Why We’re Already Bored Of New Horizons

the first thing you need to know is a little bit of my personal history with the animal crossing franchise i first started playing population growing for the gamecube way back in high school when my dad bought it for christmas one year he thought it would be a great game for my siblings and i to share since you were able to have four different save files and man he could not have anticipated that my love for animal crossing would lead me to making this video over two decades later i remember the late nights spent with my siblings camped out on the king-sized bed eating popcorn and sour gummy worms playing this game late into the night and at odd hours in the morning and then i played lots of wild world in college the ds was the first handheld system i ever had and i sunk hours and hours into this game because i didn't have access to wii at that time so even though i did play some of city folk on my various vacations at home on breaks from school it was mostly something that i experienced second hand through my siblings and i played wild world a lot longer than anyone probably was ever intended to then i got new leaf for the 3ds when it came out in 2013. i got a 3ds the first thanksgiving it was available i even loved it so much i was so excited to play animal crossing that i got it for my sister as well so that we could play together at this point i wasn't really entrenched in the animal crossing community online as i was still pretty reclusive with my gaming habits little did i know that a few years later i would start twitch streaming and i would be playing this game almost non-stop over on my channel which no longer exists so don't go looking for it and i have sunk hundreds of hours into new leaf if not thousands especially after the welcome amiibo update dropped and it added all of the new features for us to enjoy it really was able to tide me over but i was looking for something new and exciting with whatever the next game the franchise would be i even played all of the spin-off games including happy home designer for the 3ds and yes even amiibo festival for the wii u i actually really like that game so when new horizons was announced in 2018 during a nintendo direct with a 2019 release date you could probably guess i was pretty stoked as a content creator i had plans for this game i made a handful of videos on an old channel speculating what we might see from the game i even knew that i wanted to do a let's play highlighting this entry in the series even when the game was delayed to 2020 i had faith i'd much rather have a completed fleshed-out game than a rushed game i would much rather have the franchise that i love so dearly be delayed and be delivered in the best possible form then have something rushed and incomplete and so the game released in march 2020 and it couldn't be coming at a better time it was a smashing success with the game crushing sales records with multiple countries in lockdown many people were opting to stay home and gameplay time was hitting new heights and let me tell you i loved playing new horizons choosing my map meeting my neighbors and exploring my island the graphics of this game were so pretty i was so excited to see a mainline animal crossing game finally in hd i looked forward to upgrading my buildings and shops and the first time i encountered all of these things i was absolutely charmed it was like the blush of a new love and i was thrilled to play the animal crossing franchise fresh and new once again and of course we can't forget those 31 million animal crossing players now a part of this community never before had i experienced such a strong animal crossing community presence particularly online groups sprang up all over dedicated to trading villager acquisition stock market exploits and more and then the updates started every couple of months we had new content to look forward to in addition to the progression milestones we were reaching on our own such as unlocking the museum moving in new villagers and terraforming players were put in charge of their islands and ways they had never been before being able to put furniture outside hunting for that elusive dream villager on mystery islands we also had increased design slots which would be increased again in a later update and we didn't have to worry about ruining flowers or where our rocks and trees were placed because all of this was changeable we had control in ways we never had before and of course we got to witness all of these amazing islands through youtube twitter instagram and eventually visit them ourselves when the dream address feature was added in an update and of course i can't forget the outfits i don't usually play games for the fashion aspect even though i do enjoy fashion but animal crossing new horizons had me hooked not only were we treated to those extra design slots but due to the online community custom design sharing was absolutely flourishing the able sisters also had tons of new and unique pieces of clothing that rotated on a daily basis plus i could visit my friends if they had something i was looking for all of this in addition to the character creation options new to the franchise and the later updates that would add new hairstyles and skin tone options at this point you've probably sensed our central theme and what has become my main thesis for this analysis animal crossing new horizons is about self-expression but wait if you remember earlier in the video i said the first time i encountered all these things i was absolutely charmed and that was true i primarily play games for the novelty the joy of discovery exploration building relationships seeing what's new the next day and the next day and the next day an animal crossing used to be this quaint video game about the isolation experienced when first moving to a new town how will the villagers treat you will you make any friends do you belong here in older iterations of the game residents of your town would move in or away with nary a hint of their intentions and some were downright rude in their interactions it always kept me on my toes as i never knew exactly what to expect from day to day i just spent the first part of the video singing the praises of animal crossing new horizons and i will happily stand by those opinions but there are a few things we need to discuss before we can move forward as someone who plays for the joy of discovery i did have a few problems with new