The Online could've been so much better

[RoxasFan25]

Okay by now we've played this game for almost a year now and I think one of the biggest issues with the game is the online. New Horizons has probably the worst online I've ever seen. Basically you go to airport, talk to Orville, wait for the internet to be connected, then you have to go through so much dialogue just to answer his questions on where to travel. Would it make more sense just to add a "Search by Dodo" after you pick " I want to fly"? It should not be this hard to do.

On the other side when your friend is waiting on you they will see the "Looks like someone's on their way here" bar above the screen. They have to wait an entire minute just to see you come to their island. At first its cute seeing it but when you have to invite many people and forced to watch that loading screen of who's coming from which island its so annoying.

It gets worse. If you have like 8 people on the island and someone wants to leave, everyone in the lobby has to stop what they are doing weather its talking to the villagers, shopping, or having your menus opened just to make the one person leave the island. Then you are also forced to watch them leave. Its the same thing with everyone else and it takes forever. Usually the Host can end the session to make everyone leave but the problem is that you have to hope nobody leaves "quietly" when that happens everyone is booted out and anything that they were doing on the island is restart because the game doesn't even bother saving what you did on your friends island. Its the same thing that happens if you were to get a communication error.

All I hope for in the future is that they improve this because this is the reason why my friends don't play this game as much. They just got tired of the loading screens and whenever the game crashes it restarts everything they did on the island. Let me clear this up New Horizons is a good game but for its online multiplayer its not the best. Sure you can hang out with your friends and mess around but there is nothing much else to do afterwards since there is a lack of modes. Thats how I feel about the online in this game, I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks.

 

[Licorice]

Sometimes I dread using the airport because a simple item trade takes so long. Why is there so much dialogue just to open my gate? Why does Orville have to warn me for the 100th time that I’ll be opening my gate to *gasp* strangers?

It would also be nice if when I opened my island for friends people on my friends list would get a notification. I’ll never know if your island is open unless I randomly decide to check the airport.

 

[lemoncrossing]

I feel this so much. It's pretty bad when doing trades, but even worse when playing with a full island of people. Last time I played with 8 people, it took 15 minutes just to load everybody in. And it's even more frustrating when you're playing just fine, then get a communication error, and have to start again completely from scratch... yikes.

And another problem with the multiplayer is that there just isn't much to do. You visit each other's shops, flex your elaborate decorations/setups around the island, and then what? The timer item is good for having fishing/bug hunting contests, but in general, there's just not much to it. I would love to see some minigames implemented (like the island tours in New Leaf) to add some excitement and possibly new types of items to obtain. I kind of doubt it will ever happen, but I'd like to see it.

 

[Masenkochick]

I miss the mini games on the island tours for multi-player as well! I hope they will add that in at some point with an update or something, but I doubt they will :'(

I agree there should be a notification when your gates are opened so your friends can just come on over. And they definitely need to streamline the airport dialogue and the load times to leave the island and go to islands.

 

[John Wick]

I have no interest in multiplayer whatsoever, but yes, online could have been better.

It should have been free.

I'm paying my ISP for data, then paying nintendo to use my own data. O_O

Greedy.

 

[Shellzilla_515]

Nintendo is known for making online features more complicated than it already is. It's like they're stuck in the stone age when they could've learned from their competitors. As for what you could do on someone else's island, it isn't much different from playing single player aside from subtle benefits for having friends. Finally, this doesn't matter at all but I laughed when ACNH got nominated in the best multiplayer category for the 2020 game awards. There's no way to hide the glaring issues behind it. If you're gonna have the ability to meet your friends, at least ask yourself what the game has more to offer. If not, then work on it.

 

[VanitasFan26]

Its funny I haven't invited anyone to my island since way back in October 2020 that was the last time I ever had friends. The reason is because I just got so fed up with the long load times of someone leaving and visiting the island. The worst thing that can happen is that you can explore someone's island and yet someone has their menu open and is AFK, That prevents people who want to come and leave.

When that happens the host has no choice but to end the session which causes the server to crash and gets everyone kicked out. Even worse is that the game doesn't even save all the process you did on the island before it crashed. This is why I loathe Dodo Airlines so much. It takes so long to even fly to someone's island and when you mess up you have to re-enter the Dodo code, by talking to orville so many times. Its so annoying!

I Really hope Nintendo tries to at least fix this because this is another big issue with this game is that the online is very unstable when going to people's islands and the fact that there is literally no modes for you or your friends to even play with like it was in New Leaf.

 

[-Blue-]

I can't knock NH's online without also knocking NL's. They're equally as bad. I remember discussing here and elsewhere and with my friends how we envisioned the future title's online to be. And we would bring up ideas like not disconnecting everyone when someone disconnects and having overall better loading times. Nintendo is using the same servers from when NL was out and there's been rumors floating around that they're looking into updating their outdated online methods from like last decade.

We kind of just went along with it because it was free to play online. Now that they're making us pay services for the same severely outdated online, people are pushing and rightfully so because we're paying to go online with P2P connection.

 

[Chris]

Please don't bump up these old complaint threads, thank you!