Important Warning about Animal Crossing: Nintendo please fix this

[GenericBadGuy]

Lots of people don't mind the sharing aspect and knew it was coming. In fact I looked forward to sharing a town with my wife since the announcement, and shared a town with my siblings way back on Gamecube.

The problem is the surprise inequality (not like in New Leaf where someone was obviously Mayor - plus the 3ds is not a couch console) and waiting on player 1 to advance the town. My wife (player 1) has been extremely active since she loves the game, and the town is as far as it can be in day 4 since release. In that respect her being the ambassador doesn't matter. Yet...my player character still doesn't have a recipe to craft a bed, or many other recipes she was simply handed by NPCs. You cannot purchase them in the store - I looked and bought all I could. The crafting recipes sold in the store do not contain everything given to player 1. I had to spend miles to get the ability to place fences when she was handed the recipe and some already made fencing to boot. Its things like that you are constantly reminded of, and are indeed frustrating.

 

[Pancho]

It really bums me out reading these stories. Nintendo is always making some really backward design choices in their ganes. No matter how good they are, there's always something.There's zero reason for not letting people having more than one island per system at least. Its not like AC has any competitive multiplayer feautures that would get ruined by any exploit that may be discovered.

 

[CruJones33Rad]

One Switch = One island, you can't have multiple islands on one Switch at all. Online doesn't apply in this case, don't worry about that.
The first person that starts up the game will be designated "Rep" of the island and will be the only one that can progress the development (hence the thread).
Up to 7 other people can move in to the island, they all get their own homes and stuff. Up to 4 people can play at once, though it's a little limited and awkward, more just to help out one player than anything else.

I hope this helps.
Sharing a town is one of Animal Crossing's best features, you can send letters to each other, give presents, just collaborate in general. It's a good time.
Just make sure you know who is going to "start" the island, and that they will be willing to play possibly every day.


I'm at a loss, I'm assuming this is satire though.

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Thanks for that, I understand now. Cheers

 

[-Tetsuo-]

Is it possible if you have the game installed on an SD card, to swap cards and start another island?

 

[GazRB]

Lol I just play with the second person so it doesn't matter.

 

[darz1]

So if I make an island. Then later with the same switch my kid logs into their profile while I'm not playing and they load up AC, they will be on my island and limited in what they can do?

 

[GenericBadGuy]

So if I make an island. Then later with the same switch my kid logs into their profile while I'm not playing and they load up AC, they will be on my island and limited in what they can do?

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It would depend on how far along you were with the island. They will have to buy recipes for items that you were gifted, but I'm guessing your kid won't progress farther than you have, and as such will not be gated by what you have accomplished as the "island rep".

In the long run they will not be able to decide where stuff gets built and won't be able to terraform the island. They will not be able to harvest the same resources such as wood from trees or minerals from rocks from the same sources that you have that day.

 

[darz1]

It would depend on how far along you were with the island. They will have to buy recipes for items that you were gifted, but I'm guessing your kid won't progress farther than you have, and as such will not be gated by what you have accomplished as the "island rep".

In the long run they will not be able to decide where stuff gets built and won't be able to terraform the island. He will not be able to harvest the same resources such as wood from trees or minerals from rocks from the same sources that you have that day.

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If I make an island but only play sometimes but they play all the time in their own profile, they won't be able to progress past where I'm at?

 

[GenericBadGuy]

If I make an island but only play sometimes but they play all the time in their own profile, they won't be able to progress past where I'm at?

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Right. He would have to play your profile in order to get anything done in town. Better make him player 1 in your scenario.

 

[darz1]

Right. He would have to play your profile in order to get anything done in town. Better make him player 1 in your scenario.

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Hmmmm. I actually have a couple of kids but was considering getting this and I would set up the island and let them play at their own leisure. But now that sounds like a bad idea. And I don't know who would play it most out of my kids

 

[mugwhump]

Can you do 2 islands on 1 switch if you hack your switch and use emunand? That seems doable.

