It has been a really long time since the last time I played the game regularly (almost two years I think) I used to pick it up and play non stop for months, take a break for some months and then come back to it again. But rn I barely play once every two months. I adore the game but the idea that I have to play every single day just to make sure I wont lose a villager makes me not want to pick it up. I wish I could play one day and come back two weeks after and not have to worry about villagers moving. My town is finished and I dont have any issues with that as I still have goals in the game I havent completed (I still dont have all the houses fully decorated, only my main one has all the rooms. I dont have the HHA exteriors nor all the badges. And my museum rooms are just storage lol) so I dont think making a new town would help. It is not about not having things to do but about not being able to do them In the pace I want to without it having consequences like losing villagers or getting any guilty tripy 'you have been gone so long!' messages. I just wished the game didnt require such constant attention to play it without feeling guilty because you haven't spoken to your villagers in two weeks. Anyone else feel the same? :c
Yes, I've felt this before- both back in City Folk and my previous towns in New Leaf. Once you leave for a while it's hard to come back for fear of seeing how everything kinda fell apart when you left. The animals are helpless mooches, lol. Not only that, but they blame you for disappearing- aka having a life outside of the game.
You could always resort to time traveling. That keeps everything in place, well still being able to play at your own timeframe. It's just a game. Time traveling is not cheating. I used to do it, and it was super helpful for planning around my real life.
I feel almost exactly the same. I ended up buying another copy for a second town cause I was playing so much, and then ended up stopping playing. Like... I just get distracted with everything else, and then next time I play my villagers are complaining that I've been away for 2 months. It's just insane how quickly you can get absolutely drained from the game even though there's a bunch more to do.
I have encyclopedias to complete but end up missing entire seasons cause I just don't wanna play. I wanna make my museum rooms anywhere but storage but I wanna keep my stuff that I know I'm gonna sell and then immediately wanna use again. Badges? Can't even get half of those unless you play for a long long time.
Yep, I totally feel you, especially right now, I'm just too busy with school and such that takes up a lot of my time, and With free time I just have way better things to spend time doing like draw, and New leaf really drains my energy so I don't want to deal with it a lot, so really I just never do feel like playing (?ε｀*) whenever I do it's when I go onto animal crossing Tumblr and such and feel really motivated to start playing again, so maybe that might fuel you too? Anyways it's just a game so it doesn't really matter that much (*^▽^*)
I know exactly how you feel, I was away from my game for 5 years. I didn't intentionally stop playing, it just eventually got away from me and I realized I couldn't remember when I'd last played. I ended up staying away because I didn't want to see my town in ruins and find my beloved neighbors had left.
However, I eventually blew the dust off my DS because I wanted to download the ACNL update, just in case I ever did try playing again. I guess this woke something up in me, because two days later I braced myself and turned the game back on... and was shocked to find that everything was fine! My town was in good shape, but then again I have the Beautiful Town ordinance in place so I assumed that was part of it. However, amazingly, NONE of my neighbors had moved away! I've been so thrilled that they were all still there that I'm now back to playing every day, which I'd wanted to go back to doing ages ago.
I'm still amazed my neighbors didn't leave. I wonder if it has something to do with the ordinance? Or does the game just decide that if you go inactive for [x]-amount of time that you're probably on a hiatus and it just sort of 'pauses' its progression?
I suppose one thing you could do is to only stop playing once a villager pings to move. Once you say no to a villager, you should be able to take a long break from the game without any unexpected move outs.
- - - Post Merge - - -
It would probably need to be the same day you stop playing though.
Back in the days I had the same problem that I lost my motivation at some point to continue playing the game and I was very worried that I would lose any of my villagers if I take a longer break, as I just got all my dreamies I wanted. What I did was that I used that one trick other players suggested: I waited till a villager wanted to move out, told them to stay, written down the in-game date where this happened and took a break then. Once I wanted to play again, I just time traveled back to the date where I stopped playing and everything was still the same., no one moved out, no weed or any other changes. Of course this only works if you don't mind doing time traveling. Alternative, check out every three or four days your game by talking to your villagers and see if someone wants to move out. It's kinda a disadvantage when it comes to Animal Crossing that if you don't want to lose any of your beloved villagers that you have to keep an eye on them in some way.
I used to do it, and it was super helpful for planning around my real life.
