna back Team 8 Players here. I don't need it, but somebody out there does.

 

[Aerith]

More animal villagers. I don't have this problem, but I've known a lot of people who had to choose between missing one personality on their island and having a villager they loved, or having a island with all 8 personality types. Yeah there's technically two extra slots, but there are over 400 villagers to choose from.

I've never needed more than 4 player characters, although with my first island, I did make 6 for fun haha. I think 8 player characters is nice for people who have big families, but I would assume that's the minority. Plus, if you have a family that big, I doubt you're sticking to one console, lol.

 

[Alolan_Apples]

More animal villagers. I don't have this problem, but I've known a lot of people who had to choose between missing one personality on their island and having a villager they loved, or having a island with all 8 personality types. Yeah there's technically two extra slots, but there are over 400 villagers to choose from.

I've never needed more than 4 player characters, although with my first island, I did make 6 for fun haha. I think 8 player characters is nice for people who have big families, but I would assume that's the minority. Plus, if you have a family that big, I doubt you're sticking to one console, lol.

As someone who comes from a family where each of us have our own Nintendo Switches (I have three), 8-player towns would be unnecessary for us. However, it would also be good for friends who want to share an island with a family.