July 3rd Summer Update Discussion Thread

[Le Ham]

@Le Ham Out of curiosity, how would you feel about DLC if they gave free updates for years and then released paid DLC around when another game was being released?

Not sure on that one. It sounds nice to me, but Idk if that's a model that makes sense as a business decision and therefore whether I should expect it. I have never played a game with paid DLC, so maybe this is just something people are used to now that I'm not? I'm not really a gamer per se - buying new games like people go out to see new movies isn't really a part of my life. I just have a thing for AC.

To give an idea of how stingy I am, my NSO subscription is a surprise gift my friends bought for me after I burned through a month's worth of free 7-day trials when NH first launched. Once it expires, I don't know if I'll buy another year's worth - will probably just sell my extra stuff and just focus on my island from then on. Just the mindset I was raised on, make do with as little as I can. Would rather do something more valuable with my money.

 

[Cottonball]

thank!!! the game was getting so boring.

 

[Uffe]

Birthday gift or kind gesture from a multimillionaire company? Now that's just funny lol it's all bussiness and the cost to make it was in the price we all paid upfront

It is a business, yes, and from that standpoint, they are going to aim towards the northern hemisphere since that's where most people who play New Horizons are from. Think of it this way. F-Zero: Climax wasn't released in the United States because F-Zero isn't that popular here and Nintendo wasn't going to put a game out where they're not going to get business or make a profit. There are F-Zero fans who would have loved to owned that game. Another game to look at is Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. A lot of people in the US at one point held very non-progressive opinions about Tingle. So Nintendo only released that game in Japan and in Europe. As a business, Nintendo is going to look at mostly where their target audience comes from. This can all sound privileged, but it's not because everybody had a choice to choose northern or southern hemisphere. I would have loved to have chosen the southern hemisphere even though I'm from the northern hemisphere, because the southern hemisphere got mushroom DIYs and frozen DIYs. People from the northern hemisphere have to wait for those items.

 

[toenuki]

i knew they'd bring this in

 

[xSuperMario64x]

i knew they'd bring this in

I think in a way everyone knew. It wouldn't make any sense to give players a chance to live on a deserted island and then be like "oh sry you can't swim lmao whoops."

 

[Nicolette]

I love how people found a way to complain for an update they been asking for for like 2 months? It's free. It's like complaining about a birthday gift or any kind gesture. Nintendo gave an update. Appreciate that we even got anything at all. Some of ya'll are just ungrateful..

I don't think the people complaining are reaching at all. The diving mechanic shouldn't have to be an update because it belonged in the base game, and it's fair to criticize the company for withholding as much content as they are. Updates could have been reserved for new furniture, dialogue, plants, etc. Small, but still exciting things.

This is ultimately a business move for Nintendo, not a gift or a kind gesture to its customers. If they release previously cut content for free now, players will feel more inclined to spend money on future DLC. We can't drop or mail out yellow leaf items with our own custom designs on them, so making DLC-exclusive items untradable is entirely possible.

 

[N e s s]

It’s nice but it would have been better if they actually added more multiplayer content. This does give you something new to do and the addition of the mermaid set + potential pirate set is neat, but like... where’s the dream suite, club tortimer, and the roost??

 

[Bethboj]

No matter what update Nintendo roll out there will always be “I wish they had added x,y and z”.

Let us all be thankful we have finally got news of not one but two updates over the next couple months!

Also, I’m sure there will be a QOL update very soon if not with this update. Remember employees have families and lives too! Had we not all been in quarantine when this game released I don’t think as many people would bored yet. There’s apparently 3 years of updates that Nintendo have in store, this is only the 3rd months it’s been out, relax.

 

[Jeremy]

I don't think a free update like this could be considered a "business move" unless we're talking about releasing NH in the state and at the time it was released. The game was already delayed, so they simply released it while continuing to work on features they wanted to include. That has to do more about prioritizing the game's development than making money since this is not paid DLC. Also, we can't say that this was a feature cut out of the game just because it was a part of New Leaf. New Horizons is an entirely different game, not an update.

 

[Pintuition]

I'm excited to try diving/swimming! Some friends and I are already planning a swimming party! The mermaid furniture and shell items should look great together, and I'm excited to add them to my underwater themed basement!!

