What do you miss most from AF/AF+/AC/AFe+?

[ItsmeIlyas]

I miss the sassy animals, NES Games, Train Station and Island (even tho they reappeared in NL) AND those weird viking hat things male players used to wear.

 

[apeisland]

I have loads:

1. Live recordings
2. The Post Office building in AC
3. Tom Nook opening after hours in AFe+
4. K.K. Slider playing a mini concert for your birthday
5. Chip giving you a free fishing rod at the Fishing Tourney if you don't have one

And, worst of all:
0. The villagers which Wild World killed off for good

I really miss the post office too I liked it a lot. And I miss the old cafeteria so much, finding K.K. Slider there was mu childhood and I miss it.

 

[drowningfairies]

Actual villager personalities.
I loved the dialogue from AC and WW. The dialogue in NL and NH are so flat, it’s honestly disappointing how boring it gets.
I used to look forward to the different things the villagers would talk about. Now, I find myself ignoring my villagers due to it.

 

[McRibbie]

At this point, the amount of stuff that hasn't been brought back from GC in some way, shape or form is minuscule, so unless I think it was done better in GC, I'm going to stick to things that were ONLY in GC.

• The Nook store lottery. If they brought this back in the next AC, I wouldn't want it to be exactly the same as in GC, because I don't want the store to completely shut down once a month and I found dealing with the tickets horrible given GC's notoriously bad storage, but I want to be able to buy a lottery ticket from the Nook store and win something, either something rare like the items in the GC lottery, or something Nook-related like the items in the Nooklink app in NH.
• The big bushy things! Having the smaller bushes are great, but can you run through them and have leaves fly everywhere? Can you catch crickets or grasshoppers in them? Nope.
• The GBA minigames you could play with your villagers in e+. I have yet to actually win anything in them, but they're great fun from what I've played of them and I wish that they'd do something similar in a future AC game, albeit actually inside the game?
• Ditto the live bootlegs from e+. Having the option to listen to a live version of K.K. is great, having something rare and special that isn't just the 7 millionth extra villager photo to get from a villager you're totally besties with is also great.
• tbh, one of the things about villager dialogue that gets buried under 10 million practically identical posts of "DAE REMEMBER MEAN VILLAGERS, I MISS MEAN VILLAGERS, WHY AREN'T THEY MEAN ANYMORE?!" that I genuinely miss is Subtle Details About The AC World And Its Characters. Still not entirely gone, imo, but there was more before they made more personality types and ended up stretching the amount of dialogue thinner. Saharah being from Way Out West, Wendell being from Tuskany, snooty villagers having unseen boyfriends who drink all their coffee and eat all their cake, cranky villagers having unseen nieces who want bugs or fish, and letters being sent from such strange and mysterious characters as The Singing Bug Boy (BUUUUUUUUUUUUGS!)... delightful weirdness, need more weirdness in my AC pls
• Controversial opinion, but after being reminded that it exists, genuinely think the feature in e+ bashing Tom Nook's door until he opens up again is a better way of dealing with the shop being closed than either having an ordinance to make it open up for longer, or just using the deposit box to get slightly less money for stuff the next morning, because it has the advantage of a) being able to do something at an awkward time, but also facing actual consequences for it, and b) Tom Nook and the Nooklings in "honk... mimimimimi" pyjamas is genuinely precious
• Although there's a very clear reason for it not being included in future games (you can look at the sky now, so you don't need to look at the reflections in it), I very much miss having the lake as a second event location. The Fishing Tourney tent works so much better there, as does Redd's slightly dodgy (but by his standards, fairly legit) fireworks show tat stand... and I didn't even mention the lily pads in it!
• I still think WW is the best game in terms of villager errands for how they're tied into each individual villager's personality, and in terms of sheer variety NL's the best one, but there's one thing that very specifically e+ does that I'd love them to bring back: having the villager ask you for a very specific item that's being sold at Nook's shop that day. I love this. It has the potential to be very annoying, but I still love this.
• While I think the rewards were done much better in NH, I think the actual Morning Aerobics itself works better a) with Copper doing it (the fact that they brought back the police station and the big tree in NL and DIDN'T bring it back in NL is still one of my greatest disappointments with that game) and b) it being restricted entirely to summer mornings (because, idk man, it just doesn't feel right doing it on a hazy autumn afternoon, or at 10pm on a winter's night. Someday, we've gotta have a conversation about the fact that the AC playerbase time-travelling has led the devs to keep making up ways around it in an attempt to curb it, to the detriment of the actual real-time mechanics of the game)
• Finally, a load of items, like the JP construction theme from DnM/+, the Mario and Luigi trophies, (without the games bc NSO covers that nowadays) Famicom and NES consoles, the jumping boy sign and the Nook's Cranny sign from e+, and both the JP and US versions of the mailbox item.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

[Easily the best take on this thread, by far.]

I sometimes wonder if we're the same person or not, because I'm down with nearly every single thing listed in your post returning in a future game in some capacity. And here's my $0.02 with some of your points.

The Nook store lottery.

I think I prefer the lottery to the Point System in the two games after the GC era. I also agree that it didn't make much sense to have the entire store be shut down, especially if the shop in question was upgraded to Nookington's...

The GBA minigames you could play with your villagers in e+. I have yet to actually win anything in them, but they're great fun from what I've played of them and I wish that they'd do something similar in a future AC game, albeit actually inside the game?

