How is it fun?

I'm probably not one of those people, although I don't have tons of roads, and I tend to have many of my buildings mashed together.

Various reasons for this:

- At this point I'm still trying to earn money for needed buildings to complete quest lines. So I'm not buying up tons of land. As such, I'm squeezing lots of items into not a lot of space.

- I don't like lots of roads, especially since they aren't really used in Springfield. I like cities, I like dense urban areas, buildings next to each other, high density of housing, etc. I don't like having one single building with a bunch of parking next to it surrounded by a square of roads. Some people enjoy giving every building its own block of space, that's not my style.

I have one neighbour like that, but he has a lot of premiums as well. Weird...

My town up till recently was a dumping ground, I started out with great intention but I rapidly ran out of money and land at the start, I also bought quite a few premium buildings as well, as you know while playing you keep getting different types of buildings so I just placed the new stuff in any space I had with the intention of starting a redesigned soon, I would start doing a small area finish that area then get another building of the same type from a task in the game so a redesign was needed again, and on it went till I became overwhelmed with buildings also as I'm not the most imaginative person it got to a point where I just didn't know where to start, so just kept dumping building next to each other, but I still loved playing the game, reading the funny dialogue between the characters in the game and the challenges that were set by EA for things like Christmas, easter etc, finally just after this Christmas we had a period with very little to do so I finally made the decision to sort out my Springfield, l got up the nerve and pressed the nuke button in the game, then thought instantly what have I done when faced with a large green virtually empty area, I have now just about finished with my design and I'm finally happy for now with what I consider myself to be a reasonable Springfield, well something that I'm happy with as I don't have the skill or imagination of some on here, anyway I hope that this sort of explains how someone can enjoy the game yet not have a good design as up till recently I was one of those people, sorry about the wall of text as I'm also one of those who aren't great with language as well, all the best Gary.

I don't mind, while you are still levelling up if things are not perfect. I had times where a lot of items had been just dumped. I still dump occasionally but never looks as bad as it once did. Once I could afford enough land and had enough cash I started to set things up. It's a journey but well worth the wait. even once I had all the land, I had to wait for cash to accumulate to decorate however I wished.

Ningyo42 wrote:
First, I'm not complaining, and am only curious. I'll explain after I tell you what I'm talking about. :)

I go to towns now and then where there are few to no roads at all, and just buildings jammed together in a Tetris like manor, and I wonder how that is fun?

Now I don't mind people doing that, with one exception to the rule. I noticed that people who do that don't seem to play as long as those who design with at least the minimum of roads to put the buildings on. So they end up stopping sooner, and I'll drop them after my usual 4 or so weeks of non activity.

So like I said, I don't mind. I've had people who do this as neighbors, and they're usually good neighbors. They keep their buildings cleared for tapping during visits, and visit me on a regular basis, so I don't have any problem with it. I just don't understand how it's fun to do that in this kind of game.

Any insight, opinions, or whatever? Drop them in a reply. :)

This has been a subject that I also have trouble understanding. To me, it's like being a car collector, and then just parking the cars randomly across many acres of land, and essentially leaving them to rot.
These people should be shunned by society, have their names entered into some sort of register, and have signs placed on their front lawn to let people who.... Well, that may be a bit harsh.

I enjoy taking my time visiting neighbors, as I actually enjoy seeing the artwork they've created. When I see a jumbled mess, it makes me do this:
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs3/2062811_o.gif
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/20140305/4993596/crying-indian-o.gif

I started out Freemiun, and had choices between land and buildings. I choose buildings, to gain the money and experience to level up. I'm now working on buying more land so I can spread out and do some serious civil planning. Maybe I'm weird, but I've had fun playing when I was leveling up, and fitting things in where I could, and now when I'm slowing spreading out. I have a low multiplier so it takes time to earn enough money to have the land to meaningfully spread out. Based on my neighbors I'm not the only one who started out this way, or am working towards a nicer town. As long as my neighbors give me something to tap and visit on a semi regular basis, I'm happy with them. I like seeing them level up and redecorate.

barryriddl474 wrote:

Ningyo42 wrote:
First, I'm not complaining, and am only curious. I'll explain after I tell you what I'm talking about. :)

I go to towns now and then where there are few to no roads at all, and just buildings jammed together in a Tetris like manor, and I wonder how that is fun?

Now I don't mind people doing that, with one exception to the rule. I noticed that people who do that don't seem to play as long as those who design with at least the minimum of roads to put the buildings on. So they end up stopping sooner, and I'll drop them after my usual 4 or so weeks of non activity.

So like I said, I don't mind. I've had people who do this as neighbors, and they're usually good neighbors. They keep their buildings cleared for tapping during visits, and visit me on a regular basis, so I don't have any problem with it. I just don't understand how it's fun to do that in this kind of game.

Any insight, opinions, or whatever? Drop them in a reply. :)

This has been a subject that I also have trouble understanding. To me, it's like being a car collector, and then just parking the cars randomly across many acres of land, and essentially leaving them to rot.
These people should be shunned by society, have their names entered into some sort of register, and have signs placed on their front lawn to let people who.... Well, that may be a bit harsh.

I enjoy taking my time visiting neighbors, as I actually enjoy seeing the artwork they've created. When I see a jumbled mess, it makes me do this:
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs3/2062811_o.gif
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/20140305/4993596/crying-indian-o.gif

Lol...thanks for the much needed Laugh!

I have a freemium and a premium town. The freemium is slowly coming together, but I do have some buildings crammed up while I am buying land and arranging, BUT you can clearly see where I have arranged. In my premium town I have some scattered buildings on the outskirts that aren't placed, due to we just got more land and I am thinking where to put them without blowing up my town. But again the majority of my town is arranged and a functional town with no house farms or smashed buildings.

I'm a crammer. 2 towns worth. I started my first game just before THOH 2014 and the second in the middle of it (by accident, then I decided to continue it as a lark just to see how a pure Freemium game would play out).

I quickly realized that if I bought a bunch of land, filled it up with streets and made everything look pretty, I'd never catch up (I'm still trying to catch up: level 49 on my Premium game, level 47 on my Fremium), so I just started cramming stuff everywhere - better to buy buildings that earn money than buy land that doesn't.

Meanwhile, I realized that the characters on outside tasks and off task were attracted to streets. I also realized that aliens (THOH) were also attracted to them, so I limited my street to one short section. No more tracking down aliens to squish! A few taps and I'd gotten them all.

Later in Winter 2014 part 2 I realized that the elves were also initially attracted to streets when I moved my street over to connect to the Squidport (which also attracts characters). My street was NNE of the cannon and all the elves would drift in that direction after they crashed in - I moved it to the east and they started drifting East...

Furthermore... The streets are all out of proportion to the buildings. They're almost as wide as Brown Houses.

Designing takes time. I have more important things to do than sit around going, "Hmmm, maybe this building would look better over here... And maybe I should build a complex flower bed around it...".

Then there's the fact that I have no artistic sensibility. Anything I designed would look like a typical planned subdivision anyway, so why bother? Sure, I could copy other people's designs, but what's the point? It wouldn't be original.

And lastly... It's A Game. You don't get points for how pretty your town design is (yet... And if that ever starts I will lose SO many points).

I can just imagine them adding that to the Conform-o-meter with your neighbors voting daily on the appearance of your Springfield... I'd have 0 stars for THAT.

I'm one of those with a horribly crammed town and its because I have been getting buildings much faster then places to put them even now when I grabbed a little space after Christmas I know I will end up using most of that with the level 49 items.