How do you feel about New Horizons going mainstream?

Twinsouls1145

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I think it's definitely affected how people interact with the game, in both good ways and bad. what do you guys think? im not fully sure how i feel so i wanna see what other ppl think b4 i say anything myself.
 
I’ve encountered people on other social media playing it a lot but they don’t know the mechanics or etiquette of the community. In a way, though, many newbies just want help with the game or want to learn how to do things and sometimes have a better attitude than veterans to the game. On the flip side, if you have them over to your island they may pick up a flower without asking because they have never done this before. Some people don’t understand how sacred we hold every part of our islands lol.
 
The link is right, this game is terrible... /s
 
I don't feel like it's too dissimilar to New Leaf to be honest - that also had a bunch of new players and a totally different "philosophy" to the likes of WW and CF, and some will drop off when they get bored, others will stick around long enough to endure a toxic divide in the community (hacked towns) enjoy the interesting new avenues people come up with to increase the longevity of the game!

In all seriousness, though, Animal Crossing stopped being niche as the hype for New Leaf built up in my opinion, it was mainstream before New Horizons. The only reason WW wasn't as big is because of the crazy staggered release around the world and the lack of any real marketing, and CF was kind of an unappreciated title for the Wii that caught a lot of flak.
 
I’ve encountered people on other social media playing it a lot but they don’t know the mechanics or etiquette of the community. In a way, though, many newbies just want help with the game or want to learn how to do things and sometimes have a better attitude than veterans to the game. On the flip side, if you have them over to your island they may pick up a flower without asking because they have never done this before. Some people don’t understand how sacred we hold every part of our islands lol.
This kinda reminds me of when the Souls games became popular.

There were some unwritten rules to the multiplayer aspect of those games. Most people knew "the code", and everyone respected it.

When Dark Souls became popular, that aspect was tainted. While most veterans still respected the code, ganking and cowardice became common. A lot of other problems arised, such as people sending hate mail after a pvp. The magical aura around the game and it's fair duels soon dissipated.
 
It's kind of weird to see Animal Crossing be so extremely popular. Not that it was exactly an indie game before lol, but I don't remember there being such hype outside of the pre-existing Nintendo fanbase for New Leaf. I don't mind it or care who plays and who doesn't, but there's going to be a lot of people who play for a little while because of the "New Horizons is the game for quarantine" hype, and then never play it again.
 
I'm so glad for the mainstream exposure. Seeing celebrities tweet about it is so funny.

There are little growing pains with people new to the franchise. I had a university friend ask to come over and I left them unsupervised...

Came back and they had shaken all of my fruit trees (arranged as a display) and picked all my flowers as they did not have them yet. It was upsetting but I was already TTing at the time to get all 6 rocks in a pattern so it wasn't a big deal. I'm just glad they didn't have Best Friend privileges! and they won't be getting them lol.
 
There's the obvious downside from all the toxicity, but honestly I love it! It's so easy to find villagers to trade or any information I want, so many new people to talk to about the game and basically all of my friends have it too which makes it all the more fun! I love having so many people to talk with about my favourite game
 
I think it’s overall good for the game and community. The more people buy it and show interest, the more likely Nintendo is to keep supplying us with new content.

There’s always been issues with people not respecting each others towns, acting rude or being annoying. I really don’t see much of a difference now tbh. If there’s more trouble with players, it’s just because there’s more players total. I ignore or call out their bad behavior, same as I do with anybody else.
 
I'm happy about it. It seems like people outside of the hardcore fans used to look down on AC as a massive waste of time and wonder why anyone would play that type of game, but now it's much more popular and I get to say "I was playing AC before it was cool" and wear it like a badge of honor.
 
I'd like to believe that the circumstances would've been drastically different if it weren't for the current world situation.

NH would be just another videogame most people, who primarily just follow current trends, wouldn't care about.

It is great for the game when it's mainstream, especially with the sales, but the community wouldn't be as toxic if it weren't. But that's just me.
 
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It’s great because I love this franchise so I love to see it selling so well, but the more success you have the more hate you receive. Which is why a lot of toxicity has arrived in the community.

Overall I feel it’s a good thing for the series though.
 
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I honestly think it's really great! It encourages Nintendo to keep updating it, and I get that the community might be a bit toxic, but I think that'll die down in the future. As for the popularity, it's still running pretty high but it has definitely dropped down, as the initial hype starts to wear off. Anyways, I think this is a positive for the game!
 
It's been amusing to me lol. I see articles popping up being amazed by things in the game/community as if they're so shocking or new, but they're things that have been around since last game at least. Like there was one of "things the game doesn't outright tell you" and in it was being able to kick dirt back over a hole instead of using the shovel and they were huffy because the game never tells you about that mechanic because it was introduced last game. Articles being baffled by people visiting islands to sell turnips. The buying/trading villagers market. Dream villagers. Custom designs for clothes and paths. Just a lot of things that people who played NL are so used to at this point, but for new players it's all a novel concept. It's kinda cute.
Another comment reminded me though about how sacred we hold our towns and decor, I was reading an AITA post from Reddit where a guy was wondering if he was an a-hole for not wanting to share an island with his girlfriend because he wanted to decorate and not have her (a novice player) mess anything up and wanting her to get her own console so she could have her own island, and everyone in the comments was like yeah, you're the a-hole, just share an island with her jeez, and I'm like no, no, no, you don't understand. Idk it's amusing to me to watch new people learn or not understand things that are second nature to me at this point.
 
I'm happy for its success I think it's cool to see it gaining popularity. Not that this post has this type of tone at all (it doesn't) but it seems silly to gate-keep a game from people who haven't played as long. It's exciting to see it thriving imo :)
 
def has goods and bads. The community has for sure changed a lot, I think TBT hasn't been affected as much but the levels of greed I see on discord are really sad lol. Like people charging 1nmt to catalog a cardboard box 😬 also reading articles when it first came out about how to like. fish and sneak up on bugs and stuff was amusing to me because none of these are really secrets, but I realized yea if acnh was your first game they dont really explain any of that!

on the plus side, it's nice telling people my favourite game series is animal crossing, and not having to really explain myself anymore!! before when I tried to explain animal crossing's appeal to people, I would just get told "oh that sounds really boring/like a children's game, why do you play that" 😔 so many more of my IRL friends (who've tried past animal crossing series but never got into it) are playing acnh fairly actively now which makes me really happy haha
 
I've definitely seen quite a few of my friends come into it which made me really happy, though their approach to the game has been incredibly... different from what I'm used to. I feel as though a lot of people are playing the game because everyone else is and not necessarily enjoying it for what it is if that makes sense?

I have no qualms with people coming across the game and playing it because the concept sounds fun, but I think a lot of new players don't truly enjoy the game and just want to play it to understand the memes / have another thing to play with their friends. This is common with any other popular game and that's fine. I guess I just have a more sentimental approach to the game that gets kinda of shattered when my friends try to bring me along in their playstyle which is where it rubs me the wrong way.
 
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