What do you think is the reason for missing features?

[RollingAntony]

I'm not sure I completely agree with you, that might be what the devs planned for but as we can see from all the people who dropped this game, it didn't work out. It's a good idea for the udaptes to come as players are developping their island but then we should've gotten more furniture or buildings, to actually help with the growth of the island. After almost a year of updates my island doesn't feel very different from when I started playing in March. So many people already finished their island and are now on their 2nd, 3rd, 4th island. The updates don't really take the game further, they bring back some players but a lot of them are bored again after just a day.

Just to put out my two cents, but how could an island look the same now than 9 months ago? We have gotten access to:

May
*Plaques for our homes

June
*Wedding items
*Summer wallpaper/flooring for homes

July
*Sea creatures like the Horseshoe Crab
*Mermaid items
*Pirate items

August
*Fireworks items

September
*Acorn/pinecone items

October
*Farming
*Halloween items

November
*Mushrooms items
*Turkey Day items

December
*Toy Day items
*Ornament items
*Snowflake flooring/wallpaper for homes
*Frozen items
*New Year items

January
*New Year items 2: electric boogaloo

We've gotten 84 new furniture items + the seasonal items already there. And that's not counting how someone can still be missing fish/bugs models, Gulliver's furniture, Redd's fake art (or real) and Celeste's furniture. Those four take a lot of time to complete, almost impossible atm alone. And the RNG of the game probably means some people still haven't seen some of the 1000 items present (I know I haven't). Of course, you could have burned through months of content by trading seasonal items with the opposite hemisphere or you could have TT and got everything day one but that's not something everyone does.

We don't need buildings to make our island grow. They could be helpful for some and a headache for others. Of course even more furniture will help, it always help. And sure, some people may have gotten their dream furniture on the first month and completely detest the 120+ furniture/items added after, but we can't know the % of players who feel like that.

That also goes for the # of players dropping the game. If 1000 users on this forum and the internet say their 10 friends stopped playing NH but 36,000 copies were sold on Japan last week, it means there are 26,000 new players, not 10,000 less players. We don't know what is the magic number that will make Nintendo and the devs say "oh, NH has many more players dropping the game and faster than previous entries, let's do something drastic".

If (BIG "if") the game has been delayed due to COVID, since March 2020 developers had more than enough time to bring missing features, (ANOTHER "if") if they planned to.

The pandemic didn't end on March 2020. Even planned updates were probably affected by it and with Japan entering a new state of emergency, the impact will still be hitting all industries. It's easy to say "the devs had more than enough time" but it has not been easy to work... no, to live, during that time.

 

[LeenaM]

Just to put out my two cents, but how could an island look the same now than 9 months ago? We have gotten access to:

May
*Plaques for our homes

June
*Wedding items
*Summer wallpaper/flooring for homes

July
*Sea creatures like the Horseshoe Crab
*Mermaid items
*Pirate items

August
*Fireworks items

September
*Acorn/pinecone items

October
*Farming
*Halloween items

November
*Mushrooms items
*Turkey Day items

December
*Toy Day items
*Ornament items
*Snowflake flooring/wallpaper for homes
*Frozen items
*New Year items

January
*New Year items 2: electric boogaloo

We've gotten 84 new furniture items + the seasonal items already there. And that's not counting how someone can still be missing fish/bugs models, Gulliver's furniture, Redd's fake art (or real) and Celeste's furniture. Those four take a lot of time to complete, almost impossible atm alone. And the RNG of the game probably means some people still haven't seen some of the 1000 items present (I know I haven't). Of course, you could have burned through months of content by trading seasonal items with the opposite hemisphere or you could have TT and got everything day one but that's not something everyone does.

We don't need buildings to make our island grow. They could be helpful for some and a headache for others. Of course even more furniture will help, it always help. And sure, some people may have gotten their dream furniture on the first month and completely detest the 120+ furniture/items added after, but we can't know the % of players who feel like that.

