#obviously you can't please everyone but consider the things most players want added/changed

[abandonedpie]

Little bit of a vent, not that serious but slightly heavier than you'd expect from the subject.

TL;DR designing an ACNH island is suffering and I took that personally

So my island has been in a WIP state since its creation. Got fairly far with implementing my plans, and I've worked on pieces of it here and there, but recently, I was inspired to redesign the whole thing (again). No longer liked all the ideas I had liked before, and overall felt it was lacking. With some struggle, I started coming up with new ideas that I felt good about.

But the thing that has slowed me down the most? That has me already doubting or even hating my brand new ideas?

Paths. It always comes down to the paths.

Custom paths? Default paths? Both have pros and cons to consider. Fellow ACNH players are likely familiar with these issues: loss of footstep sounds, limited design slots to work with (is it worth using 12+ slots for a single path border?), having to make every design from scratch (no Online for me), lines of grass left between paths/inclines/buildings...

And I can't decide. I can't find an answer. Whatever I try, whatever I imagine, I don't like the result. I've hit a wall, and that wall is my own perfectionism. Clearly there is no perfect solution, and I have to compromise to progress—"finished, not perfect" and all that—but I don't want to compromise the vision I have for my island, even though I know that vision is unattainable.

I just want to have an island I'm happy with. And it feels like no matter what I do with it, I'll never be satisfied. I've seen such beautiful pictures and videos of other people's islands, and while they inspire me and fuel my creativity, they also raise my standards for my own island because I know it could be so much better.

I want to be able to settle for "good enough." But it feels like trying to paint a rainbow with one or two colors missing or not quite the right shade. Maybe I can make something pretty, but it's not what I envisioned or want.

So I think, let's just come up with something different. There are plenty of designs I would like just as much or more, right? I'm already struggling because I like multiple exclusive aesthetics/layouts/etc. and I can't fit them all on one island. But...paths are kinda omnipresent, and that means I have to accept them being substandard. Unless? I've considered using minimal to no paths, but I can't imagine that working for me. I'm not going for full-on natural forestcore or whatever (and even that wouldn't look its best without dirt paths, right?).

I guess I might've made this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. At this point, I feel tired and stuck and hopeless, and part of me wants to let it go. It's just a game. But I don't want to give up and leave my island a mess again. For a short while, I was excited to create, thinking I could shape my little land into something great, something I could walk through with a smile and maybe feel proud of. And now I wonder if that's really possible. There must be something I can do, something I'd like, but I don't know how to find it. I'm honestly having trouble focusing on it right now.

Seeking inspiration is a double-edged sword. As nice as other people's islands look, I know a lot of pictures are shared with filters, and even those that aren't...well, seeing images and videos is different than walking through your own island day after day.

I could go into the game's flaws and limitations, but this is what we've got. And it's not all bad. There's potential. The problem is my own inner critic, and I don't know how to get past it.

The best part is that I've been trying to fight this perfectionism with the game from the beginning, when I last restarted my island and named it Wabisabia after the term wabi-sabi, the Japanese ideal/aesthetic centered on transience and imperfection. You can see how well that's going for me ha ha ha! Even if I want to embrace it in theory, it's not so easy to break through the perfectionism cemented inside me.

Anyway, yeah. Back to agonizing over my island I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