Remember a week ago when I was excited about this exit poll at Nook's?
Seems like a great idea, right? Here's the game taking the time to find out how you play and adjusting itself to your liking. We all opted for "better hours," figuring that we would sacrifice the rare item stock for store hours that fit our lifestyle... we usually only play Animal Crossing at night, and it's a sucky rush to get to it by 9pm when Nookington's closes. Or else our pockets fill up with unsellable fish, fruit and fossils.
A few days later, this notice went up on the bulletin board:
Cool. We're excited. Best case scenario, Nook pushes his hours to something awesome like 1am. And we lose the frequency of Nook's item specials. Big deal; I already have most of the rare junk in my catalog from the Wild World import.
We were not prepared for the Worst Case Scenario.
Fucker went back to the Nook-n-Go!
With the same interior, too! So it's not like a TARDIS thing where it's small on the outside and good ol' huge Nookington's on the inside. Unbelievable.
We told the guy we wanted better hours instead of item variety, but we assumed that would just dial down the rarity... not turn us back to a minimal daily selection of tools, seeds, furniture and everything else. We were willing to ditch the quality, but not the quantity.
All for a bullshit 11pm closing time.
The worst thing about this is that Nookington's is a place of pride. Now anybody who comes to our town will think we're some kind of amateur pikers who can't even upgrade Nook's to the top level. It's embarrassing. And thanks to the strategy guide being garbage, there's no warning anywhere that something like this could happen.
This is unsettling enough for me to not ever want to play Animal Crossing again. It feels like I've been punched in the gut. Because there's no going back to an earlier save, or any of the usual gaming preservation and backup tricks. All decisions by Nook are final.
Running the numbers, it looks like Nook brought this up approximately two months after we started playing. Maybe he asks this every quarter. Will he ever poll us again? Or will we have a lousy small-town Nook's forever? I will be inconsolably pissed about this if we're truly stuck.
Talk about an accurate life simulation. Even in Animal Crossing, the economy is falling apart.
One of the advantages of posting on forums is that you can pool your knowledge. I only got this game last week, but looking through the thread now, I see that they learned about the "downgrade for hours" event back in December.
Other useful info: don't wait on voting when people start debating bridge placement. If you postpone your vote, they pick someplace random.
Sigh. Wouldn't it be nice if somebody actually put all of this into a strategy guide? You know, like what EVERY OTHER GAME ON THE PLANET gets?
I really really really hope Nook asks this question again. Because I have totally changed my mind and I want Nookington's back.
Ugh, I finally decided to register a Vox -just- so I can comment :P
Anyway, I'd heard about this and I'd prefer Nook 'n' Go. Nookingtons is nice and all, but it's far too big to make me want to check it out every day.
...
Not that I would. I've already stopped playing. Yeah, this is coming from the guy who played WW for two and a half years straight. That's probably why, though. It's just too similar.
Oh, and you might like this: http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Animal%20Crossing/Update%201/index.html
A quick check at GameFAQs Answers for AC:CF says yeah, he'll ask again later. All Is Not Lost.
If you tell him you want better hours again next time, though, it's just a hotdog cart.
So...
...you probably don't want that.
Ice: Yeah, commenting has been sort of busted ever since I tried putting new MT code inside my old MT templates. I need to do an entire backend overhaul.
Wow, that has to be the lamest thing that has ever happened in animal crossing.
You lose a 2 story deluxe store for a crappy gas station that stays open for...what, 2 more hours?
Bull. This game keeps making me more and more frustrated with Nintendo. Still haven't played it since I got the first house upgrade. And I love animal crossing; I played the first one for a year and a half. Every day.