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What are you hoping for in the next animal crossing game?

I just want it to be more like New Leaf than New Horizons. I want the charm back. I want the NPCs back. I want my tools not to break every 5 minutes.
releasing New Leaf (or something like it) again in 2020 would have been a different kind of mistake imo, proving that they'd learnt absolutely nothing from LGTTC's failure, the same failure that made them go "hey, let's try something different instead of making a game that succeeds where WW failed, but fails where WW succeeds". People would have also gotten mad about being essentially sold the same game they'd been playing for 6 or 7 years for double the price, when they'd been waiting for something new!

releasing New Leaf (or something like it) again in 2025 however just feels like you've given up entirely on making something new and fresh, like NL was meant to be in 2012/13, and instead it feels like a groveling apology to Animal Crossing fans, who *checks notes* spent the previous 7 or so years going "why are my villagers moving out on their own??!!!1" "why can't I choose where villagers live, I'm the mayor!!!", making theme towns, plot resetting and layout resetting, and treating villagers like collectible dolls more than things with the illusion of life, and then getting really damn mad when the devs realised they were doing this and reorientated Animal Crossing around it further, despite constantly saying they should "listen to the fans!" (as if fans are the font of all knowledge and understanding of how a series should work, or how a series is developed)

New Leaf is a very good game. But it's far from being The Most Perfect AC Experience to me, and it could honestly be better in so many ways (having NPC backstories so that the NPCs that come to your village to open up shops actually have reasons for doing so other than just "you spent X amount of bells, new shop"! Not mishandling a good portion of the NPCs! Not replacing the Nooks as your go-to shop with Reece and Cyrus, who are dull! Dialogue that doesn't feel like The Bare Minimum! Villager pictures that feel like a momentous occasion and not just "we're good friends, you've done something for me, have another picture"! Weird letters and bulletin board messages! More actual stuff from GC and WW like "aerobics", "Wisp" and "blatant scams that somehow give you exclusive items" so it doesn't feel like The Theme Park Version of those games!). If the next AC game was like that, then yeah, maybe I'd want it to be more like New Leaf, but even there I'm still going "but what comes after that?", because continuously rereleasing variations on NL every half-decade or so isn't a good blueprint for the future of AC.
 
I want it to be more like New Leaf or the city one. I want the NPCs to have discoverable backstories again. I want better character dialogue. Everyone is just too nice and it makes them feel empty and robotic. Give Kappn his charisma back, who even is this imposter? Have the villagers form friendships, enemies and gossip about each other. Make it feel alive.
 
New surprises, most of all! I really want the new game to be very unlike its predecessors while still having callbacks here and there. As I'm biased towards the GameCube version, I'd like the comeback of golden shovel trees, they're so pretty!

But, even more than new surprises, I want them to focus on the villager dialogue and interactions. I want AC to feel like a little community again, rather than a group of dolls to be played with.
To be more specific, the wacky and sometimes rude dialogue from Wild World holds a special place in my heart. I want villagers who are a little weird, a little cooky, and always saying something new.
 
I'm hoping for more games and interaction online like they had in New Leaf. That was one of my biggest disappointments from New Horizons.
 
This is just me... I want the next game to have an air of mystery to it, with all sorts of secrets waiting to be discovered that no other animal crossing game has ever had.

Or, to describe it subtractively: I do NOT want animal crossing to end up following the pokemon route, where it's just the same gameplay, reverberated into another console with new graphics. They should keep freshening up the gameplay loop somehow, and make the gameplay feel actually different game to game. And one way to do that is to simple create more surprises to be found, day to day.

What those surprises might be... I just hope that their trailers won't spoil them. But maybe a hidden minigame here? A secret on the beach there? How about a special effect when you collect an entire set of furniture? Or if village bookcases had special notes for certain actions causing special events, like bug/fish spawns, etc? Depth in mysteries could make for a very special game to me.
 
I want a more user friendly custom design system with more color options, shape stampers and stencils, and the option to make the design either shiny/glittery/metallic or not and also a leather look option. Basically some sort of option that makes clothes look like different types of fabric and materials.
 
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