Do you think the developers were on a time crunch?

[Mars Adept]

Ok. Unpopular opinion. I believe that despite Nintendo claiming the game was delayed because they didn’t want to put any stress on the developers, there just wasn’t enough time to finish the game at all and there may have been a lot of time crunch.

Ignoring any ‘missing’ features because that is not a debate I want to get into and for all we know they possibly weren’t planning on putting them into the game in the first place, there have been several major glitches in the game. Not counting the patched duplication glitch which is just a thing that ends up happening in every Animal Crossing game and is to be expected, there’s been...

The 300 Balloon Glitch (Patched)
The Villager Moving Glitch (Was originally some glitch specifically involving villagers moved in via amiibo card, after being SUPPOSEDLY patched it apparently mutated into a glitch involving all villagers, FINALLY patched in the recent update... hopefully.)
And now apparently a new glitch where something triggers Redd never visiting your island... ever.

Don’t you think that’s a little odd? Seeing so many potentially game-breaking glitches one after the other? Was New Leaf ever like this? From what I can remember aside from item duplication glitches the worst bugs City Folk and New Leaf had to offer were funny out of bounds glitches. And the sick villager no ping oversight in New Leaf but they just removed the sick villager feature in the Welcome amiibo update entirely for some reason.

Do you think the developers were/are on time crunch?

If that’s true... on one hand, I’m mad that apparently this game didn’t start development until a few years ago as opposed to New Leaf which was just four years after City Folk. On the other hand, it’s really upsetting knowing that even with the stressful things going on in the world right now, the developers likely have to get out the updates on time, particularly holiday related ones(such as Halloween), and aren’t allowed to wait until next year.

This game has been a big mess, and it’s sad.

 

[Khaelis]

No, glitches happen. Animal Crossing is a huge series so they are bound to miss a lot of things.

 

[Lumbridge]

I don't know if I'd use the prevalence of a couple of glitches as a justification for the game being rushed. I'd be more partial to cite the huge list of missing features from the game that are being slowly trickled in through updates... which whatever, it's fine I guess and I'll get used to it but it's pretty clear the game was not a polished, finished product that met people's expectations when it was released

 

[Mairen]

I don't want to sound like a mindless Nintendo fan or anything, and I admit that anyone could make poor marketing and development decisions, but I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would just toss out a half finished Animal Crossing game onto the market >.< At this point, I honestly believe those glitches were truly accidental. Humans are still the ones developing our games and even if this game goes through multiple layers of testing and checks it's still possible that someone could miss something.

 

[Dragostea Din Tei]

The fact that most of the iconic furniture series are missing is more than enough proof for me

 

[tajikey]

Absolutely not. I believe there was a ton of thought put into how/when they were going to release not only the game, but all the various updates. Nintendo relies on the millions of end users to try and break the game. If they hadn't patched the issues so quickly, then I think we'd have a problem.

 

[voltairenism]

So.... glitches happen when people do things with the game the developers didnt expect. Yeah, the ballons were a thing, but I dont think even 30 years of development would make it perfect. The game has to come out at some point :/

TL;DR: yes, but it's ok.

 

[FireNinja1]

I don't want to sound like a mindless Nintendo fan or anything, and I admit that anyone could make poor marketing and development decisions, but I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would just toss out a half finished Animal Crossing game onto the market >.< At this point, I honestly believe those glitches were truly accidental. Humans are still the ones developing our games and even if this game goes through multiple layers of testing and checks it's still possible that someone could miss something.

They released Mario Kart Tour, which I thought was a godawful attempt at creating a mobile Mario Kart experience. Drifting was terrible, microtransactions were terrible, everything about the game was bad. I don't see anything remotely close to that in this game, but maybe I'm just a bit more cynical when it comes to this kind of stuff.

 

[pocky]

I'm inclined to believe so with all of the glitches that the game released with. I know that bugs are bound to happen with every game, but I'm used to Nintendo games being a lot more polished than this. Granted my Switch didn't get much use before the release of ACNH so it might just be an issue with the new generation of games that is coming out.

 

[Jared:3]

No not really, I mean didn't they have like 7 years to make a new game?

 

[Matt0106]

Every game comes with its problems. You can delay a game as much as you want, and chances are, a game-breaking glitch will go through. It's easier for millions of people to notice a glitch compared to a development team of a few hundred people. I think it's a little unjust to think that if a game has a game-breaking glitch, it is considered rush.