I haven't had the chance to play any of those minigames yet, but I really do love the concept. I can understand the handheld AC games not having them (well, it's understandable with WW, at least), but I suspect they weren't included in any game after AFe+ for the same reason why NES/Famicom games were omitted because "it'd distract from the main drive of Animal Crossing" or whatever. Regardless, I'd love to imagine these minigames taking place through the game's own 3-D graphics if they were kept in subsequent titles.

Ditto the live bootlegs from e+.

It stills greatly bothers me that no other game in the franchise had live recordings from K.K. That's something I don't think I'll ever let down until someone smacks some sense into the developers and finally add those back in future games.

tbh, one of the things about villager dialogue that gets buried under 10 million practically identical posts of "DAE REMEMBER MEAN VILLAGERS, I MISS MEAN VILLAGERS, WHY AREN'T THEY MEAN ANYMORE?!"

Can I just appreciate the fact that there's someone else out there who doesn't care much for this need to have villagers mindlessly berate you for no reason as they did in previous games? Rudeness itself is fine, and there's nothing inherently wrong with villagers being nice to you, but there needs to be a balance, and it's a sentiment I wish more people shared, rather than complain about villagers having "no personality" because they aren't making verbal snipes at the player in every single interaction. That doesn't give these NPCs character or make them stand out; it just makes them unlikable annoyances. Pardon that little tangent, there. Anyway...

Saharah being from Way Out West, Wendell being from Tuskany, snooty villagers having unseen boyfriends who drink all their coffee and eat all their cake, cranky villagers having unseen nieces who want bugs or fish, and letters being sent from such strange and mysterious characters as The Singing Bug Boy (BUUUUUUUUUUUUGS!)... delightful weirdness, need more weirdness in my AC pls

100% on all of this. I found it heartwarming to receive favors from Crankies — asking you to hunt for a certain creature for their niece. Now that every villager has his/her own established family of sorts, this could lead into loads more possibilities. I also missed when villagers would just up and show you letter that some random, (often) bizarrely-named character wrote. Some of them were a joy to read.

Controversial opinion, but after being reminded that it exists, genuinely think the feature in e+ bashing Tom Nook's door until he opens up again is a better way of dealing with the shop being closed than either having an ordinance to make it open up for longer, or just using the deposit box to get slightly less money for stuff the next morning, because it has the advantage of a) being able to do something at an awkward time, but also facing actual consequences for it, and b) Tom Nook and the Nooklings in "honk... mimimimimi" pyjamas is genuinely precious

It doesn't seem controversial at all. It's better than TTing, and I don't have to rely on an Ordinance to make up for not visiting it during the scheduled time range. It's also something people find funny; as do I. I think it'd be even funnier if Nook and his nephews got increasingly angrier each time you forced yourself inside after business hours during the night, which could also affect the prices even more.

 

[StarlitGlitch]

As a side note opening up Nook's in e+ is a fun feature but since the prices are so jacked then it's more of a novelty than something to use regularly. If they made it a bit more balanced it would be fun to see again!

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

As a side note opening up Nook's in e+ is a fun feature but since the prices are so jacked then it's more of a novelty than something to use regularly. If they made it a bit more balanced it would be fun to see again!

Personally, the prices never bothered me. He's tired and wants to go to sleep. He'd probably rather shout at you to get out, but he's too drained of energy, so he inflates his prices up to 40%(?) and drops the economy of the items in your pockets to 20%, instead. This is just me making an assumption on how he feels, but I'll be far less forgiving if I was in his shoes. I do feel the inflation should be at the same percentage as selling your items, it does get a bit annoying not having to skip dialogue and Nook and his nephews moving slower than molasses, even if it is supposed to be comedic to the situation.

 

[Geoni]

Animal Crossing Gamecube: There's a lot I miss from the original but what I miss the most was how ruthlessly mean, hurtful, and shady the villagers were. And the intensity of Resetti's rants that apparently made kids cry. It felt like it had the most events of all the games and the most personality in the dialog. If you weren't being careful the villagers could even rob you of tens of thousands of bells if you played their games while carrying a lot of money. The game wasn't afraid to punish you.

Wild World: Not my favorite title and it feels the most limiting of all the titles but I think the observatory was neat and overall has my favorite soundtrack for the hourly themes, especially the night hours.

City Folk: is the animal crossing I never played, maybe one day I will get see if I can emulate the wii on my phone. But from what I can see it had UFOs which is always a big yes! And it also wasn't afraid to force a specific atmosphere at you.

New Leaf: MAIN STREET, it just made the things you could do more accessible and freed up space in your town for other things. It's actually a shame how the things you can do multi-player were so much better than your options in the current title.

 

[MarkTheFreak]

Rude villagers (seriously tho I love being insulted by them it’s so ridiculous)
Atmosphere
NES games
The island (still don’t understand why the GBA is a requirement but whatever)
15 villagers
The morning exercises (glad they made a comeback in NH but I wish they didn’t have to be manually triggered with the tape deck)
The police station
Music

 

[DarthGohan1]

This isn't a complaint, because New Horizons is fantastic... but I do miss the simplicity of AC on Gamecube.

 

[nonbirimura]

the train and train station! they brought them back, but nothing in the world makes me feel more at peace than the original opening scene in the gamecube version.

i also miss the music from that one. new horizons isn't quite the same as the older games in that department.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

the train and train station! they brought them back, but nothing in the world makes me feel more at peace than the original opening scene in the gamecube version.

i also miss the music from that one. new horizons isn't quite the same as the older games in that department.

NH uses live instrumentation, rather than mimicking them as in older games post-GameCube. It's why I've held the soundtrack from the first game in high regard. It's something that's honest — it doesn't hide the fact that it's electronic, yet it still captures the sense of being in a forest.