This is kind of a catch 22 for me. The cards are expensive but I get bored with island hopping pretty quick. Up to now I only bought the sanrio amiibos cause there that was the only way to get them. A couple days ago i finally got a villager I've wanted gone ask to leave. The timing was good because the plot was empty saturday and I'd have the whole day to island hop. But life got in the way and I couldn't get on game til after 7 that night. though I island hopped for hours I never found a villager I wanted and am getting Astrid as my random move in.
This seems to happen every time for me and I'm tired of it so I finally bought some amiibo cardd so I can get who I want. So which method do you prefer?
I like to island hop because I think it's fun and I can collect things to sell along the way or get special islands! Usually I just pick a villager I'm okay with having around for awhile even if they're not my favourite. But I'm not against using amiibos either. I'm pretty sure I invited Marshal via amiibo, but I can't remember!
I really love that we have both options. I have bought a good amount of cards recently. For me it depends on if I’m looking for a specific villager. For my main island I’m finally going to have it be an all penguin island. So island hopping for just one species is a lot harder. I ordered the penguin villagers I have wanted from eBay and they should be delivered soon. Just tired of it taking forever to find them. For my second island I found island hopping fun because I’m never looking for just one villager. I’m using that island to see all the villagers.
Cards all the way. I don't have time to sit and island hop (or gather the funds to do so tons of times in a row). It's worth it for me to spend a small amount of money on a card rather than waste tons of my time hoping to land on the right villager.
Amiibo but I'm just glad there is more than one way. I doubt most people have every amiibo they care about on hand. Plus the randomness does help meet other villagers and keeps most villagers away from a paywall.
Amiibo. If there was less steps in island hopping [like if I could just pay for my ticket at the airport when I selected an island] I might do it for fun sometimes.
i like amiibo better even though island hopping is funner. island hopping is time consuming and most of the time i don’t have the patience for it but i like the excitement of finding a villager i like/was looking for on a random mystery island. But with island hopping i need to have an open plot for a villager while with amiibo i can just invite them and they can force someone else to move. inviting amiibo villagers is also time consuming because you need to make them diys for three days until they want to move in, but it’s less time consuming and i like controlling who moves out.
I see the pros and cons of both. I feel like Amiibos can sometimes take away from the beauty of playing, but let’s be honest— we all want that one villager we can never get out hands on, and sometimes amiibos are necessary so that we don’t get burnt out on island hopping/campsite hunting.
What I like about what I have seen from HHP is that it looks like we get several prospective villagers on the beach to select from. I think this will help speed things along in finding dreamies. That said, it doesn’t help with our main island.
I personally only have the sanrio amiibo cards, so generally I go with island hopping - I do enjoy island hopping as a concept, seeing the different islands and villagers and stuff, but after so many islands I get sick of the same dialogue and getting disappointed by villagers so that'd be the time when I'd start wishing i had amiibo cards. plus amiibo cards kind of take away the randomness of who you get, but that's not always a bad thing
I vastly prefer island hopping. I like the surprise element of it, seeing the villagers as I go and not knowing exactly who I will end up inviting to my island.
I do appreciate the amiibo function existing, since I can imagine that island hopping with only one or two specific villagers in mind would be a terrible ordeal, and for those occasions where i need to time a villager move out specifically.
but if given the option for myself, I will choose island hopping every time.
I love the idea of island hopping. I also love the actual experience for maybe like 5 times. After that I’m just mad as hell. Lolllll So I’d say I prefer amiibos. Although after some time I’ll get bored and want to island hop again.
I definitely like the experience of island hopping and seeing who pops up randomly more, but I’m not against amiibos either. I like amiibos more as a trading card collecting aspect though.
I love island hopping, I know it can get really time consuming and frustrating when you have to spend a lot of NMTs to get someone good but I like that it gives me a lot more exposure to villagers that often get overlooked. Something about seeing them on the mystery islands just really shows me so much more about them than just looking at a picture.
I think having a few amiibos on hand can be very helpful though, if someone wants to adopt one of your villagers and its so nice to be able to just kick them out easily with amiibo instead of time travelling. And I think having amiibos of your ultimate favourites is nice just incase you ever want to restart.
I like both, but since I don’t have access to a lot of Amiibo cards, I have to rely on island hopping or finding someone on here who has the villager I like.
I prefer island hopping. I spent a lot of money acquiring the villager cards of my dreamies at one point and occasionally I might use them. However, I found that when I control every aspect, the game loses its charm. I no longer have any incentive or excitement when I can just have everything given to me. This goes for a lot of other features in the game too. I like the randomness and I feel most excited by the work that has to be put in. I like how it feels to work hard to find a certain villager and finally find them. I feel like I've earned them in a way. I like keeping my roster fresh and trying to open up to new possible permanent residents. I can appreciate that the cards offer a very nice method of surefire acquisition but it just doesn't do it for me. I still have the cards, and I'll certainly use them for HHP since it's different. But, as far as playing the game goes, I much prefer to either try my luck with the randomizer or put in some hard work to acquire what I want.
I have a love/hate relationship with island hopping. It can be fun for a while, but I have had it take an incredibly long time. I've searched sometimes up to 30 islands in 1 day. At first, you hope for a dreamy. But after a while and you keep encountering villagers you don't like, you start to feel desperate to find someone halfway decent because you don't want the game to roll over to the next day and then you get a random villager that you might not like take that slot instead. It also took me about a year and a half of real world time to FINALLY find an island with Raymond on it.
I know that using amiibo can seem as anti-climactic to some because there is no search and you instantly get what you want. But at the same time, there are certain villagers that I don't own amiibo of and have NEVER seen on the islands. It's incredibly frustrating to be stuck waiting for luck to go your way. And now they're introducing 16 more villagers, which if they can be obtained like normal without amiibo, are now further increasing the pool of villagers and therefore making it just that much less likely that luck will go your way if there's ONE certain villager you want.
I hate island hopping. I know exactly which 10 villagers I want as residents and I only want those ones in particular, as my towns and my island all have themes that they're based around and the villagers have been specifically chosen because they fit the theme. I have no interest in and do not enjoy the random chance element of island hopping, especially after it took me weeks to find Tucker to be my Lazy resident in that first month when the game launched last year. Even though the potential pool of villagers that I could find at that time was limited to Lazies, it still took that long and I saw repeats of other villagers so many times. No thank you.
I find it far more preferable to just spend a few dollars on amiibo and scan them in to the campsite for three days than have to put up with all that hassle and annoyance.
So I’d say I prefer amiibos. Although after some time I’ll get bored and want to island hop again. 
