Is villager moveout really random? (pretty long first post, I'm so sorry)

[momayo]

Or is it influenced by other factors? I've long heard that not talking to them/keeping a relatively low relationship can push them towards moving out, but I'm not entirely sure. I've also read conflicting accounts where having a high friendship with them makes them more likely to move.

So... I've been TTing for hours, twice today, to get a specific villager out of my town. I've been trying to keep tabs on who's set to move out. I verify this by time travelling one month to the future and taking note which house disappears (I then TT back to prevent it from happening).

The first time I tried to cycle out a villager, the following villagers (out of 10) wanted out:

1. Julian
2. Frita
3. Pietro
4. Roscoe
5. Stitches
6. Vesta

Arranged roughly by frequency. Unfortunately I wasn't able to tally exactly how many times each of them triggered. Julian asked the most times out of everyone. Note that not everyone asked to move out: Willow, Snake, Carmen and Pippy did not trigger a moveout. The villagers who asked the most (Julian, Frita) were the ones that I'm closest with.

Now an accident happens and Frita moves out, making my town only have 9 villagers. I try to cycle a villager out again, making sure to tally the frequency of moveout incidents that I've prevented for each villager. Here are the results:

• Willow - 6
• Stitches - 4
• Vesta - 3
• Pippy - 2
• Julian, Roscoe - 1

This time, it's Willow who moves out most of the time, which is really puzzling me. If it's truly random, how come there's always one or two villagers who stand out? If it's predetermined to some extent, how come the pattern changed? Now it's someone relatively new who I haven't talked much to who keeps trying to leave my town. Julian doesn't want to move out much anymore, only triggering once out of the 17 moveouts I've prevented.

And then there's the issue of the villagers who never seem to trigger a moveout. Carmen, bless that rabbit, who I've been trying to cycle out all this time, can't seem to put it in her mind to leave. Note that Carmen doesn't have any special treatment from me: I treat her about the same as I do Pietro, Roscoe, Pippy, and Vesta. Snake also never seems to trigger for me. He's the newest villager in my town and I've somehow accepted that as a possible explanation except I also read about exceptions to the rule.

Sorry for the long words. The summary is: is villager moveout random? How come some villagers tend to move out way more frequently than others? Have other cyclers compiled notes on how many times their villagers try to move out? Why do some villagers never seem to get a clue? Am I overthinking this????

GAH!

 

[Arrei]

Most likely, moveouts are in fact random. Your results do not go against that - by the very nature of randomness, you could very easily have ping rates all over the place as you described.

 

[jolokia]

Yeah you'd need a much bigger sample, I'm talking in the thousands, to get a clear picture of the distribution.
I don't TT so I don't have much to add, just that it's seemed a fairly evenly spread random selection in my town so far.

 

[momayo]

I am aware that, individually, each cycle phase is not statistically significant, but I'm pretty sure I've had a total of 30+ moveout incidents and Carmen and Snake have absolutely not pinged even once, and I'm determined to find out whether there's a reason or if there's some sneaky thing going on. n=30 isn't statistically perfect, but it's usually a large enough sample for some rudimentary patterns to emerge. (I say this with some background in Stat, though my knowledge isn't perfect or complete. Please feel free to correct me!)

You're right, though -- even if it is completely random, it's not unusual to find small bumps of irregularity here and there. I tend to agree that it's most likely completely random, but there's always a "But what if.." in the back of my mind. If anyone else has compiled data on this or recorded their own cycling efforts, I'd love to look at them!

 

[Arrei]

Oh, I'm all too familiar with the "what if..." effect, especially after you've been at this for eight in-game months and that blue scourge Hugh just WOULD NOT PING WHY DID HE TAKE SO LONG ARGAHRHAGRH

*ahem*

But yeah, just like you had a couple villagers ping a whole lot, Carmen just happens to be pinging a lot less.

I am moderately certain at this point that it is not possible for villager 10 to ping for moving, and those reports where someone had their most recent move-in ping to leave likely had some other factor in play. What that factor could be, I could only guess, but not one of my 10th villagers has tried to move in the several years I've cycled through.

 

[saehanfox]

It seems random because the moving out probabilities of the ignored villager and the befriended villagers are near equal. When you are using that ignoring strategy, do it with a brand new character and don't befriend the villagers you want to keep too much with that character.