Of course you'd need to reboot into emunand with a jig or paperclip or whatever and hook up to a computer whenever you wanted to use the emunand save, but I don't think it would take THAT long. Probably like 2 minutes?

 

[Snake__]

this is really shitty, Nintendo real wants households to have more than one switch

 

[DarthSpider]

You don't need to delete your island, but you can delete her from your island.

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How do you do this? I'm player 2 in my wife's island, and I bought a Switch Lite because I want to play my own island. She's of the mind that I'm stuck in her game forever with an unfinished house. She's able to make me move away?

 

[FFNB]

That sounds absurd for something that Nintendo could have done to make multiple people (ie, families), playing on the same system. If they cared that much, they should have let the Island Rep be able to choose between "locking" his/her island so that other player's on the same system can't edit it, or "unlock" it so they can progress things and actually get a complete AC experience.

Basically forcing families to have to have multiple Switch consoles to enjoy the game's features is bullshit.

I've been playing AC since the original on GC, and I remember me and my ex-wife (girlfriend at the time), would go back and forth between playing the game. She had her own town, I had mine, all on the same Gamecube, and we'd visit each other's towns, share fruit and stuff, and leave each other messages on the bulletin board. There's no reason for this game to not allow other profiles to have their own distinct islands to run. It's a stupid, backwards ass decision, and the apologists from some folks in this page is really disheartening to see.

 

[Zed]

this is really shitty, Nintendo real wants households to have more than one switch

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Another possibility is the developers of the game are really stubborn. The game was made by the people who made Splatoon 2, and there are stupid limitations in that game such as not being able to play online co-op at certain times of the day. They seem to have the mindset of "I am the creator, I know what is best, you are fucking moron, deal with it."

 

[VirtuaModel]

Yeah, neither my wife or I had ever played Animal Crossing before, but since she was far more excited about it I had her be the primary player. I always ask her what I would be doing now if I were her, since things feel a bit more aimless for me. She always tries to share major events with me though. I don't mind too much personally, but there are so many issues with the way they have developed the multiplayer systems in this game.

 

[Deleted member 28386]

Welp I was gonna try to get this game to play with my gf but that ain't happening now. Gonna focus on doom

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Are you me? Same exact situation. Been loving Doom at least :D

 

[JVID]

Yeah it sucks. I've just been letting my wife play. It's still fun to watch and lord knows the amount of time shes had to watch me play something lmao.

 

[Enduin]

Is it possible if you have the game installed on an SD card, to swap cards and start another island?

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No saves aren't on SD cards they're on the system memory.

 

[RedMercury]

Yet...my player character still doesn't have a recipe to craft a bed, or many other recipes she was simply handed by NPCs. You cannot purchase them in the store - I looked and bought all I could.

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Can you have her craft them and leave them on the ground for you? You could leave the mats on the ground for her.

 

[Adventureracing]

This pretty much makes the game a no buy for me.

 

[Poltergust]

How do you do this? I'm player 2 in my wife's island, and I bought a Switch Lite because I want to play my own island. She's of the mind that I'm stuck in her game forever with an unfinished house. She's able to make me move away?

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It's in the settings. I think you press - on the Start screen?

 

[GenericBadGuy]

Can you have her craft them and leave them on the ground for you? You could leave the mats on the ground for her.

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Yeah this is the workaround we currently use for items player 1 has the recipe for but the other doesn't. Thankfully in our case we are both playing the game so much its a quick turnaround.

 

[NoKisum]

So when's the class action lawsuit?

 

[jnWake]

I noticed this yeah, it's quite lame. When I got the Axe instructions, my gf could later buy them from the shop... Does this happen with any instruction "Player 1" gets as reward?

 

[GenericBadGuy]

I noticed this yeah, it's quite lame. When I got the Axe instructions, my gf could later buy them from the shop... Does this happen with any instruction "Player 1" gets as reward?

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From my experience it is most of them, yes. You have to buy them from the shop or exchange miles for them. However if you get stung by a wasp you can get the medicine recipe from a villager just like player 1 did. If you have yet to construct the museum, Blathers will also teach anyone how to make a shovel and vaulting pole.

