The Animal Crossing Grass Controversy, Explained

Animal Crossing: City Folk had a feature that was so controversial, some fans PETITIONED Nintendo to try to get it removed?!

#animalcrossing #wii #nintendo

Works Cited:

[hylianespeon]

I feel like if the grass "healed" faster, these paths would be way more accurate to how desire paths actually work

[frosty]

This could have worked if most tiles had the health value go up alot each day, based on how many step you've taken so avid and 'visiting' players can get an equal experience with how paths appear

The Value going up prevents patches and the barrenness

[constanzelade]

Animal tracks as a feature was actually awesome. It was not optimized in City Folk. In New Leaf it was perfect and it didn't take that much to regrow the grass if you wanted to change your path.

[wiktorszymczak]

Couldnt they just give it higher self regeneration? If you dont walk there long enough it would grow back

[Megara.x]

I actually really like the idea, it just needed better implementation

[-camcam_]

I think it's so cute, you would often take the same path without realizing it and step by step it takes shape naturally. It would make the city more alive and showed your little habits

[christiney.]

I picked up the series during the New Leaf era, and I remember hearing that proper etiquette for visiting another player’s town included staying on existing dirt paths (or artificial “pattern” paths) as much as possible, just so you wouldn’t contribute to the grass degradation. 😅

[Jim_xyz]

I actually kind of liked it, I like the natural path formations, I wish there was a good balance between making paths like in NH but with natural paths through animal paths. So you could end up with that “desire path” phenomenon

[frog]

I actually loved how to make paths in New Leaf you had to use the same route each time, made the town planning aspect much more meaningful.
I had no idea it was that bad in City Folk though 😭

[jonathansfavorites]

As someone who didn't have friends to play with, I didn't have people running in my grass, so I was able to create some good paths.

[digiboygaming]

-Have a visual warning that the grass is getting thinner so you can avoid that area or continue to use that path if you want a path there.

-Grass heals substantially more per day than single time foot traffic.

-Grass within 2 tiles of trees and 1 tile of flowers never decays.

-Running deals more path damage.

[Kitsuku]

I played city folk and even though I played it quite a bit my town never turned into a mud pit like a lot of others did. I had nice paths and I tended to use them to get from the house to house into the stores. I always like this feature myself because it made the town feel more lived in and I liked how the pathing system felt more natural. Granted I always generally walked on the path and only left the path to shake trees, so I never experienced the full grass die off like apparently so many others had

[Yapity]

These feels like a cool idea with terrible execution. Maybe they should have coded in some restrictions where it checks if there's already a dirt path nearby and locks the grass health to prevent too many dirt patches in one area. From your explanation it also seems like the grass' health didn't restore over time which is a huge oversight.

Letting us just put down our own paths is definitely preferable

[smashtherocks]

I have a theory that they were intending people to use the pointer controls for the game and expected them to walk the same straight lines nore often as people would click the aame places, thus creating small paths instead of barren wastes

[noahjordan]

I think it was a good idea as long as they implemented a way for the grass to regrow

[duranls]

The fun thing is that in ACNH WE LOVE DIRT PATHS

[MERCHIODOS]

The worst part was when it was raining and you ran around your village while it was raining the dirt tracks would appear faster

[KyleRavenborn]

I think the most obvious fix to animal tracks is to have a tile limit, like only the bottom 200ish hp tiles are dirt

[Homedepotorange]

The problem is that you dont actually stick to the same paths as you think you do. Natural paths are a real thing. Heavily walked grass areas eventually become dirt so I like it in theory but in practice it falls apart

[Bonnie_Mairead]

I hated that feature. It didn't help that my fam had the max number of players as well. We ended up designing a TON of tile designs and placing them all around as our paths.