I've made a mistake...

[Whizzurd]

For a long time now, this has been putting me off. I have a "little neighborhood" where all of the animals basically reside. It's symmetrical for the most part, and has a red brick theme. I personally name it the "Red Brick District".

Although, I think it's starting to lose it's charm. Why? Well, I don't know if it's just me, but all the animals will only really reside in that area of the map. They would hover mostly over there, and at the town hall, and thats basically it. 90% of the rest of my island never really has anyone else walking around. Occasionally, and I mean really rare, I may catch an animal that decided to go walk around the museum.

Is this normal? Basically with how my island is set up, I never liked my island. The concept of the storage thing gives me anxiety, and I'm sincerely not a billionaire or anything here... as Im quite aware that moving a villager costs a hefty sum, and an entire day, (I don't time travel, and never will). I'm not thast great at terraforming at all I guess, and always feel that whenever I go to another island, most of the time it seems like they have such a creative process and the bells/means to get it done. Now over here, not even my own villagers will seldom leave their little district.

Any thoughts or opinions? Would it be worth it moving them each day, even if it's costly? Seeing as the update hits 11/5, it looks like a good chunk of it suits the style of giving a villager their own space of land anyway.

 

[Insulaire]

I used to have all my villagers in one area too. A few months ago I remodeled and spread out the villager homes and now they roam way more around the island. I highly recommend spreading out

 

[Khaelis]

Main reason why I tried to avoid these 'gated community' style builds. Having villagers spaced apart gives more creative freedom. Nothing wrong with making someone neighbours, though!

 

[HappyTails]

I would space them out. I had at one point did the whole neighborhood thing as well myself.

Exhibit A

Spoiler: Neighborhood

Not only did the problem you have now with the villagers hanging out in the neighborhood and not going anywhere, but it resulted in a lot of empty space that I didn't know what to do with.

So in spreading them out

Spoiler: Spread Out

Not only will the villagers move around the island more, it takes up space and your villagers can each have their own areas.

 

[DarkSlayer1331]

I have a small neighborhood where six villagers live. The other four live along the river on the other side of the island. I live up north. I do have all of these areas connected via paths, and my villagers are all over. I'll even have a villager be at my picnic area sometimes, and that's up on a cliff, and it doesn't have a path leading to it. So I guess I have things spread out enough to have my villagers all over, but it's kind of cute to have a little neighborhood spot too. But these days I think it might be nice to really spread them all out and give all of them a decent yard.

 

[DJStarstryker]

It absolutely is true. I used to have my villagers spread out and they wandered more. But now that I have a neighborhood area, they mostly stay near it. I personally don't find it to be a problem for me personally. It makes it easier to find them when I want to talk to them or give them a gift. Since NH doesn't have the megaphone item like NL does, it did annoy me that I'd struggle to find any animals not in their houses before.

I did feel bad that they don't have their own little yard, like they did before. But now that HHP is coming out, they could have their own yard with their vacation home on the archipelago. I can save the island space for decorating as I want to.

 

[VanitasFan26]

You're not the only one. Most of all my villagers just hang out at Resident Services. Half the time I barely seem them walking around other parts of the island. I did had their homes faraway on my 2nd island but even still I find them at the Plaza all the time. It annoys me when the villagers just walk by all those chairs and benches that I setup but they ignore it and choose to set by the trees instead.

On my old island I used to have all the villager homes spread out but at the time it was not a good idea because I just find myself having to run a long distance just to get to that one villager's home that was far. Nowadays on both my islands I have them in a vertical line of 2 rows. 5 on top and 5 on the bottom. So it made it easier for me to see which villager was home and which wasn't. It would've been cool if I was able to design yards for them, but that would just take up too much of my time. Luckily the Happy Home Designer update that we saw is the idea that I wanted for the longest time to become a reality.

Although I sometimes wonder have the villager cap went up to 15 instead of just having only 10 then maybe there would be a variety of villagers wondering around the island just so it would feel more alive.

