does grass wear underneath patterned paths?

[mimituesday]

in my one town i am planning how i want my paths to go. because i am still getting lost in my town right now, i'm laying down some patterns on the ground so i know how to move around my town better, but i want the grass to wear underneath so i can have dirt paths (which i like better)

does that happen or does the pattern keep the grass green?

thanks

 

[Tomoe Hotaru]

As far as I know it should wear away under patterns because I think the game treats patterns like different colored ground. At least I haven?t heared that they prevent wear yet.

edit: I just checked and I have always had paths, but there is definitely some wear under them. I don?t know if there is any difference in how fast the grass disappears.

 

[mimituesday]

thank you! i will do a lot of running on them then

 

[katysu]

I've found the wear to be the same, patterns don't make any difference, as far as I can tell. It definitely did not make any difference in accf.

The advice to players trying to make natural paths is to lay patterns down to help you keep to the paths you are trying to make. Along with bushes/trees/flowers it helps to keep the paths from 'bleeding'. Once formed take up the patterns.

Personally, given there is no research into grass wear in acnl, I follow accf grass wear rules: Its the number of times you save and reload that effects grass wear - in accf grass 'grew' once per day but wore every time you reloaded the game and you stepped on the space/tile.
So you could reload many times and keep grass wear to a min if you didn't step into areas where you wanted to keep the grass, but walk/run on the paths where you wanted the grass to wear.

Grass wear does not follow accf rules exactly, but my towns do seem to follow this bit related above - the grass under my patterns have worn a lot, well they are bare; I have a lot of grass wear in other areas where I step on over multiple loads - eg around the rocks.

 

[Stackhouse]

I've always had the dirt paths, and just made a couple more by TTing and walking/running over the path.

I had read it was the number of saves and loads, and wanted to test this.

I found walking on the path 50 times, and saving, did no more than walking on it once.

That's why it takes weeks, and alot of TT.

 

[katysu]

"I had read it was the number of saves and loads, and wanted to test this"

In accf days, a few players were able to look at the underlying code and basically worked out how the mechanism worked.
The same has not been done in acnl and its obvious that Nintendo have changed the mechanism somewhat - eg winter now seems to grow the grass back fast.
In accf it was shown that grass grew once per day (6am, & implemented when loaded on the first play that day), but every time you saved and loaded the game within that day, the grass would wear again - but only on the tiles that you stepped on.

Its not easy to test this in acnl without being able to see the underlying code, so anything we say is subjective.
But its how the grass in my towns seem to react to my multiple loads in an ingame day.

However there is at least one wiki which says there is no extra grass wear between saves & reloads - but give no indication as to how this conclusion was reached. Its subjective of me but I’ve seen most grass wear in the areas I step on over multiple loads of the game.

"I found walking on the path 50 times, and saving, did no more than walking on it once. "

Yes this is true if those 50 walks are on the same load of the game. But not sure if you mean 50 loads of the game in one ingame day. Even if it was 50 reloads, the amount of wear wouldn't be visibly drastic, I don't think it would mean the ground would be bare. It still takes time.

In accf walking and running had the same effect, it was the actual stepping onto the tile/space that caused the grass to wear.

Time travel with respect to getting the grass to grow back works in acnl, didn’t in accf – the grass ‘grew’ only on the days that you loaded the game.
Thankfully that is not the case in acnl – you can use TT to get the grass back.

 

[Stackhouse]

No.

It was 50 different loads and saves, as I wanted to make these paths quickly.

I loaded, walked and ran on my path, saved, and redid it 50 times, whilst also testing another path only walking on it once.

Then I TTd, and the wear on both paths was minimal, yet equal.

I've been making these particular two paths for a good week, TTing up to 20 times a day.

The TT was to the next day only, and I made sure to walk on the paths again before going back to the previous and current day.

As I said, I did test it.

 

[Quill]

I had thought that just walking on grass had no effect on wear whatsoever, and only running would wear down the grass..?

Either way, I find grass wear super frustrating. I've been trying to wear down dirt paths near my retail and it's just. not. working.

 

[mimituesday]

i like to be able to run in my towns from place to place without having to turn sharply because i hate bumping into things so before i stopped playing for like two weeks i had good dirt paths in tuesday and now they are mostly gone...... time to keep running.... and in glory, running everywhere has been good because then i get to see what places there is a little bit of wear so i know where i am running if that makes sense