This may be a little long winded, but ever since I have joined The Bell Tree (which has been a great experience overall), I've noticed some things that have been weighing on my mind.
First and foremost, I would like to say that there is really no "wrong" way of playing Animal Crossing. There technically is no "cheating" -- not even hacking is necessarily cheating. Time traveling, plot resetting, and trading villagers are all built into the game. But, with that being said, a certain type of elitism has arisen that really bugs me. Getting all of the villagers you want is great! But where's the fun in that? Where's the fun in shelling out 20 million bells for a villager?
The ranking and bandwagon concepts that exist, not just on The Bell Tree, but also sites like Tumblr and Reddit (which also have different villager popularity standards from The Bell Tree), have essentially created internet hiveminds on what villagers are worthy and which ones are not. I've recently spent a lot of time browsing the Villager Trading Plaza threads and have grown to seriously hating "autovoiding." In fact, a lot of my (so-called) dreamies would probably be autovoided villagers. So the villager market that exists on the internet simply dismisses 50-60% of the villagers because they are not "tier 1" or "tier 2" villagers. In fact, I hate visiting dream towns that are all Julian, Marshal, Stitches, Lolly, Rosie, Beau, Diana, Fang, Marina, and Zucker and I also dislike most of those villagers.
I want to encourage EVERYONE to give up the dreamie stance on playing and start looking into loving every villager that comes to your town. Not that you have to like every villager, but you would be surprised at the ones you come to love. For example, I love unpopular villagers like Merry, Broccolo, Cousteau, Vladimir, Naomi, and Alli. But, it's very hard to find this villagers because people just shoo them out of their towns before even getting to know them. It's sad to see this happen to so many excellent villagers.
I've reset my town twice now, and I have to say I regret the first reset, but not the second one (which happened back at the beginning of this month). In my very first town, I had villagers like Julian, Marshal, Ankha, and several other pretty popular villagers. I grew to love some of them, but I also found the great disappointment that came with some of these villagers. I've never paid for a villager, but I did win Julian in a raffle. When I came to pick him up, I was ecstatic because "wow! what a cool and popular villager! He's hard to come by and I got him for free!" But the longer I had him, the more disappointed I was with him. I grew to love the widely obscure blue snooty cow Naomi, but I grew to dislike the unbelievably popular Julian. This is because Naomi was a unique villager that you don't see a lot, and surprising gem. The more I knew her, the more I loved her.
This second time that I have reset, I'm focusing on getting to know ALL of my villagers. And sure, I've found that I don't really like Curlos or Frobert, and I'll let them leave when they ask, but I also will find surprisingly great villagers like Tammi and Tia.
So, please: try to change the way you look at the game and at villager popularity tiers. They're just bourgeoisie ways of making the game about popularity and elitism.
Thoughts? Comments? Disagreements?
First and foremost, I would like to say that there is really no "wrong" way of playing Animal Crossing. There technically is no "cheating" -- not even hacking is necessarily cheating. Time traveling, plot resetting, and trading villagers are all built into the game. But, with that being said, a certain type of elitism has arisen that really bugs me. Getting all of the villagers you want is great! But where's the fun in that? Where's the fun in shelling out 20 million bells for a villager?
The ranking and bandwagon concepts that exist, not just on The Bell Tree, but also sites like Tumblr and Reddit (which also have different villager popularity standards from The Bell Tree), have essentially created internet hiveminds on what villagers are worthy and which ones are not. I've recently spent a lot of time browsing the Villager Trading Plaza threads and have grown to seriously hating "autovoiding." In fact, a lot of my (so-called) dreamies would probably be autovoided villagers. So the villager market that exists on the internet simply dismisses 50-60% of the villagers because they are not "tier 1" or "tier 2" villagers. In fact, I hate visiting dream towns that are all Julian, Marshal, Stitches, Lolly, Rosie, Beau, Diana, Fang, Marina, and Zucker and I also dislike most of those villagers.
I want to encourage EVERYONE to give up the dreamie stance on playing and start looking into loving every villager that comes to your town. Not that you have to like every villager, but you would be surprised at the ones you come to love. For example, I love unpopular villagers like Merry, Broccolo, Cousteau, Vladimir, Naomi, and Alli. But, it's very hard to find this villagers because people just shoo them out of their towns before even getting to know them. It's sad to see this happen to so many excellent villagers.
I've reset my town twice now, and I have to say I regret the first reset, but not the second one (which happened back at the beginning of this month). In my very first town, I had villagers like Julian, Marshal, Ankha, and several other pretty popular villagers. I grew to love some of them, but I also found the great disappointment that came with some of these villagers. I've never paid for a villager, but I did win Julian in a raffle. When I came to pick him up, I was ecstatic because "wow! what a cool and popular villager! He's hard to come by and I got him for free!" But the longer I had him, the more disappointed I was with him. I grew to love the widely obscure blue snooty cow Naomi, but I grew to dislike the unbelievably popular Julian. This is because Naomi was a unique villager that you don't see a lot, and surprising gem. The more I knew her, the more I loved her.
This second time that I have reset, I'm focusing on getting to know ALL of my villagers. And sure, I've found that I don't really like Curlos or Frobert, and I'll let them leave when they ask, but I also will find surprisingly great villagers like Tammi and Tia.
So, please: try to change the way you look at the game and at villager popularity tiers. They're just bourgeoisie ways of making the game about popularity and elitism.
Thoughts? Comments? Disagreements?
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