Animal Crossing cleanup

Trimming the art one down to this:

• Completing the Art wing of the museum is an exceptionally drawn-out process without other players' assistance. The main source of art is from Redd, who appears, on average, once every 2 weeks as an island visitor offering 4 art pieces each time. Like past games, only genuine pieces may be donated, and there's no guarantee that Redd will be selling non-forgeries and/or genuine ones you don't already have. And like New Leaf, a player can only buy one piece of art per Redd appearance. Male residents may rarely send pieces, but it's luck if it's genuine or always fake if from a "Smug" resident. Thus, without trading, visiting other people's islands where Redd is visiting, making additional accounts so each can make a purchase from Redd, or time traveling (which re-rolls his stock), it will take an excruciatingly long time to complete the art wing. Update 2.0.0 helped address this through building his co-op store on Harvey's island, but it is only two pieces a week unless you buy a piece.

Fixed

Edited by DDRMASTERM on Apr 22nd 2022 at 7:50:59 AM

Looks good for the most part, but the part about Redd's stock on Harv's Island is a bit inaccurate; it's two pieces per week, and if memory serves, he only changes his stock prematurely if both pieces are bought before the rollover (even if one or both are fake).

Edited by bowserbros on Apr 22nd 2022 at 10:51:10 AM

Cutting down the Announcements part to this:

• The announcements whenever starting your game for the day became very unpopular for a long time:
  • Events highlighted in daily announcements (birthdays, changing of seasons/seasonal DIY sets rotating in, meteor showers, campsite visits, villagers moving in, villagers moving out, holidays, event days etc.) were not very common. Otherwise Isabelle sometimes goes on tangents that, while cute and funny at first, get annoying since they repeat ad nauseam. It doesn't help that "no announcements" means no campsite villager and thus, no progress possible on that day on the game's longest-term goal (moving in the villagers you want). This was partially fixed in the November 5th 2.0.0 update, as Isabelle now has dialogue that pertains to which special NPC is visiting the island that day, but it can still be skipped if she has any other announcements to give that day.
  • While very situational, if Isabelle is supposed to give out a seasonal craft based on the current season and camper is visiting, a villager is moving in or out, or a birthday is occurring, she will delay giving the recipe until a day where she has no news to give. On a similar note, if a meteor shower happens to overlap with any of the events previously mentioned, Isabelle won't tell you about it and you could potentially miss a great opportunity to obtain star fragments and a Celeste visit. Thankfully your villagers can comment on a meteor shower happening at night if you talk to them, though it may take a few conversations for them to spill the beans.
  • As 5 AM is when the game starts a "new day", if you happen to cross that time while playing and you are outdoors, the game will stop everything to do Isabelle's announcements and respawn you back at your house, which is really annoying for those who play around this time. Thankfully, this doesn't happen if you happen to be indoors or on a mystery island, but the moment you step outside / return to your island, Isabelle's routine will kick in. In a similar vein, in the Happy Home Paradise expansion, if you start working on the apparel shop before 5 AM and finish after, you can't partake in the Playable Epilogue; the moment you step outside, the day will roll over and the festival will end.

Should the 5 AM point even be included? It's a mechanic that's been part of the franchise since the beginning; the only thing that's changed is that days now start an hour earlier than in previous games.

I brought this up on the complaining thread, but a couple of people have been adding new entries to the Scrappy Mechanic page over the past week or so.

Moving all of the mechanics that aren't unique to New Horizons to YMMV.Animal Crossing might be a good call.

Edited by NitroIndigo on Apr 23rd 2022 at 6:12:08 PM

That does seem like a good idea.

I'll also bring up these ones not to necessarily change right now, but to discuss:

• House visits have become a constant source of irritation shortly after it was introduced in the November 2021 update. At any given moment, an islander will drop by your house and ask if he or she can stay for a little while. During that time period, the villager looks around the place, comment on the decor, give items, and offer to play a game of "Major or Minor". What makes this feature so annoying for some players is that it locks them from crafting items or decorating the house, and the amount of time said villager varies anywhere between a few minutes or a full half-hour, unless the player decides to leave the house earlier, to which the villager will attempt to guilt trip them into staying a little longer. While a few players have found ways to work around the issue and minimize time spent indoors, it doesn't stop them from approaching the player and ask to either drop by the house, or alternatively, invite them into their place instead.

