Polygon: Animal Crossing players are starting over after dozens (or hundreds) of hours

[Munyo]

EDIT: never mind, I don’t want to go too much off topic (or out of line)

I'm just going to +1 you on this issue. Although I can't speak for people with OCD, I don't really condone that use just for "behaviour." Not appropriate.

-

I restarted my island twice already. I think especially because people are stuck in their homes, there's too much time to overthink and wanting things to be perfect.

 

[seularin]

i just want to delete my progress since I'm picky ;;; but then i look over at my 365 hours

 

[xxxxnatalie]

at this point I don't think I'm capable of resetting. I have too much stuff that I like that it just wouldn't be worth it to grind for it all again. The only thing about my island that I've been unhappy about is the river mouth placement, but I've started to make it work in my favor so it's not really an issue anymore. I don't really understand why there is such a competitive edge to decorating islands? I'm personally using my island as a creative medium and just trying to create whatever I think looks best no matter how long it takes.

 

[Phailboat-Returns]

Resetting the island? Cool, no big deal. Losing all the stuff you've acquired? Nah. Never.

 

[JackABee]

Parts of my island are frustrating to change. The peninsula is in a wacky spot and town hall is only a few tiles next to the airport. Although the locations are frustrating, I find fun work arounds to the problems. Try working with limitations, you might just enjoy what you find!

Below is a pic of my airport/town hall, it's like REALLY close.

Spoiler: reference pic

 

[Santana]

Ya gotta do what you gotta do to keep the game fresh. Still, just the thought or resetting makes me nervous

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

i started over 5 days into the game, even with that short amount of time i was bummed out on how much stuff i could be losing. so i cant imagine someone being able to do that 100 hours in

 

[Chibiusa]

As others said, social media probably ruined a lot of the experience for people. People are constantly (especially on here) comparing their islands to other people's and thinking theirs isn't good enough. Then when they try to emulate what those people did, they're not satisfied or still think it doesn't compare. I never was able to/didn't really see other people's towns during GC/Wild World era and I never felt dissatisfied with my town. Even during New Leaf with all my stuff everywhere with no real "flow" I was happy with my town. That was until I discovered this forum and began comparing myself to others. It made me critique every inch of my town until I felt somewhat happy with it.

With how big social media is in this current year, that problem has really just snowballed into what it is now. I'm not surprised regarding people resetting until they think they're happy. I think it's fine to find inspiration through others' islands, but at a certain point it becomes overload. It's important for people to limit themselves with regards to exposure from other people's creations, imo. Otherwise yours will never be seen as "good enough" to yourself.

 

[Blood Eclipse]

I'm too far in to reset my town now, but in the beginning, I did reset a whole bunch of times looking for a map I liked that also had peaches as a native fruit. Then somewhere further down the road, I learned that there's such things as native flowers, too, and that Dodo Airports and Nook Mile items vary in color from town to town. I'm glad, in a way, that I didn't know that from the beginning otherwise who knows how much longer I'd have spent on resetting my save.

 

[Arithmophobia17]

i mostly wouldn't reset because i have a bunch of villagers I LOVE and couldn't part with, which would make it a pain to find them again. especially raymond. plus, i like my island a lot, and i really like that i have my registered thing on my passport as on 3/20/2020, even though i'm sure i could TT that. anyway, overall, i've already put so much into it, and all my collecting would go to waste.

 

[Manah]

Same reason why so many people are unhappy with their bodies when they see photoshopped models, or their life in general when seeing super stylized living spaces on Instagram. These islands are specifically designed to be as Aesthetic(tm) as possible.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that if you enjoy playing like that. But it sets an arbitrary standard that people feel they must adhere to, instead of having fun and playing the game the way they want. The impression of enjoyment and "good results" being mutually exclusive is already way too prevalent and social media cranks it up to eleven. You're not supposed to ever feel content with yourself.

That said, I feel like the amount of resetting would've been the same in New Leaf without being able to have multiple towns on one 3DS. People just had the option to buy more copies of the game and didn't need to delete their old saves.

 

[Bloobloop]

i could never imagine resetting! maybe earlier on, but i have so many diys learned and so much stuff in my catalog now that resetting and going through the ordeal of going through the tutorial, unlocking terraforming, cataloguing everything again, and relearning a bunch of diys sounds awful to me ;; i hate where my river mouths are, though, but i'll make do. especially since i have dreamies like audie who would be a huge pain to have move in again.

 

[Flunkifera]

"But she still wasn’t happy. One night, she was struggling to get a cliff to round off just right. After 10 minutes, she told Polygon, she started to “uncontrollably bawl.” So she decided to reset her game and start all over again."

In my opinion there is no right or wrong way of playing Animal Crossing. If you wanna leave your island as natural as possible and terraform nothing, go for it. If you want to terraform your whole island and go with a theme, go for it. The game literally leaves you with so many possibilities. You can literally leave your island as in the beginning or transform it into ducking disney land, ITS UP TO YOU.

That being said, you can make your life waay easier or harder. The easiest way is to just look for the river mouths and Service Center so that you like those. With those two things you often are already content within the first 4 maps. Now if you look a certain fruit, flower, villagers, dock, pier, peninsula, pond, etc. you will be looking for ages. The thing is that you get every darn fruit and flower, and most of the time work around the other things. Of course it's up to every player how they want to play the game but if they choose to be so picky regarding every single aspect of the map it's kind of their "fault" if they are unhappy whenever something isn't 1000% the way they imagined it to be.. I hope you understand what I mean