Do you like the idea of villagers looking into your pockets just to take stuff from you?

[VanitasFan26]

Okay so I know in most Animal Crossing games whenever you have items in your pockets, sometimes the villagers would point out your items and they would get either demanding or annoyed that you have certain items. For example in the GameCube version sometimes if you have creatures in your pockets the villagers may take away your fish/bug from you because they don't want you to smell "stinky". Also sometimes they would demand the item from you even if you didn't ask them if they wanted it like in the newer games, even as going far as to making you play a game for it as if its some type of gambling.

The thing is I never liked this feature because if you are just saving on to your items because you want to put it in your home the villagers would sometimes run up to you and they would want the item from you. I might be in the minority but I am glad that in the newer AC games they got rid of it. It was pretty annoying when villagers try to take items from you even though you didn't ask them if they want the item. In New Horizons the villagers are now more understanding so they don't get all angry or upset if you say no when they see an item you have, but the only issue is that they sometimes force a gift on you even if you didn't want the item which that can be annoying at times.

How do you feel about this feature in most Animal Crossing games?

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

This was one of the worst aspects of villagers from the GC port. I mainly played the Japanese exclusive e+ version, but I can recall one instance in the English localization of the game in which Piper stole something from my inventory because I had the gall to speak to her. Winnie tried to demand something from me, but I turned her down. Mind you, Winnie was one of my starting villagers, and we've been neighbors for quite a while, now. Both of them apologized, but all of this told me was that I needed to stay away from Peppies. I heard Crankies, and even NORMAL Villagers, could steal from you, as well. I do NOT want to find out if the latter is true. Ever.

Snooty characters could force an exchange out of you, too. Honestly, I don't know how people (especially kids who grew up playing it) didn't just give up on the game. The hostility from the GC villagers isn't funny or clever; it's annoying and unwarranted — as if the game is punishing you just for simply interacting with them.

As for the other games: I still don't care much for this particular mechanic, because it makes dialogue feel a bit more artificial than it is because it wouldn't make sense for an NPC like Maple — who enjoys cute furniture and what have you, to ask the player for something she would consider her least favorite based off the theme/style of it. Also, it gets a bit grating having villagers consistently make poor offers. At the very least, though, it does help me get rid of stuff I don't care for/don't want anymore.

I think it's fine that villagers no longer treat you as if you're the second coming of Hitler or something, just for simply saying no to them. People want this type of rudeness back in the newer games, but I have to ask these people if they want to go back to this type of behavior that never changes because the game doesn't account for how friendly the player is towards villagers. Also, the topic of "Villager Rudeness" is a bit more complex than just being horrible or kind to you on a whim. That's an entirely different discussion; though. One I don't want to get into, now. I have ideas on how to make dialogue have more meat to it without villagers being on obnoxiously extreme ends of the spectrum, but I'll save that for my own thread.

Lastly, I suspect the reason they don't gleefully take your items away anymore is because of the "ping" mechanic. Can you imagine how frustrating it'd be to have them ping you, then take whatever's in your pockets because you decided to interact with them? That would've made already bad game design even more terrible.

 

[Mr_Keroppi]

I hated in the Gamecube game when they legit STOLE your items but I quite enjoyed it in New Leaf because I cannot recall if it was in CF and WW but one thing I always thought was weird about it was that Retail existed??? Like, if they really wanted the item like they say they did I understand but its so weird because if you were actually going to sell it just put it up for sale at Retail and THEN your villagers can buy it?? It is definitely weird but since Retail isnt in New Horizons I think running up and asking is okay but no more snatchy snatchy trash

 

[VanitasFan26]

Lastly, I suspect the reason they don't gleefully take your items away anymore is because of the "ping" mechanic. Can you imagine how frustrating it'd be to have them ping you, then take whatever's in your pockets because you decided to interact with them? That would've made already bad game design even more terrible.

Oh yeah and if they kept that mechanic in New Horizons I would avoid my villagers at all cost because that would get annoying fast. I also just remember how if you go and play that card mini game in the GameCube version they take it way too far with the gambling they sometimes may say "If you lose, then I get all your money" or "If you lose then I get to take an item from you" I mean just what in the would were they thinking? I am glad its no longer a thing in the newer AC games.

 

[-Mars-]

-

 

[LadyDestani]

I didn't like the way they could just steal items from you in the GameCube version, but I avoided the problem by never talking to my villagers if I had something I wanted to keep in my pockets. If I bought something from the shop for my home, I ran straight home to drop it off before doing anything else. If I caught fish or bugs for the museum, I made sure to donate them before talking to any villagers. It may not have been the most efficient system, but it did solve the problem.

