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Discussion What are some new features/ideas you'd like to see in the next Animal Crossing?

Derachi

Derachi

Fresh Eater
Founder
Pronouns
he/him
With ACNH being one of the most successful video games of all time, it's only a matter of time before Nintendo makes another one. What kind of new features or ideas would you like to see in a new Animal Crossing game?

The main one I'd like to see is more interaction. I spent over 1500 hours building my island, and I'm really happy with it, but I wish there was more I could actually do. For example, I built an arcade space with crane games, arcade machines, a dart board, etc. But it'd be cool if I could actually play those arcade games, or actually play darts, especially with my villagers or other players. Sometimes I see videos of Pocket Camp where villagers are actually interacting with different items, like skateboarding in a half-pipe or whatever. In New Horizons, villagers only ever just lean forward and touch stuff, which really takes me out of the experience. Honestly, the next Animal Crossing should take a page out of Yakuza's book: give me playable arcade games, let me play darts, let me actually sing at a karaoke machine. Let me make my own coffee in my coffee machine (though, much like real life, the coffee from home will never be as good as coffee from a good coffee shop like Brewsters.)

Speaking of coffee shops: I'd also love to be able to build buildings/businesses. For example, as I said above, I built an arcade "space" on my ACNH island. It's really nice, but I wish the walls weren't made of dirt cliffs barely hidden by simple panels. I wish I could just build a building. I know some players started other "villager accounts" and used their houses as multi-purpose "buildings" but that feels way too patchwork. I think the DLC for ACNH got started in that direction: you did end up getting to build a cafe, a restaurant, a hospital, a school, and I think maybe one other thing that I forget. I just want to be able to do exactly that, again, and on my main island.

Another thing I'd like to see is a bit more variation in Villagers. As it is right now, each villager is one of 8 "personality types," and within those are about 1 or 2 sub-variations each. That's nice and all, and I get that adding more personality types is creating exponentially more work, so I think they can stick to the existing 8, though it'd also be nice for them to not gender-lock the personalities. In New Horizons each villager also has a Hobby (music, playing, nature, reading, fitness, and fashion) which gives them a bit more variety.

I think there's more you can do per-villager to give them a bit of difference that wouldn't be too difficult. This is where I think you can start assigning hidden "stats" to each individual villager. For example: give every single one of the ~400 villagers a "music skill" stat. Make it simple: a number from 1 to 3 that determines how good they are at music. Each of the KK music tracks that you can play from music players has an instrument track for all the different instruments you can place, and your villagers can play those instruments along to whatever KK song is currently playing. Make it so any villagers with a music skill stat of 1 will miss notes, play notes wrong, and while they're having a good time playing along, they're not very good at all. Meanwhile a villager with a music skill stat of 3 is a virtuoso, hitting every note, able to play along perfectly, and will even garner a crowd whenever they play. Another stat they could introduce: a cooking skill stat. Cooking Skill of 1? Yeah they can make very basic dishes, but nothing to write home about. Cooking skill of 3? Not only are they incredible cooks, but will just outright run up to you and hand you delicious meals while you're out and about in your town. Maybe a Cooking Skill 3 villager will plan and host a feast in the town square on a random day, just for fun, but they might need the player's help gathering ingredients. Another skill, assuming they take my previous request about adding playable arcade games: a gaming skill. That one is easy: it assigns each villager a difficulty rating from 1 (easy) to 3 (hard) when you play against them in an arcade game. Fishing stat (maybe they'll actually let a villager catch a fish for once), bug catching stat, athleticism stat (how quickly they move around your island), generosity stat (how often they might just give you stuff) (maybe Generosity 1 villagers don't give you stuff very often, but when they do it's rare, meanwhile Generosity 3 villagers give you stuff all the time but it's never anything rare or valuable). I think adding these tiny little 1-3 stat numbers to each villager would work wonders in making each villager feel wholly unique.

Anyway, these are just some of my ideas for things they could include in the next Animal Crossing game. I'd love to hear what other people would like to see! Please actually offer feature suggestions and not just "make it better than ACNH" or "just make New Leaf but HD" lol
 
Here are some pieces of concept art that I've made for a possible long-form video series going over what I would add in an Animal Crossing game, primarily going over customization options and possible options for city/town layouts that would accommodate different playstyles that I might remake or return to at a later point in the future. These were made last year after reflecting a bit on New Horizons as a whole. The town layout section is a bit rough, but it was just to give a very, very general idea of them. If I were to do this now, I would probably try to 3D model the town layouts for a clearer picture.
ACCitylife_character_customaization.png
ACCitylifeGeneralCity.png
 
I only have one concrete demand.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, let different accounts have different islands on the same switch. In fact, let us have multiple islands on the same account.

I know technically the series has always been like this, but nobody cares about city folk, and whatever memory limits that necessitated it on WW and NL are a thing of the past. In fact, WW already let you do this in the VC rerelease where every account got its own save and village to themselves
 
I want the City aspect from City Folk to be expanded into a "social hub" kinda like Splatoon's hub city/area. Have the standard shops and stuff like Nook's while the City itself is always populated with a random assortment of players where you can view their outfit, get their dream address, see their museum status, etc.

I also want to go back to towns instead of Islands. Islands were a good one off thing, but the novelty has worn off and towns were just so much better in the grand scheme of things.

Also remove terraforming. Not because it's a bad idea but I can't help myself from leveling my island the moment I gain the ability to do so, I need them to take it away from me.
 
Oh I had one more thought: I’d love the birds-eye-view terrain edit/item placement UI from Happy Home Paradise to be usable in my town/island. Maybe if I’m in Hard Hat Mode, I can press a button and me and any nearby villagers disappear, and I can edit the terrain and place items from a bird’s eye view in the area I was in at that time.
 
HeyItsPulse said:
I want the City aspect from City Folk to be expanded into a "social hub" kinda like Splatoon's hub city/area. Have the standard shops and stuff like Nook's while the City itself is always populated with a random assortment of players where you can view their outfit, get their dream address, see their museum status, etc.
Click to expand...
This right here, I've been saying this since like 2014-2015 The city was interesting, especially if they added online to it alongside online multiplayer for fun minigame activities I think it would be redeemed from its lackluster appearance in city folk tbh.
 
Probably my biggest gripe: allow friends to come and go without halting gameplay. Make that a really smooth experience for both parties.

Also, I've always thought AC having proper farming sim mechanics would be fantastic.
 
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I agree with the OP that I'd like more item interactions the most. I want the world to feel lived in, not like a stage set.

I would also be okay with less villagers, but these more fleshed out and unique.

And of course many quality of life changes to the menu, inventory, dialogue system to not unnecessarily waste my time too much.
 
