If there's one game I love for my 3DS it's Animal Crossing New Leaf, it makes sense really I loved Animal Crossing for the Gamecube, Animal Crossing Wild World for the DS and even Animal Crossing City Folk for the Wii but despite my love for this franchise I'm always angry with each new release. Now your probably wondering how on Earth can you love something so much yet hate it at the same time, it's not because it has terrible gameplay, it's not because the game has bad graphics, it's not because it's boring to play because the game has none of those problems, the reason is the games offer so much yet still miss a ton of features they could of added. Everytime a new game is announced I always build myself up like this will be the game which correct the wrongs with the last game and will add some missing, most obvious, features but everytime I sit down to play the newest game I always come out a little disappointed.
Lets look at the newest game in the franchise, Animal Crossing New Leaf, in this game you are not just an average villager anymore, you are now the Mayor of your town but despite being in charge you feel at times like your not and being in power is not all it's cracked up to be.
If a villager moves into your town they will select a random location in your village where there is enough space to set up a new home however sometimes you get villagers who will set up their home on top places you have spent hours decorating with flowers and tree's destroying them in the process. Other times villagers can move into your town and set up their home right into front of your home or another location you like, in the end their house in the wrong place might look out of place.
Why is it that as Mayor your not told that a villager is going to move into your village, your the Mayor you should be informed in advanced if someone is going to move in. When you load up your game Isabelle should be waiting outside or should summon you on the load up screen to come to the Town Hall, when you do she should tell you as your secretary that someone wants to move into your town, she will hand up a file of some kind with the villagers photo attached and wants you to review it to see if it's ok for the villager to move into the town, think of this process as Papers Please. If you decline Isabelle will let the villager know the town is too full and to try another time (yes she'll lie because we aren't going to be d***s about it) if you accept then Isabelle will want you to select the spot to where the villager will be able to set up their home. With this method you have complete control over your town and what it will look like in the end. If you don't mind it messy you can have villagers spread across randomly across the town, if you like everything in order like myself you can dedicate a place in your village for houses like a small estate for villagers. Whatever you choose the fact is YOU chose it, not the game.
Speaking about your towns layout another thing which you should be able to do as Mayor is to design the village the way you want. How many rocks or ponds have gotten in the way of you constructing something, wouldn't you think because of you being Mayor you could find a way to remove these things so you can create the village the way you want. For the rocks in the town there should be a new tool, the Hammer, which like the Axe will break after a while, this will get rid of unwanted rocks which are in the way of you building something. As for the ponds the best way to deal with this is if you could ask Isabelle to plan overnight construction work so someone can fill in these ponds, create new ponds or redesign your existing ones, think as this process like the Sims where you have a birds eye view of your town and you select what you want to change about the layout, each thing you change will increase the total bell charge in the end when your finished. With this method you could create new rivers, make them smaller, create new ramps down to the beach and create the town you want.
When your creating your town you should be able to design it the way you want. Do you want your town to have a old town look to it or do you want it to have more modern touch. Surprisingly you can do this in a way, overtime villagers will tell you they want to see a "modern" bridge or a fairytale lamp post, not much but it's a start. The problem with this is again we're the Mayor so why do we have to wait for people to tell us stuff we can build, sometimes it takes ages to get the things you want. I've been playing since June and I still don't have everything I want. To expand on these ideas I should be able to construct paths or roads in the game using the Sim like feature I mentioned in the paragraph above. If you take a look on the internet a lot of people have resorted in using design patterns to do this, while that's nice and very creative this should be a design element to the game, not something people have found a way round.
While we are on the subject of designs for your town I would like to point out I'm not impressed that the only way for you to get a different design for the train station for example is that you have to play online with 100 people so you can get 100 people to visit your town. This should be one of the ways to do this but for people who don't have many friends with a 3DS there should be a way round this.
Can you see so far how small features like these can help give you, the player, actual power in your town. Don't you feel at times that Isabelle holds more power then you when she tells you what you can and can't do I mean please B**** I'm the Mayor of this town, you work under me, you understand, sheesh. Lets look at some more additions which Animal Crossing needs to move forward.
Character interactions seem to get so repetitive that when a villager I like the most asks me to do something I tell her where to stick it, you know in New Leaf terms meaning "I'm busy". Are you really telling me your hungry for an Orange when your standing right next to a bloody Orange tree or how you really need to deliver a package to Gabi despite the fact she's wandering around right next to us. Things like that get tiresome and I wouldn't mind if it meant that the villager would NEVER consider to move but even if you talk to a villager the most every day they still want to move because of how the game picks a random villager to pack up and move to another town. Sorry but if I'm friends with a villager, she's well liked, talked to and I listen to them while helping her with tasks why would she want to move, you should be getting the people I ignore to move. Another problem about being the Mayor is how you can't get rid of anyone in your town, surely if I don't like them I can convince them to move, the game shouldn't just randomly pick for me. Again it's all about control and how us, the players, don't get enough of it.
Tools, where would you be without them, probably not very far since tools in Animal Crossing are vital in order for you to advance in the game and earn those bells but you want to know what I hate, the fact with so many tools, including your Swimsuit, it takes up a lot of inventory space, so how do we get round this problem, easy, what we need is a tool belt. The tool belt will be available from Nookling Stores once the player has bought every tool in the game, even the Swimsuit, once you have bought the tool belt you will be able to put your tools on a second inventory screen at the side of the screen once opened and put them in there for safe keeping. Overall this will allow you to have more space in your inventory and will not make you choose which tools are the most important to keep on you at all times.
