idea: villager personalities

[LambdaDelta]

what if they overhauled villager personalities so that they aren't strictly gendered anymore? or perhaps even take it a step further, and have it so villagers can also have hybrid traits of 2 (or possibly even more) personalities?

so like for some examples, a female lazy jock villager as one that loves athletic things and wants to work out themselves, but ends up slacking off most of the time; or a male peppy cranky villager that is generally reserved and sour, except with those they consider close friends, where they then become super energetic and supportive

super doubtful it'd happen, and would certainly take a ton of work to implant properly if they hybridized the personalities, but I feel like this would def do a lot to solve the issue of villager personalities feeling rather cut and paste across the board

 

[Kalle]

I think this can be done with sub-personalities of current types. For example: a lazy cat villager would have some unique dialogue in comparison to a lazy dog or elephant. It would provide enough unique dialogue so that not all of the current personalities sound the same and the devs wouldn't have to pick and choose which villagers would have mixed personalities.

 

[smonikkims]

I like what Kalle had to say personally. It would be nice if that unique dialogue was spliced in with all the regular dialogue, along with maybe even one or two pieces of villager-specific dialogue. I don't think it makes sense to hybridise every villager in existence considering that would make them very different from their already-established personalities for no good reason, and it would be weird if only a few or only the new villagers got this treatment.

 

[LambdaDelta]

I think this can be done with sub-personalities of current types. For example: a lazy cat villager would have some unique dialogue in comparison to a lazy dog or elephant. It would provide enough unique dialogue so that not all of the current personalities sound the same and the devs wouldn't have to pick and choose which villagers would have mixed personalities.

I was thinking of this, but it still feels rather railroaded to strict personality types to me, esp if it was to make the sub personalities strictly based on the animal species: ex: cat=lazy, dog=jock, elephant=cranky, wolf=smug, etc

wouldn't be against though, just that it feels like putting a bandaid on the issue rather than addressing it outright

- - - Post Merge - - -

I like what Kalle had to say personally. It would be nice if that unique dialogue was spliced in with all the regular dialogue, along with maybe even one or two pieces of villager-specific dialogue. I don't think it makes sense to hybridise every villager in existence considering that would make them very different from their already-established personalities for no good reason, and it would be weird if only a few or only the new villagers got this treatment.

fwiw I never mentioned hybridizing every one, so some would still be pure personality types

and some villagers have changed personalities before. which granted it was generally just to one of the new types, but it does show that changing up personalities isn't strictly off the table

and hey, for all these ones, they could just take the main personality and mix in the secondary one with it. so the villager is different, but not completely so. like say something like making cheri a lazy peppy villager. so she still has her peppy traits, but has now picked up lazy ones too

which could also be very easily established as character growth of sorts. I mean people don't stay exactly the same throughout their lives, so why should the villagers too?

 

[Kalle]

and hey, for all these ones, they could just take the main personality and mix in the secondary one with it. so the villager is different, but not completely so. like say something like making cheri a lazy peppy villager. so she still has her peppy traits, but has now picked up lazy ones too

This is essentially what I explained to you except with the concept of mixed personalities. Instead of mixing the current 8 personalities, what I proposed is have unique dialogue and interests to each animal breed (around 20) that mix with each personality's dialogue and interests.

 

[LambdaDelta]

This is essentially what I explained to you except with the concept of mixed personalities. Instead of mixing the current 8 personalities, what I proposed is have unique dialogue and interests to each animal breed (around 20) that mix with each personality's dialogue and interests.

isn't this just making a sightly different flavor of the same exact thing? like chocolate ice cream with caramal vs chocolate ice cream with butterscotch?

honestly sounds even less appealing than how I interpreted it before. which sounded like about a 10% difference between the different species of the same personality at most, but now sounds just very much the same across the board, with just certain sections being able to have singular words or basic strings swapped with little to no difference to the final result


note: the idea I'm thinking would for hybridized villagers make it anywhere from a 70/30% (where one personality would be clearly dominant, but the other would still be reasonably notable) to an even 50/50% personality split. and is intended to make just about every villager completely unique vs just a slightly different flavor of the same thing. also, of course have the sub-splits be pretty even across the board too

so like say if there were 50 equal-to-dominant peppy villagers, then something like
10 pure peppies
6 normal peppies of varying degrees
5 snooty peppies of varying degrees
5 uchi peppies peppies of varying degrees
3 cranky peppies of varying degrees
7 jock peppies of varying degrees
8 lazy peppies of varying degrees
6 smug peppies of varying degrees

- - - Post Merge - - -

oh, and of course certain personalities may not even get hybridized together period

 

[smonikkims]

fwiw I never mentioned hybridizing every one, so some would still be pure personality types

It's just that I figure if it's going to be a thing, it's going to be either for the entire cast, or a heavy chunk of them (at least half), and with the hundreds of villagers that exist it's a bit heavy to have such a huge chunk of them change, and like I had said it would also be odd for it to be a new feature that then only applied to a few villagers, so I wouldn't see that happening either. Unless there was a large number of new villagers, who could then use this mechanic and have it not seem so specialist, kind of like how the smug and uchi personalities were handled - there are comparatively fewer new villagers who use those personalities, but a few of the existing animals had their personalities swapped to them to help balance it out. If that were done for the mixed personalities that would be fine by me! It would just require quite a few new animals, which I figure we're going to have anyway, but if we don't get many new ones then it would fall into the mentioned dilemma.

