Higashi Nogami: "Animal Crossing: New Horizons won't be compatible with cloud backups to avoid manipulating time."

[Tobor]

My goodness, if only there was a way to have the saves stored on a server and still prevent players from messing with them!

Nintendo's continuing incompetence with all things online still amazes.

 

[Radeo]

Y'all think that not implementing cloud saves is "artistic integrity" when it's just being lazy lmao

And "ruining the in-game economy" LMAO

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Are you saying online games can't have cloud saves?

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I'm not. I don't allude to that in my post. I was the first person on this board to come to a cloud save solution for this game that actually works without limitations and without potentially subverting or threatening the game's online multiplayer functionality by enabling offline exploits.

If you look around for like a second you can probably figure out why I said what I said, and no more.
Every page in this thread includes many posts about how AC is a strictly single player game.

It's not, it hasn't been a single player game in fifteen years, and the online experience is actually an important part of the series appeal to a large number of people.

I'm just providing context.

 

[ngower]

That community is going to find a way to mod anyways, this is a horrible reasoning from Nintendo.

 

[jts]

My goodness, if only there was a way to have the saves stored on a server and still prevent players from messing with them!

Nintendo's continuing incompetence with all things online still amazes.

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There isn't with the way the devs want the game to still be fully played offline. If you have a way to allow for that and avoid save scumming with cloud saves, please enlighten us.

Y'all think that not implementing cloud saves is "artistic integrity" when it's just being lazy lmao

And "ruining the in-game economy" LMAO

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Yeah cool lazy devs rhetoric when the Switch supports cloud saves at a system level and devs have to actually go out of their way to opt out lmao you're clueless.

 

[Qassim]

Nintendo is so 1999.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Maybe tone down the passive aggression. I already acknowledged that folks will dislike being able to back up their saves, but still someone will find a way around this. It happened on both the Wii and 3DS versions and it will happen again.

I never said people can't play the game however they like but I do understand why being unable manipulate saves was put in place for this sort of game with a constant day/night schedule which continues to run even when you are away from the game.

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Well i apologize for being aggressive (directly, not passively, in fact). Sometimes i use strong language without thought.

I just think if people want to break the game that's up to them. I forgot that there might be some kind of online economy, though, so maybe my point was moot anyway.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

There isn't with the way the devs want the game to still be fully played offline. If you have a way to allow for that and avoid save scumming with cloud saves, please enlighten us.

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Have AC dedicate a small amount of internal system data to a town marker. Let players use cloud saves as much as they want

But

Don't allow a cloud save to be used if the town marker indicates that a future version of that town already exists on that particular Switch.

Bam. Can't save scum or dupe without 2 copies and 2 switches and a shitload of time... And can let people utilize cloud saves freely, no limits.

While keeping cloud saves relegated to sensible uses that won't as readily affect social/online play.

You'll be able to move your town to a new Switch and recover lost towns, without opening Pandora's box and giving everyone the ability to dupe by way of time reversal

 

[Extremely Solid]

Nintendo.

 

[Deleted member 5127]

And this series is probably the game that is perfect for this feature with all those hours spent in, fucking hell.de

 

[Doskoi Panda]

I forgot that there might be some kind of online economy

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I wonder why that is.
I'm trying to speak quietly so I don't get caught in a lethal avalanche of posts made in this thread describing Animal Crossing as a singleplayer, strictly personal and nonsocial experience

 

[karmitt]

Are people really defending this? I would have expected unanimous outcry tbh.

To be clear, I don't think this is a lazy devs move. I do however think it's misguided dev/director priorities. Animal Crossing is the play-forever experience; the come back and play more later experience. It's the game I stop playing in Spring and consider picking back up again in Winter for a completely fresh feeling experience. Given the choice I'd prioritize the persistence of saves over preventing cheating in a basically single player game any day.

Also fuck the "artists vision" rhetoric here.