horizons there are only a handful of new villagers even after so much time i understand when you're developing a game a lot of time goes into character creation but since most of them just needed graphical reskins i expected after so much time in development that we would have a lot more new villagers and npcs joining us in the newest game and that simply just doesn't seem to be the case and this wouldn't feel like such a hit if we didn't have missing npcs in the first place a lot of the characters that we love from previous games are just completely missing or they have very diminished roles in the new game being relegated to update events and smaller appearances than i would personally prefer there's also a lot of deep lore missing for the remaining npcs i used to enjoy learning about sable's backstory and befriending her over time and it just doesn't feel like i've built the same relationships with npcs as i did in previous games gulliver especially had a lot of potential in this arena i thought that after visiting with him several times on the beach that i would eventually unlock more of his backstory or something special about him but that just doesn't seem to be the case and i've really grown to be kind of bored with him personally the personalities of the remaining villagers that are still in the game feels quite stale it's very easy to spot when two villagers happen to share the same personality which is likely to happen since you're only allowed to have 10 villagers and there are only 8 personality types total again if so much time was saved in the character creation aspect why wasn't more time given to making these characters feel very different from each other and having enough dialogue options that even if characters did share the same personality type they wouldn't feel like copy pasted versions of each other one of the main draws of this game is coming back day in and day out to see what's happening on our island without enough daily chores to do it just doesn't feel like i have as much incentive to come back and see what's going on with my villagers most likely i'm not going to find anything to do there might be the basic chores like finding the money rock maybe harvesting some materials or finding a lost item but my villagers don't seem to ask me to do anything anymore and on that note i feel like i'm way too tied to my nook phone instead of building bonds with my villagers remember when your villagers used to tell you to take breaks and it seemed like they were pinging you for something to do every 5 or 15 minutes now we just have this carousel of never ending nook tasks and i feel like it's kind of a missed opportunity because i could be doing the exact same thing my phone is asking me to do but having my villagers ask me instead and having them give me rewards it would feel like i'm building bonds with my characters in a much more significant way than just being tied to my phone kind of feels too much like real life if you ask me even the mystery islands lack mystery usually they're used for just grinding materials or bugs and the occasional villager hunt but you don't even get to do that if your island is full i just feel like there's a lot of missed potential like maybe if you found a villager on a mystery island you could complete some sort of task for them or deliver something for them back at your home island i'm not exactly sure i'm not a game developer but it feels weird complaining about things without putting forth some sort of solution this is sort of a smaller complaint but i also don't feel like there's any standout hourly music there's nothing in this game that really compels me to go and listen to it in my spare time even though i listen to a lot of video game music off the top of my head the only hourly music that really stands out is the 6pm music and even that is kind of basic [Music] there are also some weird audio cues that are mixed really weird like every time you catch something or discover something the audio for that sound effect is mixed really high and as somebody who's pretty sensitive to audio cues and volumes and mixing i just find it to be kind of grating when i'm sitting there and just chilling out even people around me notice how much louder it is than everything else so bearing all that in mind i had to ask myself am i playing animal crossing wrong or more aptly am i the wrong kind of player for this game would a player more interested in self-expression enjoy this game more i had to change my perspective of the game in order to answer these questions you see personally i have always struggled in getting invested into simulation games even though i have hundreds and hundreds of hours dedicated to games like the sims 3 most of that was spent designing houses i simply wasn't interested in acting as the all-knowing overlord and master of fate in these kinds of games i did not want to bear the burden of that kind of responsibility but there are plenty of points that reinforce my thesis of new horizons having evolved into a game about self-expression first off we have the character creation everyone was super excited when we saw this during preliminary gameplay we finally had control over our skin tones our hair color our hair styles we were no longer beholden to some weird personality quiz that would dictate what we looked like for the rest of the game with the aforementioned terraforming we now had more control than ever about the layout of our islands we didn't have to live with the design choices that were made for us in the very beginning of the game except for a couple of limitations with the river mouths and the beach layout we have more design slots than ever before and we also had expanded design slots in an update this makes a lot of sense when you think about animal crossing being a game about self-expression it allows users to create all kinds of custom designs whether it be for clothing or paths or standees and because of the amazing online community we had more opportunity than ever to share these designs with others there's also the focus on diy recipes and crafting you're encouraged to visit throughout the day to collect recipes as well as the materials to craft them even the mundane items like rocks trees weeds and flowers contribute to this crafting system there are also fewer consequences for missing days you don't really have villagers asking where you were until you've been missing for about a week and you don't have to