There are many reason why i like to play ACNH to be honest but the biggest reason right now is that i can experience seasons ( which i cant where i live in RL ) and i feel like its a huge scape from COVID situation since I am trying as hard as possible to stay at home at all times.
So the things that make me enjoy it are for example:
- Decorating your home's interior: I know there is a huge lack of variety of furniture still BUT with the updates coming there is always a bit more of furniture so thats good, i am really hoping we will get more furnitures soon , but I love decorating my house interior, wished the game had more gameplay dynamics so i could for example use my bathroom area or my kitchen, but thats okey. I still super duper enjoy decorating my houses, cause i actually have 3 houses in my island and i love the process of giving different ambiances to the houses. - Decorating your island exterior and/or terraforming & waterscaping: It is a bit of a hate love relationship to be honest , Sometimes i feel like i have already designed my island layout but then somehow my brain goes bz bz bz and i start thinking i want my town to look differently, like more like, I had envision so i star terraforming and decorating all over again. Sometimes its a bit frustrating cause i dont really know how to do what i want to do but then i leave it be until i get my inspiration and then when i do it just works out ( at least until i decide to change everything again )
- community aspect (online play/playing with friends/helping people out): This is a bit of controversial for me, i mean of course now i am playing over the top active (which is not the normal) , and now i would love to have more active pp in ACNH, that like to play very chill, send letters, with friendly friendly attitude and someone to do like the fish or bug festivals etc, I i haven't found someone in game i can click that way yet hehe, but im not in a rush . Although i would love from Nintendo to also release an update for the online part of the game, I personally really miss the ACNL online game options like in ACNL where you could go with friends to Tortimers island and play tons of games, which were very entertaining . I am hoping some of those mechanism come back, maybe then more online game can happen
Lets see what Nintendo has in store for ACNH, I for one i have to say i am very excited and also feel very positive about its future development ☀
I voted for decorating my house interior, decorating my island exterior, and completing collections. If I had a fourth vote I would vote for interacting with villagers.
For me, it's getting to know other people in the community and trading items. Villager hunts are fun but has been getting boring since I found most of my dreamies. I don't have the motivation to work on my 2nd island unfortunately. :/
thanks for responding so far everyone! the results are really interesting to me; i assumed that especially on a forum, which is a community (thanks, captain obvious!) that the online play/community aspect would have been ranked a lot higher.
i'm also surprised dream addresses got six votes so far, because that's an aspect of play i feel like people don't talk about as often as others. cool to know what everybody is interested in -- that's the beauty of the game, to me, that there are so many ways to play and things to do.
I voted for decorating your island's exterior, island theming, and completing collections. Eventually I'd like to collect all the furniture that's available, in case I ever change my mind about the theme of my town! Theming is fun,but sometimes I'm not sure what theme I ultimately want to settle on. I'm working on a tropical themed town using warm-toned items, but sometimes I also lean towards a Northeastern fishing town too. It's hard to decide sometimes. >.<
Theming goes hand in hand with decorating and I have a lot of fun with it. I finally terraformed my island to the shape I want, and now I have a lot more fun just filling up the blank canvas.
decorating my home’s interior! i’ve neglected this aspect of the game a bit until a few months ago but i honestly really love interior design! my ideas are never as creative as others that i’ve seen but despite how overwhelming decorating can feel to me at times, decorating my home has always been one of my favourite things to do in ac c’:
i also lovevillager hunts! i don’t get to do this very often but island hopping is my #1 favourite thing to do in new horizons! i adore the villagers so, so much and i’m always looking forward to whenever i get to go searching for a new neighbour! i’ll likely get to go island hopping sometime this week and i’m super excited
last but not least, i love in-game shopping, too! granted, it’s more-so the catalog expanding part than the actual shopping part but they basically go hand-in-hand aha. expanding my catalog was so fun for me in new leaf and it’s the same for me in new horizons! i completed my furniture and wallpaper + flooring catalogs a while ago and so now i’m just working on clothing and rugs but i’m having fun with it! it’s definitely a slow process but i’m not really in any rush :^)
Definitely decorating the island. It’s so big and there’s so many possibilities. I made a spa and an infinity pool recently, as well as a wedding/ reception area. And there’s still so much more space on my island where I have plans for. I want to make an arcade hangout and a gym with a wrestling ring and boxing equipment.
another thing I love about the game is the different npcs/checking the shops daily and now collecting seasonal materials. I can always find something to do in the game lately. I did go months without playing, but the Halloween season drew me back into it and I’ve been playing for hours everyday. So for me, holidays/seasonal content being added is another reason I’m motivated to play
I chose - interacting with villagers, villager hunts, and something to do every day.
1. interacting with villagers-I love seeing my villagers and talking to them and gifting them. Even if they repeat the same dialogue I have heard before, I just love seeing them and having the sense they are happy to see me. To be honest, even the repetition is less painful than a lot of real life small talk. For me the villagers are the best part of the game. I like decorating and collecting, but without the villagers I wouldn’t be as addicted as I am. Yes there is a bit of a guilt aspect, in that I feel bad (I know this is irrational) if I were to neglect my villagers, but so far it has never felt like a chore.
