What do you think is the reason for missing features?

[Holla]

I feel like it was a mix of not enough development time and purposely withholding features for future updates.

The original release date for ACNH was 2019 that was later pushed to 2020. So clearly they needed more development time than initially thought. I'm guessing they probably could have done with even more time even after the 2020 release date, but since it was already delayed once they were likely pushed to just release what they had by that time.

I also believe they had planned in adding new features and events in updates from the very beginning. We all know the game is meant to be played in real time despite the many people who time travel. To combat this issue locking holiday events behind updates make sense. In past games some players would play and time travel so much that within the first month of release or less they would have already experienced all the events and get burnt out on the game in no time. This new form of releasing new things in bits at a time help keep these excessive time travelling players coming back for the new stuff. They can still time travel all they want of course but the events won't be spoiled ahead of time. It also benefits non-time travelling players as we are less likely to have future events spoiled as in past game time travellers would often have event items early. It's not a perfect solution but I do like the attempt that was made to balance out those who time travel vs those who don't.

*Just to clarify (so I don't upset anyone) I'm fine with those who time travel even though I don't time travel myself. Play the game the way you want.

Overall I feel like many basic features were missing even in the original release of the game which would explain not enough development time. But most of the events were planned all along to be released in updates.

 

[moo_nieu]

I think it’s a combination of the first two options. They have the option to continuously update the game in the future by holding out on previous features, and it also helps to distinguish from and give more play value to the other games

 

[Corrie]

I'm on team "ran out of time." I personally think they ran out of time and use the slow updates to hide that fact and make it look intentional. But I see right through it haha.

 

[meggiewes]

Agreed, I also think they wanted Animal Crossing to be a "games as a service" - experience. I guess it would make sense for them to withhold certain features like the festivals just to keep the game fresh over a longer period of time. I'm not sure, though, whether that was the right approach. I know a lot of people that quit the game because they didn't feel there was much to do after a while. Shop upgrades for example could have been kept and would have motivated players to keep playing. That's a shame because in maybe one or two years, NH could catch up to New Leaf in terms of features and a lot of players will never experience that. I hope there will be some larger updates this year that can get players to return to the game.

I think if there were big changes happening, it would attract back players who were curious and got bored. The same thing happened with New Leaf's Welcome Amiibo update. Probably not as much as the initial boom at the beginning of the pandemic. A good chunk of people will probably return. The question is will they stick around or will the updates make them feel like the game should have been shipped complete?

Unfortunately, only time will tell on this one

 

[RollingAntony]

#1: It's a different game, with a different perspective, setting and view. Therefore, many old features are not compatible with how the game plays. (for example, lots of buildings). This, however, can change after some time and explain it as a story-driven thing.

#2: It's made after a GaaS-like model, so some updates adding content were planned from the start. Making a game this way allows a general feeling of "refresh", letting players come back when there are new things to enjoy (for example, people who had many hours already at April and dropped the game can revisit it now and have a lot of events/features left to explore)

#3: The game was already delayed to avoid crunch but probably wasn't able to be further delayed. So, some content still needed work and required to be completed afterwards. This compliments #2.

#4: Many things were streamlined on this game and many were added as a QoL. This contributes to a feeling of "old features removed" even tho the functionality remains on the game. (for example, NPC being replaced by objects).


We may speculate that the game had troubled development because of the delay and the rocky move to HD development. We know that all items and islanders had to be "reinvented" from scratch and that probably took a lot of resources and time (the interview where they revealed how they went over each animal to adjust them, such as adding toebeans, how they modeled each item to let 'em work properly and how they played with the scale of all of them). This fact we know supports the idea of the devs facing tough problems but thankfully they weren't forced to crunch. Oh and the new features are huge and probably took tons of dev time.

We also don't know for sure if they are "withholding" features from us, as far as we know, they are still working on new/returning things. Things being found on the code doesn't mean they are complete and just making us wait, it just means they are/were developing them. Some of them could have been already scrapped or be leftovers. Of course we can speculate that some things are indeed ready, but unless there is an internal leak, we can't say for sure.

From a business perspective, the game is not a success; it's a complete and rotund success. As cruel as it sounds, they probably don't care that random user 345 on the Internet feels "x" thing was totally necessary and therefore the game is not as good (especially if they don't agree with that opinion, double especially if random users 456 and 789 say they don't care about that "x" thing). We also don't know if players are dropping the game faster than previous entries, but they might indeed- that means that either the drop rate is on par/equivalent or they simply don't care.

Pocket Camp has almost nothing to do with this. We know that PC wasn't a great success, but it's a nice money maker with all the whales on the game. The intended effect of the mobile efforts of Nintendo was to promote their franchises and although we can't be sure PC did its thing with this release, we know for a fact that the opposite happened, as PC had its best months since launch after the launch of NH.


