I thought I understood the grass decay... Maybe not?

[Pickles]

This. So much this!!

Because this is false.

My grass is getting noticeably worse every single day, and even days and days of rain haven't helped to fix areas that I rarely even walk on to begin with. In fact, I notice them continuing to wear away even with my flowers being watered every day. I think the theory that loading your game in itself/going to black saving screens such as through wifi connections actually kill off your grass every single time by small amounts, but doing these more often obviously adds up.

People complain about it because:

1. It's a 100% useless feature in the game.

2. It's a useless feature than virtually nobody ever liked in past games yet they brought it back anyway.

3. They bring it back yet don't give us any practical ways of combating it. Honestly, grass wear wouldn't be an issue if they made Beautiful Town ordinance prevent it from happening, or drastically speed up the recovery process.

There's absolutely no reason for this feature to even exist in the game except to make your town look progressively worse... for no reason other than to just do what it's doing.

 

[curiousfluke]

The grass had started to wear along my river after how much I walked over it my first week after release trying to catch everything... I haven't really paid attention to it until I saw this thread and so I checked to find everything regrown.

As an experiment the other day, I made a new character, plopped their house down in my town, then deleted them. Of course their house destroyed all the grass in that area. I'm not putting any flowers on it or doing anything special. It has been 2 days and I haven't seen any regrowth just yet. I might put down another house and try the flower theory with that dirt plot.

I have had very little grass wear (well, under my paths is probably wearing, but I don't care about that) other than that bit around the river since the game came out on the 9th.

I don't hop in and out of my game more than 2-3 times a day and I almost exclusively walk on my paths (I only really leave them when I wander around to find my daily fossils.) In the last 2 days I've had about 40 people visit my town who generally stayed on my paths so I don't think loading screens/ saving affects the grass deterioration, because I don't see a difference.

Just what I've seen. Grass in this game is a mystery.

 

[Nami]

I'm just saying there is nothing we can do about the feature existing, so why continue to whine about it? I'm not happy either, but I'm doing the best I can to combat it. Why flowers aren't working for some people is a mystery to me, even without them my gras grows back at a decent rate.

 

[Stevey Queen]

I notice a lot of people complain about how their grass dies in areas they barely walk and then I remembered back when everyone was playing the Japanese version, somebody said that villagers were affecting the grass too. They had a picture of it dying and the person said it was dying because all their villagers liked to go that particular area a lot.

Of course villagers affecting the grass is just another thing we'll never truly know :/

Nintendo should release their own guide on this game. Then we'll know everything.

 

[XTheLancerX]

I run. All the time. I haven't noticed any grass wear. At all. Well, I think there are a COUPLE places where I can see the grass receding a little bit at the edges of dirt patches, but nothing serious. I have the beautiful ordinance btw

 

[CharityDiary]

Not sure what you meant, but grass that is under a path will be destroyed. Theirs a video floating around of someone lifting up their paths to reveal a dirt path under it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1D8vbv7pf8

This video shows a town where the pathways have been removed.

 

[TheCreeperHugz]

Dont know if anyone has mentioned this (too lazy to read every post) but dirt patches that are there when you make the town will not grow grass, even if you never walk on them. They stay as dirt.

 

[sharkstache]

Dont know if anyone has mentioned this (too lazy to read every post) but dirt patches that are there when you make the town will not grow grass, even if you never walk on them. They stay as dirt.

I was just about to post this lol.

However, if a natural dirt spot gets bigger, it's possible to shrink it down to it's original size.

I've managed to get rid of a dirt spot that a moving neighbor left in only 6 days, but the natural areas remain the way they are.

 

[Fishboi]

I think... Animals must affect grass wear. In my town, there were like three houses next to each other and it looked as if a path between the doors/to the river had worn itself without me really ever walking that all that much.

In essence, I think the problem boils down to this for me:
It's not about being able to avoid it, it's not about being able to "fix it" with patterns, it's not about any of that. It's that I have to employ avoidance strategies at all in the first place.
It's about not having a reliable and effective strategy to "fix it" with in game items. For a game that's all about customization and personalization, why do I not have more control over this feature? We don't even know how it grows/dies. It's ridiculous.

I shouldn't be punished just because I don't have the time to take hours and hours to plop down paths throughout my town.
I shouldn't be punished because I don't have hours and hours to water all the flowers everywhere on all of the rapidly expanding dirt patches throughout my town.
I shouldn't be punished for having a gamestyle which involves loading/saving multiple times in a day. After all, just think about animal crossing, if anything, this is a game that promotes a play style like that. Therefore it is simply unacceptable for someone to come in and say "Well it's your fault for not doing X."

