Playing in real time or time travelling Animal Crossing New Leaf ?

[Akeea]

Because of my school and work schedule, I rarely play acnf. That is until recently I decided to play the game a few days ahead.

Any thoughts on the pros and cons of either time travelling or playing the game in real time.

 

[stitchmaker]

That how I set my main town when I first started out. At 6pm the fishing tournament ends and my family eats dinner than.
Also celebrating holidays with the villagers and family wouldn't work. So I set the date one day ahead and it's about 4 hours behind. This way I never miss an event and can enjoy the holidays with my family.

 

[Hypno KK]

I don't think there are any pros or cons to either other than what you make of it. If you have a really busy schedule and can only play at night or early in the morning, time travelling means you can get to interact with you're villagers while they're still awake or go to shops while they're still open. If you tend to miss out on days at a time and want to catch up on things like events, it can also be your main way of getting to experience them.

The pros of playing in real time is that it makes the game feel more real if it's the same time and season in your town and in real life.

I don't think it's bad to time travel and it's an option in the game for a reason. Just make sure that you're careful if you're going through lots of days at a time, to avoid losing any villagers.

 

[PeachPrincess]

I only time travel when a new villager moves in
When you've 8 villagers, nobody will move out so it's 100% safe to tt when you've less than 9 villagers.

 

[kyrynbunni]

I haven't done any time travelling in my main town in a long time. Now that I need to cycle to get Ruby back, I may start time travelling very small amounts and carefully to get her back soon.

Really, there are pros and cons to both ways. It's really totally up to how the individual player wants to play the game.

 

[eraev]

I don't time travel. I found that I will keep playing much longer if I play in real time with the date/time matching up exactly with real time. I used to TT a lot in previous games, but it really made the game stop being fun because I wasn't just enjoying the day by day scene in my town. I prefer to just take it slow now. I'm far more invested in my current town because I don't rush through it.

 

[Skyfall]

I time travel lightly. I can only play at night so if i played in real time, i am always in the dark and shops are perpetually closed. Sucks. So i go backwards to catch the day everyday. Works for me!

 

[Trickilicky]

I play in real time in my main town, and in my new second town I TT'd so much it was awesome. I just got over tonsillitis and started the town to help distract me when I was sick. Being able to plot reset quickly and place PWPs down and make a real start on landscaping made it fun and kept me interested. Although perhaps if I carry on TTing so much there won't be much left to do, so now all my villagers are in place I'll probably play normally again.
TBH, people should feel free to play however suits them. There's nothing at all wrong with TTing imo, but it comes with it's own set or pro's and con's. As long as you're having fun though, it doesn't matter how you play ^_^

 

[Burumun]

I don't really TT, but I guess I think it's sort of better.

As has already been mentioned, with the holidays it can be annoying when you want to get holiday items and stuff in ACNL but don't want to spend time on it because you're doing stuff in real life. It would be nice if the holidays were on a different day by default...

Plus, you can make the game fit your schedule in a way. Personally, I often TT forward about 3 hours so that I can go to Re-Tail since I mostly play on my morning commute before 7 AM. I used to have the Early Bird ordinance, so it worked out, but now I have the Beautiful Town ordinance so I don't have to worry about flowers wilting since I don't play daily.

The only pro to playing normally I can think of is that it's easier to take care of your villagers, since you don't have to deal with multiple requests per villager per day.

 

[isebrilia]

I play both in real time and by time traveling.
I finish my daily tasks for one day in about one or two hours. By the time I finish the tasks, I wish it was the next day as I'm already bored. I then decided to TT and it made me want to play the game even more! On some days though, I prefer to play in real time as it makes the game have a more realistic aspect. Cons of time traveling include losing villagers or spoiled turnips (I like to turnip farm and I made the mistake of time traveling and losing a whole locker full...). I've also lost two of my dreamies from time traveling, I'm 11/16 done with cycling for one, but I don't know if I want to cycle for the other as it's time consuming :c

 

[Feloreena]

I used to play in real time. However I took a long break from the game recently (~6-7 months) so now I'm time travelling day by day when I play. I know I could just jump back to the current date, but I don't want to miss out on certain events and fish/diving stuff.

 

[cosmic-latte]

I play real time on my main town and time travel on my cycling town.

 

[Rarr01]

Time Travel. I used to play by day, but then I got SUPER far behind and I started jumping ahead. I like TT'ing better anyways, because I can manipulate the game to run how I want it to more. I do try to keep it at a minimum, but for me it makes the game more interesting.

 

[K.K. SIider]

I've tried playing in real time, but I'm too impatient to wait for the next day so I just started time traveling.

 

[daniduckyface]

I play in real time unless I need to TT backwards to go to a store again since I play at night most of the time and don't want to get rid of the beautiful town ordinance. In my cycle town, I obviously TT lol

 

[mizzsnow]

Like some people have said I only time-travel by hours because I'm busy during the day with no time to care for my town
But never to the next or previous day because I don't want to mess up something