Why does friendship decay exist ?

[GIVING BAD PEOPLE GOOD IDEAS]

Why does the game actively erase your progress when one of the big points is befriending the villagers ?

[Amberbaum]

I don't know. i guess to force you to interact with them and to create some artificial difficulty regarding the social aspect of the game.

I use CJB cheat menu to deactivate the friendship decay.

[GIVING BAD PEOPLE GOOD IDEAS]

Yeah but they're not the only part of the game, as a player you have to farm, take care of animals (that for some reason also haave the stupid mechanic applied to them) and go mine and forage for materials. The game is punishing you for not spending time every single day chatting to all the villagers and always giving them gifts when it also throws so much for you to do.
Guess mods are the way then

[Amberbaum]

Originally posted by 1000%!! I USED TO GIVE A ♥♥♥♥:

Yeah but they're not the only part of the game, as a player you have to farm, take care of animals (that for some reason also haave the stupid mechanic applied to them) and go mine and forage for materials. The game is punishing you for not spending time every single day chatting to all the villagers and always giving them gifts when it also throws so much for you to do.

I know. That's why I use the mod. I don't like this aspect of this game. Feels antiquated.

[pruitcake]

The decay is so minimal that you can pretty much ignore it. You don't even have to talk to them daily or give them gifts that often to maintain relations. Just giving them something they like on their birthdays is more than enough to have steady rise in your friendship.

This isn't "artificial" difficulty. The time constraints are there to force players to make meaningful decisions on any given day. You have more options than you have time, but the game gives you means of easing that pressure too. Farm automation such as sprinklers and feeders means less time spent managing your farm. Same thing for rain/winter, you're given a lot more time to do other things. Birthdays and holidays are also a good way to maintain/raise relations with people.

[NBOX21]

Maxing out your hearts with each person in town will stop decay. Most people have a maximum of 10 hearts - once you reach that number, decay will stop for that person. For eligible bachelors, they will by default have a maximum of 8 hearts at which point decay stops there. Once your spouse moves into your house with you, however, friendship will always continue to decay even if you max out their hearts at 14, but can be easily prevented just by talking to them once every morning.

[Amberbaum]

Originally posted by pruitcake:

This isn't "artificial" difficulty. The time constraints are there to force players to make meaningful decisions on any given day.

Nah, I know other farming sims who don't have this "feature" and you still have to make a decision on how to spend your time. This is just the game being tedious on the most underwhelming aspect of this game which makes it even more frustrating for people like me and OP.

[Playzr 🐵]

I'm in the "decay is so minimum it doesn't make a difference" crowd.

[Dimensional Traveler]

Originally posted by 1000%!! I USED TO GIVE A ♥♥♥♥:

Why does the game actively erase your progress when one of the big points is befriending the villagers ?

What have you done for them lately?

[pruitcake]

Originally posted by Amberbaum:

This is just the game being tedious on the most underwhelming aspect of this game which makes it even more frustrating for people like me and OP.

It's really not that big of an issue but go off I guess

[G. S.]

It´s like real life: if you don´t make a gift to your friends from time to time, they end up going away.... oh, wait...

[red255]

it is incredibly minimal and mainly serves to off set the minor gain you get from talking to someone once or twice a week.

if you are giving them remotely decent gifts regularly they'll shoot up to max hearts and not get decay.

its something like 1 heart a year lost. whereas you can gain almost a full heart just from the board outside pierre's shop. or doing the luau properly.

[Maya-Neko]

The game doesn't really punish that much, unless you ignore people for years. Gifting someone a loved gift on their birthday gives you 640 friednship points, while it takes roughly 2,8 years to loose all of that again. Even when you accidentally gift them a liked gift, that still takes 1,6 years to decay away. (and add 50% on top of these numbers for iridium quality gifts or 25% for gold) Overall if you want to go the way of least resistance, just give them their loved gift on their birthday and get the best Luau response and you should get most villagers easily to full hearts in no time.

And if you don't have the time to gift someone something at least once every 3 years, then i would argue that you don't really care about it at all anyway.

[admos]

Just like real life

[Phirestar]

I didn’t even know there is friendship decay. I’ve never seen it occur, even while making 10-heart friendships with like half a dozen people at a time.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

I should have thought it was obvious? Because people forget about you if you ignore them too long