In the newer games, I don't really mind when villagers ask for the items I have in my pockets. At least I have the choice of whether or not to give it to them and if I say no they don't even get mad like they would in the older games.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

I also just remember how if you go and play that card mini game in the GameCube version they take it way too far with the gambling they sometimes may say "If you lose, then I get all your money" or "If you lose then I get to take an item from you" I mean just what in the would were they thinking? I am glad its no longer a thing in the newer AC games.

Yeah. That was especially a pretty crappy implementation on the developers' part. I don't think I'll ever understand the thought process that goes on when making these sort of luck-based scenarios that can stack against the player. Sure, I can just hide the money/items I don't want stolen from me in envelopes or just put them on the ground, but I mean... why should I do that every time I want to talk to a villager? I can imagine one of my villagers leaving, and making sure that the villagers that I really care about — don't just leave my town without any warning, with a dialogue chain in which they might leave my town and I have the option to get them to stay (basically the only way of preventing your villagers from moving in the original game), and instead of that dialogue chain playing out, they do or say something that makes me have second thoughts about having them to stay in my town, anyway. It was a really dumb system, and while I'm glad that villagers don't scream at your face for the most trivial things, I wished we had more than just a couple of options in terms of talking to villagers, and that it wasn't so randomized. What gets on my nerves is that you couldn't just save your bells at the Post Office until all of your debts were paid off. ...Why couldn't that just be standard from the very beginning? And they didn't even try to fix this in later releases of the GCN port... Whatever.

 

[Shawna]

The villagers were awful in the original, there is no argument here. A lot of people want this back, but I strongly disagree. I can understand the frustration of the watered-down personalities in newer games, but I thought they went too far in GameCube. The forced trades/steals are an excellent example of this. And the crankies and the snooties are not the only rude ones either. Even the peppies and normals were horrid at times. I thought WildWorld had a good balance of coldness and friendliness. Yes, snooties and crankies were rude, but it was milder and they were nice if the right choices are made and you get closer to them.

I think it is downright stupid to put a "feature" where you can get robbed of something without making a choice. As someone else said, it's like the game is punishing you for interacting with your villagers. Why would the game punish you for doing something that is a major part of Animal Crossing? Sure, the catalog exists, so you can just re-order it, but still. Hell, I am pretty sure they can steal creatures and unorderables too! Imagine finally catching a fish/bug, and a villager forces a trade. This would be frustrating as heck, I'm sure. .-. You should not have to keep hiding things in your mail, for fear of being forced to do a trade. That's ridiculous.

If I may get semi-off-topic, I noticed that Nintendo is pretty guilty of this: Putting features in their games just to frustrate players. It's one thing for a game to have flaws, it is quite another to intentionally put in pointless features for the sole purpose of frustrating players. A petty complaint I had in New Leaf is that the train would pass through Main Street a lot, and this is frustrating if I have to go to Main Street. You can argue that it "doesn't take very long", but it is still extremely annoying having to wait for it to pass through.

Then there is Miitopia. I love this game to no end, but there are two features that frustrate the heck out of me: Sickness and Wrong Buying.

Sickness happens when the dark lord is defeated, and after the darker lord is defeated, the main hero can also get sick. A lot of people argue that this was implemented to encourage players to switch around their teams. "Encourage" is not even the word I would use. It's more like "forcing". I can understand that switching around your team can keep the game fresh, but after the dark lord, and even the darker lord, is defeated, there is still a lot of grinding to be done with our main four teammates. Plus, Sickness in this game is executed very poorly. It happens way too often, cannot be prevented, and it can be frustrating just to get your miis well again.

And the wrong buying is just stupid. It serves no purpose whatsoever. Miis can already take forever to even think about buying something, but this just makes it worse.

I wish sickness and wrong buying were removed in the Switch port (or at least the former be executed better, like being able to prevent it, or having medicine somehow be available). And wrong buying should not exist at all.

Anyway, tangent over. I love Nintendo, but they need to stop putting frustrating features in games. Again, it's one thing for a game to have flaws, but they should not intentionally put pointless and frustrating features in their games.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

The villagers were awful in the original, there is no argument here. A lot of people want this back, but I strongly disagree. I can understand the frustration of the watered-down personalities in newer games, but I thought they went too far in GameCube. The forced trades/steals are an excellent example of this. And the crankies and the snooties are not the only rude ones either. Even the peppies and normals were horrid at times. I thought WildWorld had a good balance of coldness and friendliness. Yes, snooties and crankies were rude, but it was milder and they were nice if the right choices are made and you get closer to them.

