Animal Crossing Debate: Is Time-Travelling Considered Cheating?

[GolguiAr]

Cheating maybe, but as others have pointed out we do not all have the luxury of a schedule that allows us to play at any time of the day, or even of the year. For example I spend a lot of time doing fieldwork between March and September, which prevents me from playing any game for weeks.
I got the game last August, and I intend to let a full year go by before considering time-travelling to catch the critters or attend the events I have missed throughout the year. That way, I still get the normal experience over a normal year, but I allow myself to make up for the time when my work must come before video games

 

[FaeLeaf]

I do think it's cheating, but I don't say "cheating" in the strong way that many people might. It's cheating to do anything exploitive or manipulative to a game, no matter what. But I do it myself (way too impatient to wait half a year for certain things that would look incredible in my town/house right now), and I don't frown upon others who do it all the time. It's especially understandable when you can't play on a holiday for whatever reason but time travel to experience it.

If anything, the primary thing is that it's cheating your experience. I wish that I had the patience to play a couple of hours a day and slowly experience each time of year like I used to as a kid.

 

[-Blue-]

Whether it's considered cheating or not, Nintendo actually punished you for doing it in Tomadachi Life. And the punishment was really extreme where it took like a week for special events to happen again.

So you can see where their stance on it is. Personally I don't care if someone time travels or not. Sometimes I do it. Sometimes I don't.

 

[VanitasFan26]

Everytime I see this topic it just makes me cringe. I time travel only to kick out villagers and of course speed up the process of ordering items from Nook Shopping. Let me just say this everyone plays this game differently and there should be no shame of time traveling. Its not doing anyone harm and it should be well respected. If you are against time traveling then don't berate others for doing so because its going to end pretty ugly. Once again everyone has different ways of playing the game and they set their own rules weather or not to time travel.

 

[McRibbie]

As someone who's extensively time-travelled in the past... not gonna lie, the answer's yes.

I think the increasing amount of control that you, the player, has over the world of Animal Crossing, that's deep down fuelling at least 25% of all the discourse surrounding New Horizons throughout its nearly 3 years of existence, ultimately stems in part from the AC devs trying to counteract people time-travelling in some way (their general stance going by interviews for both NL and NH seems to be "they don't think it's a good idea, partially because part of the appeal of AC is the game reflecting the time of year and the time of day, partially because it stops people playing for a long time like they intended, and partially because it stops people sharing their experience with friends and family... but they're not trying to stop you")

And, ngl, it kind of sucks. It's a compromise that doesn't actually work, because you just end up with a world drained of anything proper happening, lest Time-Travelling Idiot Player loses one of their valuable villagers that they've for some reason paid money for. It's a world where events end after about 15 minutes and there's absolutely no replay value, as all but 5 items are now available leading up to the event. It's a world that ultimately revolves around the player's needs rather than actually, y'know, being a world that exists in its own right.

Take the time to actually enjoy the world as it is in this moment in time. Chill out, don't rush things, because if you're time-travelling you're not fully engaging with the world of Animal Crossing. If you missed an event, hey, there's always next year. If you want an item but can't find it, ask around to see if other people have it! Communicate. It's what the game's for.

 

[AuroraFox]

In the past, I have used time-traveling in New Leaf quite frequently. Although I do feel that time-traveling can take away some of the anticipation and excitement of waiting for things to happen in real-time, I personally do not consider it cheating. Nowadays, I only resort to time-traveling on rare occasions when I simply cannot wait for something to happen in-game.

 

[Red Cat]

No, because you can do it without modding the game and there are almost no penalties for doing so. Other than turnips rotting (if you don't TT correctly), there are basically no penalties for TTing. NH made TTing even less risky since you can't accidently lose villagers now. You can argue that the devs discourage it more by removing the in-game clock from NH, but if they really didn't want people to do it, they would attach penalties to it.

 

[_confused_piplup_]

In my opinion it's not. Like, it's just something that you are allowed to do, hence it's not cheating. If I made the game, I wouldn't allow time travel, of I considered it cheating. Also, I think that Animal Crossing sometimes can be really slow, so I get why people time travel. I think it's a very debatable topic, but in the end each player is allowed to do what they want. So, to each their opinion on the fact if that's cheating or not.

 

[Holla]

The devs obviously created the game without time travelling in mind as you are supposed to play it day by day in real time. At the same time though there’s no real endgame or way to “beat” the game. It goes on indefinitely and you play as you make it. I definitely much prefer to not time travel as I find I don’t get bored of the game as quickly and it forces me to take breaks while I wait for things to happen. Other people feel they must time travel to have fun and so be it. I wouldn’t consider it cheating exactly.