Edit: I realize folks have brought up a kind of online economy and it makes a lot more sense if that's what they're trying to maintain. I just wish they'd come up with some kind of way to backup our saves

 

[jts]

Have AC dedicate a small amount of internal system data to a town marker. Let players use cloud saves as much as they want

But

Don't allow a cloud save to be used if the town marker indicates that a future version of that town already exists on that particular Switch.

Bam. Can't save scum or dupe without 2 copies and 2 switches and a shitload of time... And can let people utilize cloud saves freely, no limits.

While keeping cloud saves relegated to sensible uses that won't as readily affect social/online play.

You'll be able to move your town to a new Switch and recover lost towns, without opening Pandora's box and giving everyone the ability to dupe by way of time reversal

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How do you prevent deleting this "town marker", even if not accessible via save data, by simply formatting your whole system? Even if it sounds like too much trouble for regular players, item farmers/resellers and such would have no problem with it.

 

[ReactionShot]

I have a feeling that within one or two generations AC will become an always-online/online-only title :(

 

[metalslimer]

Nintendo's complete incompetence at pretty much everything outside of creating games is always amazing to me.

 

[Gacha Santa Alter]

I'm starting to think their cloud service is broken. Why else would Nintendo not support the service that they've spent money on to create.

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I can see all their network devs, gathered around a Switch and a wooden box with "cloud storage" scribbled on it. Lots of head scratching in silence until someone goes "let's just disable it until we get it working".

 

[jts]

Nintendo's complete incompetence at pretty much everything outside of creating games is always amazing to me.

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This is creating games, though. Not an executive decision, a dev design one.

 

[GMM]

That's just a terrible excuse, if people want to cheat themselves out of the Animal Crossing experience they should be able to. Instead they chose what's worst for everyone by removing the ability to back up your save data just to prevent a tiny minority of players from cheating themselves.

People always find a way to cheat and they will do that regardless of the cloud data restriction on this game, another classic baffling Nintendo online decision that actually prevents you from utilizing a paid advertised feature.

 

[KORNdog]

Why do they keep making these dumb ass decisions. Saves are the worst thing you can lose a a gamer. and not being able to back them up in any way is just fucking stupid. I could maybe accept it for some 3 hour indie game. But you sink hundreds of hours into titles like animal crossing... This is actually enough to put me off playing the game at all tbh.

 

[OmegaDL50]

Well i apologize for being aggressive (directly, not passively, in fact). Sometimes i use strong language without thought.

I just think if people want to break the game that's up to them. I forgot that there might be some kind of online economy, though, so maybe my point was moot anyway.

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I think people should do whatever their want minding it doesn't effect anyone else.

I've never played Animal Crossing too seriously, but I know the in-game world is sort of lives on even when you don't directly visit it. Like you'll have residents move in and out of your town without you being aware it happened. I do know some folks are super serious on how they manage their mini village and manipulate saves to prevent certain villagers from moving out of their town and try to have some villagers move in.

There is also the matter of the downtown area that has items you can trade with other online players. I suppose one could easily back up a save, trade an item and then reload your old save to effectively dupe stuff.

One way to get around this is to make the game automatically save at the time of a trade, but I digress if you back up your save prior to this, it can be circumvented.

I don't plan to play this game online if I do pick it up, so the online community driven stuff has no impact on how I'll play the game, if I do decide to play it, that is.

 

[Blade Wolf]

I swear to god Nintendo is just like my mom.

 

[MXT]

It is unacceptable that Nintendo routinely disables system level features like cloud saves to 'deal with' a problem that is neither real (Animal Crossing is primarily a single player title) nor matters in any real kind of way. There are better ways to deal with save tampering regardless, and this restriction will not apply to the people that intend to cheat - they will be on modded Switches and won't be backing up a tampered save as that is a no brainier way to get banned.

Pro controller support should be mandatory, cloud save support should be mandatory, this crap is awful. God, I cannot stand Nintendo.