I think it's more about the personalities being inconsistent between games rather than them being watered down, because AC characters were always, at best, two-dimensional. I'm not sure if it's the localization(s) struggling to write these personalities without deviating too much from the original Japanese source material, or just Nintendo not caring about this altogether because the whole concept of distinct personalities wasn't established until after the game was localized, and I'm pretty sure they came about via a magazine, rather than it being officially declared. This is all just speculation, and I could be wrong about the personalities not being set and stone officially, but it'd make for an interesting topic.

Wild World balanced this sort of attitude by having less of it, yet I think some of the insults in that game cut more deeply than on GameCube. I especially don't understand the nasty letters they could randomly send to you after they moved. At least they don't steal, paint your roof, or just generally screw you over, anymore; they seem to take rejection a bit easier, as well.

It's definitely not perfect, though, because Peppies were just as bad as they were before (it's actually worse because they're also ditzier, too; a bad combination), Snooties often felt more like a variant of Peppies because of how their dialogue was written — as in, they're supposed to have a snobbish manner of speaking, not the Valley Girl talk that Peppies already occupy; it's a bit weird how City Folk was the only game to write Snooties in-character without them being too condescending as they were PG!. I'm a bit mixed with Crankies because Nintendo (Nintendo Treehouse, at least) decided to give them this eccentric, crazy trait while still being plenty rude. It's a weird combination. I also prefer them in CF because I find the more subtle approach to how they're characterized to be much better written. I never had much of an issue with Normals on GC because while they did have their moments, they were still among the nicest animals you interacted with, and that remains true in the games succeeding it; I have similar thoughts on Lazies, as well. They never gave me any grieve unless I bullied them; they were the easiest to talk to, I think. Jocks, though, were honestly just stereotypical jocks, just not as jerkish as they're often portrayed in highschool dramas and whatnot. It was worse in WW because they were much dumber, and the writers further exaggerated their one defining character trait. It's like how Peppies were more absent-minded and how their Valspeak was accentuated in both WW and CF.

I think it is downright stupid to put a "feature" where you can get robbed of something without making a choice. As someone else said, it's like the game is punishing you for interacting with your villagers. Why would the game punish you for doing something that is a major part of Animal Crossing? Sure, the catalog exists, so you can just re-order it, but still. Hell, I am pretty sure they can steal creatures and unorderables too! Imagine finally catching a fish/bug, and a villager forces a trade. This would be frustrating as heck, I'm sure. .-. You should not have to keep hiding things in your mail, for fear of being forced to do a trade. That's ridiculous.

If I may get semi-off-topic, I noticed that Nintendo is pretty guilty of this: Putting features in their games just to frustrate players. It's one thing for a game to have flaws, it is quite another to intentionally put in pointless features for the sole purpose of frustrating players. A petty complaint I had in New Leaf is that the train would pass through Main Street a lot, and this is frustrating if I have to go to Main Street. You can argue that it "doesn't take very long", but it is still extremely annoying having to wait for it to pass through.

[using Miitopia's RNG an an example when it comes to buying and Sickness]

I love Nintendo, but they need to stop putting frustrating features in games. Again, it's one thing for a game to have flaws, but they should not intentionally put pointless and frustrating features in their games.

Waiting for the train to pass through never bothered me that much. At its worst, it's a 15-second-or-so obstruction, so within those 15 seconds, I do something else while it passes through.

However, I understand where you're coming from — Nintendo adding these obnoxious features/mechanics/elements into their games that serve no practical effect, other than to annoy players. I know plenty of other developers of plenty of other games do this, too, but it's especially bad in this series:

• Wild World — I still can't believe they thought it was a good idea to have the Nookington's upgrade being locked behind an online feature. That's multiple magnitudes of stupid. Once the Wii U shop closes next year, people are going to be stuck with the version that didn't fix this issue, anyway. Good Job, Nintendo.
• City Folk — Animal Tracks; AKA, grass/snow deterioration. Did they really think people wouldn't be pissed off and frustrated having their town become a freakin' desert because they played and walked around it for too long? A lot of my issues with this game stem from aside from being more refined technically, it barely addressed the real issues Wild World had, introduced some of its own problems, and even removed a good amount of content that made WW worth playing.
• New Horizons — Every tool, even if it's GOLDEN, now breaks over time, with zero visual cues to determine how long they'll last. Need I say more?