 

[daringred_]

my villagers are all over the place, and they do tend to roam quite a bit. usually, they'll stay within the same acre or so as their house, but other times they'll be in the same acre as someone else's house entirely, and my villagers who live up on the cliffs will often wander over to or spawn in the plaza, which is on the complete opposite side of town. the only area where it's unusual to find a villager is the middle strip of my island where, ironically, there are no villager houses, so i'm sure there is some merit to this.

 

[Brookie]

You can always have 2-3 neighborhoods/residential spots on different areas of the map.

• 2 spots: sets of 5
• 3 spots: sets of 3-4

This could help spice things up and get the villagers to explore more evenly throughout the nmap.

 

[Marshmallows]

I've found that the villagers like to walk on paths. Not so much custom pathing, but the default paths (with custom on top or not.) Very rarely will I see a villager walking through the flowers.

All my houses are spread out, mostly in groups of two with a couple single homes. Their favorite places to hang out seem to be RS plaza, around their house, or the paths right near RS but I've spotted them everywhere. If you put new things down in an area or terraform, it seems like they like to check it out.

 

[Pokeking]

I have a neighborhood and I don't mind if they stay near there.

I've got flowers growing on the rest of the island. Plus, I'm wanting to display all the bug models in addition to certain series/themes on the uninhabited parts of the island.

 

[Bobbo]

I have my villagers spread out from one side of the island to the other. They’re always out and about. When I’m searching for fossils and such, I always run Into villagers!

 

[Whizzurd]

I've decided to take each day and move a villager each day. On top of that, give my entrance a make-over with hills and such, and hopefully terraform more inward from there to create something more. I've lacked the motivation recently, aha.

 

[Regalli]

It absolutely is true. I used to have my villagers spread out and they wandered more. But now that I have a neighborhood area, they mostly stay near it. I personally don't find it to be a problem for me personally. It makes it easier to find them when I want to talk to them or give them a gift. Since NH doesn't have the megaphone item like NL does, it did annoy me that I'd struggle to find any animals not in their houses before.

I did feel bad that they don't have their own little yard, like they did before. But now that HHP is coming out, they could have their own yard with their vacation home on the archipelago. I can save the island space for decorating as I want to.

Yeah, personally I prefer them being more in one area - they talk to each other a fair bit, it’s easier on me looking for them, and I spaced it out enough that they each have at least a little bit of space for some decorations and flowers. I’m not one for elaborate landscaping anyway, and there’s usually one or two villagers wandering off on the beach or other corners of the island. Besides, I put a big plaza right between the two blocks of houses with benches and a table and maybe it’s because it’s directly behind the town plaza and they prefer that to everything else, but they never use any of it. So I feel better leaving the rest of the island to tinker with as I please.

 

[gh0st]

I have the same issue and I think I want to change it. I visited an island once where each villager had their own cute little front yard and I think that it would be cuter.

 

[moon_child]

I recently reset my island and am currently trying to decide whether I’d go for a structured neighborhood with personalized yards or do it the same as I did in my previous island where they’re all scattered in diff parts of the island with their own areas. The upside of the scattered style is they are all over the island but it can be hard to find them sometimes. A structured neighborhood makes it easy to find them all and visit them and it leaves plenty of room to make projects for the rest of the island.

 

[Violet Witch]

How strange, I have a neighbour that spans the bottom left hand side of my island over two levels but they all still happily wander across all areas of my island. The only explanation I can come up is that they're pretty spread out as oppose to being right next to one another, which might explain why others like yourself only see them stay in one area.

 

[Pecora]

I also placed them all together and I like that this makes the area more "city like". I also have a little forest with only one house and a deep woods area where no one lives. For me the fact that some places are more visited then others just makes sense...

If you don´t like it you can always redecorate - You have 9 TBT and since 1 million bells usually equals 1 TBT; you can already get enough bells by trading with the forum currency.

 

[Sheydra]

Hmm I have a group community but my islanders end up everywhere on my island.

 

[-Blue-]

I did a huge strip on the bottom of the beach to give it a private beach resort theme. There is a break with 4ish houses due to a river. I will probably spread those ones out somewhere else eventually because they do only ever walk around that spot. I think it's because they're coded to spawn in around the plaza/other villager homes and since all are tightly together they don't really go far.