 

[momayo]

It seems random because the moving out probabilities of the ignored villager and the befriended villagers are near equal. When you are using that ignoring strategy, do it with a brand new character and don't befriend the villagers you want to keep too much with that character.

Just to clarify, I'm on friendly terms with Carmen. Snake, the newest villager, is someone I haven't talked to much at all, though it's certainly possible that he doesn't ping simply because he's the shiniest new person in town. Since I TT pretty heavily I tend not to use the ignore strategy. I'm curious about this as well: has it worked for someone that couldn't be accounted for by randomness? :0

Also, I'm not sure if this is really relevant, but a lot of times it takes more than 4 days of TTing to get a villager moveout to happen! The longest I've TTed is 9 or 10 days back and forth (4 forward, 1 back, 4 forward, 1 back) before someone wanted to leave. For anyone doing the 2 days forward 2 days back strategy, it's possible that nobody will ping you no matter how many times you reset for that day. This is not the case all of the time, but for me I've found this to be true most of the time.

..on one final note. Crap. Willow wanted out again.

Other things I have noted:
Under spoiler because...uh...I'm not sure if this is already common knowledge!

Spoiler

A town with 9-10 villagers exists in two states: one where there's no planned moveout (A) and another where there is (B). If a village is in state A, it doesn't matter how far you travel in the future. Nobody will move out. I can travel 1 month to the future and the roster will be the same, because the moveout hasn't been triggered yet. I have only confirmed this for time travel up to 1 month forward, but I am assuming that this extends to time travel that exceeds this length. Just to be safe: DON'T DO EXTREME TIME TRAVELLING.

However, travelling forward or just generally letting days pass has a chance of moving your village from state A to B (moveout stage) assuming that it's been about 4-5 days + since your village's last trigger. Once your village is at this state, it is really unadvisable to TT any further because you might accidentally move a villager to boxes.

The best way to check if you're at this state is to TT to the future with a new character and check for missing houses. If there are missing houses then that means that you're in state B and you still have a chance to prevent the move by going back to your original time without saving your new character.

If no houses are missing, then that means your village is still in state A. You will need to TT again at least one day forward or back to try and trigger a change to state B.

 

[DJStarstryker]

Fang has been in my town since day 1. My town I've had since June. He is close enough that he has given me his picture about 5 times now. He has NEVER asked to move.

But then I've had other people ask to move in less than a week of them moving in, and I do pay attention to them in that timeframe. It's odd.

 

[VioletsTown]

Yeah, i agree with you there does seem to be some mechanism at work, i just cant figure out what. I have a second town i cycle in it and there are some villagers that stay put for years. Why? And some move out as soon as they move in.

 

[jolokia]

Assuming it is random, there's still only a 1/10 (or possibly 1/9 re the most recent movein theory) chance every time that any individual villager will be picked to move. The fact that someone might have had Villager X in their town for Y amount of time without pinging is not a statistically meaningful anecdote.

 

[momayo]

Some update: I recently moved in Gaston, and almost immediately Snake (who was the newest resident before him) pinged me to move. I'm guessing he's now allowed to move away since someone else is moving/has moved into my town?

@jolokia: Yeah, that's why I'm trying to compile at least a basic rudimentary count!
So far things really do seem pretty random, except for a few anomalies:

(1) The most recent move-in does not seem to be able to trigger a moveout unless a new villager is on the way or has set up a house. (seems to be pretty common knowledge?)
(2) For some reason, one villager will ping more often than others (at least 1.5x more often than the average). For the first cycle, it was Julian; after Frita moved it was Willow.
(3) Most villagers will ping fairly consistently (the count was updated and things seem to be averaging out for half of my villagers).
(4) Some villagers (2-3) practically never trigger a moveout, regardless of length of stay or friendship level. For the first cycle, it was Willow, Carmen and Pippy; for the second it was Carmen and Pietro.

I'm still trying to verify if (2) and (4) are just outliers or are in fact representative of some kind of weird pattern.

I'm really sorry if I'm trying to extrapolate too much data from just one village! It's not very rigorous and is really sloppy, so please take everything I write with a giant grain of salt.

e:
Oof. I really feel dumb. Willow and Julian seemed to be pinging more often than not because I've been looking at them as two separate cases. If I take all samples together then the times that they're not active pingers and the times that they are, cancel out. Now that Gaston moved in I think it's a whole new cycle; I wonder if the same pattern will appear again with one villager suddenly pinging like crazy.