Item interactions are my priority. Buy an arcade cabinet, play it, compete with your friends on leaderboards. On your beach or wherever, engage in a simple game of soccer or basketball.
 
Generally I like most of what they do, but yeah I can vibe with the online thing. Drop in/drop out stuff, lets go.

If they have craftable weapons, they need an upper tier to work towards that is unbreakable. Unlike BOTW/TOTK, breaking items in Animal Crossing has zero purpose. Especially once you are at the "end game".

Interactable items. Its bullshit I can build a carousel but I can't ride on it. The mobile game sucks ass in almost every other way but it lets you do stuff like this. Let me go down the goddamn slide.

Cooking should become even bigger. God the cooking stuff in ACNH was majestic. More ingredients, more recipes, more uses.

Villagers should be able to be dicks again and just in general have better writing again.

This is my first pass, I'll come back later with more.
 
I said it before and I will say it again:

look at how Dragon Quest Builders II handles village/villager interaction and use that as a template in a new Animal Crossing.

Which means that Animals continue to do chores but also have an actual function in their daily strolls. If the player designs an outside kitchen, one animal will cook and the other might eat. If the player makes a field the animals will farm and gather together.

Maybe the player can assign certain animals to do jobs around town, but make it work more interactive than how New Horizons' expansion implemented it.

Oh an auction house would be cool as an event each week, like how it worked in Wind Waker.

And maybe as a new system birds can be added which will fly around and land on trees, houses, posts and certain other furniture we have to take pictures off (don't move to close!) to fill our museum with.

Rare alternate colored (Shiny) fish and bugs, just to make fishing a little more interesting, maybe make critters worth more according to size?

Island minigames could return?

Oh and maybe bring back a long lost feature that will never ever happen: NES Game furniture. But this time with secret furniture to unlock obtained when you reach a certain achievement within these games.

More different kind of minerals! There are so many! But nearly all games stick to the usual boring Sapphire-Emerald-Diamond-Ruby-Gold-Silver but there are like 200 other precious stones. Not to speak about 20.000 minerals total. Maybe make the stones vary in purity instead of size.

Make the character able to jump and introduce vertical layers and soft platforming to the game, which can enhance the exploration a lot. (might be difficult to implement because of clipping with furniture)

Oh and finally, make furniture interactive. Animal crossing makes the most cozy bathroom furniture but I still can't take a bath.
 
It needs a BOTW-level reboot for me to get excited over it. Not that ACNH wasn't great, but I already played around 100 hours of it. I don't wanna do it all again, and I reckon a lot of people feel the same, so it's gotta be time for a big shake-up.
 
Gimme something to do when visiting a friend's island. Literally all you can do is walk around. There needs to be mini-games, or a scavenger hunt, or something interesting about visiting someone else's town. The series needs more interaction in general.

Suggestions:

-Introduce a in-game trading card game. You can buy a new booster pack every day, and then trade with and play against your villagers and friends. When visiting other people's towns, you have a higher chance of getting cards that aren't available or would be rarer in your own town.

-Have some kind of board game (strategy game?) that varies depending on what town you're in and its layout

-Let us play arcade games/original minigames and compete to bear each other's high scores
 
Realistic wishes:

  • If crafting returns it needs to have a thousand and one QoL improvements. It needs to draw items from your inventory and you need to be able to craft multiples at one time. Also it needs to be heavily expanded, get crazy with it and add lots of fun and weird items to craft and materials to collect. Animal Crossing at its core is naturalistic but the materials you find could be mystical or magical without hampering that naturalistic vibe.
  • If cooking/farming returns, they need to better implemented. Give me a reason to want to farm pumpkins or carrots, have a community notes board were villagers can request certain items or dishes or crops. Also for Hylia sake it needs actual farming mechanics. The water can of Animal Crossing is not a suitable tool for farming.
  • A tier system of durability would be nice. Regular weapons should have a certain amount, stronger variants would have more, and golden tools shouldn't break. Golden tools in fact should be rewards for long drawn out quests. Like "you gave 500 villagers a item they requested on the community board, here's a golden shovel" not "here's a recipe for a golden shovel that'll break in 20 uses." Also just implement a durability meter, I don't know why this stuff has to be hidden.
  • Please actually give us stuff to work towards. I want more than one store upgrade or one basic museum upgrade. This is the type of stuff that should be expanded with each entry not shrunk.
  • The game should be on the same base level as all other past games at launch. I shouldn't have to hold out hope for Zelda items or swimming.
  • Please make the music good, I didn't care for most of the outside music of NH.
  • Please no more locking stuff behind multiplayer. Not all of us have friends, Nintendo, some of us are loners. Lol.
Unrealistic wishes:

  • Like everyone else I want more item interactivity and more interactivity with the villagers. I hate how NH feels like you're designing a doll house, it's so shallow. Let villages ride bikes, or play games or actually use the items that are placed outside. Same with my villager.
  • I want the island/town/whatever to be much much larger than NH. Also if terra forming comes back it needs to be heavily reworked. It's super clunky in NH and the way cliffs and paths look is less than ideal.
  • I want the natural more organic elements of past games to come back. I want random patches of tall grass or dirt or so on.
  • A deep intricate friendship system, again I want stuff to work towards. Give me rewards let me do more stuff with a villager if I befriend them like hug them or high-five them or maybe let them move in or even an option to play as them.
  • I like the home decorating of Happy Home Paradise, but I'd like to see it expanded and an option that is available on the main play area. Let me choose what shape I want my rooms to be, how many I want, how many floors I want, if there will be doors, where windows where go, and so on. It would also be nice if this is an option that's available for other villagers in your town. Let me give my fave a three story mansion.
  • Alongside the larger island I want more villagers to be able to move in, and I want more shops. Give me a separate coffee shop or a shoe store. Give me a crop store, a hair salon. Also take the shops in HHP and put them in the main area. Let me see a villager get a job there, let them have lives.
  • Haircuts should be something a player buys not something they can just do via a mirror.
  • A 360 camera while outside would be cool.
 
Make it more of a life simulator where you're just a regular villager moving in, like in the older games. Get rid of all the customization stuff and replace it with more intelligent and interesting villagers and things to do with those villagers. I want the game to feel like I'm living in a slice-of-life anime every time I play it.
 
Organizing my thoughts on this matter may prove difficult for me, so I ask that you all exercise patience if you choose to read this post. I apologize in advance.

PART 1: INTROSPECTION
In the past few years I have become more interested in the creative origins of Animal Crossing. Specifically I turn to one of its design inspirations, as I remember it: Hisashi Nogami had been working late for many months, and he rarely got to see his children, much less play with them. He became interested in an asynchronous multiplayer game in which players could contribute to a shared world or story together at different times. Several implementations of this core followed, and the ultimate result was Animal Forest.