I reject that and take offense to that reasoning. Because what it boils down to is this: This feature sucks. This feature sucks and I shouldn't have to do a damn thing to avoid how I want to play this game for fear my town will turn into a dirty Smudge. This is affecting my enjoyment with it, having to walk everywhere, having to go out of my way not to walk on dirt patches - because by there nature - it's where I would tend to walk a lot in the first place.

And I want it gone.

 

[Mr. L]

I've planted flowers in my dirt patches since day one and they've all practically regrown.

If you're not at least seeing a difference in a week or two, it's your fault for walking over it or inviting people over who walked/ran over it.

Walking over it at full speed will deteriorate it, walking with your character's hands slowly swaying back and forth will not.

 

[Nami]

Dude, yes walking does do it. You've regrown your original dirt patches? So you have none?

 

[Stevey Queen]

I've planted flowers in my dirt patches since day one and they've all practically regrown.

If you're not at least seeing a difference in a week or two, it's your fault for walking over it or inviting people over who walked/ran over it.

Walking over it at full speed will deteriorate it, walking with your character's hands slowly swaying back and forth will not.

Pics or it didn't happen.

 

[Attribule]

If you're not at least seeing a difference in a week or two, it's your fault for walking over it or inviting people over who walked/ran over it.

Walking over it at full speed will deteriorate it, walking with your character's hands slowly swaying back and forth will not.

So for starters you're admitting the problem is incredibly hard to fix. You're saying you should avoid the worn areas for up to 14days to see a difference? Yeah, very practical. Especially when villagers walk wherever they please at all hours of the day.

Also, you're completely wrong about walking not wearing down grass. It's been confirmed it DOES wear it down. Grass wear is literally impossible to prevent completely. There will always be wear on the edges of grass that touch any dirt, whether the wear is immediately noticeable or not.

If you don't understand how grass wear works you shouldn't post about it as if you know the facts.

 

[Sean4]

I hate this, by the end of the next week my town will be all dirt. /Request nintendo to fix this, haha. I completely agree with what Attribule and Fishboi have said. Paths are ugly, and take up space where stars (for fossils) and stones/flowers could appear/grow plus as mentioned just cover up the dirt not fix it. -Shrugs- It'd be cool if Nintendo could actually send us a update through wifi to solve something like this or change the game in anyway. (Digitally downloaded copies of course)

 

[RisingSun]

I hate this, by the end of the next week my town will be all dirt. /Request nintendo to fix this, haha. I completely agree with what Attribule and Fishboi have said. Paths are ugly, and take up space where stars (for fossils) and stones/flowers could appear/grow plus as mentioned just cover up the dirt not fix it. -Shrugs- It'd be cool if Nintendo could actually send us a update through wifi to solve something like this or change the game in anyway. (Digitally downloaded copies of course)

The physical copies can get updates too...MarioKart had to be updated to play online (I had the physical of that one too). I have a minimal path put down, and I don't feel it is taking a lot of space up. My paths are single line and going through the town for each house and major building. I am not putting paths to each and every PWP, though.

 

[Bubble Pop]

I think other animals in your town affect it too, quite a lot of grass outside the houses of villagers i've barely visited is wearing away.

 

[Mary]

Okay, now we are just whining! No good is going to come of this. I placed down a path and I run only on that path. Come on, people. Cheer up. dEAR GOD, LET A MOD CLOSE THIS THREAD

 

[JKDOS]

You can also Run with L and R

 

[Sean4]

Okay, now we are just whining! No good is going to come of this. I placed down a path and I run only on that path. Come on, people. Cheer up. dEAR GOD, LET A MOD CLOSE THIS THREAD

We have the right to whine, we paid for this game did we not? @Sun thanks for reminding me, when I started up Animal crossing I realized there was a selection "update data." and I have the physical copy so. haha

 

[Hirisa]

We have the right to whine, we paid for this game did we not? @Sun thanks for reminding me, when I started up Animal crossing I realized there was a selection "update data." and I have the physical copy so. haha

I agree. I think people are allowed to critique the game they paid for. It's nice that some people are 100% satisfied with the game as it is, but that doesn't give them the right to try and shut down conversations they don't like. They are, however, welcome to move on to a thread that they can contribute meaningfully to.

Anyway, I see grass deterioration as a good idea, with flawed implementation. The paths I walk every day in my game show almost no wear, but the dirt patches in my game grow ever larger. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.