worry about checking in and watering flowers every day or plucking weeds or getting rid of things on your island for the most part it's pretty self-sustaining there's also a strong showing of infrastructure options including several designs for bridges and inclines you can also customize your diy recipes with a set number of design options or using custom options that you have created or unlocked yourself we should also talk about the ease of acquiring villagers which are now no more than ornamental fixtures on your island you can collect them through mystery island hunting campsite visits and also coordinating with other players you're now creating an island as opposed to living on one you are the master of your island's destiny you don't even really get penalized for time travel now due to the update system and progression gating and if the whole point is to play as an all-powerful overlord why not time travel you might spoil a few turnips but that's a small price to pay and yet and yet even with this obvious focus on self-expression even though we have had more control than ever before the game suffers due to some critical errors made on nintendo's part if you're really into the outdoor design aspect of new horizons and placing tons of furniture pieces outside you've probably also noticed the significant lag that accompanies that i have noticed it quite a bit myself while visiting other people's dream islands and from what i can tell from youtubers online they've also experienced that even when not on online play not to forget the bloated ui obtuse menus mismatched or double negatives it's very common to blow through character dialogue and choose the wrong option because you're expecting the affirmative action to be on the top of the menu while it's actually on the bottom this seems to be nintendo's weird attempt to not accidentally force the player into permanent consequences but whatever the case it means for me that i'm constantly having to redo dialogue options and slow down to make sure that i'm choosing the right thing there's also no multi-crafting which in a game focused on self-expression doesn't seem very efficient to me you should be allowing players to create as many copies of a furniture item they need instead of forcing them through this slow paced and laborious process and worst of all the greatest offender in my book is that you're only allowed one island per switch once again this just seems like an artificial constraint on nintendo's part there's no save data associated with the game cartridge i don't understand why they couldn't allow every profile to have its own island if they wanted to there's nothing to say that some profiles couldn't join an existing island and other profiles could have completely different islands independent of any others i do actually like designing towns which is why i had four animal crossing new leaf cartridges now changing my island means starting over from scratch or going through the costly and time intensive process to flatten it and redesign it right now the part of the game that i like the most is going to sleep and visiting dream addresses i love seeing how the community has worked with these constraints to still express themselves but for me personally i don't like these constraints i don't find them to be useful and i usually just get frustrated by the amount of time it takes or trying to find new designs it's just not worth it for me and so the community waited we waited for updates that would re-spark the thrill of discovery we waited for quality of life improvements that streamlined our process of self-expression we waited with baited breath for the triumphant return of beloved characters and services with the hopes of encountering new and wonderful animals to fall in love with and we got none of it and so we come to the crux of the issue and why i think we've seen a mass exodus of players especially after the one year mark for the players who like myself thrive on the thrill and charm of encountering new things there was simply too much missing from the game and not enough provided in the way of updates for me personally i realized that i like living in a quaint village or island not necessarily building it myself and being responsible for it and players who revel in the tools of self-expression this game provides have been disenchanted by the lack of quality of life improvements and the bloated and clunky systems that have gone completely unrepaired or acknowledged i can get on board with dripping out content in the way that animal crossing new horizons has done over the past year it keeps players interested and gives us things to look forward to the problem is this game seems to have slipped between the cracks in terms of who it's serving based on the plethora of reviews i've seen and conversations i've had with the community it feels like nintendo isn't hearing their feedback and that kind of disconnect between a developer and their game spells disaster and so it's time for nintendo to lay out all their cards they need to decide if this game is a game about self-expression or if this is a game about discovery in the past i would say animal crossing has been a franchise that is about the joys of living in these small towns and life going on with or without you and that was an aspect i really enjoyed now it seems that the franchise has evolved into a game about self-expression but there are just some critical things that nintendo needs to get right in order to keep their player base happy i really hope you enjoyed this discussion and if you have any more points to share i would be happy to talk about them with you in the comments below please leave a thumbs up for this video if you enjoyed it and hit that subscribe button if you want to get more nintendo type content here on story time but until the next video sweet dreams

Channel: Simple Bean

Views: 396,195

Keywords: Animal Crossing New Horizons, Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing New Horizons One Big Problem, Animal Crossinf New Horizons Review, ACNH, ACNH Review, ACNH Problem, Animal Crossing New Horizons Problem, Nintendo, Animal Crossing Review, Animal Crossing New Horizon, One Big Problem, Animal Crossing New Horizon Problem, Why I Still Prefer New Leaf Over New Horizons, retrospective, analysis, what went wrong, mass exodus, why does no one play, everything wrong with, Viral

Id: FinHQZ8Z9Qw

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021