The Custom Design Portal Grieves Me.

[your local goomy]

The Custom Designs Portal giveth and the Custom Designs Portal taketh away.

Seriously, though, I wish there was a better search system or a history feature or something. I like to browse randomly to get nice clothes for my character, and in another one of my Great Reset Debates, I was debating turning my island into one with a Pokémon theme...again...not important though. What is important is that I found a sweater that I debated downloading...and didn't. Now, I thoroughly browsed all 100 pages of the sweater section and it's gone. I can't remember the name and it was some random page, so I doubt anyone bothered to share it. A long search begins. Undoubtedly, as I look, my frustrations with the portal will grow. I don't want to trash the content too much considering a lot of youngsters use the portal too, and I can't say anything, not being a good pixel artist myself, but if I could filter all the repetitive designs and just certain things in general, this would make it a lot easier. This is better than what we had in NL FOR SURE and I'm glad for the portal's existence, but it could use some work.

 

[Spooky.]

I wish we could favorite designs to come back to later too, in case we see something we like and don't want to use right then, like seasonal paths and such. Sure, we can write down the code but eh.

 

[daringred_]

i found out the other day, when i hit it, that there's a limit on how many designers you can favorite, rip, so i don't know the codes for the designers of some of my dresses, but i at least have plenty of room left for clothing designs, so it's not something i have to worry about yet. personally, i wish the portal had a more advanced filtering feature so you could search by color or theme. (the latter would make it easier to find seasonal paths/clothes, for example.) i also would've preferred if your favorites were shown as the actual designs you favorited instead of the creators because i don't remember who designed what, and a lot of my creator's names are in japanese (which i can't read) so trying to find my winter path decorations for tomorrow is going to be a nightmare.

obviously this portal is better than NL, and it's definitely a step in the right direction, of course, i just think it could definitely be more... optimized?

 

[Spooky.]

i found out the other day, when i hit it, that there's a limit on how many designers you can favorite, rip, so i don't know the codes for the designers of some of my dresses, but i at least have plenty of room left for clothing designs, so it's not something i have to worry about yet. personally, i wish the portal had a more advanced filtering feature so you could search by color or theme. (the latter would make it easier to find seasonal paths/clothes, for example.) i also would've preferred if your favorites were shown as the actual designs you favorited instead of the creators because i don't remember who designed what, and a lot of my creator's names are in japanese (which i can't read) so trying to find my winter path decorations for tomorrow is going to be a nightmare.

obviously this portal is better than NL, and it's definitely a step in the right direction, of course, i just think it could definitely be more... optimized?

The struggle when so many amazing designs are by Japanese creators and trying to remember how the name looked. I can read minimal Japanese but it's not enough to help (plus I don't think you can change your keyboard language in game?) so I would forget.

At this point I just save designs I find online that I like on a private discord server for later.

 

[Marshmallows]

I find the portal difficult to use and have mostly given up trying to find anything worthwhile randomly. There's little to no sorting and the search feature leaves a lot to be desired as well. If you search for "stone" for example, you'll only get designs that are named stone, but not "stone path" or "stones" or "stone wall" or any of the other millions of alternatives people name things. Uploading has the same issue, you have to give your designs the most basic of names to have any chance that someone will find it. And that's just considering one language.

I don't know what the solution is, but a broader search system and maybe a top downloads section or something would help. I just search for designs on google. Someone may have uploaded or shared the Pokemon sweater... it's worth a try.

I'm so grateful for the ability to create custom designs, but the whole system is about as clunky as all the other multiplayer aspects of the game.

 

[Pyoopi]

It's why I don't use it at all and I struggle how to efficiently name my designs. The more specific you get, the harder it's to find on a random browse and too generic, well you join the endless sea of them.

I like to use Twitter to find designs under the #acnhdesign or #acnhdesigns. I also follow a retweet account that showcases seasonal stuff.

 

[Imaginetheday]

If I'm trying to decide if I want to use a design, I will favorite the designer. I have run into the limit, but when that happens, I go to my oldest and usually find I can delete a few. If have multiple players, they can't have their own designs, but they can have their own favorites. Don't forget you can take a screen shot on your switch and save it that way as well. The portal is not perfect, but I don't experience the frustration I see here. (other than wishing for more design slots! LOL)

 

[Raz]

Imagine if Nintendo were technologically advanced enough to have it on the NSO App, so you could have an endless list of favorites sorted by category, and you could add the custom patterns to your personal catalog from your app even when you're not playing (similar to the nooklink function that lets you order special items that you buy with Nook Points).

 

[your local goomy]

As cool as having it on the NSO app would be, I'm really just looking for a better darn search bar. The sweater I'm looking for had a stupid long name with abbreviations, so it would be nice if we didn't have to know the EXACT name. Though, having it on the app would be more of an incentive to keep subscribing.

 

[maria110]

My peeve about it is that I want to be able to find a design by a creator I like and then click on their name or number to see all their designs but you can't. You have to write down the creator's number. Ugh.

 

[your local goomy]

Yeah, it would be easier that way. Like I said, I STILL prefer this over QR codes for sure, but it just seems kinda...primitive. I'll still be hunting for that sweater, even if it takes an eternity

 

[inazuma]

My peeve about it is that I want to be able to find a design by a creator I like and then click on their name or number to see all their designs but you can't. You have to write down the creator's number. Ugh.

you can favorite them! and then go to favorite section. im sorry if this wasnt what you mean but i randomly search like "mossy building" and then i found a good design and wanting to look at the creator to find more, just favorite them!

 

[Bizhiins]

It’s really difficult to use, I agree. Most of what I’ve found that I liked is from browsing Pinterest and then finding their designs on the portal using designer I.D.
But searching by keywords is rough. I wish you could browse by categories, or something like that. When I search for something specific, either only 10 designs show up, or a huge amount that I have to browse through endlessly and a lot of them aren’t really relevant. I think I’ve found maybe 5 designs I liked searching by category. The rest were finding them online.