To me, sharing a town with one or more of my sisters was the core experience of Animal Crossing. Sharing a town became less necessary as new games were made for handheld devices, which were more often used by a single person. Nintendo Switch, interestingly, awkwardly occupies a space between the two, as it is used as a shared console by many but also as a single-user device by others. As an aside, the intended product model of members of a family each having a Nintendo Switch, each with their own Animal Crossing world, that can be displayed on a TV like a home console interchangeably creates its own unique experience.

Regardless, the asynchronous Animal Crossing experience is long gone to me, and in fact has been for a long time. Animal Crossing begins for me as an adult as it often ended as a child: alone, by design as an adult and by my sisters getting bored as a child, in a world that only changes when I seek to change it.

However, there is a strong source of this Animal Crossing experience in the modern era as an adult. The best Animal Crossing experience I have had this decade has been on a Minecraft realm. Realms, for the unfamiliar, are inexpensive cloud "servers" provided by Microsoft for a relatively low fee. By way of this I experienced in spades with old friends and friends-of-friends Nogami's original vision of Animal Crossing. People came and went as they were able, leaving ample signs of their transient presences wherever they went: chests filled or emptied, notes left on signs, new structures built or destroyed. I did not fully appreciate it at the time, but this was the absolute best of Animal Crossing as I had experienced it as a child.

Accordingly, my new personal hopes for the future of Animal Crossing now lie with the internet.

PART 2: THE CONCEPT
On a restless night in August I began to consider the future of Animal Crossing, and how I would implement Nogami's early aspirations with the technology that exists today. It is imperfect, of course, but I'm quite fond of it. Before sharing the structure that I devised, I'd like to specify that this concept assumes a relatively near-future launch on a direct successor to Nintendo Switch. The only bearing this has on the concept is the need, in my opinion, for a meaningful offline experience. If you feel that my implementation of offline play is clumsy, awkward, or unnecessary, I remind you that it came about primarily from this design objective. Finally, I will be referring to the game as New Animal Crossing because I don't especially like the title that I came up with at the time.

The player domain of New Animal Crossing is primarily divided into two types of area, called Towns and Neighborhoods. Each player has their own Neighborhood, an offline space with their home and a few Neighbors that is largely reminiscent of a prior Animal Crossing world. In addition to their Neighborhood, each player lives in a Town, a persistent online space that is shared by up to eight player residents at a time. As such, each Town, the primary play space of the game, has up to eight Neighborhoods. Additionally, up to eight Towns can exist together in a Region. Accordingly, up to 64 players can share one Region. In the game world, this relationship is structured by the train network. Each Region has a rail line, with Towns and Neighborhoods being stops along it. Each Region has a shared terminus in a town (lowercase) not occupied by any players. This is a shared space that is not owned by any players by design.

Having established the basic structure of the game's world, I'd like to describe some of the gameplay that it enables. First, rather than having a museum in every Town, museums would be regional, located in the Region's terminus. With more rare specimens to provide, as well as some fossils being exclusive to certain Towns in the Region, this would re-establish the museum as a communal effort among many players. Each terminus would also have an auction house of some kind, as well as regular player markets, to facilitate trade among a wide group of players. On a regional scale other players could be friends-of-friends-of-friends, resulting in unique communication opportunities. Lastly, features like messages in bottles, sending and receiving balloons, and travel between non-player characters would make a region feel asynchronously unified.

One of many player opportunities created by this structure would be local leadership. Towns would have flags as they always have, perhaps abiding by the previous system of submission. However, Regions would have their own flag that flies alongside the Town flags, and these would be voted on by every resident. Within a given period players could vote by mail between different players' submissions, creating incentive to lobby among the broader group to advocate for a given flag. I hope that this example spurs your imagination as you envision your own ideas for asynchronous multiplayer opportunities.

Up to now I have only described player residents and their interactions in any detail. The non-player inhabitants of Animal Crossing are a very important part of the experience, so I'd like to now move on to describing them. Before I do so, I have a fun fact to share. There are over 88 vigintillion unique Mii combinations. That's 63 zeroes, by the way. You may already see where I'm headed with this. As the world of New Animal Crossing would be populated on launch day, many original characters, which I call Townies, would be generated and named (with a given name and a surname chosen from respective pools). These characters would be persistent. When they move away from a player's region, they enter a pool of existing characters and can move to another Town in another Region. To fully realize the immersion of a shared world, these characters would also perform the working roles in Towns. A character would work as a shopkeeper, a tailor, a barista, a mail carrier, and so on such that each Town is unique.

There is an obvious limitation to this system, of course, that being the lack of unique dialogue. While it would be easy in our time for me to say that all text would be generated, I prefer to envision a system of nesting personality traits. There would be a given number of core personalities, with sub-categories, traits, and species all being factored into the text used for a given Townie. Some text could be shared by all cats, for example, some by cats of a given sub-category, and so on. I think that categories and shared pools of text like this could provide a fairly convincing illusion of distinct characters and personality. Incidentally, the terminus of each Region would have a hotel in which tourists and potential new residents from around the world stay to visit your Region.

As for the beloved villagers of the previous games, they would own infinitely many homes in Neighborhoods, the offline-domains, which they would stay in from time to time for a few days. While this illusion would of course not be perfect, and would indeed break down very quickly for those seeking to break it, it would allow for a classic Animal Crossing experience offline and give these beloved characters roles in the game. Existing special characters could similarly visit Regions, though there could be value in these being scheduled globally. In essence, there would be one Tom Nook, one Rover, and one K.K. Slider.

"One K.K. Slider?" you may ask incredulously. While this issue would be partially solved by one Townie in a Region being a cover artist who plays shows in the terminus city on Saturdays, it is also addressed by the final area I have yet to describe: the Big City. Yes, you know where I'm going with this. There is one city for the entire world. It has a massive canopy train station, auction house, a grand hotel, a Happy Home Showcase, a live venue for the aforementioned single K.K. Slider, and a single New Animal Crossing National Museum run by the one and only Blathers. In addition to natural history exhibits, the National Museum would have an art gallery. Because, as I'm sure you can imagine by this point, there would exist only one authentic instance of every art piece in the game. Would the global playerbase be able to fill out the National Museum? Likely not, of course. The discovery of an authentic art piece, the auctioning of it in the Big City auction house, and the eventual donation by an exceptionally wealthy Animal Crossing culture benefactor would make headlines on every video game news website online.

PART 3: CLOSING REMARKS
That sort of went off the rails in tone towards the end there as I became enraptured by the excitement of my own ideas, but I assure you that very few details were invented now. Most were contained in a significantly more brief note on my phone, which I again wrote on a sleepless night over a month ago and added to occasionally in the following week. I hope that you all enjoyed reading my concept. I recognize that such a massive online game would be a bit far-fetched to come from Nintendo in the next five years or even beyond, but I see this concept or a similar one as the best possible path forward in the endeavor to return asynchronous multiplayer to Animal Crossing.