This crap comes from the same toxic culture that permits stuff like 'mandatory single Joycon only on TV play' (Pokemon Lets Go) despite there being no actual game design issue requiring that - two Joycons in handheld mode works fine. Because, you know, comfort and accessibility do not matter, artistic vision is everything.

Nintendo needs rules imposed on them or this kind of crap will continue.

 

[FearMyWrench]

Could you elaborate? This is the first I've heard about the game's new online-based economy, and I couldn't find anything when I went looking for details.

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Nothing new, it's been a part of every AC game since they added online play. Almost every item in the game can be traded online, alongside currency, and there's a pretty large online community for facilitating these trades including GAF/ERA back in the day.

 

[iKnackwurst]

The solution could be so easy. Upload saves to the cloudstorage as usual, but restrict downloding them to once every three or four months. People who need it still get it, and those that try to abuse it can't do much harm.

 

[@dedmunk]

Technically this has nothing to do with the quality of Nintendo's online system, and it's not like they don't know how to get the saves to upload.

Hilarious that people who don't understand this are being condescending as hell about it lmao

 

[Radeo]

The "completely averse to standard features" crowd is really something huh

 

[Edge]

Is there any way to get your save off the system without having a custom firmware?

 

[kubev]

I don't know how time passage works in Animal Crossing games, but I think it'd make more sense to build some sort of anti-tampering feature into the saves instead of just not supporting cloud saves. I'm all for developers protecting the sanctity of their game play systems by ensuring that players play the games a certain way, because I don't really understand why people would bother to play a game that's clearly not designed around how they intend to play it (and I'm very into the idea of people having to live with consequences without the ability to save-scum), but it's bad form for Nintendo to offer a paid feature like cloud saves and offer first-party games that flat-out don't support the feature.

 

[EarthPainting]

It's because of stuff like this that I can see the franchise moving towards becoming always-online in the future. A lot of their sensibilities and concerns are reminiscent of MMOs, and everything being server-side would address a lot.

 

[DefectiveReject]

So take 8 people who had manipulated time by months and years to advance fast in game.

Now those 8 people all visited each other to play and the towns and times were all to pot... How'd you handle that?? That's a lot of variables to try and balance out

 

[Kyuuji]

Stupid. I have this nonsense with Splatoon 2 and I'm not looking forward to having a similar save for AC.

Users and their entire progress shouldn't be at risk because of your concerns for people cheating their own saves. Find a better solution.

 

[Camisado]

So take 8 people who had manipulated time by months and years to advance fast in game.

Now those 8 people all visited each other to play and the towns and times were all to pot... How'd you handle that?? That's a lot of variables to try and balance out

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You don't handle it, you notice a difference in the system dates of the console and send in Mr Resetti to spend 20 minutes telling them why cheating is bad.

Nintendo really need to stop denying cloud saves to the many to try and stop a vast minority from cheating, especially in a single player game like this that has literally no benefit to cheating it.

 

[Ninjadom]

Why do they keep making these dumb ass decisions. Saves are the worst thing you can lose a a gamer. and not being able to back them up in any way is just fucking stupid. I could maybe accept it for some 3 hour indie game. But you sink hundreds of hours into titles like animal crossing... This is actually enough to put me off playing the game at all tbh.

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Remember, we put hundreds of hours into BOTW before cloud saves were even available to us. It is an absolute pain in the arse though. But don't let it put you off playing, especially if it turns out to be the best Animal Crossing.

 

[Radeo]

Remember, we put hundreds of hours into BOTW before cloud saves were even available to us. It is an absolute pain in the arse though. But don't let it put you off playing, especially if it turns out to be the best Animal Crossing.

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I mean sure, we'll live without it, but my New Leaf save got corrupted years ago and it just put me off completely.