 

[Lavamaize]

Imagine if you could make a mini island in your ocean that you could swim to. That would be neat.

 

[Serabee]

SWEET! I totally knew diving would be back, I mean, what could be a more summery update than that?

And I'm excited to see the Mermaid set returning! Frankly, I REALLY wanna see more returning sets. Not just the event stuff... I find myself really missing, like, the lovely set, or the blue set, or the green set. And even though it was only in one game I totally fell in love with the alpine set ☺

The only question is... do I put the mermaid set in my beach bum character's house OR in my cute character's house? That's gonna be a tough choice I was originally just gonna do holiday/event stuff in my cute character's house, but then I found so much unrelated cute stuff that now her house is almost fully furnished with no holiday furniture

 

[SmoochsPLH]

PASCAAAAAAL!!! My other favorite hippy baby! Now I just need Harriet and Harvey to have a better role and I'll be complete! And diving! And omg the mermaid set, does this mean we'll be getting other old sets back too? And Gulliver gets new clothes? Ok? why lmao

Post automatically merged: Jun 25, 2020

Imagine if you could make a mini island in your ocean that you could swim to. That would be neat.

I misread island as salad at first and got very confused. x'D

 

[meggiewes]

After having some time to think about this at work, I think I've come to the decision that I'm not happy about this. Why? Because I've played ACNH and diving is nothing new to me. In fact, diving was a base game feature that was always a part of the game and it was a new feature of that game. It feels like they either held it back for no reason, held it back only to have an "exciting free update", or didn't have the chance to finish ACNH. (Edit: or they decided not to put it in the game and only made it fit due to fan demand which is probably not the case because of something to do with data mines and programming and other stuff that I do not have any proper working knowledge on.) I will never know the answer to that and I don't think I want to know the true answer to that either.

Since Nintendo looks like it is releasing content one month at a time, it makes me feel like the updates will be nothing more than 1 substantial old thing that could have easily been in the base game, 1 really small newish thing, and one or two returning furniture sets that could have been included in the base game and that will rotate with a month-long event that will eventually get old or tiresome after a solid two weeks.

I love ACNH and I really loved ACNL. I think that is why I'm feeling more disappointed than anything. I guess I was just expecting something different than diving for a bunch of critters with a wetsuit that is probably color locked to your island and only one confirmed returning furniture set with a speculated return of pirate-themed furniture with Pirate Gulliver. Because pirate themed furniture was never flat out stated and shown, I'm not expecting it just in case they do something different with Pirate Gulliver.

 

[Iris_T]

Nice! I was not super crazy about diving in NL but I certainly welcome more stuff to do and collect in the game, even if it's slowly I'm glad they keep adding stuff to the game.

 

[R3i]

Maybe Guluver unwittingly caused a coup, became captain then was “accidentally” knocked overboard

 

[Nefarious]

Seeing people here complain has me like “At least Animal Crossing isn’t being treated like Pokemon has been treated for the past two year. :’ ^]”

Joking aside though (I’m still feeling the sting from yesterday, sorry for bringing it up again), my two cents on this:

I like to complain when something is bad, as consumers it is our right to expect a good decent product. As someone who’s taken game development classes, I understand why it’s being done, but even so, you need to work hard to earn that money from core fans and casual consumers. I’m not too happy how slow they’ve been releasing updates, but I now understand that the pandemic really has slowed production down (you can tell by the recent Smash reveal. Sakurai said his team is working from home. Heard that he even foot the bill so his team could get the equipment needed at home). Any other time I would be for complaining about this, I was before I saw the Min Min in Smash video, but now I’m thinking the reason why it’s been so slow and we haven’t had much news was because the teams were stuck at home without the needed equipment for quite some time. Considering the situation we were in (and still are for some), we should be a bit patient with them. We really don’t know how frequent these updates should have been in the first place. Hopefully when all this blasts over for good, these updates and the core features already established in the series are rolled out much faster.

 

[Obios]

I can't wait to swim in ACNH. It maybe the only swimming I get to do this summer.

 

[frogslime]

Why fly when you can dive? Gonna put Dodo Airlines out of business and swim to other islands. Time to get JACKED.

 

[wanderlust//]

i’m so excited for the update and really curious about the august one, i wonder what it’ll be