I had intended to write some specific details to refute potential design flaws in the concept, but I've spent over an hour writing this post and candidly I'd like to move on with my evening. I will very eagerly respond to questions, criticisms, and ideas of your own, however. I hope to see a lot of activity in this thread.
 
rpg, open world, ai conversation, character creation, community, treasure hunting puzzles, online, coop, human players as villagers, human created jobs chores and quests, card collection game based on your villagers where you play pokemon style battle game against other villagers using cards of the villagers
 
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Anything that makes villagers more interesting. They have gotten less and less interesting as the years went, and New Horizons made it so bad that every other line felt recycled. What if you could give cranky villagers coffee to excite them, or build a structure that they can interact with
Another thing that’s a bit less specific, but I hope the next game has less of a focus on building and town customization. It’s really fun, but it was the main point of the game in new horizons, and I feel like it took away from the amount of content in other, more integral parts of animal crossing
 
Lot of great ideas here. I want to second deeper simulation aspects. My most wanted ask is for the game world to really feel alive. For the world to move on even when you're not playing. For the villagers to have lives, for them to befriend each other, to leave on their own. More holidays or special events throughout the year would help the world feel alive as well
 
I pretty much agree with everyone— I’d love more interactivity with items and more fleshed out villagers, even if they have to decrease the hard count for both in order to do so.

Then I want a sailboat. Even if I have to scrounge up a million Bells for it, I will do it.
 
I don't really want a decrease in any villagers if I'm gonna be honest, like yeah as I and others have said they need to be more alive but not at that cost. Like I honestly think cutting characters out would be one of the worst things they can do, everyone has a fave, no one should have to worry about them being cut.
 
I spent about 300 hours in NH. I’m not sure they could get me to come back for more. That said.

- Animal Crossing Triple Triad. A little card game or something villagers play with you. You can collect cards etc.

- Make it a village simulator. ACNH is a diorama simulator. Make things interactive. More writing etc. l

- Have a plan to actually update the game as you go. ACNH had updates, but those were clearly them just working through the initial design document. The next AC needs continuous development. I’m not sure how that would work in a full priced game.
I want to log in and see new items all the time.

Just more stuff to do and the ability to do it quicker. I want to log in and do stuff and get out within 20 minutes every day.
 
I’d like pets and bird watching as a collectible that would be chill.
 
I want there to be, when it rains a lot, be VERY heavy rain. With no music. Just strong rain hitting roofs and such, making lovely smattery sounds. Can stand under trees or so to stay dry. Or just brella.
And even when you are indoors, you hear very nice rain smatter on your roof and windows, and you can just turn off your lights and just chill.
Since the sound of heavy rain on roofs and windows is the most calming and cozy sound there is.
That's what I want
 
I'm not an uber Animal Crossing fan but so I'd mostly just want online to be a smoother experience, I found New Horizons' still pretty limited in that respect when I visited friends/vice-versa.
 
Actually I lied, I have a second request.

Nerf the heck out of the turnip system. It completely ruins anything else contributing at all to the economic systems in the game, because it grows exponentially and the online systems essentially guarantee that you can get a large spike every week also remove any risk, however slight it was, from the system.

If it was up to me, any turnips not in your inventory would rot overnight and the maximum sell price would be way smaller than it is in NH.

I just want fruit growing/bug catching/fishing/... to be meaningful ways of earning bells, but everything has to be priced taking in to account that there's one method of earning bells that is exponentially growing while the rest are roughly constant, regardless of what you do.
 
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Dating sim elements, let me turn my island into a harem paradise. This is actually a terrible idea
 
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Raccoon said:
Organizing my thoughts on this matter may prove difficult for me, so I ask that you all exercise patience if you choose to read this post. I apologize in advance.

PART 1: INTROSPECTION
In the past few years I have become more interested in the creative origins of Animal Crossing. Specifically I turn to one of its design inspirations, as I remember it: Hisashi Nogami had been working late for many months, and he rarely got to see his children, much less play with them. He became interested in an asynchronous multiplayer game in which players could contribute to a shared world or story together at different times. Several implementations of this core followed, and the ultimate result was Animal Forest.

To me, sharing a town with one or more of my sisters was the core experience of Animal Crossing. Sharing a town became less necessary as new games were made for handheld devices, which were more often used by a single person. Nintendo Switch, interestingly, awkwardly occupies a space between the two, as it is used as a shared console by many but also as a single-user device by others. As an aside, the intended product model of members of a family each having a Nintendo Switch, each with their own Animal Crossing world, that can be displayed on a TV like a home console interchangeably creates its own unique experience.

Regardless, the asynchronous Animal Crossing experience is long gone to me, and in fact has been for a long time. Animal Crossing begins for me as an adult as it often ended as a child: alone, by design as an adult and by my sisters getting bored as a child, in a world that only changes when I seek to change it.

However, there is a strong source of this Animal Crossing experience in the modern era as an adult. The best Animal Crossing experience I have had this decade has been on a Minecraft realm. Realms, for the unfamiliar, are inexpensive cloud "servers" provided by Microsoft for a relatively low fee. By way of this I experienced in spades with old friends and friends-of-friends Nogami's original vision of Animal Crossing. People came and went as they were able, leaving ample signs of their transient presences wherever they went: chests filled or emptied, notes left on signs, new structures built or destroyed. I did not fully appreciate it at the time, but this was the absolute best of Animal Crossing as I had experienced it as a child.

Accordingly, my new personal hopes for the future of Animal Crossing now lie with the internet.

PART 2: THE CONCEPT
On a restless night in August I began to consider the future of Animal Crossing, and how I would implement Nogami's early aspirations with the technology that exists today. It is imperfect, of course, but I'm quite fond of it. Before sharing the structure that I devised, I'd like to specify that this concept assumes a relatively near-future launch on a direct successor to Nintendo Switch. The only bearing this has on the concept is the need, in my opinion, for a meaningful offline experience. If you feel that my implementation of offline play is clumsy, awkward, or unnecessary, I remind you that it came about primarily from this design objective. Finally, I will be referring to the game as New Animal Crossing because I don't especially like the title that I came up with at the time.

The player domain of New Animal Crossing is primarily divided into two types of area, called Towns and Neighborhoods. Each player has their own Neighborhood, an offline space with their home and a few Neighbors that is largely reminiscent of a prior Animal Crossing world. In addition to their Neighborhood, each player lives in a Town, a persistent online space that is shared by up to eight player residents at a time. As such, each Town, the primary play space of the game, has up to eight Neighborhoods. Additionally, up to eight Towns can exist together in a Region. Accordingly, up to 64 players can share one Region. In the game world, this relationship is structured by the train network. Each Region has a rail line, with Towns and Neighborhoods being stops along it. Each Region has a shared terminus in a town (lowercase) not occupied by any players. This is a shared space that is not owned by any players by design.