It's unlikely to happen but it does, and I'd very much like the option to back up my save in case of this. I'll still get it because I love the series, but I still feel like I paid for a year of online without being able to use any of the features. Splatoon felt much the same

 

[ninjabreadman]

Dumb decision. I hope the developer even knows how easy it was to hack the launch model, as it sounds like they are worried about client-side cheating and thinking this is somehow going to stop it, when folks with unlocked systems are going to be doing crazy shit with their save files on day 1.

 

[Ninjadom]

Dumb decision. I hope the developer even knows how easy it was to hack the launch model, as it sounds like they are worried about client-side cheating and thinking this is somehow going to stop it, when folks with unlocked systems are going to be doing crazy shit with their save files on day 1.

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Will these hackers be going online with their hacked save files and interacting with legit online players? I thought Nintendo banned that kind of activity.

 

[MadMod]

They need to get their priorities straight, this isn't a valid excuse.

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Pretty much this, what the hell. In 2019 thats not an excuse.

 

[Lentic]

Hurting normal players to fight cheaters. Ironically, hackers will find a way to do anything they want.

 

[Mocha]

Might as well not have the cloud if it's so easily hackable.

 

[kpaadet]

Animal crossing is serious business can't let your players manipulate a single player game to have fun, have to fuck over all the people paying for cloud saves instead. Amazing priorities.

 

[Waveset]

Servers run clocks, check time stamps against the save files and prevent uploading where manipulation is detected.

 

[Psittacus]

"The potential for anyone to lose hundreds of hours of progress is less important than having a select few people not be able to use an exploit in a singleplayer game with no leaderboards"

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It's infuriating that so much of Nintendo's data policy has been based around this philosophy for the last few generations

 

[Rats]

Nothing new, it's been a part of every AC game since they added online play. Almost every item in the game can be traded online, alongside currency, and there's a pretty large online community for facilitating these trades including GAF/ERA back in the day.

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An online community that has flourished while time manipulation has been incredibly easy to do, I'm guessing?

 

[Rendering...]

Please enjoy the specter of permanent data loss in each and every moment you spend with our game.

 

[FearMyWrench]

An online community that has flourished while time manipulation has been incredibly easy to do, I'm guessing?

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It's not about time travelling, it's about item duplication which was present through a glitch previously and would remain present through cloud saves as outlined by others in this thread. You don't believe developers should make any attempt to resolve glitches or exploits in their games, I'm guessing? Just leave them and make no attempt, I'm guessing?

 

[stone616]

Fuck.

The games that I'm most concerned about losing progress in (Pokemon and Animal Crossing) have no cloud backup. While Pokemon should have cloud backup, I do understand it. If people found a way to duplicate Mew or Jirachi, those Pokemon would lose all rarity and value. But people have been manipulating time in Animal Crossing since the Gamecube (maybe the 64? I haven't imported that version). If I duplicate a couch, who gives a shit?

I've been all digital on Switch at this point, if I buy Animal Crossing physically do all the saves go to the cartridge like on DS/3DS? So if I took it out of my Switch and put it into another one I'd still have my save file?

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Literally no other game developer or console maker has these problems but Nintendo. On PlayStation and Xbox I can't think of games that are blocked from backing up save files. Access to your digital footprint isn't some special reward its an industry standard practice.

 

[Lumbai]

Please someone elaborate how players save scumming to have infinite money would actually ruin the 'in-game economy'/online experience?

AC is an inherently non-competitive game with no 'meta' that can be broken by players having access to all the content in the game via infinite money.
If you are a player who doesn't want to partake in cheating the money system, you can easily not allow players to enter your town or just simply ignore the big bag of money they drop on the floor.

I appreciate the design intention of 'working it off', but by restricting cloud saves they have allowed a minority of the player base to 'force' them to make a decision that could ultimately hurt more players (losing your save) than infinite bells ever would.

It just doesn't make sense and feels like such a waste.