New Leaf is the only game where I can't think of anything that bothers me as much as these three examples. The onslaught of letters sent by villagers is annoying, but that's more of a flaw of either the A.I., or the Friendship system.

 

[xSuperMario64x]

I'll never forget a time when I was like 9-10 years old playing AC:GCN and my brother was collecting quazoids for his house, and one of my characters from my second town had a tall quazoid so I brought it over to my main town. and then one of the villagers in the main town (I think it was a jock) demanded that I hand over the quazoid and since I couldn't reverse it, I ended up resetting the console. but any veteran player will know that resetting while in another town causes you to lose all inventory items/bells/mail and also your face lmao. so I lost the quazoid regardless and I was so upset (and also the face thing terrified me, I thought it broke the game or smth).

so basically, no, I think the idea that a villager can loot your pockets like a pirate is absurd. as much as I like the OG animal crossing I'm really glad they didn't bring this back in any newer game.

Post automatically merged: Jun 6, 2022

Wild World — I still can't believe they thought it was a good idea to have the Nookington's upgrade being locked behind an online feature.

did you know, this is actually also a requirement in the original game, though it's understandably easier to do because it doesn't require internet, only two memory cards/towns. my Doubutsu no Mori e+ save on my computer is permanently stuck with Nookway bc no one can visit my town lol.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

did you know, this is actually also a requirement in the original game, though it's understandably easier to do because it doesn't require internet, only two memory cards/towns. my Doubutsu no Mori e+ save on my computer is permanently stuck with Nookway bc no one can visit my town lol.

That's how I was able to get Tanukichi to upgrade his store to Nookington's in DnMe+. It's just stupid that they went in did that in Wild World, but it has to be from a visitor online, essentially making it online-restrictive content.

 

[WaileaNoRei]

With the caveat that I have only played ACNH, I think it is pretty funny. In a world where I am carrying several full grown trees in my pockets, along with a storage box that magically connects to my house and several live bees, I don’t see any problem with villagers peeking into those pockets.

I don’t have any problem at all with villagers asking for things or giving me things. They only ask for catalogued items, so I really have no problem handing it over (sold Soleil a yacht the other day).

I say yes, probably more than 95% of the time, but there’s really no issue with saying no either.

I like the feature because I like interacting with villagers. But I do sympathize with how they often have the worst timing and choose something you actually want (someone always asks to come over just as I am about to shut off my game for the day- and I just am weak and cannot say no!)

People want the villagers to interact more, and to seem more ‘alive’ but there’s literally no way to do that without it being occasionally slightly inconvenient to at least some people some of the time. So the way the feature is designed now seems like a reasonable compromise, and like a way to address complaints from earlier games.

I like the villagers to be interactive and interesting and fun on my island, so I like features where the villagers do things that you don’t control and cannot predict.

For me, it is a non-issue/ a positive, even if they were to steal it, because it is so easy to rebuy whatever those little rascals were to swipe (they always want my trash cans! Why guys? -- Haha, I know it’s probably just in some preferred price point they are set to prefer). There were a couple times when I sort of had and ‘aww man, I was just about to use that’ feeling, but i that’s it.

Just my opinion, obviously, and etc etc no offense intended.

 

[VanitasFan26]

For me, it is a non-issue/ a positive, even if they were to steal it, because it is so easy to rebuy whatever those little rascals were to swipe (they always want my trash cans! Why guys? -- Haha, I know it’s probably just in some preferred price point they are set to prefer). There were a couple times when I sort of had and ‘aww man, I was just about to use that’ feeling, but i that’s it.

One time one of my villagers (back when I was collecting photos from last year) by the name Lucy gave me a "Garbage Can" after I gave her a Antique Chair. Not gonna lie I got pretty mad about that one. So what I did was just put the Garbage Can by her home saying "Well now you will take out the trash yourself and don't except me to clean up your mess" As you can tell I took that personally lol.

 

[Shawna]

I think it's more about the personalities being inconsistent between games rather than them being watered down, because AC characters were always, at best, two-dimensional. I'm not sure if it's the localization(s) struggling to write these personalities without deviating too much from the original Japanese source material, or just Nintendo not caring about this altogether because the whole concept of distinct personalities wasn't established until after the game was localized, and I'm pretty sure they came about via a magazine, rather than it being officially declared. This is all just speculation, and I could be wrong about the personalities not being set and stone officially, but it'd make for an interesting topic.

