What makes a "Good" town map?

[Lavamaize]

In my opinion, these factors make a good town map (bascially your favorite map and how it would look):

- One beac with a island that you must wim to
- A river that does not leave a bunch or small spaces/space
- A southern facing waterfall
- All the starting features (Retail, Town Hall, plaza, Train station) are not bunched up close together
- At least one opening to the beach that faces downs as opposed to the side.


Thats about it for me, what about you?

 

[Khaelis]

The one I like the most. Pretty much it.

 

[CasualWheezer]

I'd say a good town map would have a lot of open space for public works projects and several houses, the buildings and the ponds spread apart, and every part of the town should be easy to get to and not isolated from the rest of the town.

 

[Laconic]

As long as the river doesn't cut weirdly and make one side of the map super small, I don't really mind too much about how it looks. I can get use to everything else, or find uses for the layout.

 

[Twix]

I remember I used to reset for hours and hours to find that "perfect" town, but here are my personal preferences...

- Ponds that don't interfere with any paths. Preferably only the one that's required in the Re-Tail acre!
- Rocks that aren't placed in the worst places.
- A south facing waterfall!
- A private beach that can't be accessed without a swimsuit.
- A ramp to the beach facing downwards that lines up perfectly with the dock.

 

[BluebearL]

Well in my reset of Velaris which is now Patna, there is a nice big secret (you can only swim to it) island and I have turned it into a little resort! I also find it important that the retail shop, town hall, main plaza etc are on the same side of the river for convenience. I also hate it when the bridge is placed is a really annoying spot you have to walk around the whole map to get to just to get over (not sure if that makes sense but hopefully you get what I mean) and the other thing I like is minimal ponds. They aren't great for fishing, don't add a nice aesthetic and just annoy me (especially if I am laying down a path) So yeah. That's it for me The rest doesn't really worry me to much. Although (un-map related) I really like my native fruit to be peaches.

 

[Sweetley]

Personally, I would call a town map good if it has the following features:

- The plaza being located in the central
- Town hall and Re-Tail not being so squashed on the edges of the town or far away from the train
station (alternative plaza)
- Having not so many rocks
- Having not so many ponds (the best would be one to three in total)
- Apples or cherries as town fruit (although isn't so important for me, as I would just replace them)
- No small spots or private beach (not a fan of this)

 

[Duu]

I like a winding river that covers as much ground as possible. Its pleasing to the eye to have a body of water visible and to have paths go along the banks. In my town I chose a rather short and straight river that wouldnt interfere much and would leave more large areas of land, but now I kinda regret it ��

I like Retail, town hall etc being as far away from each other as possible. If I make a pretty town I want a reason to go into every corner, not be huddled in one spot with my house and everything else. Imo it makes it feel more alive when houses are scattered.

 

[Blood Eclipse]

It took me hours of resetting to get a map I could finally settle on. The only problem was that my native fruit wasn't peach as I wanted it to be originally, but I wasn't about to spend another hour of resetting to get the perfect map again that also happened to have peach as the native fruit. Every town map that had peaches were terrible. Either the river was way at the bottom and only left a bit of space at the bottom for PWP and villager homes, or the retail shop was at the bottom next to the town hall.

My "perfect" town map, or the best one I settled on, has tge retail at the top right and park at the bottom left leaving plenty of room to add villager home s and my character homes in the bottom and stores and the police station on the top, next to the train tracks.

I'm mostly satisfied with the layout. Everything looks good, except the villager homes that refused to move in the open areas I left for them.

 

[LadyDestani]

I don't have just one set of preferences for a map. My requirements might change depending on what I plan on doing. But there are a few things that I consistently look for.

I like an interesting river shape that winds through town. I don't like rivers that are too straight or the ones that are scrunched up on one side of town.

I usually prefer to have the main buildings and features spread out a bit. I don't want Town Hall, Re-Tail, and the event plaza all clustered together. It's a bonus if Re-Tail is within easy reach of the dock, but it's not a deal breaker if it's not.

I've experienced split beaches and one long beach with a private beach and I have to say I have pain points with both. I don't like needing a wetsuit to reach the private beach. It's annoying when I'm looking for Gulliver or something. But it's also a pain to have to check two beaches instead of one. So I guess the main thing is that if I have to have a private beach, I want it to be tiny. That way Gulliver is less likely to spawn there and I can mostly ignore it.

I don't mind ponds, grass shape, native fruit, or building colors for the most part. I'll try to work with whatever I get as long as the rest of the map meets my needs.

