Vesta's #1 Fan

sub types of personalities (this is a thing in NH)

giving villagers hobbies (this is a thing in NH)

give the player character more opportunities to respond in conversations. most conversations should give you at least once chance to respond, and a lot of them should give you 2-4 chances to respond, so the same conversation can end a bunch of different ways

bring back the feature where if you say the wrong thing, you might upset the villager, making them sad/angry, or making them extra happy if you say the right thing

some sort of "gossip" system. each personality type and species is either more or less likely to get along with each other, and how those traits line up determine how well any two given characters get along. if two characters especially like or dislike each other, or if there is a big mismatch between how they feel about each other, other villagers will talk about it with the player. "do you notice X and Y always hang out together?", "A and B always seem to be at each other's throats" <- that sorta thing. these villagers will also either hang out more or avoid each other based on this.

friendship points can enter into the negatives if you're mean enough to a villager. if they're only a little bit in the negative, they'll act a bit snarky. further into the negatives they'll start being outright rude. really far into the negatives, they can do really annoying stuff like steal things in your pockets like in the game cube game, deny requests for things like moving their house, way overcharge you for things that they're selling, deliberately scare away bugs and fish if they see you trying to catch them. the big concern is that villagers who are mean for no reason can be upsetting, but I think it should be fair game if the player is actively antagonistic towards the villager

simple hotel room highly inspired by @mochisquish liminal space interiors