This is the most recent addition. I personally don't find the visits especially annoying.

• You can approach chairs from the side to sit in them...but only if they have no armrests. Chairs with armrests, or even with just anything in the way of you sitting on them from the side like folding chairs, can only be sat in from the front. This creates problems if you are trying to arrange chairs with desks or tables, as you are forced to turn them sideways so you and NPCs can sit in them. And chairs cannot be turned while sitting in them, not even wheeled chairs like the various office and gaming chairs. For example, this means you cannot set up a desk with a PC on it and an office chair, and be able to sit in the chair facing the PC, if you wanted to do a photo of something like that. The only way to get such a photo is in the Happy Home Paradise expansion when editing a facility or home, which does give you the opportunity to drag-and-drop characters, but that is not possible in the main game.

This one just feels nitpicky, and I'm personally inclined to cut it.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on Apr 23rd 2022 at 2:45:10 AM

House visits always felt like a minor annoyance at most to me, even in New Leaf, since you could just... leave. As for the armrests thing, that'd only be a Scrappy Mechanic to a very niche subset of players. I feel both can be cut.

On a similar note, I think this point about tarantulas and scorpions does scratch at a legitimate issue, but the wording again focuses on a niche portion of the game's audience:

• For players who are arachnophobic, the very existence of tarantulas and scorpions on the player's island from 7 PM to 4 AM is a source of Nightmare Fuel and Paranoia Fuel in what is otherwise one of Nintendo's most laid-back game series. Depending on one's own opinion of "time traveling", this can basically turn into an unnecessary form of Anti Poop-Socking or forcing the player to toy with the system clock and deviate from the intended way of playing just so they can enjoy the game without having their phobias set off. This further affects players who can only play during the aforementioned hours. Short of time traveling, the only way to prevent these two arachnids from spawning is to have another player visit your island.

I don't think phobias do much to define what is and isn't a Scrappy Mechanic. You could, however, make the claim that tarantulas and scorpions can be intrusive in how they're able to attack and knock out players, which is offset only by their rarity, so maybe the point can be rewritten to focus on that. Maybe also move it to YMMV.Animal Crossing, since both bugs have been part of the series since Animal Crossing: Wild World. Thoughts?

Edited by bowserbros on Apr 23rd 2022 at 2:49:08 AM

Sure, that seems fine.

Alright, let's see if I can refit it around that...

• Since Wild World, scorpions and tarantulas have been available as catchable bugs, spawning between 7 PM and 4 AM during the summer months (or during different halves of the year in New Horizons). What makes them different from other bugs is that they can attack and knock you out if you make sudden movements near them while holding a net — and it's very easy to set them off by casually walking around. As a result, they can become an unexpected source of Paranoia Fuel for nighttime players who want to catch other bugs, especially considering the number of other valuable bugs with overlapping spawn periods. Short of time traveling, the only way to prevent these two arachnids from appearing is to have another player visit your town/island.

Edited by bowserbros on Apr 23rd 2022 at 4:00:10 AM

Go ahead and delete the NH one and add that to the series one.

Edit: I also just cut the examples I brought up.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on Apr 23rd 2022 at 5:39:55 AM

Alright, removed the tarantula/scorpion point from ScrappyMechanic.Animal Crossing New Horizons and added the rewrite to YMMV.Animal Crossing, citing this thread in both edit summaries.

I'll add a commented-out note to the New Horizons page to add series-wide examples on the series' YMMV page.

I shortened the first drop-off box sub-bullet to this (the bullet and second sub-bullet are already very concise):

• After selling an item through the drop-off box, Timmy or Tommy will call you on your cell phone at the start of your next play session to inform you that they sent the bells to your savings account. Many find it redundant given that the drop-off box already totals the amount of bells that will be sent to your savings account, which is 80% their full price. This is especially irritating for late night or early morning players, who are forced to use the drop-off box exclusively to sell items unless they "time travel" or either Flick or CJ are visiting the island.