While we are on the subject of inventory space why is it so limited, oh yeah that's right it's because the inventory space is apparently your pockets, you know your magical pockets which you can keep tables, sofas and all your tools in. What we need in this game is different backpacks available at the Able Sisters, each time you spend enough money in the store a upgraded backpack should appear, either that or speaking with Sable when you've done this will result in her giving you it for free. Once the backpack is available you should be able to have the choice between what kind of bag you want, do you want the regular old backpack, a satchel, a man bag, a hand bag etc. Once you've chosen your bag of choice you should be free to customize it anyway you see fit.
Storage is such a big thing in this game which is why it's such a noticeable thing when you see a problem with it, whether it's your inventory space or storage at home you always need it. Lets talk about storage space in your house, one of my biggest problems with the game, why the hell after so many games in Animal Crossing does every storage space in your house use a universal inventory, even the one in the train station and the museum use the same storage space as the storage in your house. What we need is for every item to have it's own inventory space. If I want a basement full of storage chests each with a different set of items in then why is that a problem. For example I bought all the Jingle items and acquired all the Snowman items recently but I have no space left to store them. They are items which are only going to be used in December so why can't I store them away for next December, if we had different storage spaces I could put them away no bother but unfortunately this game is still stuck in the past with it's horrible universal storage system. If I want to fill a wardrobe of nothing but clothes and a dresser with my most important items then I should be able to do that, making players sell items to make room for other stuff, especially when Nintendo are always giving us unique items from time to time then I should have plenty of storage space to do that.
Lets talk about one more thing before we finish off and that is Main street. Main street is basically what the City was in Animal Crossing: City Folk. However despite New Leaf being the next game I don't feel they've expanded on this idea very well, instead of having a city they've just downgraded it into a street. The City in New Leaf should of been nearly the same size of your village or least half the size where your free to roam around to a variety of different shops. There should be a fruit shop, an art shop like Reds Gallery, a bakery, different types of shops for furniture so have more of a chance each day to buy something you like, a music shop, a lighting shop and maybe a bigger expanded garden centre where Leif should be able to do a service to re grow worn out grass in the game, come on we all have it somewhere in our town and it looks horrible. So I think with the next game they should really expand on the City, it could be huge, fantastic place to kill time because lets face it there still doesn't seem to be a lot to do in Animal Crossing even when making money you can go to the Island at night to catch rare bugs.
Overall I think Animal Crossing despite being a fantastic, additive and well loved game is very undeveloped. By that I mean even though it's still a very complete, solid package on the surface there's so many gaps which haven't been filled since the first instalment, it's only now 4 games in that we have seen a massive change in the formula where we now play as the Mayor of the town. We should of been the Mayor in City Folk, all these new editions we are getting now should of been done years ago, so I don't know whether it's Nintendo want to hold ideas back for the next games and slowly dish them out or they really don't understand how much stuff is still missing. Yeah you could pass off my points above as nitpicks but others you can't ignore like how we lack any control of our town despite being the Mayor or how the City could so much more.
If you've made it this far then thanks for reading, it would be nice if you posted any bright ideas for Animal Crossing below which you have because with a game like Animal Crossing there is so much room for improvement.
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I agree with everything you've said, especially the problem with the storage limitations. I'm the sort who likes to collect series of furniture that I like and swap them out whenever I want. It's annoying to have such limited storage space. I know you can purchase rooms in the Museum (that's where I've stored the special furniture series I've collected so far), but it's a real pain having only 16 spots in your inventory, especially if you've got your tools with you.
This is one game series that could really benefit from DLC. I'd enjoy hunting for new fossil sets, bugs, fish, etc. once I've completed the collections.
Storage wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't have SO many items that can't be reordered. There's a ridiculous amount in this game. So if you want to keep/collect stuff, you have no choice but to store the stuff.
Museum rooms help things, though. Also, I think that this game has the largest amount of cupboard space. Although, it still seems small due to the nonorderable's clogging up space. So I think a non-universal storage system would be great.
Repetitive dialogue is one of my main problems with the game. They really sapped some of the individuality from the villagers and NPC's. It's worse than other games in the series. Normal villagers all have the same dialogue. Cranky villagers share the same dialogue etc. They need to change that up for the next game.
I'm a little iffy on a lot of the other things you mentioned, though. I really love Animal Crossing games for their simplicity. Some of your ideas may change that. For example, I don't know if the terrain building stuff would fit in a game like this. I also don't know how having so many different shops would play out. For example, I barely use Kicks, and I hardly visited Lief until his store became a part of Nooks. For me, there's convenience factor associated with Nooks and Ables. So separating things into their own stores would have to be done pretty well IMO.
The only thing that I disagree with is your idea of cherry picking villagers. I've found a lot of new favorites because the game didn't give me the one I really wanted. I personally like that part of the game. Giving people the ability to bar anybody who isn't on their list of dream villagers would take something away from the game IMO.
I enjoyed reading your blog. I agree that the game has room for improvement. However, I think the game is great in its simplicity, and I think that anything too elaborate/convoluted would risk tarnishing that.
I love these ideas, However I too am iffy on the amount of control that should be given to the player. It's not that player choice is bad, it's that it will lose it's value if you give the player too much of it. It's the equivalent of letting a child eat as much candy as they want and whenever they wanted. Suddenly, those sweets are no longer special because they're eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That works for something like Resident Evil, but no so much for Animal Crossing.
The point that I'm making is that Animal Crossing is a game about variety, so too much control over your own experience can nullify the novelty of experiencing new things every time you play the game. A lot of players would just set up their town a certain way (villagers included) and then not allow for change.
Although, if developed well, Nintendo could allow for the complexity of controlling every little detail of the town for the really hardcore players (who go out of their way for those options) while leaving the game, by default: randomized for the more casual crowd who doesn't want to make their own fun (in other words, how it already is). Very Interesting ideas, nonetheless.