Structure of the town

[Sothe]

This has to be one of the things I’m most interested to see once we get some actual footage. What are your hopes for the overall design/structure of the town?

Personally, I feel like City Folk had the best overall town designs. I love having a town that has tiers to it. That was one of the best features they brought back from the original game, and it’s somethig that I hope makes another return in the Switch version. The town also just felt so large and spacious, too, which has to be one of my biggest gripes with the handheld versions, but I understand why they’re smaller.

I remember everyone being so excited when we got that little teaser image of a map before any New Leaf footage was released. For me, though, I feel like New Leaf has the worst overall town structure before any PWPs are taken into account. I still love the game and play it every day, but in comparison to the previous ACs, I just find the layout of the town to be... boring. It’s basically just a cliff with a river running through it. They sorta implemented tiers with the beach being below the town, but it’s not the same. The beach being below the town itself is actually kind of frustrating. It’s good for hybrid farming, but other than that I really don’t like it. It’s just really frustrating when you’re trying to find a villager for a delivery or something and run all over your town not finding them, just to eventually see them on the beach practically a mile away from the slope back up. For that reason alone I hope the beaches are just connected to the town again.

It’s be pretty cool if we were able to select a geographical location for our town when we’re creating it. If you want to have a town that’s like a beachside cliff like in New Leaf, you can. Or if you want a more forest-y town like in GameCube or City Folk, you can. They can even introduce new town locations like around a mountainside. It’d be a pretty adventurous idea that I doubt they’d do, but it’s just a thought.

What are your hopes for the design of towns in the Switch version?

 

[princepoke]

ooo being able to choose the terrain would be amazing tbh! ive lost at hide and seek a few times if only because a villager would hide in the corner of my beach behind a coconut tree while i was combing my town thrice over ;;

i find the cliff layout LOOKS pretty snazzy, and its great especially cause it means theres an?ther waterfall aside from the one in the edge/side of the town that the river comes in thru, but ive got a trees here and there which make it a little hard to get down the single ramp access to the beaches...
i hope if theyre gonna keep the cliffs honestly, theyd implement at least another ramp on them :-(

a little more space overall would be great too tbh cause unless uv got near to no trees and a river cut that allows u to maximize space, with 9-10 villagers, 3 characters, and basic town-locted buildings (retail, police station, capsite, roost cafe), theres not a lot of space to really run around too much ive found.. ive even been contemplating cutting down all my trees except 1 or 2 of each fruit way in the corner just so that i have some actual space to move and put down a fourth character house when needed again..

 

[Roshan]

imagine a map like breath of the wild

 

[watercolorwish]

oof im really excited to see this. i really hope that the town layout is hilly. it would make spacing out PWPs way more interesting. i also hope theres the option to choose the geographical location too

 

[Sothe]

ooo being able to choose the terrain would be amazing tbh! ive lost at hide and seek a few times if only because a villager would hide in the corner of my beach behind a coconut tree while i was combing my town thrice over ;;

i find the cliff layout LOOKS pretty snazzy, and its great especially cause it means theres an?ther waterfall aside from the one in the edge/side of the town that the river comes in thru, but ive got a trees here and there which make it a little hard to get down the single ramp access to the beaches...
i hope if theyre gonna keep the cliffs honestly, theyd implement at least another ramp on them :-(

a little more space overall would be great too tbh cause unless uv got near to no trees and a river cut that allows u to maximize space, with 9-10 villagers, 3 characters, and basic town-locted buildings (retail, police station, capsite, roost cafe), theres not a lot of space to really run around too much ive found.. ive even been contemplating cutting down all my trees except 1 or 2 of each fruit way in the corner just so that i have some actual space to move and put down a fourth character house when needed again..

That’s one thing I’ve found, too, that after you get all of the permanent buildings, villagers, additional characters, that there really doesn’t seem to be that much space left to work with. I feel like this should be fixed in the switch version though, since I’m expecting our towns to be bigger again like they were when we went from Wild World to City Fok.

 

[Sweetley]

imagine a map like breath of the wild

Imagine playing hide and seek with your villagers with such a map, takes you three days to
find that one villager because the map is so big, lol (but I would kinda like it to be honest).

Honestly, while I do love playing New Leaf, I started to hate how the town and beach aren't
that connected anymore as it was in CF. I remember how a villager house or even your own
house could be near the beach, like you walk out and you was there. It was so cool and I
really enjoyed it because it was pretty nice in my opinion. In NL however, there are now
those cliffs, and while I'm not hate them with passion, I just... dislike them. I do agree that
CF and it's towns designs were awesome and I really wish that you can choose in the Switch
game if you want a town in the design of CF or NL (or maybe sort of a combination of both).

What I would like to see would be a underground part of the town, like where you can find
a subway for example. Other then that, I wish you could also choose what kind of climate
you want, like if you want your town located in a cold place with more snowy days or in a
hot place with more sunny days and so on. Kinda like in HHD. And of course a bigger town
with more space in general would be great.

 

[AlyssaAC]

Agreed. I would love to see bigger and better maps. Also, instead of only giving you the choice to choose from four maps, they should let you cycle through as many as you would like just to find the one that's best. I really miss the maps from City Folk and wish they didn't change that.

 

[loglady]

I'd love being able to choose the terrain. I originally wanted my town to be a modern/fairytale mix but because of the design it ended up looking more like forest/fairytale after placing all the trees and bushes. It'd also be great to choose the climate.

I've never played City Folk myself, but a tiered town sounds really nice and more realistic. I'd love to have some structures on cliffs and beaches, too. You can only have structures on the beach if you hack your town, which I couldn't do even if I'd like :-(

I really wish the town was bigger also because I have barely any PWPs in place and my town feels so cramped. When I can get Chai, who I want to be my 10th villager, I have no idea where I'll put her because I don't think I have any space that's convenient.

 

[smonikkims]

Looking at some of the areas in PC, I'm wondering if we might get sort of... multilayered cliffs? Like, these little mini ones here, except having it so that you can actually use them. Of course that would suck for PWPs but I think it'd be interesting and make for a lot more different combinations for towns. The number of potential maps for NL is actually surprisingly small.

 

[lunatepic]

Looking at some of the areas in PC, I'm wondering if we might get sort of... multilayered cliffs? Like, these little mini ones here, except having it so that you can actually use them. Of course that would suck for PWPs but I think it'd be interesting and make for a lot more different combinations for towns. The number of potential maps for NL is actually surprisingly small.

oooh i was thinking of this, it'd definitely add a lot more variety. i like the idea of having lots of mini cliffs (maybe stairs?)

 

[oath2order]

It's going to console, so it's likely to be tiered, I agree with you there.

imagine a map like breath of the wild

I mean yes, but it won't happen.

I wouldn't mind roughly the same from NL. Maybe a more gradual flow to beaches.

 

[Snowesque]

I actually quite liked the layout of New Leaf.
I liked having more access and the feeling of being less cut off. Having more bridges helped too.
Being able to edit terrain would be great.

 

[MapleSilver]

I really hope they bring back tiers, and perhaps even 3-tiered towns. If they are concerned about navigation, they could let us place our own ramps as PWPs.