 

[Deleted member 41502]

heh. I'm the second on my kids island, but they don't play much. I wondered why not much was happening.

 

[m_shortpants]

Yeah it sucks. I've just been letting my wife play. It's still fun to watch and lord knows the amount of time shes had to watch me play something lmao.

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That's pretty much the boat I'm in lol. This is the first game outside of Tetris my wife has REALLY gotten in to. The decisions Nintendo made are outright bad, but I don't mind letting her enjoy the game for all the nights of gaming I've done haha.

 

[HustleBun]

This pretty much makes the game a no buy for me.

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Stay tuned. Hopefully they'll make an adjustment or at least update it so you can switch the "primary villager".

It's a great game otherwise.

This was just a very cold surprise to uncover.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

Literally every AC works this way and will probably always work this way. Again, no reason this should take anyone by surprise if they've ever touched the series before.

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Nobody complained before en masse because the games either weren't popular (Wii) , or would be easily gotten around (own copy of the game for new leaf, wild world, own memory card on GameCube).

If you stopped to think for a couple of minutes you'd realise that we've had multiple threads and social media blowups about this issue since the game was announced specifically because this was never as much of an issue as it is with new horizons. Nintendo fucked up badly.

And before you say it, because I know you will, dropping £280 on an entire separate console plus the price of another copy of the game doesn't fall in the same vein as the above mentioned methods on GameCube/ds/3ds at all.

 

[GMM]

The fact that this issue was not mentioned in most reviews is shady as hell.

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Most reviewers likely did not play it with other people in order to meet deadlines.

 

[SchroDingerzat]

its seriously greedy. people keep saying ,just buy a second switch'

imagine any other publisher doing this

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Any other publisher would get burned at the stake and rightfully so. But because it's Nintendo we give them a free ride.

guess I'm one of the 10 people that like the sharing aspect.

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Sharing an island isn't an issue, if it was an option then no one would care. The fact that it's something you don't get a choice in is the issue.

 

[m_shortpants]

Posted in the OT but I'll share here too. My wife, the primary, got her ladder today. When I got on to play the new store was closed and I had no way of getting the recipe for the ladder, nor any of the other cool furniture items she has. I just have to wait until tomorrow to match her progress

I couldn't put a bridge down. I couldn't arrange the plots for the new arrivals. When I spoke to Tom Nook he literally told me to speak to my wife about what to do, IRL I suppose, LOL. No idea who thought this was acceptable.

 

[Deleted member 51789]

The bolded could be pointing to a possible rea$on.

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The fact that this issue was not mentioned in most reviews is shady as hell.

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What is the implication here? That reviewers were paid off not to mention it, or withheld talking about because they didn't want the game to look bad?

Because that'd be a ridiculous thing to suggest...

Any other publisher would get burned at the stake and rightfully so. But because it's Nintendo we give them a free ride.

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Also most people here and on social media are not happy about the local island sharing situation and are coming them out even if they're enjoying the game - they certainly aren't getting a free ride outside of traditional fanboys, and you get those for every company's games.

 

[furfoot]

Yep, speaking as a second player, I'm bored after day 3 already. Built my house and the only incentive I have to play is get 100k to pay off ur debt.

Proper splitscreen would have aleviated much of this as then I could atleast play alongside player one and follow some narratives.

But they gotta shift those AC consoles....

 

[NightShift]

I was made aware of this a while ago but it's sad to see it confirmed. I was planning to split it with somebody else but if we can't play our seperate games than I don't think either of us will play it at all.

Count me in as somebody who thinks Nintendo gets away if so much shit any other publisher would get crucified for. The save file issue on Switch still irritates me because for a system that utilises both SD cards and USB-C, it's inexcusable that the only way to back up your saves is in a cloud server you have to pay for. Yet plenty of people jump to excuse it.

 

[Blitz]

This is sad. I'm player 2 as well and not much to do.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Any other publisher would get burned at the stake and rightfully so. But because it's Nintendo we give them a free ride.