That also goes for the # of players dropping the game. If 1000 users on this forum and the internet say their 10 friends stopped playing NH but 36,000 copies were sold on Japan last week, it means there are 26,000 new players, not 10,000 less players. We don't know what is the magic number that will make Nintendo and the devs say "oh, NH has many more players dropping the game and faster than previous entries, let's do something drastic".

That's a fair comment, to be honest there were quite a few of the seasonal items I didn't get, and I wasn't particularly on the lookout for items from Gullivarr or Celeste. That's also probably because my island now is not actually my island from March, I reset 3 (4?) times. And sure I agree that we don't need buildings to grow, I was just trying to imagine what would make me feel like my island developped, because accross all of them and my whole playtime it all felt pretty samey? My main point was that I didn't feel like my island was growing/developping further after each update.

I'm also not trying to say that NH is not successful or that's it has less players, I'm just saying that if the idea was to keep players interested thanks to the updates I don't think it really worked, the updates were nice but didn't change much for the people still playing, and they weren't enough to keep or bring back players who stopped playing. Which is a bit disapponting since AC games are usually known for their longevity.

I guess my main frustrations are with the base game itself, I don't wish for anything drastic but I would really like the next updates to focus on Qol, especially to improve npc and villager dialog, since I feel like these are the interactions at the base of AC games that make it so enjoyable and make me want to come back and play everyday.

 

[RollingAntony]

That's a fair comment, to be honest there were quite a few of the seasonal items I didn't get, and I wasn't particularly on the lookout for items from Gullivarr or Celeste. That's also probably because my island now is not actually my island from March, I reset 3 (4?) times. And sure I agree that we don't need buildings to grow, I was just trying to imagine what would make me feel like my island developped, because accross all of them and my whole playtime it all felt pretty samey? My main point was that I didn't feel like my island was growing/developping further after each update.

I'm also not trying to say that NH is not successful or that's it has less players, I'm just saying that if the idea was to keep players interested thanks to the updates I don't think it really worked, the updates were nice but didn't change much for the people still playing, and they weren't enough to keep or bring back players who stopped playing. Which is a bit disapponting since AC games are usually known for their longevity.

I guess my main frustrations are with the base game itself, I don't wish for anything drastic but I would really like the next updates to focus on Qol, especially to improve npc and villager dialog, since I feel like these are the interactions at the base of AC games that make it so enjoyable and make me want to come back and play everyday.

Oh yeah, I can understand that feeling on not developing. I just think that sometimes not even adding, say, 200+ items will help with that for some people and well, that's unfortunate, as I'd hope everyone can enjoy and feel better about their progress. Hope there's something that revitalizes your island soon!

Unfortunately, we dont know about the players being interested or not, as we don't have statistics to support either side of the coin (be that the updates have been or have not been successful). But I can agree that there is indeed a (sometimes) very vocal group of people that dropped the game. I wish they find something on future updates that lets 'em enjoy the fresh content.

In the end, I hope the devs and almost all players can reach a point of mutual satisfaction. Apologies for the use of the word "almost" but there are certain players that I personally don't think deserve anything catered to them/their voices heard, like a person that said the game was "Instagram-like" just because the director was a woman.

 

[sunmarsh]

My apologies for not following the latest thread of conversation here, but in response to the main topic:
I think that the periodic updates were an intentional decision made to cut down on development time, and as a way of managing NH's digital economy by ensuring that seasonal items could not be obtained in advance via time travel. I think this worked really well for a game like Splatoon, which relies on constant (re)balancing as the meta evolves. It lets you playtest a lot of features and then make continuous adjustments to gameplay until everything is 'just right'. Hard to say whether it really paid off for NH. I think that removing a lot of the special characters is a difficult decision to make, but I think it's actually the right one. Otherwise you go down the Pokemon route, where the number of characters must be infinite, because of the established precedent of 'new world, new pokemon, new evos'.

 

[niko@kamogawa]

All of the reasons does fit to see why New Horizons is like this today.

Honestly, Nintendo handled the release of this game quite well to me despite its flaws.

I do miss a few things from New Leaf. However, I don't think this is going to affect my playing experience of New Horizons. I clocked more hours than New Leaf, in fact.