Now that the existential nightmare ofBunny Dayis over inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, players of the beloved game are turning their eyes toward the future and looking at ways for Nintendo to make the already well-received game even better. While the game has a lot of great improvements and features from previousAnimal Crossingtitles, there are still areas in which the game could be better, from a more refined crafting system to a better and more robust island designer tool.
Since Nintendo has plans to give updates for the game for the foreseeable future, there are some big features that should come to the game - hopefully sooner rather than later.
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Crafting Overhaul
Crafting is a new feature to theAnimal Crossingseries withAnimal Crossing: New Horizons. Players can forage for crafting materials by hitting rocks, chopping trees, and shooting balloons out of the sky to make tools, furniture, and more. While some fans of the series are frustrated by how quickly tools break, the feature has been fairly well-received - though not without some complaints. First and foremost, players should be able to craft using materials in storage if they are crafting from a table inside their home. It’s incredibly tedious to look up a recipe, remember the number of ingredients, and then attempt to pull them out of storage before forgetting what was required to begin with. Being able to use stored materials would also save a ton of inventory space for those who want to craft from inside their home.
Another big feature that is painfully absent is the ability to craft stacks of items at one time. With the recent fishing tourney, players quickly realized that they had to craft a lot of fish bait and had to do it one-by-one rather than turning all of their Manilla Clams into fishing bait at one time. Some players even went so far as tocreate a robot to craft baitfor them so they didn’t have to button-mash to get a ton of fish bait. In a perfect world, players would be able to select an item and tell the game how many of said item they would like to craft. This would be especially helpful for things like bait, or if players are crafting multiple of the same item to sell to their shops.
Updated Able Sisters
The Able Sisters shop is not on the island when players first land, so players will have to go out of their way tounlock the clothing store. Once they do, players will be able to buy tons of fantastic clothing and even share custom designs. However, players quickly realized that if they want to buy multiple items from the changing room (which by itself is a fantastic feature for buying clothes!), they have to keep going in and out. Not every item in the changing room is on display on the sales floor, so the changing room is the best way to find items that are on sale that day. To make the shop much better, players should be able to select multiple items to purchase, even if they are the same type (like two pairs of pants for example) so it saves time and sanity.Animal Crossing: New Horizonshas a ton of great fashion items, so players desperately want to be able to purchase multiple items at once.
Better Island Designer Controls
The Island Designer app is one of the most difficult things to unlock inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons.Players have to meet several endgame criteria before they can begin terraforming their island - orturning it into something from a different game. The Island Designer app can essentially turn the player’s starting island into something completely different, perfect for those who have a very specific vision for how they want their island. However, some parts of the Island Designer tool can be a bit tedious to work with. Players have to place each tile of a path individually and if players are making long paths it can take a long time to get that wrapped up. It would be great if players could just hold down the place button and walk, creating the path as they go. It’s a small change but it would make the design process go a lot quicker.
The cliff building and waterscaping tools also need a bit of refinement. While they generally work as intended, players quickly discovered ways that wouldcause some cliffs to be permanent. The waterscaping tool also can e a bit tedious to work with, though it works a bit more as intended than the cliff tool. It would be nice if players could change the location of the river mouths or at least adjust the beach line to help fine-tune island shaping, but those are minor demands compared to the bigger issues at hand.
Island Planner
As stated before, someAnimal Crossingplayers really care a lot about how their island looks. From theperfect house placementto the location of trees and flowers, some people are quite particular about their perfect deserted island. It would be handy if the map in-game allowed players to make notes or markings on it so they could plan new amenities, house movements, and shop locations. While this may seem like a small change, it would be huge for those who work hard on their islands to make it perfect - or those shooting for that 5-star rating from Isabelle!
Villager Management
SomeAnimal Crossingplayers are happy with the villagers they are given, while other players want onlythe best-looking villagersto inhabit their island. However, getting rid of villagers to create room is a hassle at times. Sometimes villagers will willingly want to move out of the island, but others will just sink their roots in and stay. Without the use of the campsite (which will randomly have new villagers in it unless players use amiibo), getting new villagers once the island is full is near impossible.New Horizonswould do well with a feature that allowed players to ask villagers to leave, or at least pay Tom Nook to do it for them. Some players resort to hitting villagers with nets to get them angry, but the jury is still out on how effective that really is at causing villagers to leave. In the end, there really does need to be a better way to evict villagers to make room for some new faces.
Better Networking Functions
Whether player online with friends or testing out the newlimited local co-op features,Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis a great way to spend time with friends - especially during a quarantine. However,New Horizonshas some serious flaws in its networking design. Starting with local co-op, it’s limited to this strange follow-the-leader playstyle where one player dictates where everyone goes. The other members can still do things, but they have to stay close to the leader. It’s a wild choice and in reality should be changed to be more in-line with the online co-op style where players can wander the island working on individual tasks with no restrictions by distance.
Online co-op is not without it’s glaring design flaws either. First, connecting to another players island can be a hassle. If the players are Switch friends then they can search for all friends' islands with gates currently open. However, once players pick an island and begin flying in, it completely locks all players out of doing anything until the landing sequence is finished. This is true when players leave the island as well. All activities grind to a halt and the game is held hostage until players have landed/left. Now if there are multiple players coming and going (looking at youturnip sellers), it can be an absolute nightmare to be on that island. This absolutely wild requirement needs to change to make multiplayer fun and enjoyable for all parties involved.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonshas seemingly taken the world by storm as many players escape from the wild current events and immerse themselves in a new island life. WhileNew Horizonshas a ton of great features, there are still some major improvements to be made to make the game as good as it can be. Hopefully with thefuture updates on the wayNintendo will begin rolling out some much needed quality-of-life fixes thatNew Horizonsdesperately needs.