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Thats not true - its just that most people like wont act like Nintendo or any publisher sold off their firstborn because of a feature that never was advertised isnt part of said game. Regular people will express their disappointment and dont buy the game if it doesnt offer the features they expect or were looking forwards.

For users like you it seems like everything is "giving developer X a free ride" unless their HQ is in flames. Gamers are among the most entitled group of customers you will ever come in contact, throwing out insults and hoping to cut off the livelihoods of developers the second a product doesnt cater to them.

I dont know how and if Nintendo is gonna react to this - but they are def. listening and hearing the feedback.

 

[Pancakes R Us]

Most reviewers likely did not play it with other people in order to meet deadlines.

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I love AC as much as the next guy, and am really enjoying playing NH (on my own, mind you), but I think that reviews should be updated to explain how second-rate the game is for anyone who isn't the first player.

 

[SchroDingerzat]

Thats not true - its just that most people like wont act like Nintendo or any publisher sold off their firstborn because of a feature that never was advertised isnt part of said game. Regular people will express their disappointment and dont buy the game if it doesnt offer the features they expect or were looking forwards.

For users like you it seems like everything is "giving developer X a free ride" unless their HQ is in flames. Gamers are among the most entitled group of customers you will ever come in contact, throwing out insults and hoping to cut off the livelihoods of developers the second a product doesnt cater to them.

I dont know how and if Nintendo is gonna react to this - but they are def. listening and hearing the feedback.

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I defend Nintendo an awful lot, but I am damn well going to call them out on this.

It's not just the 1 island rubbish (which was more flexible on previous games), it's also their implementation of Cloud Saves which is a joke. A first party service like Cloud Saves should be supported across all first party releases, especially when it is a paid service. It's not about being entitled, but it's about getting a product that I have paid for, anything else is anti-consumer.

Also Nintendo said months ago with the initial outrage that they won't do anything about this. The Cloud Save "solution" was a hastily made backtrack that doesn't solve the issues.

Also to answer the original point, yes people do give Nintendo an easier ride. I am guilty of doing it myself. They make great games that provide a lot of enjoyment, but their backend systems are terrible. For example, Smash is amazing, and I cannot say that enough. But the online play is a laggy broken mess at times and that is extremely frustrating.

Nintendo can fix these things, and that is why it is annoying me. They have the games, they have a great concept of a system, they just need to fix the online and implement proper Cloud Saves (local saves would be nice as well but I know that will never happen). I criticise them because I want them to be better.

 

[Arkaign]

This pretty much makes the game a no buy for me.

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Yep. I'm really happy I read this before buying the game. Whether its simple greed, stupidity, or what, it is definitely an easy skip and ignore for this kind of bs.

 

[bxsonic]

Yeah. There's a few baffling design decisions regarding the multiplayer. I've played the game with my wife and kid from day 1 and currently trying to setup 3 different sites for houses. Tom Nook literally just told me to talk to the main player regarding the houses. Lol. I think it was the same for collecting the materials for Nook Cranny.

I think it would have been nice if we can all work individually to complete the task collectively without having to channel everything through the main player. On the other hand, we were able to encounter and help Gulliver and Wisp 3 times over, so clearly the developers had thought through these scenarios and made the design choices as it is. I hope they can update the game to "fix" it but I'm honestly not too confident that it'll happen.

 

[ThreepQuest64]

guess I'm one of the 10 people that like the sharing aspect.

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If I understand correctly it's not about the sharing aspect but how everyone except player one isn't really more than a visitor.

Don't own a Switch and the last AC I've played was I think on the N64. But I understand how this poor-ass design decision (it truly can't be an oversight) is causing irritation. This is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[cw_sasuke]

I defend Nintendo an awful lot, but I am damn well going to call them out on this.

It's not just the 1 island rubbish (which was more flexible on previous games), it's also their implementation of Cloud Saves which is a joke. A first party service like Cloud Saves should be supported across all first party releases, especially when it is a service I pay extra for. Anything else is anti-consumer.

Also Nintendo said months ago with the initial outrage that they won't do anything about this. The Cloud Save "solution" was a hastily made backtrack that doesn't solve the issues.