Having established the basic structure of the game's world, I'd like to describe some of the gameplay that it enables. First, rather than having a museum in every Town, museums would be regional, located in the Region's terminus. With more rare specimens to provide, as well as some fossils being exclusive to certain Towns in the Region, this would re-establish the museum as a communal effort among many players. Each terminus would also have an auction house of some kind, as well as regular player markets, to facilitate trade among a wide group of players. On a regional scale other players could be friends-of-friends-of-friends, resulting in unique communication opportunities. Lastly, features like messages in bottles, sending and receiving balloons, and travel between non-player characters would make a region feel asynchronously unified.

One of many player opportunities created by this structure would be local leadership. Towns would have flags as they always have, perhaps abiding by the previous system of submission. However, Regions would have their own flag that flies alongside the Town flags, and these would be voted on by every resident. Within a given period players could vote by mail between different players' submissions, creating incentive to lobby among the broader group to advocate for a given flag. I hope that this example spurs your imagination as you envision your own ideas for asynchronous multiplayer opportunities.

Up to now I have only described player residents and their interactions in any detail. The non-player inhabitants of Animal Crossing are a very important part of the experience, so I'd like to now move on to describing them. Before I do so, I have a fun fact to share. There are over 88 vigintillion unique Mii combinations. That's 63 zeroes, by the way. You may already see where I'm headed with this. As the world of New Animal Crossing would be populated on launch day, many original characters, which I call Townies, would be generated and named (with a given name and a surname chosen from respective pools). These characters would be persistent. When they move away from a player's region, they enter a pool of existing characters and can move to another Town in another Region. To fully realize the immersion of a shared world, these characters would also perform the working roles in Towns. A character would work as a shopkeeper, a tailor, a barista, a mail carrier, and so on such that each Town is unique.

There is an obvious limitation to this system, of course, that being the lack of unique dialogue. While it would be easy in our time for me to say that all text would be generated, I prefer to envision a system of nesting personality traits. There would be a given number of core personalities, with sub-categories, traits, and species all being factored into the text used for a given Townie. Some text could be shared by all cats, for example, some by cats of a given sub-category, and so on. I think that categories and shared pools of text like this could provide a fairly convincing illusion of distinct characters and personality. Incidentally, the terminus of each Region would have a hotel in which tourists and potential new residents from around the world stay to visit your Region.

As for the beloved villagers of the previous games, they would own infinitely many homes in Neighborhoods, the offline-domains, which they would stay in from time to time for a few days. While this illusion would of course not be perfect, and would indeed break down very quickly for those seeking to break it, it would allow for a classic Animal Crossing experience offline and give these beloved characters roles in the game. Existing special characters could similarly visit Regions, though there could be value in these being scheduled globally. In essence, there would be one Tom Nook, one Rover, and one K.K. Slider.

"One K.K. Slider?" you may ask incredulously. While this issue would be partially solved by one Townie in a Region being a cover artist who plays shows in the terminus city on Saturdays, it is also addressed by the final area I have yet to describe: the Big City. Yes, you know where I'm going with this. There is one city for the entire world. It has a massive canopy train station, auction house, a grand hotel, a Happy Home Showcase, a live venue for the aforementioned single K.K. Slider, and a single New Animal Crossing National Museum run by the one and only Blathers. In addition to natural history exhibits, the National Museum would have an art gallery. Because, as I'm sure you can imagine by this point, there would exist only one authentic instance of every art piece in the game. Would the global playerbase be able to fill out the National Museum? Likely not, of course. The discovery of an authentic art piece, the auctioning of it in the Big City auction house, and the eventual donation by an exceptionally wealthy Animal Crossing culture benefactor would make headlines on every video game news website online.

PART 3: CLOSING REMARKS
That sort of went off the rails in tone towards the end there as I became enraptured by the excitement of my own ideas, but I assure you that very few details were invented now. Most were contained in a significantly more brief note on my phone, which I again wrote on a sleepless night over a month ago and added to occasionally in the following week. I hope that you all enjoyed reading my concept. I recognize that such a massive online game would be a bit far-fetched to come from Nintendo in the next five years or even beyond, but I see this concept or a similar one as the best possible path forward in the endeavor to return asynchronous multiplayer to Animal Crossing.

I had intended to write some specific details to refute potential design flaws in the concept, but I've spent over an hour writing this post and candidly I'd like to move on with my evening. I will very eagerly respond to questions, criticisms, and ideas of your own, however. I hope to see a lot of activity in this thread.
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This basically
 
More minigames and 'micro events' (like being invited places or asked to do things for villagers). Things to break up the day-to-day, basically. Plus smoother online stuff and quality of life stuff when it comes to terraforming and crafting (i.e. make it quicker, let me batch craft, I forget if they added that in later). Would be cool to have an expanded farming and cooking system.

Mango said:
I don't really want a decrease in any villagers if I'm gonna be honest, like yeah as I and others have said they need to be more alive but not at that cost. Like I honestly think cutting characters out would be one of the worst things they can do, everyone has a fave, no one should have to worry about them being cut.
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I feel the same way. I want more dialogue, and some unique dialogue or at least more variation so it's not as easy to have two villagers who say the same thing, but I don't really want to see villager cuts. A big part of the series appeal to me is how varied each set of villagers is between me and my friends, and it's really fun to get someone you remember, and even more fun to get someone you've never really seen or considered before.
 
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Oooh, I have tons of that:

  • A full house builder mode that could rival The Sims. Walls, doors, windows everything. Nook could enlarge the lot we build on with payments.
  • Better land shaping tools.
  • BICYCLES! I expect the island to be much bigger so we need better traversal methods. Bicycles is one of them, but we could also have scooters or golf carts. Maybe a canoe for the river too?
  • Open up your own store! Design your own clothes, craft furniture or cook. Sell them in your store. You can even open up your own cafe or restaurant and hire a villager to tend in your behalf while you're not playing.
  • Better AI for other villagers. They also would build their own homes and I wanna see some crazy AI creations.
  • AI interaction to have villagers to send different letters every time. Templates got so boring.
  • Relationship status for other villagers. You hit a villager, don't expect them to forget about this.
  • Licensed collabs for DLC packs. I want to fill my house with Hatsune Miku figurines and posters.
  • A composer to create your own KK themes. Nintendo games having a composer software in it is not a new thing, in fact, Nintendo's composer softwares are among the best: Jam with the Band, WarioWare DIY and Mario Paint.

