Animal Crossing was created by Katsuya Eguchi, who was inspired to recreate the wholesome feelings of friendship and community he missed after moving from his hometown to Kyoto, Japan.

The reason Animal Crossing is known as a relaxing and wholesome series is because the game was created to replicate the feeling of moving in to a new town and making new friends.

We feel that New Horizons has strayed from the goal of creating that experience, and that this has lost many players, as well as potential players.

While it’s fun to build a community the way we want to, we also want to feel like we’re creating a community for villagers we care about. Animal Crossing New Horizons has brought about some exciting new options for players to shape their new island home the way they want to. However, we feel the creators have neglected the player-villager relationship.

As a result of the lack of connection between players and villagers, New Horizons has been said by some to feel “hollow”, and therefore dull.

We feel that improving the variety and quality of interactions between player and villager will solve this issue - mainly, the dialogue. The villagers are what set the stage for a cozy community that players will want to spend hours in. That means the villagers must have more dialogue on a variety of topics other than, for example, fame or fitness.

We all host at least two or more personalities on our island, and feel the repetition is a deterrent from building friendships with our islanders. There’s no point in talking to both lazy villagers more than once a day, because they’ll both say the same things. This also creates a problem with villagers not feeling like individuals worth getting to know.

For example, there is no incentive to get to know the “ugly” smug villagers, because you’ll get the same experience with a visually appealing smug villager. In this way, the villagers have come to feel like accessories to enhance our islands. There is no illusion of agency or individuality among them. The only difference between Julian and Beardo, for example, is their outward appearance.

We want the villagers to have some illusion of individuality. Going back to the example of Julian and Beardo, we might like to see some dialogue differences between them. While it’s difficult to create dialogue specific to both characters, perhaps it’s possible to use other methods of giving both of them dialogue that is different between them, but still used by other villagers. Perhaps bears and horses both have different dialogue. One might be more gruff and the other more “free-spirited”.

There are rumors of an A and B type sub-personality system. If this is a system used in the game, then we suggest expanding those sub-personalities to more than A and B, then use that to further diversify villager dialogue. This could also be used to diversify villager reactions to events, preferences, and so on.

For example, a sarcastic response from the player might make a cranky villager laugh while a peppy villager might become offended.

We don’t ask for villagers to insult or demean players. We do ask, rather, that villagers express different emotions more frequently or write them to be a little less passive.

On a similar topic, we would like to have more opportunities to respond in a conversation, so that players will feel more involved. We would also like different responses to elicit more reactions. If a player decides to heckle a villager, then they should reap the consequences of that by getting an angry reaction.

Another feature we would like is for cranky and snooty villagers to be harder to befriend, because this creates a further sense of realism. In reality, not everyone is easy to befriend, but, if you are diligent, that friendship will become a precious one. We would love to see that return in New Horizons.

Experiences like this are what made Animal Crossing popular. You feel like you’re truly communicating with different people, and you learn how to navigate them. Some players will relate to the stand-offish villagers more than the extroverted ones, and vise versa.

We also feel there aren’t enough kinds of interactions between players and villagers. We would like to have the option to ask villagers for chores a limited amount of times each day. Another feature we would like to see are random visits from our villagers, as well as requests to schedule a visit with our villagers either at their home or at ours.

Additionally, we hope Nintendo will consider adding new ways to interact and play with our villagers.

For example, we would like to do activities such as flying kites together, sitting down to interact with a picnic set, swinging on a swing set, schedule times to fish or catch bugs together, and so on.

Essentially, we would like more interactive items we can share with our villagers, and new kinds of activities that both players and villagers can engage in.

That request is only an additional change we would like to have.

Most important to us is for Nintendo to create the illusion of individuality in our villagers by improving dialogue, and creating ways for villagers of the same personality type to feel unique. Create a way for us to feel like the two jocks living on our islands are both worth talking to without a great amount of repetition.

While New Horizons has been successful financially, we feel that the game struggles to retain players because of the lack of attention given to villagers. Their current dialogue is charming, but passive and repetitive, and we don’t feel connected to them.

As a result, we don’t feel the need to check in on our villagers as we did in the previous games. That cozy, community feeling isn’t there. We feel this is harming New Horizons now, and it will in the long run as well. 

Please consider improving communication and interaction with our villagers - we feel doing this will improve player retention immensely.

Thank you for your time.