Alright, so I've seen enough people talk mention this that it deserved its own discussion. Gameplay after Level 20 has become very, very slow for me. Building amenities and furniture for villagers is suddenly taking high amounts of material (120+) without a proportionately faster way to get it.
This leads to me being able to get ~30-60 of my desired material every day, if I complete every request and visit the quarry at an opportune time, and I'll likely be able to make what I want in a few days.
That's one piece of desired furniture.
Every few days.
Of constant gameplay.
Of course, this can vary, but for the most part, I'm finding later levels to be very, very slow, and not exactly rewarding. I really enjoyed the earlier levels, and I've been pretty taken aback at how quickly this game became slow!
Gameplay-wise, I'd say we need consistent rewards and varied activities to make it more interesting. As it is now, my rewards have slowed down remarkably, and I'm still completing the same tasks I did at Level 1. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but is certainly a surprisingly lacking design from Nintendo/DeNA, who are usually better at maintaining an interesting pace.
Is this something you anticipate being solved in version 1.0? If not, what sorts of things do you think would solve it?
I think a greater variety of villagers would certainly be rewarding, but then I'd be less likely to interact with the villagers I'm actually interested in. Greater sources of materials, or at least clearer sources (instead of trying to guess) might help. One huge thing that would help is random events from NPCs like in the original games - something to break the pace of normal gameplay and give you new tasks, and rewards. As it is now, almost anything, from more Isabelle quests to more shopkeepers to more characters would be enough to break my current slogging grind to get enough wood and cotton. However, what dies everyone else think?
I agree. I only ever played the first Animal Crossing on gamecube, so I can only compare my experiences to that game, but there was always something to do. In Pocket Camp, the game dries up for a few hours after you've completed the various animals' requests, and then I cannot find a decent thing to do. I'm currently level 22, and I'm preying on the new animal visitors for levels, as most of the main animals at my camp are around level 8 and yielding very low experience points.
To answer your question, I'm not entirely sure what I expected for the 1.0 version. This game is fun, but there is a lot of room to grow. It seems that there are already built-in special events that may offer a break from the norm (animals have birthdays), but more random events would be a breath of fresh air. I think just "more" in general should be added to the game. Right now, it feels really limited, and by offering more creative ways to get items/materials/bells, the game would feel less sluggish. Specifically, I would start by fixing the market. With most things at 10 bells per item, it just doesn't seem practical to farm fish/shells/fruit for money. Thus, once the quests are done, I'm done. After that, I would add more frequent random events, as we already discussed.
Overall, I like the game, and I look forward to seeing it grow.
This is disappointing to hear. I found that I got bored with Happy Home Designer very quickly for similar reasons and I suspect from the videos I have watched, that the same thing will happen with this game. One factor for me is that with the wonderful deep games like New Leaf to compare it to, it will seem superficial and repetitive very soon. I hope you are right about updates adding more dimension. And of course, being an AC fanatic I will play it whatever the drawbacks lol!
I've been playing for a few days and at level 25 now. I play a few minutes in the morning at breakfast and in the evening and that's ideal for picking up/ordering furniture, checking on my visitors and fulfilling requests.
I don't feel that the game really intends to offer more content than that and I'm fine with the bite sized gameplay.
I'm not grinding as that always kills my enthusiasm for a game. So far I'm happy with the pacing and will probably continue to play daily - I still play Fire Emblem Heroes daily as FtP.
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Building amenities is definitely really slow... the one I’m building now required like 72 hours which has slowed me down a lot cause all the villagers at my campsite have maxed out friendship levels and I should’ve built the cute tent or something first so I can continue leveling up while the super time consuming amenity was being built. And I also haven’t been building that much furniture but I probably should build more
I haven't actually noticed much of a slow down and I'm almost level 30; I think it has may have more to do with playing style than the game. I personally can't even check in every 3 hours and I'm more interested in unlocking things than in making all of them. I'm still having a good time finding the rarer bugs and fish and decorating. I also am playing with a handful of friends and we text each other and swap items through our market boxes, so that helps.
I also feel like the dialogue is a lot deeper than it has been, especially since it changes depending on what they're near. So that is keeping things interesting (got a pretty wild confession out of Cherry yesterday!)
One thing that definitely helps is building all 4 amenities at level 1, then level up all 4, so you are able to continue building friendship levels.
I also haven't had a problem with the game slowing down. I'm level 27 and I've leveled about 3 times today. I also don't have a problem with the requirements crafting an item takes, I've been able to pretty much make something whenever I have the space too.
The only problem I have is with the dialogue, I just skip it now because I think I've seen everything they've had to say.. although I only speak to them when they will raise their friendship with me/or have a request, so I could just be missing it.