And finally the most important of them all: MORE SPECIES! Donkey, bat, ferret and crows...
 
what I want is more unique villager dialogue (per character, not per archetype) and a design philosophy focused on making the town feel like a lived-in space that exists outside of the player

what I'll get is more god-game lite customization and (hopefully) better online play

I'm fine with either, honestly, but they should pick a lane
 
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Some new Villager species would be cool too

I’d love to see Crab villagers personally. Crabs are my favourite animal
 
-What if instead of increasing the amount of land you have in your island, you can buy more islands with unique themes and remixed music. Like maybe you can buy a forest themed island where houses are built into trees, and the usual hourly themes are remixed. Maybe certain species would be more inclined to move to certain islands, like monkeys move to the jungle more than bats. Speaking of bats, have them as a new species, and add TONS of unique species while your at it.

-Another idea, hotels. You can set up hotels and charge a daily rent for the villagers who stay there. Maybe a villager can buy a room and then come back every winter, meaning they don’t LIVE in your island but they stay there. What if other players can buy and customize a room in a friends hotel, making it a place where they can stay when away from their island.

-Another another idea, more ways to obtain and use bells. I already mentioned hotels and extra islands, but I wanna go deeper than that. I want bells to be something the player REALLY want and NEEDS if they want to make a great civilization. What if you can partially own a shop, and you get part of the earning for every order the shop gets. What if the amount you own a business is reflective of the amount you pitched in to construct it, and if you’re broke you can pitch out of a company, risking it for bankruptcy. What if you could actually WORK at places for money. Like say a pizzeria opens up, and you need bells to renovate your house. Just go up to the pizzeria, get a job there, and do a little mini game to get cash. This would also play into the idea many people have mentioned here about having more minigames. They ultimate reward for more bells is increased island ratings. When the island rating goes up, more and more prestigious figures come in and set up shop. These shops would unlock new features and ways for you to get your tasks done, alongside increasing villager satisfaction. The island rating system would also allow for more island to be bought, and more land to play around with.

-Another another another idea, villagers not having PERMANENT personalities. What if every villager started out with a personality like the old games, but maybe the gifts you get them, the way you talk to them, and the more they hang around you, they begin to change in personality. Like maybe if you say sassy lines to sassy villagers they realize how mean they were and start trying to be less sassy. This idea plays into my general want for more dialogue for both the player and villagers

-When it comes to over all hopes for the next animal crossing, I just want them to juggle the new island building aspects with classic animal crossing better. I think the island building mechanic is great, but they need to balance it better with the classic animal crossing charm
 
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I fully expect this to never happen but ever since we got the Animal Crossing course in Mario Kart 8, I've wanted a a fully 3D villager's eye level view of the town in that style.

Maybe that would be more achievable on new hardware but I know it would take some people out of things and what they want from the series, unfortunately I've had a lot of trouble trying to get it out of my head.
 
I want them to bring some Pikmin to Animal Crossing

i want to have to carry stuff home. I want gigantic creatures to interrupt my efforts to do it

a city would be nice. more interaction, less friendly. walking to the fruit market.

and I want like… expandable areas. like you can’t leave your neighborhood for the first week, but slowly you get more established. get like a subway pass. just. some shit I guess

and way more clothing / style options

make it gayer somehow?

idk i don’t know what I want. but i think i like it! just would like something different
 
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I'd like it to become even more seasonal. The weather, bugs and fish are seasonal, but you can grow tulips and tomatoes all year round. I'd like each flower and edible to become seasonal and only available when it would be in real life. People would probably moan, but I would love that change.

I'd also like daylight hours to change so it gets darker earlier in winter and later in summer.

And tortoise villagers. Oh, I would love to have new tortoise villagers!
 
i want them to be messy about their lives and i want in on their gossip
 
One thing I hope for in the next animal crossing is for the huge ass cliffs to come back. These really help the general landscape to feel much for organic and fuller, in my opinion. The way the cliffs look in new horizons looks so artificial and small to me, and it actually kind of took me out of the game for a bit.

Also, I hope for a bigger feeling town in the next game as even though New Horizons might have more acres in concept, in actual execution it feels super small, especially after placing tons of furniture on the surface, and was kind of disappointing considering the idea of a deserted island would've been neat if it felt like you were constantly in a feeling of finding more and more available land open to you each day.
iu
 
Garrett said:
I'd also like daylight hours to change so it gets darker earlier in winter and later in summer.
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this is absolutely essential and I find its (to my memory) complete absence to this point bizarre and infuriating
 
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i want them to hook up and regret it. i want people to drift apart. i want a bowling league. i want someone to go off to another city and everyone to be fucked up about it. I want some asshole high school teacher to leave their spouse for some weeny folk singer and everyone to tell judgy fucking jokes about it, and for you to hear a brutally sad anecdote if you ask the people involved. I want everyone to be doing their best in a fucking mess.

I want odd jobs as minigames. I want unexpected events. I want my character to not be able to go outside sometimes because of wildfire smoke. I want to see what an Animal Crossing pandemic looks like. I want villagers to fucking die. i want to go to their funerals. i want those funerals to create impossible grief and strengthen bonds between some characters while tearing others apart.

I want the sea level to rise a little every year. I want to start up the game one time to smoky nothingness and an alarm and have to flee from an apartment fire because some asshole charged their e-scooter overnight.

i want in-game vehicles. I want more ways to bully. i want more ways to be bullied. i want my character to wake up in the hospital and take two weeks to recover and see which villagers i’ve bonded with enough to take care of me in that horrible, frightening, lonely time. i want overwhelming kindness under gruff exteriors. i want to bond in tragedy and all come out stronger on the other side.

i want a game that reflects some of the sloppiness and chaos and hopelessness of our world. but, unlike our world, I want a game where everything we’re supposed to believe about empathy and coming together and surviving and taking care of each other to be true. I want the game to just surprise you. overwhelm you. I want to never quite know what’ll happen when I boot it up.

but most of all, I want it to feel like it might be worth it. like some moment of kindness, or funny interaction, or wild thing down the street is going to make me glad I woke up that morning. to make me want to keep going in pure simulated uncertainty and life.

but I figure if I want that game… i’ll have to make it myself. lmao
 
I think Animal Crossing came into this world almost perfectly formed and it has changed less than any other major series Nintendo has since conception. The big difference is that it has moved further and further from social sim to home designer and I can't see them reversing that trend.

So I expect a game very, very similar to New Horizons with some new "gimmick" like a new island to visit or some such.

I think it will be very difficult for them to remove crafting and island landscaping now that those are in there - there are a huge amount of new players to the series who started with New Horizons for whom that is a non-negotiable part of their enjoyment.