 

[Rats]

It's not about time travelling, it's about item duplication which was present through a glitch previously and would remain present through cloud saves as outlined by others in this thread. You don't believe developers should make any attempt to resolve glitches or exploits in their games, I'm guessing? Just leave them and make no attempt, I'm guessing?

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I don't think that attempt should involve locking out a standard feature that you're literally charging your users for.

 

[FearMyWrench]

Please someone elaborate how players save scumming to have infinite money would actually ruin the 'in-game economy'/online experience?

AC is an inherently non-competitive game with no 'meta' that can be broken by players having access to all the content in the game via infinite money.
If you are a player who doesn't want to partake in cheating the money system, you can easily not allow players to enter your town or just simply ignore the big bag of money they drop on the floor.

I appreciate the design intention of 'working it off', but by restricting cloud saves they have allowed a minority of the player base to 'force' them to make a decision that could ultimately hurt more players (losing your save) than infinite bells ever would.

It just doesn't make sense and feels like such a waste.

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Supply and demand.

Like many games, there are rare and hard to obtain items in Animal Crossing. Soon enough, there are such an extremely inflated amount of those hard to obtain items out in the world through duplication that they become sold for such trivial prices, and they can't be sold for their 'true' prices anymore by anyone obtaining them legitimately.

It's not about getting infinite money to 'finish' the game by paying off debt, but more that it's fun to barter and trade with others to acquire the rarer items. I like that if I happen to find a really rare golden throne item in my shop that day, or the coveted Triforce item in my random fortune cookie another day, I can sell or trade those off to other people who want them to help me get a different rare item I'm trying to find.

Obviously there's no way to know how an item was acquired besides honesty, and it doesn't take long before people who don't duplicate are unknowingly re-selling duplicated items. The trading market becomes more of a giveaway market rather than items actually bought and sold for their true values with what you earn by playing the game.

I do want to say that I'm mostly playing devil's advocate providing the reasons why the developers might make this decision. I agree with the idea that save scumming does effect that part of the game severely and they should do what they can to reduce it, but I don't know if I agree with them that it's more important than the security of our saves. I wish they would instead find a way to implement cloud saves just with some protections like suggested in this thread already by others, there's gotta be a compromise here somewhere.

 

[jts]

Supply and demand.

Like many games, there are rare and hard to obtain items in Animal Crossing. Soon enough, there are such an extremely inflated amount of those hard to obtain items out in the world through duplication that they become sold for such trivial prices, and they can't be sold for their 'true' prices anymore by anyone obtaining them legitimately.

It's not about getting infinite money to 'finish' the game by paying off debt, but more that it's fun to barter and trade with others to acquire the rarer items. I like that if I happen to find a really rare golden throne item in my shop that day, or the coveted Triforce item in my random fortune cookie another day, I can sell or trade those off to other people who want them to help me get a different rare item I'm trying to find.

Obviously there's no way to know how an item was acquired besides honesty, and it doesn't take long before people who don't duplicate are unknowingly re-selling duplicated items. The trading market becomes more of a giveaway market rather than items actually bought and sold for their true values with what you earn by playing the game.

I do want to say that I'm mostly playing devil's advocate providing the reasons why the developers might make this decision. I agree with the idea that save scumming does effect that part of the game severely and they should do what they can to reduce it, but I don't know if I agree with them that it's more important than the security of our saves. I wish they would instead find a way to implement cloud saves just with some protections like suggested in this thread already by others, there's gotta be a compromise here somewhere.

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Agreed completely. I'm not happy about the lack of backup saves either, but that's how I've always played my games since... ever, and somehow made it through, so for me it is the lesser evil.

I'm not sure I'd be completely against the idea that you could only load and save to the cloud (no local save), but you could play offline still. But it would raise an even bigger stink.

Honestly, I was naive enough to not expect this kind of mild backlash, because I always assumed this is how it would turn out. But I think most people complaining don't have a full grasp of Animal Crossing.