I do definitely find that playing with others helps quite a lot I also have tons of goals that are gonna take a lot of playing to get, like finishing landscaping (which will never really be finished bc i'll probably always be changing it), finishing the museum, getting all the shops on mainstreet, including all the upgrades like the emporium and museum shop, getting all the PWPs I wanna get, decorating dreamies houses, decorating my own house, getting said dreamies haha, maybe even eventually having a finished catalog?
I feel like the game has a pretty endless supply of stuff to do, as long as you make goals
- change the town flag and tune! i need to do this again soon but i'm stuck for ideas ugh
- change my mayor's look (seems like a small thing but it's so satisfying having a cool outfit imo)
- change my town's colour scheme - right now i don't have any flowers at all because i can't decide which colours i wanna use omg. project for tomorrow maybe??
- buy landscaping stuff on this forum
- change my future PWP plans
basically i just change up some part of my town on a whim lol
back when i used to play regularly, i had a few irl friends that i would play with.
honestly, this seems to be the only real way that i can play for hours and hours a day
otherwise, its just a time killer for me, that i usually play in like 20 minute sittings.
For me, it's decorating my houses. I love trying to come up with creative, unique rooms. When the rooms are complete for all 4 characters, then I work on the museum rooms. I also spent a lot of time getting all the badges and completing the museum exibits.
First and foremost, to keep things fresh I tend to take breaks that span a number of weeks or months, then inevitably pick the game back up and binge on it until I start the next break. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and whatnot.
For the majority of the time I've owned New Leaf, I've tended to keep myself occupied by trying to build my towns to my liking by acquiring specific dream villagers from the campsite or (almost always) from someone's shop or auction/giveaway in the Villager Trading Plaza section of the forum as well as getting Public Works Project suggestions from these villagers to construct in my towns. That process of acquiring villagers is, thankfully, approaching its end as I only have a few more dream villagers to acquire. I'm still trying to get specific PWP suggestions in certain towns but otherwise that's mostly under control too.
Once I have all of the villagers and PWPs I want, the next target to hit is fully expanding and filling up the houses of all of my characters across my four towns. My main town's mayor is the only character of mine who thus far has a fully finished and furnished, and since I have three other mayors and two (eventually three) side characters, that will entail many visits to the island for bug and fish catching. Also, on the topic of bugs and fish, there's also attempting to complete the catalogues of both of those and filling all of my museums, or at least one of them. I recently noticed that there were only six bugs, eight fish, and one deep-sea creature left for my main town's mayor to catch and have since bumped that down to two bugs, five fish, and that one deep-sea creature. I've also recently made it a side goal to acquire all of K.K. Slider's songs. Thankfully the T&T Emporium makes that simpler and speedier since they sell albums.
Last but not least, my best friend has gotten more into the game in recent months and so she and I play together occasionally, visiting each other's towns and taking trips to the island to earn bells. That's fun, and I like contributing to her Public Works Projects funding and helping her afford house expansions.
With all of that to keep me occupied when I play, in addition to the previously mentioned sabbaticals I take and the fact that I have other things to do and games to play, New Leaf always manages to stay fresh when I'm interested in playing it.