Since I prefer the social sim side of the game, it means the series might not be for me next time around. But that's fine if so.
Raccoon said:
Organizing my thoughts on this matter may prove difficult for me, so I ask that you all exercise patience if you choose to read this post. I apologize in advance.

PART 1: INTROSPECTION
In the past few years I have become more interested in the creative origins of Animal Crossing. Specifically I turn to one of its design inspirations, as I remember it: Hisashi Nogami had been working late for many months, and he rarely got to see his children, much less play with them. He became interested in an asynchronous multiplayer game in which players could contribute to a shared world or story together at different times. Several implementations of this core followed, and the ultimate result was Animal Forest.

To me, sharing a town with one or more of my sisters was the core experience of Animal Crossing. Sharing a town became less necessary as new games were made for handheld devices, which were more often used by a single person. Nintendo Switch, interestingly, awkwardly occupies a space between the two, as it is used as a shared console by many but also as a single-user device by others. As an aside, the intended product model of members of a family each having a Nintendo Switch, each with their own Animal Crossing world, that can be displayed on a TV like a home console interchangeably creates its own unique experience.

Regardless, the asynchronous Animal Crossing experience is long gone to me, and in fact has been for a long time. Animal Crossing begins for me as an adult as it often ended as a child: alone, by design as an adult and by my sisters getting bored as a child, in a world that only changes when I seek to change it.

However, there is a strong source of this Animal Crossing experience in the modern era as an adult. The best Animal Crossing experience I have had this decade has been on a Minecraft realm. Realms, for the unfamiliar, are inexpensive cloud "servers" provided by Microsoft for a relatively low fee. By way of this I experienced in spades with old friends and friends-of-friends Nogami's original vision of Animal Crossing. People came and went as they were able, leaving ample signs of their transient presences wherever they went: chests filled or emptied, notes left on signs, new structures built or destroyed. I did not fully appreciate it at the time, but this was the absolute best of Animal Crossing as I had experienced it as a child.

Accordingly, my new personal hopes for the future of Animal Crossing now lie with the internet.

PART 2: THE CONCEPT
On a restless night in August I began to consider the future of Animal Crossing, and how I would implement Nogami's early aspirations with the technology that exists today. It is imperfect, of course, but I'm quite fond of it. Before sharing the structure that I devised, I'd like to specify that this concept assumes a relatively near-future launch on a direct successor to Nintendo Switch. The only bearing this has on the concept is the need, in my opinion, for a meaningful offline experience. If you feel that my implementation of offline play is clumsy, awkward, or unnecessary, I remind you that it came about primarily from this design objective. Finally, I will be referring to the game as New Animal Crossing because I don't especially like the title that I came up with at the time.

The player domain of New Animal Crossing is primarily divided into two types of area, called Towns and Neighborhoods. Each player has their own Neighborhood, an offline space with their home and a few Neighbors that is largely reminiscent of a prior Animal Crossing world. In addition to their Neighborhood, each player lives in a Town, a persistent online space that is shared by up to eight player residents at a time. As such, each Town, the primary play space of the game, has up to eight Neighborhoods. Additionally, up to eight Towns can exist together in a Region. Accordingly, up to 64 players can share one Region. In the game world, this relationship is structured by the train network. Each Region has a rail line, with Towns and Neighborhoods being stops along it. Each Region has a shared terminus in a town (lowercase) not occupied by any players. This is a shared space that is not owned by any players by design.

Having established the basic structure of the game's world, I'd like to describe some of the gameplay that it enables. First, rather than having a museum in every Town, museums would be regional, located in the Region's terminus. With more rare specimens to provide, as well as some fossils being exclusive to certain Towns in the Region, this would re-establish the museum as a communal effort among many players. Each terminus would also have an auction house of some kind, as well as regular player markets, to facilitate trade among a wide group of players. On a regional scale other players could be friends-of-friends-of-friends, resulting in unique communication opportunities. Lastly, features like messages in bottles, sending and receiving balloons, and travel between non-player characters would make a region feel asynchronously unified.

One of many player opportunities created by this structure would be local leadership. Towns would have flags as they always have, perhaps abiding by the previous system of submission. However, Regions would have their own flag that flies alongside the Town flags, and these would be voted on by every resident. Within a given period players could vote by mail between different players' submissions, creating incentive to lobby among the broader group to advocate for a given flag. I hope that this example spurs your imagination as you envision your own ideas for asynchronous multiplayer opportunities.

Up to now I have only described player residents and their interactions in any detail. The non-player inhabitants of Animal Crossing are a very important part of the experience, so I'd like to now move on to describing them. Before I do so, I have a fun fact to share. There are over 88 vigintillion unique Mii combinations. That's 63 zeroes, by the way. You may already see where I'm headed with this. As the world of New Animal Crossing would be populated on launch day, many original characters, which I call Townies, would be generated and named (with a given name and a surname chosen from respective pools). These characters would be persistent. When they move away from a player's region, they enter a pool of existing characters and can move to another Town in another Region. To fully realize the immersion of a shared world, these characters would also perform the working roles in Towns. A character would work as a shopkeeper, a tailor, a barista, a mail carrier, and so on such that each Town is unique.

There is an obvious limitation to this system, of course, that being the lack of unique dialogue. While it would be easy in our time for me to say that all text would be generated, I prefer to envision a system of nesting personality traits. There would be a given number of core personalities, with sub-categories, traits, and species all being factored into the text used for a given Townie. Some text could be shared by all cats, for example, some by cats of a given sub-category, and so on. I think that categories and shared pools of text like this could provide a fairly convincing illusion of distinct characters and personality. Incidentally, the terminus of each Region would have a hotel in which tourists and potential new residents from around the world stay to visit your Region.

As for the beloved villagers of the previous games, they would own infinitely many homes in Neighborhoods, the offline-domains, which they would stay in from time to time for a few days. While this illusion would of course not be perfect, and would indeed break down very quickly for those seeking to break it, it would allow for a classic Animal Crossing experience offline and give these beloved characters roles in the game. Existing special characters could similarly visit Regions, though there could be value in these being scheduled globally. In essence, there would be one Tom Nook, one Rover, and one K.K. Slider.

"One K.K. Slider?" you may ask incredulously. While this issue would be partially solved by one Townie in a Region being a cover artist who plays shows in the terminus city on Saturdays, it is also addressed by the final area I have yet to describe: the Big City. Yes, you know where I'm going with this. There is one city for the entire world. It has a massive canopy train station, auction house, a grand hotel, a Happy Home Showcase, a live venue for the aforementioned single K.K. Slider, and a single New Animal Crossing National Museum run by the one and only Blathers. In addition to natural history exhibits, the National Museum would have an art gallery. Because, as I'm sure you can imagine by this point, there would exist only one authentic instance of every art piece in the game. Would the global playerbase be able to fill out the National Museum? Likely not, of course. The discovery of an authentic art piece, the auctioning of it in the Big City auction house, and the eventual donation by an exceptionally wealthy Animal Crossing culture benefactor would make headlines on every video game news website online.