2. Villager hunt - along with my love of the villagers, I love island hopping to find new residents. I love the random chance of it, not knowing who I am going to find, and being surprised by villagers I didn’t expect to like. Also love the campsite and only wish I had more visitors, but on the other hand it is getting to be a painful battle between 1 and 2 - I love the villagers I have, but love to find new ones too.
3. something to do everyday - I chose this, but more accurate might be to say always something and nothing to do. I love the low pressure style of the game. I like that I can log on some days and do nothing but talk to my villagers and wander about aimlessly. I can dig up fossils everyday, but I can also leave them a day, no big deal. I can dive every day and until I find the adorable pascal, but I can also just not get around to it.
I love getting the updates, and probably will come to appreciate them more and more over the next couple/ few years, but honestly I love having nothing in particular to do some days.
my only big wish is to have just a few more plots for villagers, because are 1 and 2.
I picked in-game shopping, completing collections (which go hand-in-hand), and villager hunts. I want to complete certain sets of furniture, or get outfits for the season (even if I mainly wear the same thing), and seeing what the shops have each day is fun!
Villager hunting is something I've become addicted to. I have a list of dreamies, and my goal is to eventually cycle through most of them, then hunt the ones I enjoyed having the most. (my dreamie list right now has 26 to still hunt, 6 that I've cycled and all 10 current residents are dreamies)
There are a few villagers that I consider "locked in". I will not let them move out, they are villagers I love and will never leave my side. Right now I have 2 villagers I'm ok with letting go, 1 maybe, and 1 on hold for a friend. I plan on villager hunting soon... and I have passed up some dreamies in past hunts due to having so many tickets left. My advice is don't do that. If you have a lot of tickets left, keep them for future hunts or to give to people.
Honestly, the beginning. Just having so much to do and to unlock. Crafting a bridge is cool, unlocking houses by crafting their furniture etc. After the first two weeks or so the game, in my opinion, falls into the cycle of a lesser Animal Crossing experience. As a kid I would constantly play wild world, there wasn't really anything to do but talking to the villagers was enough between earning bells and decorating your home.
Interacting with animals - they never fail to cheer me up when I'm having a bad day, making me laugh and generally helping me forget everything going on in the real world.
Completing my museum - I've never managed it yet and I want to do it this game, I've been trying to get scorpions lately without luck, and its bothering me. I do like making some progress every now and again.
Something to do - I look forward to seeing who is in my town, regardless of whether I choose to interact with them. I like looking for campground animals, and diving for scallops too.
Community aspect (playing with others): The chief reason I got the game was because I had a few friends who were getting it and was interested in playing with them. When I first started I didn't anticipate how much I'd like it, and I think I've become the most obsessed one in the group! We still get together regularly and it's given me a nice sense of community, especially since socializing in the current environment is hard/impossible. I also have enjoyed playing with others in the community that I don't know well- it's always nice to share fun with others!
Decorating/terraforming (exterior): I really love to terraform and decorate, it's been one of my favorite things to do lately. I enjoy creating new spaces and changing things up. I love to try to come up with unique areas/ideas too. I think I spend a bulk of my time doing this each time I play. For me it's almost always decorating the exterior, I barely have touched the inside of my houses. I want to make everything look the way I want it before starting on the inside!
I'd say those two things are my top favorite aspects of the game. Lately I've also started to enjoy creating custom designs, so that has been an experience. Trading is also something I do often and enjoy. I'm not a fan of the daily chores (I avoid them so much lol) but I do them to try to complete my museum and hit the nook mile goals.
Decorating - Since NL what keeps me playing is the decorating aspect and when I'm mostly done decorating I like sharing/viewing wonderful towns/islands via the dream suite.
Collecting - Once the decorating is out of the way I like to focus on collections such as the fossils, art, fish, sea creatures, bugs, DIYs and crafting and nook mile achievements. I'd also like to have at least one color variant of every normal orderable item but I'm not sure how motivated I am for that one lol..
Friends - Its also the first time my irl friends play animal crossing so I also play for/with them.
I always under appreciate this site but this place was the first online ac community and has been my ac internet home ever since. It has only ever provided goodness, although this forum does not motivate me to play, I love having others around.
1) decorating your island's exterior and/or terraforming & waterscaping
this is my favorite thing about new horizons, and I spend much more time on this than any of the classic animal crossing activities (fishing, catching bugs, talking to villagers, etc). My houses are almost completely empty but there's something about decorating my island based on a theme I like and waiting for my villagers to interact with the furniture I place that I just love
2) completing collections (museum, diys, or just personal goals)
I'm pretty lazy when it comes to completing the museum - I think I only have one fossil left but my bug and fish collections are less than halfway done and I only have two or three things in the art and deep sea areas. but I got a real kick out of hunting down all of the main DIYs and finding my perfect set of villagers for my island's theme.
