Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but I feel like what you're describing is Stockholm Syndrome. The mechanic is designed to make you spend more time performing redundant and tedious tasks, so that it takes longer to grind for whatever you want. If you enjoy that I think that's perfectly valid (there are definitely some games where I enjoy some limitations like these) but I wouldn't call it a superior mechanic by any means. For animal crossing in particular, my opinion is: sandbox games shouldn't have such strict limitations once you've reached a "post-game" playing area. At some point you should be able to let your creativity fly without meaningless restrictions like these.