For my first town I had an unexpectedly great layout. On my first try I also got my favorite native fruit, cherries. At the time of launch I didn't really know what was good or bad, so I just went with it. I had some difficulties with one long, narrow, vertical strip of land that took forever to trek, but Diana planted her house right in the way.
for my first map, i just went with it. it was fairly nice, and i wish i didn't reset because i miss how natural everything was. in my newer map, that i have had for a year in december, i worked on finding a special map for around 2 hours. the only problem i'm facing now is getting villagers in certain spots.
My first town I didn't map reset at all cause I got it at launch and was excited, so I just picked my favorite map from the first set available and by most standards my map sucks, but I've learned to like it and worked around the imperfections of it. My second town map is everything I wanted from my first town map. My third town map was one that I saw and thought I would test out and I actually like it well enough.
I ended up restarting my original town because I didn't like what I did with it. My house was in a bad spot and all of my ideas for PWP placements weren't working in my favor. Plus I wanted perfect Cherries, but that town was Pears... which are my least favorite. So I decided to search for a perfect map with Cherries.
Took me about 45min of map resetting, but I've never been so happy with a town map as with this one! It came with Diana, as well as Cherries, just as I was wanting.
Definitely worth it, it's fun to see everything I envision for my town finally work out.
After resetting for a while I settle for this map...I don't know if I like the pond and a rock right in front of the train station :/ http://imgur.com/zW642NI
For me I just picked a town map out of the four choices given, since I was really excited and wanted to start the game. My town map isn't perfect but I'm trying to make it look nice. If I'd known that you could only have one pond then I probably would've done map resetting in the beginning but like I said I just wanted to get the intro over with and start playing.
Well, I didn't. At least for my first town. I just went with whatever Rover picked out.
For my second town, I spent three days, probably resetting over 300 times. I finally picked out the perfect town, with a horse-shoe shaped river, a private island, and a vertical ramp.
I knew pretty well what I wanted to have so I wasn't going to let go of it. Why just settle when you know the perfect layout is out there? It'd bother me to no end and I wouldn't be able to enjoy my new town. So over 200 resets later I found something that worked perfectly. It's very painful to do, but if you have a dream layout and have some time to spare -- grind a bit. A life-long love for your layout is worth it. I love opening my game.