PART 3: CLOSING REMARKS
That sort of went off the rails in tone towards the end there as I became enraptured by the excitement of my own ideas, but I assure you that very few details were invented now. Most were contained in a significantly more brief note on my phone, which I again wrote on a sleepless night over a month ago and added to occasionally in the following week. I hope that you all enjoyed reading my concept. I recognize that such a massive online game would be a bit far-fetched to come from Nintendo in the next five years or even beyond, but I see this concept or a similar one as the best possible path forward in the endeavor to return asynchronous multiplayer to Animal Crossing.

I had intended to write some specific details to refute potential design flaws in the concept, but I've spent over an hour writing this post and candidly I'd like to move on with my evening. I will very eagerly respond to questions, criticisms, and ideas of your own, however. I hope to see a lot of activity in this thread.
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Props for rethinking out the whole experience according to how you experienced Animal Forest / Animal Crossing. I love big high-effort posts like this and I think I see what you're going for here in your hierarchy of communal experiences here. Neighbourhood (1 person) -> Town (8 people) -> Region (64 people) -> City (Everyone). I completely agree that Animal Crossing can feel like a lonely experience these days.

Three points:
You describe the town as the primary play space of the game, but if the Neighbourhood is the typical animal crossing village where the classic animal crossing villagers live, then... why would it be? Why would people choose to play in the Town-space over their own (presumably customisable) Neighbourhood-space? And is the Town-space just another typically-sized animal crossing island/town? What is the region play space? Just a train station connecting Town-space?

Another is just how the game deals with solo players. I don't have any game playing friends. Am I placed in a random region with other english speakers? I think that could be fun, but I think Nintendo would be terrified of putting randomers in situations where they can communicate. Is there are "server browser" for regions?

Lastly, I'm kinda against any randomly generated characters, even if your goal is to make it feel like each Region is its own distinct place in the world with its own distinct inhabitants. But people quickly realise that randonly generated places or people aren't "real" and struggle to love them, imo. I don't think making each region "unique" in this way is worth the cost. I'd use the classic characters for everything - while adding a ton and more personality types etc of course.

Overall, though, I think this idea is so much more interesting than whatever they'll come up with.
 
Heron said:
Props for rethinking out the whole experience according to how you experienced Animal Forest / Animal Crossing. I love big high-effort posts like this and I think I see what you're going for here in your hierarchy of communal experiences here. Neighbourhood (1 person) -> Town (8 people) -> Region (64 people) -> City (Everyone). I completely agree that Animal Crossing can feel like a lonely experience these days.
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First, thanks for reading! I spent a lot of time writing out my thoughts in that format. That said, I might reduce it back down to bullet points for clarity.

Heron said:
You describe the town as the primary play space of the game, but if the Neighbourhood is the typical animal crossing village where the classic animal crossing villagers live, then... why would it be? Why would people choose to play in the Town-space over their own (presumably customisable) Neighbourhood-space? And is the Town-space just another typically-sized animal crossing island/town? What is the region play space? Just a train station connecting Town-space?
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The Neighborhood would be a smaller space, both physically and in scope. Think of it as a small home, or maybe even a campsite or apartment to start, for a single player, about ten (edit: I am excited to announce that I'm dropping it to 8) "Neighbor" homes that are intermittently inhabited, and some sort of shop akin to Re-Tail. The primary gameplay and appeal would be a space that a single player has full dominion over. This would in effect be the New Horizons experience: a player's animal theme park creation that others can visit primarily for the sake of looking around. In addition to customization, the Neighborhood would allow players to make progress offline with fishing, catching bugs, and other core Animal Crossing activities.

Towns, meanwhile, would be the primary space, bigger and more fully-featured than the Neighborhood. About fifteen (edit: let's go with 16) "Townie" homes, a Town Hall, and amenities that would vary by Town within a Region. All residents of a Town would have full "permissions," as it were, so landscaping would have to be either collaborative or combative.

The Region does not exist, yes. It is the structure by which eight Towns are freely travelled between, gameplay experiences are shared, and the single "no-man's-land" regional capital exists.

(edit: So I noticed that I sort of just said "Towns are the primary space" again without really saying why. In short:
  • A player's primary residence is in a Town, despite the Neighborhood name.
  • Shops, including the general store, would be in Towns
  • Towns are bigger
  • Towns are persistent, asynchronous multiplayer (a pro and a con))

Heron said:
Another is just how the game deals with solo players. I don't have any game playing friends. Am I placed in a random region with other english speakers? I think that could be fun, but I think Nintendo would be terrified of putting randomers in situations where they can communicate. Is there are "server browser" for regions?
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I totally skipped over this and am honestly a little embarrassed that I overlooked it. The shared environments would be opt-in. A selection flow on the train might start with a question like "is the town you're headed to in a friend's region, or somewhere totally new?" A player like you would be able to live in a single Town in a Region, though I imagine that in practice you would coordinate with other "IRL loners" on Famiboards to share a Region, or even a Town.

That said, I like the notion of being assigned a Region or Town like university roommates. Maybe that'd be a good optional feature for verified adults.

Heron said:
Lastly, I'm kinda against any randomly generated characters, even if your goal is to make it feel like each Region is its own distinct place in the world with its own distinct inhabitants. But people quickly realise that randonly generated places or people aren't "real" and struggle to love them, imo. I don't think making each region "unique" in this way is worth the cost. I'd use the classic characters for everything - while adding a ton and more personality types etc of course.
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Similarly to your second point, I think I was too oblique about the Townies. It wouldn't feel like each Region is distinct, they would be distinct. I really hesitated to make the comparison, but superficially it'd be a bit like NFTs (while obviously nothing like NFTs by way of being centralized and not using blockchain technology at all). When a combination is instantiated for a Town, that is the only instance of that combination to ever exist. When that character moves away, it enters the pool of characters to move into another town. Each of these characters would live a life in a way, with a lineage of towns lived in, possessions gained and lost, letters received, and so on.

As an aside, I thought it would be cool for characters that are similar to be "related." A character could have their brother move into the Town or Region, or have said brother live in a completely different Town. Coordinating family reunions could create unique social opportunities for players worldwide.

I'm not sure if that clarification has any bearing on your aversion to the proposed system, or if it was even unclear to begin with, but I'm glad I took the opportunity to expound on the system more explicitly. I can definitely see the detriments to such an approach, and the character system would have to create very unique, appealing characters.
 
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