On a side note, I've never understood what the definition of "incomplete game" is and with all the differing opinions over it I'll never get it haha. The game plays well and has tons of content which are more than enough for a release with pre-planned GaaS-like support.

 

[Khaelis]

Im so tired of this mindset today in gaming, games as a service/lifestyle. Artificially "prolonging" a games life by making a game start out barebones as and then to add free content for years for a high "retention rate" of players. Everything turned into mobile games basically, using dirty psychological tricks to keep you hooked. FOMO is one of them, frustration another, jealousy of other players a third.. there are presentations you can watch on this. My problem of introducing this kind of "business model" (in quotation marks since theres no paid dlc or in game store, yet) in AC is that it already was a game I played everyday for years, it wasn't needed imo. It just makes the people who get it first have a lesses experience and withholding things we know will come like swimming, art, gyroids, Brewster, makes me feel bored of the game now, like why is it that important to have monthly updates to a game that has no other income than that first purchase? Are they planning on selling things? It makes me uneasy. The gacha system of going to islands, maybe they will sell us "instant tickets" to "search for villagers on islands" and then we just get to pick, maybe thats why they made it so tedious to use nook mile tickets... maybe they will sell us unbreakable tool packs.. idk. I suspect the worst I guess. Call me paranoid. But personally I would rather have waited for a full release than the drip feed we are getting now, because I am already tired of what little we have now and I went back to New Leaf and I feel so much more satisfied after a shorter time playing. Everything is faster (the dialouge is soooo fast) and smoother and more calming to me and it feels more like my little escape world rather than something I am building to show other people, which is what I feel when I play New Horizons.
Kinda scattered post but I hope I could make some sense to what I am thinking..

And I do agree with a lot of these points, however I understand it 'both' ways for both the player and the developers, but the truth in it is that it is slowly becoming industry standard as time goes on.

 

[Mezzanine]

Deleted

 

[Lanstar]

I think of the above, only with "Ran out of development time" even more intensified. The game was supposedly going to release in 2019, but they had to delay until March 2020. Yet even when they did managed to release it, they had a bunch of bugs to patch out in the first few weeks.

What made things worse, however, was the Pandemic. The proof is in the way Nintendo released Super Mario 3D All Stars: Leaks showed that this game was supposed to release around April/May - But it got pulled back to September, which is around a 4 month delay. Given that Animal Crossing was supposed to put in Mario themed items in conjunction to that event, and that they delayed the furniture until march, something tells me that the devs are also around 4 months behind schedule their own updates as well.

Another thing I noticed is the nature of some of the updates did not feel preplanned. The main one was the introduction of more inclusive hairstyles into the game. One could think of either ill will or good will about the way they were added, depending on how you think the update system worked. If you believe it was preplanned, you could angerly say, "Why withhold it all?! It should have been released day 1!" If you believed they made them on the spot, you'd think, "Wow - they're actually listening to the fanbase for new features!"

Switching to a remote-based development must have really taken its toll on the game's updates - And I can only imagine how much more improved the game could have became if the pandemic didn't exist - Or if they actually started developing the game much earlier.

 

[McRibbie]

I definitely believe it has to do with Pocket Camp. Look how much furniture and items they have in comparison to NH. I am pissed that they had 7 years to develop this game and gave us something incomplete.

As I said in my post earlier,
a) Pocket Camp wasn't made by the AC development team, instead it was made by NDcube (who make Mario Party and who made Amiibo Festival)
b) it's more like 2 years, they came up with the ideas for NH just after NL's release but it's probably not been in constant development since then

 

[Mezzanine]

Deleted

 

[Matt0106]

They had years to produce a quality product, for Nintendo to do this is just plain disappointing.

Unless you're an insider at Nintendo, we don't know how smoothly development actually went, not to mention how long they actually spent making the game. Sure they thought about it after NL released, but that does not mean they were in the middle of making a fully functional game. After all, they were clearly working on Welcome amiibo for the game they already had, which was only updated in 2016.

 

[Mezzanine]

Deleted

 

[marea]

I think it could be a mix of all three. Some things feel like they might not have much use in the game's current direction, like harriet and maybe even cyrus since the game wants you to customise things yourself. If we get villager visits added in an update it could be because they didnt have enough time to add them before launch, or they decided from the start to make this feature part of an update instead because of their current model.

 

[Elias_]

Unless you're an insider at Nintendo, we don't know how smoothly development actually went, not to mention how long they actually spent making the game. Sure they thought about it after NL released, but that does not mean they were in the middle of making a fully functional game. After all, they were clearly working on Welcome amiibo for the game they already had, which was only updated in 2016.

