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Does the Happy Home Academy stifle creativity?

The_Storyteller

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Hi all,

I've currently been investing a lot of my time in perfecting the cosy, woodcutter's cottage theme for my Mayor's house. It's been an interesting and new experience for me because I've usually always gone with the regal/ princess combination and tried to make it as pretty as possible. With access to all the great new furniture items from the camp ground I've been inspired to go for something fresh.

But I'm finding that when I check my HHA scores, they're really low. When I first started playing Wild World back in 2006 I just did whole furniture sets in each room, and my scores were amazing! But I met a friend who had a kitchen? And a bathroom? And even a walk-in robe! So when I started playing New Leaf I decided I wanted to make my residents' houses actually feel like houses.

I did a lot of dream town reviews in my old town, and one thing I saw time and time again was people setting up entire furniture series in each room that didn't really flow or make much sense in order to score well with the HHA, and I think it's really disappointing, because I think the house is a place where you should be able to experiment and get creative, but the HHA criteria makes it really difficult.

Please tell me I'm not the only one that feels this way!
 
I did it with my Mayor Jill in my first town Applewin. (The town is now available, in its “Welcome amiibo” presence, for Dream Address visits. See below signature.) I have since done this challenge with no other human characters. For me, personally, it is not worth my time. It also doesn’t serve how I have visualized creating and assembling humans’ houses and their rooms.
 
It's a new thing with me, but I've started by throwing all the crap HHA wants so I can unlock all the gold exterior parts, and then I go back and redo my house(s) to look like actual houses, and not just six rooms full of fancy sets.
 
In Marizpan, I just got my gold HHA badge with my main and upper room sporting Rustic sets and stopped there. The gold exteriors don't fit my ideal housing theme at all so I didn't even bother with those.
 
I hate the contradiction between the fact that I want to max out on all of my badges, but I hate the HHA. I've never liked Lyle, or anything to do with the HHA. I think there's more to creating a nice home than filling your catalog and showing off your most expensive furniture. Houses in ACNL are about telling a story and creating a home, and the HHA just wants you to make six fancy bedroom/kitchen/living room hybrids.
 
I just did it for the prize and the gold exterior. After I won those I quit the theme challenge.
Why does a full set have to be in each room? They gave us bathroom and kitchen items but most of those don't work with the rustic theme I picked. Dropped it and I now have a beautiful upstairs kitchen, cabana bathroom with plants room and a nice living room in the front room. Think the mayor score is 220,000 points with no challenge.

Wished they fixed the HHA with the update. Hopefully they'll change it for the next AC game.
 
I do think it stifles creativity, but I also think, like having a pattern on the ground in front of a house, the game is coded the way it is for a reason.
 
Yes, the HHA does stifle creativity in my opinion.

You have to admit that getting a compliment feels great, and because of this you find yourself listening to the feedback of others, it's natural really. So, if you are playing the game on the Bell Tree or with some friends at home your feedback is from other humans, humans that like your creative designs. You feel proud of what you have created and just ignore the HHA.

But what if you are playing alone? The only thing you've got is Lyle. I'm not saying everyone would do this but I speak for myself while playing City Folk (I played that game alone for years, with the others in the series I had RL friends who liked Animal Crossing). With the lack of feedback from my friend who I had played Wild World with for years, I ended up trying to please Lyle. At the same time it seemed to be my own decision, I started liking the series rooms!

When I started New Leaf the first thing I tried to do was setting up full Cabana in my main room. It wasn't until I started Streetpassing people, and looking online for decor inspiration that I got creativity back that had been lost since Wild World. :)
 
The sets definitly do get you points, and if you want to unlock the gold stuff and what have you then that's the way to go, I literally pay no mind to my score, but since my whole house is all cute/fairytale themed items I get good scores anyways because the stuff goes well together. I have seen people who will just shove everything into a room for the scores and honestly it's kind of silly, like someone had a room with the lovely set and then the refurbished regal stuff to accompany it and I was like, "Aww what a cute bed room" and then they had the stove shoved in a corner just for the points and stuff, and i've also seen people make adorable kitchens with like the Alpine set and then they'll just shove in the bed like, why didn't you just leave out that piece? it's kind of silly, but I mean if you stick with "themes" and not "sets" you can actually be quite creative. =]
 
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