 

[LambdaDelta]

oh yeah, I'd imagine we'll get a good number of new villagers that could take advantage of this, and even for the older ones as mentioned above, it would do its best to not be a complete domination of hybridized personalities. probably even still leaning towards the pure personality being the greatest in quantity compared to any hybrid splits in most, if not all, cases (and hell, the older villagers could even lean more towards a heavier original personality split so that they're not as drastically different as they could be otherwise)

really, I just want them to feel more like their own individual entities, rather than all just being the same cutout with a different coat of visual paint. which has kinda been a major problem throughout this entire franchise imo

it wouldn't kill my enjoyment if the way personalities were handled weren't overhauled in some fashion, but I find it hard for me to not see an overhaul or something improving said enjoyment


hell, if anything, I'd say that while creativity options have greatly expanded for the better since cube crossing, the socializing aspect of the games has gotten progressively worse, which is likely another reason I'd be interested in an overhaul of this nature. I personally don't care too much about personalities getting changed up, so long as it isn't like a 100% shift except in maybe special exception cases, since I always have the older games to go back to meet and talk to the villagers in.

plus while there'd certainly be villagers people would end up liking less as a result of this, who's to say there wouldn't also be ones that people end up liking more or perhaps even find more fitting for? I mean there's already some discussion elsewhere about a need to change up the series, and since the social aspect of the games is like the biggest thing after the creativity part, overhauling how we see villagers would certainly count towards a major change, far more than further additions or improvements to designing and such (though I fully welcome and embrace all these things too)

 

[smonikkims]

I do think there may be some kind of change even if this isn't what I envision, even if that change is just adding another two new personality types like last time. I never really considered the way things are now to be a major problem, but it is something that would be neat to change if they could find an effective way of doing it. I also think that having 'tiers' of dialogue change according to your friendship with a villager, and making it so that two villagers of the same personality don't naturally move into your town at any point, would also be a good way of at least making sure that nobody in your town felt like a direct copy of anyone else, or at least make it more subtle.

I figure having the tiers of dialogue would make it so that when your maxed-out friendship peppy villager moves away, they will be replaced with a zero-friendship peppy villager who starts out with different dialogue simply because of their friendship with you, which will at least mean it takes a while before you see the max-friendship peppy dialogue repeat again.

 

[LambdaDelta]

ps I posted an essay and then edited in another essay right after

just as a heads up, no real reason or anything beyond just letting you know, if of any interest


and I think I actually recall the friendship tiers of the older games working something like that. like I distinctively remember crankies being huge jerkasses in wild world, but as they opened up to you they became progressively nicer, if not still rough. which made the friendship feel like something legitimately earned and more natural as a result. probably was something similar for the other personality types too

honestly could chalk it up as an example of what I mean by the socializing aspect having gotten worse. along with stuff like being able to ask if villagers need help instead of just spamming talk, villagers having more bite to them at times in the past (which in turn made them more colorful characters), villagers being seemingly trusting enough to be able to enter their homes while they aren't inside, etc

 

[smonikkims]

I genuinely do not remember dialogue ever changing with friendships even though I keep reading that people think it did. I would really like some examples to show up at some point, although I know recalling specific dialogues from past games is hard. In Wild World there was only one piece of dialogue from crankies that I remember actually did change depending on your friendship, and it was about people they hate being in their house. At first they would follow it up by saying "I'm not talking about you here, if I hated you you would know," but then later after building friendship with them they would say, "Even so, and I hope you know this, you're always welcome here." But dialogues like that I believe were few and far between, and very subtle. I think it would be better if there were whole strings of dialogue and whole conversations that wouldn't show up unless you befriended someone, instead of just a re-wording of an existing conversation.

 

[LambdaDelta]

someone datamine this **** and post results, since yeah, I'll admit I'm going completely off memory here. though my selection of cranky as the example is because, though I can't recall any specifics, crankies going from huge obnoxious jerkass to rough well-intended semijerk is probably one of the things I remember most of the game personally. just based on how much I interacted with a certain cranky villager in it

 

[smonikkims]

I gotta say that even if it is just our memories playing tricks on us, the transformation from cranky to best friend would be the sweetest and my favourite thing in the game. I love crankies and any character really who goes from being cold to being the best friend ever <3