I can not get the absolute most from my sport since it is locked away behind those damn balloons

Agreed! There's undoubtedly a nostalgia factor, but I can't help but believe that ACNH remains kind of Animal Crossing Items vacant. I keep running out of things to do whenever there isn't a special event happening. At least whenever there weren't any events to perform in ACNL, I could go to Tortimer's island!

Absolutely agreed. I can not get the absolute most from my sport since it is locked away behind those damn balloons.

Honestly, I am fine with the balloons even for seasonal DIYs. However it should not be the only way to get them. They could just do something simple, such as when you catch a maple leaf you would have a 1/10 possibility of your character moving"wait, that's not a leaf it is a DIY" or something like this.

I played al lot in november and just got the all the Mush DIYs on the last day by just keeping the Switch running to the entire day and popping every ballon that flew by (while working on other things). I understood it had changed but that I couldn't remember how it functioned in New Leaf. It has been a couple of cheap Animal Crossing Bells years since I did it.