 

[dizzy bone]

I think any map has the potential of looking great depending on how you landscape it. But here are some features I enjoy seeing in maps:

- Lots of space around town tree/plaza. I don't like it when it's off to one corner of the map, same with public buildings.
- 3 or more ponds. Love ponds
- Apples or Peaches native fruit
- Straight slopes down to the beach and dock
- Beaches with no inaccessible areas or private beaches (I prefer having a ramp in every split part of the beach)
- Not having too many permanent rocks or at least not right in front of buildings
- South facing waterfalls
- Winding/interesting looking rivers

Features that don't matter to me:

- Grass shape/pattern.
- Starter townhall/train station colours
- Starting villagers

 

[Stephanie92]

I see a lot of people posting about no private beaches, but I wish I had one, hybrid breeding is hard enough without villagers running around and possibly planting flowers. Aside from that I usually like somewhere private to live, and good space to plot reset my villagers as neighbours. I love apple's, cherrys or oranges as native fruit. I like it when the river isn't too bumpy, like, if it's straighter. My town tree is fairly central in my map, I like that too. And not too many rocks.


Oh, and I really like it when your starting town City Hall and Train Station are both green.... I like the square grass but doesn't the triangle grass turn to stars in winter?

 

[Lynnea]

As long as my town doesn't have a bunch of tiny ponds it's okay with me. I can't stand those lil things. I want to place my PWPs dang it!

 

[AlyssaAC]

Not really sure. Of all the maps I went through to look around at, I believe my favorite map would have to be this:

1. River goes almost straight through the middle and makes the town split in half with lots of space.
2. Retail has got to be near the beach with the dock to make quick and easy access to the island and selling bugs/fish.
3. The campsite is on the bottom half of the town.
4. Enough space on the top half of the town where I can put my house in the corner near the tunnel where the train comes out first.
5. Town is facing west so that the museum is on the east side.

I think that pretty much covers it. I like to have lots of room in my town for building and placing paths down and for public works projects to fit anywhere. I also really like having my house up in the corner top of my town. It's fun to see the train come out of the tunnel.

 

[Alyx]

1) There's no rock in front of the train station.
2) There's a lot of space around the plaza.
3) There is a lot of room up in the corners of the town.
4) The Town Hall is not too far from the plaza.

That's all I can think of.

 

[MapleCake]

For me, in past towns, I've always made sure I had a town with a vertical slope on the south beach leading directly up to the door of Re-Tail. 2nd thing is I preferred a train coming from the left, but the right is fine if the other things matched up. Such as, having town square and town hall close to each other AND as far up to the north, by the train tracks, as possible. 1 or 2 ponds MAX. Then when they updated with the campgrounds, you make sure that was also as far up north as possible but the town hall and town square couldn't be too close to campgrounds. Town fruit of preference was peaches and pears. I was able to gave this "perfect" town by my standards at least 3 times.
My 2 currents, I've gotten lazy with spending literal DAYS even WEEKS until I found the most perfect town.
Ginger has a vertical slope on the south beach but it doesn't lead straight up to anything. But I do have Town hall AND Re-Tail lined up perfectly on the same row, close to the vertical slope, which I had thread a T-Intersection through, which I think actually looks super nice. 1 pond. And town tree is still north, and next to the train station, and a couple walks west is my campground. My town fruit is Cherries and although not my favorite, I initially was excited to have cherries as my town fruit, however, I got sick of looking at them so I don't have to many of them planted. Lots of other fruits though. To hide the fact my town fruit is cherries lol. Also my train comes from the left so it feels the most natural to me.
My new town, Citron, is a bit of a challenge for me. There's a vertical slope on the south beach that leads to nothing. Retail and Town Hall are lined up but opposite sides of the north of my map. Town Square is to the direct right of Town hall and campground next to that. Very closely packed. 1 pond as well. This town train station comes from the right. Town fruit is Oranges! I actually love the fact that it's Oranges and I got so lucky landing an okay town map with oranges because I wanted a town to fit my Citrus theme I'm trying to work on.

Thing is though, I found myself more often than not, hating or feeling dissatisfied with my previous towns because I lucked out so often and had perfect maps imo, that there was no challenges in putting them together. I ended up getting incredibly bored of them because it was essentially the same town but different themes, every time.
I adore my new towns have these differences or "quirks" in my eyes because it gives me more of an opportunity to become inspired and makw more unique layouts. I try not to stress too much about the layouts now. But I do still love the vertical south slope, minimal ponds and the neat alignments from my buildings. Other than that, anything is fine. I can make it work.

 

[katieofsweetpea]

i usually like haing secret beach, good starting bridge, 2 or less ponds and re-tail (ish) to the beach