Also, the game is not a mess, in my opinion. So much effort has gone into it, and to write it off as a mess because of a handful of glitches, which can happen in any game and were fixed, is unfair. I do think there was a time crunch in terms of content, but I'm fine with it so long as we get free updates, which if anything, will help prolong the game's longevity and keep fans coming back for new stuff

 

[s i r e n t i c]

Considering how much content is getting released with patches and how much content is promised for later on I do think they were on a bit of a time crunch.
The bugs seem kind of like normal bugs, since almost every game has a few crazy bugs that always get discovered after the game drops to the public

 

[moonolotl]

People like TTers and such play the game much, much differently than nintendo could ever playtest, i imagine. That and its such a huge game, they're bound to miss some stuff no matter what

 

[Raz]

I don't want to sound like a mindless Nintendo fan or anything, and I admit that anyone could make poor marketing and development decisions, but I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would just toss out a half finished Animal Crossing game onto the market >.< At this point, I honestly believe those glitches were truly accidental. Humans are still the ones developing our games and even if this game goes through multiple layers of testing and checks it's still possible that someone could miss something.

This.

I have some friends who are game developers themselves. Some are even close to a few people who made a certain game some of you may have played (Celeste). One of my friends works as a 3d animator at Aquiris, the studio that made Horizon Chase Turbo. And I have to tell you, knowing these people and seeing how they work very hard (I'm on their discord, where a lot of game devs from Brazil are also present), crunch is both a inevitable and a draining part of their work.

When Nintendo announced they would delay the game to avoid crunch, that was celebrated amongst game devs from everywhere, because at the same time, we were getting horror stories about the development of Red Dead 2 and some other games where crunch was really making people feel miserable while working.

Glitches happens, bugs happen. Obviously, there's some companies, like Bethesda, who are famous for having no QC and for often releasing games in an almost Beta-stage. Nintendo has been one of the few companies in the industry that consistently releases games with a level of polish that are way above the standard.

 

[moonolotl]

Considering how much content is getting released with patches and how much content is promised for later on I do think they were on a bit of a time crunch.

I know OP didnt want to get into this topic so ill keep it brief but i honestly dont think the free updates and the "dlc" shows they were on a time crunch. They probably pushed it aside to work on later because 1. they dont need to have it out until the said months of the event and 2. perhaps they wanted to keep the sense of community and continue the hype on? like so everyones on the same page even if they TT

 

[sdw4527]

No, I don't think so, but do I think they have all content ready to go for the year like a lot of people are saying? Also no. I think they have work left to do and the bugs we've seen so far are just ones that slipped through the cracks. As someone who works in software testing, ideally you would catch every single one of these, but that's just not realistic with a game of this size and scale. The fact they responded and patched these fairly quickly shows they aren't too swamped with other tasks to do so. I don't believe the duping glitch was ever even patched in NL.

 

[Matt0106]

I know OP didnt want to get into this topic so ill keep it brief but i honestly dont think the free updates and the "dlc" shows they were on a time crunch. They probably pushed it aside to work on later because 1. they dont need to have it out until the said months of the event and 2. perhaps they wanted to keep the sense of community and continue the hype on? like so everyones on the same page even if they TT

This!

They probably did this to allow time travels to keep time travelling and not write them off completely, while at the same time, letting non-time travellers not feel like they are far behind.

 

[moonolotl]

This!

They probably did this to allow time travels to keep time travelling and not write them off completely, while at the same time, letting non-time travellers not feel like they are far behind.

even if they didnt intend for that to happen and its just a coincidence it still works super well. As a TTer myself i can super appreciate this because honestly i wanna be on the same page as everyone else! i want the hype to keep on going instead of just figuring everything out within a week!!

 

[Nefarious]

It just seems like their QA testers missed some things that they didn't think of checking, like seeing if balloons still spawn after getting the mile stamp. I bet they're checking that possibility for every stamp moving forward now. It happens. It's not like Bethasda levels of buggy at the very least. Honestly, I think the game is very polished and doesn't hint at any kind of time crunch.

 

[moonolotl]

It just seems like their QA testers missed some things that they didn't think of checking, like seeing if balloons still spawn after getting the mile stamp. I bet they're checking that possibility for every stamp moving forward now. It happens. It's not like Bethasda levels of buggy at the very least. Honestly, I think the game is very polished and doesn't hint at any kind of time crunch.

its definitely incredibly polished! no one even noticed the bugs until pretty decently far into the game and honestly most of them weren't INCREDIBLY game breaking (bar the duplication glitch we dont talk about that SHHH). Definitely not as bad as some other glitches that mainstream games have experienced