This one isn't about the Scrappy Mechanic page, but the Memetic Mutation page. Specifically, a lot of the listed memes are just catch quotes for particularly common fish and deep sea creatures, without really elaborating on how they're memes. The impression I get is just "players commonly complain about these common, low-priced catches;" I've seen plenty of jokes about the Bunny Day villager quotes about coconut trees dropping more Wooden Eggs, so I wouldn't be surprised if these catch quotes were also the subject of memes, but the explanatory labelnotes don't indicate that.

What would be a good solution to this? Should the labelnotes be rewritten one by one, should the points be deleted outright (since again, I haven't seen any indication that these quotes are indeed memed on, so to speak), or would it be better to merge all of them into one general point about catch quote parodies, assuming that they are in fact the legitimate subject of memes?

Edited by bowserbros on May 7th 2022 at 5:10:12 AM

The Sea Bass one is particularly memed on due to being the most infamous disappointing catch, but merging them all together seems like a decent idea too.

Alright, a bit late on this but here's what I could come up with:

• Common catch quote parodies^Explanation Among fans, a number of fish and sea creatures (e.g. suckerfish, anemones, and especially sea bass) are viewed as Goddamn Bats for how common they are, how little money they sell, and how their shadow sizes are similar (if not identical) to those of more valuable creatures. Consequently, the catch quotes for these common critters are common subjects for jokes that exaggeratedly depict them as The Dreaded among players.

Edited by bowserbros on May 9th 2022 at 6:00:41 AM

Edited by DDRMASTERM on May 9th 2022 at 10:21:52 AM

Alright; just did so and cited this thread.

I've noticed that the Nightmare Fuel page for Animal Crossing is very messy and has a lot of meta/fan content listed as well as the usual problems of listing everything slightly creepy or unsettling in comparison to the otherwise sweet nature of the game, but which wouldn't really be considered "nightmare fuel" on its own. Is that something that could be tackled in here, or should it go to the cleanup thread for Nightmare Fuel pages?

We can discuss it here.

For starters...

This doesn't explain why he scared players.

This has the same energy as those My Little Pony slapstick examples that the OP of the Nightmare Fuel TRS thread pointed out years ago.

Yeah, having your villager mad at you might make you feel bad, but I can't imagine anyone actually being scared by it. I think that example is an easy cut.

I'm also going to just cut out all of the entries about New Leaf dream villages, since they're all player/fan content and I believe no longer accessible to people playing the game anyway.

Thanks. I'll try to rewrite the Resetti example on NightmareFuel.Animal Crossing.

Looking back at ScrappyMechanic.Animal Crossing New Horizons, I found this point that I'm uncertain about:

• With the Summer Update came swimming, and the ability to dive into the ocean from various spots — cliffs, rocky outcrops, even the airport bridge. The last one is a huge problem — many players use fencing as an island security measure, preventing antisocial behavior by ensuring that visitors are restricted to the locations that are linked to the purpose of their visit (e.g. Nook's Cranny to sell turnips). By diving off the airport bridge, such island security measures can be circumvented. Hosting players thus have had to manually enforce "no swimsuit" rules.

The harmful bugs aren't really that scary, they don't even kill you, they just give you a scar or act as a Mook Bouncer in the tarantula and Scorpions' case. If we didn't keep the Skulltulas on Zelda for arachnophobes, why should we keep the scorpions, wasps (originally called bees) and tarantulas? Most people exaggerate the scare factor of these things anyway. I always shake trees with my net to catch wasps but that's not out of fear, it's because it's an annoyance to cure the sting and the villagers reactions are kind of grating.

Edited by Klavice on May 19th 2022 at 4:45:17 AM

That's more of a "why we can't have nice things" entry, I think. The wetsuit mechanic works just fine in normal gameplay and is essential for completing the museum; the actual problem being described is rude people in online play. The reason some players fence off large parts of their island in the first place is due to visitors stealing or vandalizing things, and the wetsuit can be used to get around those blockades.

Agreed, encountering wasps or a tarantula or scorpion might be momentarily stressful, but it's not scary.

Edited by Zarina on May 19th 2022 at 5:14:53 AM