Wild World balanced this sort of attitude by having less of it, yet I think some of the insults in that game cut more deeply than on GameCube. I especially don't understand the nasty letters they could randomly send to you after they moved. At least they don't steal, paint your roof, or just generally screw you over, anymore; they seem to take rejection a bit easier, as well.

It's definitely not perfect, though, because Peppies were just as bad as they were before (it's actually worse because they're also ditzier, too; a bad combination), Snooties often felt more like a variant of Peppies because of how their dialogue was written — as in, they're supposed to have a snobbish manner of speaking, not the Valley Girl talk that Peppies already occupy; it's a bit weird how City Folk was the only game to write Snooties in-character without them being too condescending as they were PG!. I'm a bit mixed with Crankies because Nintendo (Nintendo Treehouse, at least) decided to give them this eccentric, crazy trait while still being plenty rude. It's a weird combination. I also prefer them in CF because I find the more subtle approach to how they're characterized to be much better written. I never had much of an issue with Normals on GC because while they did have their moments, they were still among the nicest animals you interacted with, and that remains true in the games succeeding it; I have similar thoughts on Lazies, as well. They never gave me any grieve unless I bullied them; they were the easiest to talk to, I think. Jocks, though, were honestly just stereotypical jocks, just not as jerkish as they're often portrayed in highschool dramas and whatnot. It was worse in WW because they were much dumber, and the writers further exaggerated their one defining character trait. It's like how Peppies were more absent-minded and how their Valspeak was accentuated in both WW and CF.


Waiting for the train to pass through never bothered me that much. At its worst, it's a 15-second-or-so obstruction, so within those 15 seconds, I do something else while it passes through.

However, I understand where you're coming from — Nintendo adding these obnoxious features/mechanics/elements into their games that serve no practical effect, other than to annoy players. I know plenty of other developers of plenty of other games do this, too, but it's especially bad in this series:

• Wild World — I still can't believe they thought it was a good idea to have the Nookington's upgrade being locked behind an online feature. That's multiple magnitudes of stupid. Once the Wii U shop closes next year, people are going to be stuck with the version that didn't fix this issue, anyway. Good Job, Nintendo.
• City Folk — Animal Tracks; AKA, grass/snow deterioration. Did they really think people wouldn't be pissed off and frustrated having their town become a freakin' desert because they played and walked around it for too long? A lot of my issues with this game stem from aside from being more refined technically, it barely addressed the real issues Wild World had, introduced some of its own problems, and even removed a good amount of content that made WW worth playing.
• New Horizons — Every tool, even if it's GOLDEN, now breaks over time, with zero visual cues to determine how long they'll last. Need I say more?

New Leaf is the only game where I can't think of anything that bothers me as much as these three examples. The onslaught of letters sent by villagers is annoying, but that's more of a flaw of either the A.I., or the Friendship system.

As for your Wild World point, it’s even worse now that you can’t Wi-Fi on there anymore .—.

 

[Ganucci]

I think it's funny that they can just take stuff, but they should have some way for you to get it back. Like maybe a Snooty villager takes something from you and the next day you get a letter in the mail with them apologizing and returning it to you. Or maybe a Jock can take something from you and then you have to find it hidden in a hole on your island and if you find it in a set amount of time you get the item back and some bells, but if not then you just get the item. Basically they just need to make it fun and not demotivating.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

I think it's funny that they can just take stuff, but they should have some way for you to get it back. Like maybe a Snooty villager takes something from you and the next day you get a letter in the mail with them apologizing and returning it to you. Or maybe a Jock can take something from you and then you have to find it hidden in a hole on your island and if you find it in a set amount of time you get the item back and some bells, but if not then you just get the item. Basically they just need to make it fun and not demotivating.

I still think it's annoying in a game that's intended for people who just want a casual, relaxing experience, to have villagers just take what's in their inventory, but I can at least accept this alternative if they bring this instance back in future games. While we're at it, instead of this being something they do on random, give them a valid reason for them being thieves. Maybe a Peppy could steal an item you bought because you kept bullying her, or whatever, instead of her just flat-out saying, "Oh, let me just take that fish you spent a long time trying to catch because you talked to me!"

You could also have Crankies breaking your net if you decide to hit them too many times. Crankies would often use this threat in WW, but they never actually went along with it, so it'd be nice to see players punished for abusing their villagers just because they're "ugly".

 

[Croconaw]

I think it’s pretty dumb, to be honest. It’s even dumber when they want a creature or item you can reorder and force you to play a game. If you lose that game, that thing is gone forever. You really don’t have a say. The gambling feature isn’t fun, in my opinion.