I definitely agree with making all amenities before leveling each of them up.. I made the mistake of just concentrating on the cute tents and had to wait around 3 days for one to finish building, meanwhile most of my campers had maxed out their friendship level.
I think it's a neat little game, it doesn't intend for you to be on it 24/7.
I'm not level 20+ yet, but what you're describing sounds like what you'd expect from a free-to-play mobile game once you get past the initial onboarding. Unfortunately these games are often designed to lure you into the false sense of security that everything is easy and reasonably obtainable when you start out...and the suddenly you hit the wall of 'wait for days or fork out the $$$'. You're used to everything going so fast that when the gravy train slows down, it's easier to prod you into spending money to get things back to how they used to be before you hit the wall. Honestly, it's borderline manipulation!
That said, this sort of thing would be why the game is in beta for Australia right now. They will be observing the analytics coming in right now to see how we react when we hit 'the wall'. Do we just stop playing and quit out of boredom? Do we keep slugging along but not spend money? Or do we start spending money? Adjustments will probably be made before launch according to this.
wool and fabric are such a pain to get and you need way too much of them for small items.. the carpets are a nightmare..
you can't craft everything right away, if you wanna upgrade your attractions etc too.
but I still managed to get a lot things to decorate nicely, relatively quickly .. eventually you will get there.. I'm not rushing much.. it would be cool tho if material amounts would increase with level, like a few said already.. .like 1 wool is nothing.
(I wish you could just drop items, if your inventory is full and you don't wanna sell it.
also would be cool if we could put insects/fish etc in our room as in other ac games.)
I finally payed off 50k to giovanni and they did another upgrade with a 100k bill.. I can savely say he will never see me again
Definitely gathering materials is the worst issue for me so far, and the spread of it. I get tonnes of steel and barely anything like cotton or wood which are the main things needed for amenities like the swinging tree, tents and whatnot. The numbers needed to construct with these materials get higher too and takes much longer just to make like a single chair, which is annoying to get villagers, (Fauna needs like 250+ in wood lol)
Other than that, I still play very often, definitely don't intend on spending money unless there's a sale of some sort.
I hit level 36 today, which is when you get your final villager. I have a level 3 variant of every tent, except my lvl 1 sporty, and a lvl 4 cool street. Between gameplay, stretch goals, and wisely spending my Nintendo points I'm just now running out of materials. I do however check in every roataion that I'm awake for. Much like the core series, I think your experience will vary heavily based on play style. Though who are willing to, and have the luxury of, playing constantly will see much faster growth and more resources then those who don't or can't. Also an important note I habe spent a grand total of 1 dollar, and only because it was a timed package. I still managed to get both nook and k.k sliders chairs, bought 2 building slots early on, and spent a few cash here and there on requests or for stretch goals. With all that I'm sitting on 97 cash.
im only level 16 and its gotten super slow. just let me buy frcking materials and bells. i havent played in a few days now bc of how slow and boring things were getting
I'm at level 34. I didn't particularly notice much of a slowdown. It's probably the least grindiest FtP game I've tried.
Once the animals visit your campsite, they're a good source of bells and materials. I regularly get 1000 bells from my buddy Beau and just saying hi to everyone nets me a mix of crafting materials.
OMG yes, the friends menus are the worst. Accepting a friend request takes like 15 taps I swear. Also, you have to manually scroll through your whole list to *find* quarry requests. The friend menus are the only thing I really think is done poorly in the game.
I'm only at level 17 right now and I've already noticed the slow down. The villagers at my camp very seldom ask for things now, making it pretty hard to up their friendship, and when they do ask for something it moves hardly a sliver... The wait time on amenities is CRAZY! And the amount of stuff you need for them is crazy too, I had to scroll through the stretch goals and finish specific ones to get the things I need to build (which is a good way to get stuff you need if you run out of things to do for your villagers.) I wish there were more daily missions than just three, so at least I'd have that to do when I run out of tasks to do. I'm sure when they release more fish and insects it will take longer to complete tasks which will be nice at least, but I find now I get through the tasks so fast that waiting the 2 hours until I have more stuff to do is annoying.
Like Justin said, I am hoping that with the slow down, that people DON'T go jumping to buy the tickets so that they can make changes to the game for our benefit and make it easier to get through and upgrade stuff. I think what I am going to try to do is just try spending more effort on getting just the villagers that match my theme to my camp, instead of EVERYONE like I have been doing. Of course I'll still do tasks for everyone to get materials and stuff, but focus more so on getting the ones that match my theme, so I can have a matching and cohesive aesthetic without having to get a ton of furniture I don't really care for or want.
