reset buttons
With the year coming closer to an end, I've noticed an interesting trend within myself that seems fitting to share.
I have a few games that had so-called forever saves - saves that I continuously played for the entire time I had the game. I've loved these games and lived these games, so let's talk about the two that I decided to completely start over with, and why.
So first, let's talk about Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. I set up my save file on that game before it was officially released in my country, by downloading the Australian APK from a shady website and somehow not getting my Nintendo account banned.
That's an eight year old save file. I spent hundreds on leaf tickets and memberships, I bought the Complete edition on both iOS and Android, and I transferred that save to every device I had. I'd played online, offline, I had tons of furniture and clothes.
But I ran into a problem. I wanted to play Pocket Camp on my Surface Duo, while also keeping my save file on my Samsung tablet, so I started a new save.
I hadn't seen the tutorials and early levels in almost a decade, so it was like experiencing the game for the first time. I had the knowledge to level up fairly quickly, to do well in the HHA instead of not even touching it in my old save. I got Muffy back as my helper and I raised my friendship with as many campers as I could.
I quickly collected all new furniture, and found that I actually really love the Ranch set in my camper, something I never would've considered before. I began actually using the quarry, I began actually planting flowers because the tutorials showed me how much I actually loved to do that.
I'm having so much fun now, and I'm not dealing with the frustration of microtransactions this time!
Another game I've played for many years is SimpleMMO, a text based MMO by Galahad Creative. I've had my account on SMMO since 2020, so six years, and I really struggled with the game at first.
It's very pay-to-win unless you know what you're doing, and in the beginning, I did not know what I was doing. The goal of the game is to take steps, fight monsters, gather materials and complete tasks and quests, and I spent a long time working out what I wanted to be.
The first two years, I traded on the Player Market, stepping only to find more gear to sell, so I didn't reach level 1000 until 2022. This will be relevant later.
Then I switched to fighting monsters for loot drops, then decided to just fight in the Battle Arena. The only problem is that the BA costs a lot of gold, like ten thousand gold per monster you fight. So I needed gold.
I chose the Banker profession and joined a banking guild. Professions are how you earn gold and experience when idle, so I still needed to earn gold actively, so I started questing, which is where I am now.
I quest when active, I'm a banker when idle, and that led to me eventually reaching level 7000 this year.
I decided then that I wanted to reset, and start again with what I'd learned - and SMMO has options for this. Legacy Pro is a complete nuke of your account, starting from absolutely nothing, while Legacy Lite lets you keep your items, profession level, quests complete and gold. I chose Legacy Lite, because I had collections and awards that I was very proud of and could never get again since they were event rewards.
I started from level one, and I immediately knew what to do. I quested, because I still had my extra quest points from before. Quest points and energy points are the number of times you can do a quest or fight a monster respectively, or how many minutes you can do your profession, in the case of energy points.
So I did my quests, got myself a fair chunk of experience and I allocated that experience to strength, so I could go to the Battle Arena and fight monsters. I had no gear I could use, but the monsters were low level too and importantly, cheaper to summon.
I got to level 50 and went to my favourite location, Everwinter, and then just kept doing that routine. I'd log on, do my quests, step in Everwinter fighting any monsters I came across naturally. I'd do whatever quests I'd like, I'd say hi in global chat, then I'd do my profession when I left.
I reached level 1000 in two months this time.
These games, two very different games from entirely different genres, both mean so much to me. Being able to experience them with fresh eyes but years of experience has been a really fun experience, and while in some ways, it's made me play very differently, it's made me very comfortable with my routines in others.
While I did still keep my old save or aspects of the old save, I still got a fresh new experience. Sometimes a reset button is exactly what we need.
This post was last edited 3 days, 10 hours ago.