Also to answer the original point, yes people do give Nintendo an easier ride. I am guilty of doing it myself. They make great games that provide a lot of enjoyment, but their backend systems are terrible. For example, Smash is amazing, and I cannot say that enough. But the online play is a laggy broken mess at times and that is extremely frustrating.

Nintendo can fix these things, and that is why it is annoying me. They have the games, they have a great concept of a system, they just need to fix the online and implement proper Cloud Saves (local saves would be nice as well but I know that will never happen). I criticize them because I want them to be better.

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I agree with the points but people can feel more than one emotion. What makes you think that people that have a mayor issues with the current feature missing or the cloud saves - are actually paying for the game or the service ? The people that still went ahead are the ones that just arent that affected by the problems.

You can call them(Nintendo) out on stuff, but if it doesnt affect you personally it wont affect your purchase decision. Regardless of how great or good the game is you can come up with 10 reasons why game X should be boycotted if you are looking just hard enough. Should devs and games also be boycotted or are they greedy because you need the latest hardware to play them in the best quality ? Subpar frames and optimization unless you play on a One X and have a TV that isnt older than 2 years ? Because they dont offer features the never advertised or were part of the series ?

While you should call out Nintendo...i dont understand people using the "giving a free ride" whenever issues come up just based on their feelings and not based on actual facts. The people really affected by this arent gonna buy this game - this is common sense.

In this specific case - what would the typical AC fan or ERA user have to do, to show you that they arent giving Nintendo a pass on this specific issue ? Because from my point of view it seems like the only thing that would be big enough for you to chance your perception would be the game bombing or everyone being negative about a feature that might not even affect them.

People are already talking about the issue on ERA and on other online communities - there isnt really much more people can do than express their frustration.

 

[fourfourfun]

Whoa ok, this sounds pretty bad. I'm a family of four and my youngest is on maximum hype for this game and is saving up. If he jumps in as the primary island player, this means when I or any other in this family jumps in when he has downtime, we're getting a fragment of the game.

I'm getting the cart, so this means at least my boys can have a split experience across two Switches.

 

[Exile20]

Nintendo can piss off with this game. I want to play with my 5 year old daughter but Nintendo is trying to convince me to buy another switch and game.

This is some bullshit. They are putting in artificial blockers so player two would be so frustrated that you spend more money.

I say continue with the review bomb to 0. This game is an example of a greedy dev.

I started the game first and realized all the limitations of player 2. I had to delete my save and start over with her as the first player.

Local multiplayer is also just as frustrating and limiting. Farm together does local multiplayer right.

 

[kvetcha]

I readily admit it's probably just me, but it feels like Nintendo is trying to encourage in-person interaction as a part of the game experience. When it comes time to lay out villager plots, I talk with my wife and we find places for them together. I leave messages on the bulletin board if I need materials. I purchase recipe cards and mail them to her.

It feels like what people are asking for is co-op without any real cooperation.

 

[SchroDingerzat]

I readily admit it's probably just me, but it feels like Nintendo is trying to encourage in-person interaction as a part of the game experience. When it comes time to lay out villager plots, I talk with my wife and we find places for them together. I leave messages on the bulletin board if I need materials. I purchase recipe cards and mail them to her.

It feels like what people are asking for is co-op without any real cooperation.

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It would be less of a deal if the second player didn't have to miss out on so much.

Also it would have been better if it was optional.

 

[kvetcha]

It would be less of a deal if the second player didn't have to miss out on so much.

Also it would have been better if it was optional.

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Yeah, maybe I'm just malleable enough that it works for me, but I like that it's something that actually, whether by Nintendo's intent or by their neglect, requires collaboration rather than impersonal, asynchronous grinding.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

I was pretty sure I read something about this on this forum.

Hey, it's Nintendo, what do you expect? In spite of this, it'll still sell millions. People accept it. So, either go with it or move on.

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Tbh I had no idea this was a thing until reading this thread.Then again, I'm single so it's not really like that would matter.