3) the fact that there is something to do every day (daily npc visitors or etc)
I know a lot of people would prefer if Leif, celeste, and some other NPCs got their own buildings so that they could be accessed everyday and I'll admit that would be great since the way things are right now getting bug and fish models takes a long time. But checking on the daily NPC is one of the few things that I try to do daily even if I'm not really going to play animal crossing that day. So if they moved to the island or had a fixed schedule I'd probably only play AC on certain days. That being said I'm really hoping the Roost gets its own building because there's no reason for Brewster to be a rotating NPC!
we could only pick 3 but the truth is i have more than 3 things that motivate me to play the game rn, and have always had multiple aspects i liked about the game.
Decorating/Terraforming Island: this is the first game that's allowed us to do something like this (no ACNL, ur public works project & custom design paths do not count) and it's rly fun to do. i haven't even gotten close to finishing decorating and terraforming my island, so it's definitely something that motivates me to play as i like to do a little bit of those things every day if i can (inspiration is kind but brief sometimes). it is definitely one of my favorite aspects of the game, and its something that sets NH apart from all the previous Animal Crossing games.
In Game Shopping: my island is new so i have quite a lot of things to catalog still. im currently just trying to get all the items i can without having to trade for the other color variations of them, and with clothing i think u dont rly need to trade for those so im trying to buy everything i can every day oop- it's quite a lot of work (and a lot of bells). shopping in this game is something i dread less than in previous games and i dont rly know why. maybe it's because i dont feel as much pressure to try to collect everything asap since this game is still new-er and ik that i dont rly want to time travel atm.
There's something to do everyday: dailies have always been a thing in Animal Crossing games, but ACNH has added a lot more. u have to look for ur daily npc, look for ur daily message in a bottle, u have to hit all ur rocks & trees for Maximum Resource Collection, u have to gift ur villagers something everyday, etc. i mean u dont have to do these things but i want to bc in-game chores will always be better than irl chores.
now here are the random things that motivate me to play and that i quite like
In-game Sound Effects: i dont rly know why but the sounds and sound effects in this game r rly nice, and i always try to play with sound on if i can. like walking around town with the round toe vinyl pumps on,,, it sounds so lovely.
Flower Breeding: i forgot how annoying it was to try to get ur foot in the door with mass-producing flowers of specific hybrid colors but ACNH didnt hesitate to remind me. but its okay bc the flowers r prettier in the game and they also Do Not Die
Checking Out Friends' Islands: this was something i wasnt able to do with previous games bc i didnt have friends who played Animal Crossing when ACNL was the fresh new game but now i do for ACNH and it's great. it gives me something to talk about with them if i want to say something but dont know what to say. it's also funny to hear their little stories of villagers, and to see their islands as they progress.
DIY Recipes: while i may not rly feel compelled to go as fast as possible with completing my catalog, i feel the exact opposite for DIY recipe collecting. i try to log on at least 3 times a day (morning, afternoon, and evening) just to see which of my villagers are crafting for that sweet, sweet DIY recipe. if i visit a friend's island i always go and look to see who's crafting as well. i have gotten so accurate with murdering balloons in this game, just for potential DIY recipes. i like to have all options available to me when it comes to things that have multiple options, and DIY recipes aren't locked behind specific color swatches nor are there only a certain amount available per day, so theoretically i could get Many New Recipes in One Day. i may not live my irl to the fullest, but that's certainly not true to my ACNH life with specifically recipes and Nothing Else. heck i scan in a new amiibo card every day to potentially get a new recipe. i havent seen a random camper since my mandatory move-in. am i suffering? yes.
My favorite aspect of this game is the multiplayer and chatting with people on their island. It creates a priceless and fun experience that keeps me entertained and continue to keep on playing. I also villager hunt and am gathering all needed furniture for my town.
, but I love decorating my house interior, wished the game had more gameplay dynamics so i could for example use my bathroom area or my kitchen, but thats okey. I still super duper enjoy decorating my houses, cause i actually have 3 houses in my island and i love the process of giving different ambiances to the houses. 
, Sometimes i feel like i have already designed my island layout but then somehow my brain goes bz bz bz and i start thinking i want my town to look differently, like more like, I had envision so i star terraforming and decorating all over again. Sometimes its a bit frustrating cause i dont really know how to do what i want to do but then i leave it be until i get my inspiration and then when i do it just works out ( at least until i decide to change everything again 
. Although i would love from Nintendo to also release an update for the online part of the game, I personally really miss the ACNL online game options like in ACNL where you could go with friends to Tortimers island and play tons of games, which were very entertaining 
Theming is fun,but sometimes I'm not sure what theme I ultimately want to settle on. I'm working on a tropical themed town using warm-toned items, but sometimes I also lean towards a Northeastern fishing town too. It's hard to decide sometimes. >.<