Agreed. Actually, the development team behind Animal Crossing and Splatoon is the same one. Since Splatoon 2 was released in Summer of 2017, we can guess that - apart from maybe a small core team - the team didn't start development until that point in time. So the development time was relatively short anyways. They probably knew this beforehand, though. They treated Splatoon 1 and 2 very similarly to Animal Crossing New Horizons in terms of updates.

 

[JasonBurrows]

I actually quite like the way that features and events are being handled.
It is good as you can experience events in real-time with everyone else and not have it being spoiled if they are time-locked.

I know some people would more than likely not want to do this, but I would happily purchase a content-complete version of Animal Crossing New Horizons when every possible feature, event and interaction has been added to the game.
I am a collector of physical video games and I absolutely love games that are completely on the disc/cartridge.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have done a similar thing recently with Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield.

I do not dislike games that are purely digital or are the code-in-a-box games, but they must have the Badge of Shame.
I think developers must do FULL physical if they decide to do it, unless there are financial reasons for not doing physical.
(Eg. If the company does not have a lot of money to begin with)

 

[Elias_]

I actually quite like the way that features and events are being handled.
It is good as you can experience events in real-time with everyone else and not have it being spoiled if they are time-locked.

I know some people would more than likely not want to do this, but I would happily purchase a content-complete version of Animal Crossing New Horizons when every possible feature, event and interaction has been added to the game.
I am a collector of physical video games and I absolutely love games that are completely on the disc/cartridge.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have done a similar thing recently with Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield.

I do not dislike games that are purely digital or are the code-in-a-box games, but they must have the Badge of Shame.
I think developers must do FULL physical if they decide to do it, unless there are financial reasons for not doing physical.
(Eg. If the company does not have a lot of money to begin with)

I absolutely agree about the events. As long as they will be available after Nintendo supports the game with updates, I prefer them patching the events in.

 

[Yoshisaur]

I think Nintendo tries to dumb their games down to make them for ~everyone~. People between the ages of 5-80 can play no problem. For gamers and longtime fans I think it's disappointing but it seems to work. They had no issues selling ACNH.

 

[user1234]

I believe some of the reasons they do this these days is so that if you don't connect to their servers to receive updates and thereby give them more personal data to add to their big data, you don't get the complete game and you cannot buy a complete, physical game. Once they stop supporting it, a physical game on a new system will be incomplete. Allows them to subtly have more control over their IP and mildly convert game owners to game renters.

 

[Fantasyland]

I think they're getting more mileage out of Pocket Camp than they thought they would, and they adjusted New Horizons features (left things out) to make sure that New Horizons wouldn't give devoted fans of Pocket Camp enough good reasons to jump ship.

I marked other because I think the overall design philosophy was based on the same games as a service model that was a smash hit with Splatoon. The games as a service model has become more popular with developers in the last few years because it means that they can release incomplete games and finish them later. I also think that the surprise Welcome Amiibo Update for New Leaf was testing the waters to see how updates would be received with Animal Crossing because that was the first time an Animal Crossing game had been updated like that. It was a big success and they probably used the data from that to justify making New Horizons with the games as a service model.

The next year will most likely be the year to determine if Animal Crossing is viable to be developed like this in the future or not. Only time will tell on that one.

These quotes make me cry because they are true. I'm disappointed in the direction things are going, but I cannot blame Nintendo for doing so.

I won't be boycotting Animal Crossing in the future, but I did delete Pocket Camp off my phone a long time ago. I find it deplorable to introduce gambling to children through video games, as someone who was introduced to gambling through video games as a child. It sets them up for poor money management and disappointment in the future. It doesn't encourage kids to steal to continue their addictions, but it certainly gives them a motive to. I am okay with the way New Horizons is releasing its content slowly only because I am profiting off that decision, in that I got to play the game in March 2020 instead of March 2021, and I am not expected to pay for any DLC. Pocket Camp is a disappointment.

 

[moonlights]

to be honest, when I first got the game I didn't actually know it was delayed. I don't know anything about the development or how long it took, so I'm only speculating. I think they intended to do regular updates and re-introduce features from previous games, i.e. the events. I doubt the game was "unfinished" just because they weren't in the base game, and they probably had planned to introduce them at some point after release, even if they were still in development.
for someone who plays like myself and doesn't time travel, I would've been waiting to play the events in real time anyway, so I guess that's why I'm not as anti-update as some of the people that have posted already.
also, I'm unsure as to how Pocket Camp is relevant? I play both games, and they're completely different. PC is extremely repetitive, the main "objective" of the game is to collect furniture to decorate your campsite and cabin, which is why I think there's much more varied furniture in the app.