Hidden Problems in ACNL that may not be problems, but are

[Alolan_Apples]

Animal Crossing: New Leaf may be the best Animal Crossing game, but it's sure not a stranger to in-game flaws, even after the amiibo update. Some old issues (such as beetle sensitivity, sea basses, grass decay, and Resetti) are still in as we are also aware of the new issues created since the game's release (such as villagers moving in front of players' houses, Club Tortimer, the new luck system, and animals not giving PWP suggestions when we expect them). In addition, there is a problem that used to not be a problem back then, but now is. That would be the Group Mechanic.

Today's entry would be about the downsides for each feature that improved Animal Crossing, either back in 2013 when it first came out worldwide or in 2016 when the amiibo update was released. And no, they aren't stuff we seek more improvements of, but they are the disadvantages of improving the game.

1. Too many items - the good thing about introducing more items is that it creates a larger palette when it comes to decorating our houses. We have more themes, more combinations when it comes to mixing themes (to get more inspirations), and more of the other items to make your houses more interesting. Of course, we'll also need even more items to make ideas more complete. But here's the new problem: if you are a completionist that likes to collect all items, adding more items is going to make that even more difficult. What's even worse is that you are now being graded on how much you have collected.
   I'm not going to lie to you. There are now 1,764 furniture items to collect. This includes everything classified with the green leaf. That includes Sanrio items, non-AC amiibo items like the Splatoon items, DLC items, fortune cookie items, holiday items, island items, campground items, and of course, furniture you can buy at Timmy's and Tommy's store. Before the amiibo update, there was 1,214 furniture items (not including DLC), with at least 407 of them coming from a furniture series like the Gorgeous Series and Ice Series. Not to mention, but even if you only got furniture from classified furniture series, furniture themes, and furniture sets, there's still a couple of collections you have yet to get, like the winter sports items, patchwork items, studio items, and arcade items. Now, we have even more to collect since the welcome amiibo update.
   If you want to know how many items there are, here are the statistics:
   • 2,076 furniture pieces, carpets, and wallpaper. This is much more than how many items in Wild World in total.
   • 1,160 clothing items, which includes tops, bottoms, dresses, everything that appears in the clothing catalog. That's almost as many items as non-DLC, not regional-exclusive furniture items before the update.
   • 68 letter sets, 91 songs, 131 gyroids, 33 works of art, 72 insects, 72 fish, 30 seafood, and 67 fossils.
   • 147 of the other stuff, including flowers, fruits, and junk.
   • 3,947 items is the total
   If you want to collect them all, I wish you good luck, because this is going to be a long and tedious quest. But one improvement Nintendo can make is to rely on more customization, where you can change an item of one type into any theme as you wish, with any color. This will cut back on how many items are in the game to collect, as you can also see new items you never seen in previous games like Robo End Table, Mush Sofa, Green Stereo, and Sleek TV.
2. Making Money has become the core mechanic - making money has always been a major feature in Animal Crossing since the GameCube Version, but it hasn't always been the main requirement of playing Animal Crossing. You only need money to get more clothes, expand your house, or get more furniture. Talking to villagers has been more entertaining back then since their dialogue was more interesting, wasn't as repetitive, and had a separate option to do jobs. But as the series progressed by, villagers have gotten less interesting, and more features was being added. Making money is now the core mechanic, and you're going to need a lot of money as you play the game. You'll need it to pay off your houses' debts, to buy more items, to build PWPs, and of course, as a median of exchange when trading with other people online. Even donating to the Museum requires making Bells. We know that each work of art costs Bells when purchasing from Redd. Even the catching of fish, insects, and seafood requires that. You'll need bells to buy a shovel, a net, and a fishing rod. Wanna get perfect town status? You'll need to spend money on flowers and saplings. Wanna grow hybrids? You'll need to spend money on flowers and a watering can. Wanna make a boat load of money? You can go to the island, but even Kapp'n will charge 1,000 Bells per round trip. Yes, money making is now taken more seriously.
   When you start a new town, the only way to make money is by shaking trees to get the fruit, picking flowers, and picking up seashells and taking them to the Re-Tail. When you have enough, you can buy a shovel, and start hitting money rocks to get more money. You can also get a fishing rod or net to catch insects and fish to sell.
3. Lower bar of difficulty - another hidden problem with the game is how easy the games have gotten for Animal Crossing. We like to see the frustrating stuff go away, but one trade-off we're seeing is challenges going away. Sure that they can make sea basses more common and beetles more sensitive, but that's not even gonna make the game harder. Take for instance, Redd. Now he sells only art, and at least one piece is legit. Not only that, but the producers slightly altered some of the art to make it easy to tell if it's real or fake. Another example is money making. With some rare summer fish and insects being available all year on the island, and the turnip price glitch fixed, you can make a whole lot of money so quickly. If you use time traveling, you can get what you want a lot faster.
4. Animals are too nice - Some people actually complained about this. Although we don't like mean animals, the Cranky and Snooty villagers are too nice to where we can't even tell if they are nice or mean. Back in the GameCube version, they used to be a loy meaner. Other characters that used to be too mean were Phyllis and Resetti. And yes, Resetti is still strict, and Phyllis is still rude, but they weren't as mean as they used to be either.
5. Series is becoming too realistic - video games have always been more like a fantasy, and Animal Crossing is no different. But some of the stuff is starting to be realistic. For instance, the hourly music is not as catchy as it used to be, as it sounds like it well matches the hours they correspond to. The seasons have been fixed to match actual seasons. The furthest point where the grass and trees can change colors after the season change in September is the brown grass and leaves like we see in early December instead of the gray grass and trees. Celebrating the holidays became like actual holidays. Although this may not be a problem to some, video games making more sense to reality wouldn't be interesting to some.

That's all for this entry. There could be other problems to discuss, but these are all I could think of and write in this blog entry.