 

[Shawna]

I think it's more about the personalities being inconsistent between games rather than them being watered down, because AC characters were always, at best, two-dimensional. I'm not sure if it's the localization(s) struggling to write these personalities without deviating too much from the original Japanese source material, or just Nintendo not caring about this altogether because the whole concept of distinct personalities wasn't established until after the game was localized, and I'm pretty sure they came about via a magazine, rather than it being officially declared. This is all just speculation, and I could be wrong about the personalities not being set and stone officially, but it'd make for an interesting topic.

Wild World balanced this sort of attitude by having less of it, yet I think some of the insults in that game cut more deeply than on GameCube. I especially don't understand the nasty letters they could randomly send to you after they moved. At least they don't steal, paint your roof, or just generally screw you over, anymore; they seem to take rejection a bit easier, as well.

It's definitely not perfect, though, because Peppies were just as bad as they were before (it's actually worse because they're also ditzier, too; a bad combination), Snooties often felt more like a variant of Peppies because of how their dialogue was written — as in, they're supposed to have a snobbish manner of speaking, not the Valley Girl talk that Peppies already occupy; it's a bit weird how City Folk was the only game to write Snooties in-character without them being too condescending as they were PG!. I'm a bit mixed with Crankies because Nintendo (Nintendo Treehouse, at least) decided to give them this eccentric, crazy trait while still being plenty rude. It's a weird combination. I also prefer them in CF because I find the more subtle approach to how they're characterized to be much better written. I never had much of an issue with Normals on GC because while they did have their moments, they were still among the nicest animals you interacted with, and that remains true in the games succeeding it; I have similar thoughts on Lazies, as well. They never gave me any grieve unless I bullied them; they were the easiest to talk to, I think. Jocks, though, were honestly just stereotypical jocks, just not as jerkish as they're often portrayed in highschool dramas and whatnot. It was worse in WW because they were much dumber, and the writers further exaggerated their one defining character trait. It's like how Peppies were more absent-minded and how their Valspeak was accentuated in both WW and CF.


Waiting for the train to pass through never bothered me that much. At its worst, it's a 15-second-or-so obstruction, so within those 15 seconds, I do something else while it passes through.

However, I understand where you're coming from — Nintendo adding these obnoxious features/mechanics/elements into their games that serve no practical effect, other than to annoy players. I know plenty of other developers of plenty of other games do this, too, but it's especially bad in this series:

• Wild World — I still can't believe they thought it was a good idea to have the Nookington's upgrade being locked behind an online feature. That's multiple magnitudes of stupid. Once the Wii U shop closes next year, people are going to be stuck with the version that didn't fix this issue, anyway. Good Job, Nintendo.
• City Folk — Animal Tracks; AKA, grass/snow deterioration. Did they really think people wouldn't be pissed off and frustrated having their town become a freakin' desert because they played and walked around it for too long? A lot of my issues with this game stem from aside from being more refined technically, it barely addressed the real issues Wild World had, introduced some of its own problems, and even removed a good amount of content that made WW worth playing.
• New Horizons — Every tool, even if it's GOLDEN, now breaks over time, with zero visual cues to determine how long they'll last. Need I say more?

New Leaf is the only game where I can't think of anything that bothers me as much as these three examples. The onslaught of letters sent by villagers is annoying, but that's more of a flaw of either the A.I., or the Friendship system.

One annoying thing about new leaf is that villagers would decide to stay, even after you encourage them to move .-.

 

[michito]

I find it super funny concept-wise, but I hate it during actual gameplay, I have lost Gulliver & event-exclusive items thanks to that.... So in a way I'm glad it was removed in later games, on ACGC I avoid talking to my villagers if I have money (yeah, they can force you to buy stuff... whose price can be ALL the money you got in hand).
I think what villagers do now, requesting your item or exchanging it for other is good a balance; it's still sudden but you're free to refuse to the trade/gifting.

 

[Shasaur]

Awesome thread! Love these posts where we discuss game mechanics and how they fit into AC, gives me a lot of inspiration and knowledge for what I should do in my game!

Personally, I think it can create some funny situations (especially if they would replace your item with a trash can or something) but I can see from the comments here that if not implemented properly it can result in a lot of frustration. So I reckon some things that would improve it would be:
1. Allow you to request the item back if you find that it has been stolen from you (but you have to find the villager that did it)
2. Related to finding them, only naughty or mischievous villagers steal, not everyone
3. Maybe have the villagers not choose really personal items