Which of the Default Neighborhoods do you use for your sims? I usually just pop mine into Pleasantview, since it's pretty much the same idea as what you do in The Sims 1, and it's easier than making my own neighborhood.

I used Pleasantview or Riverviewblossom (Seasons) before I started assembling custom neighborhoods.

I'm not a builder, but I think it's remarkably easy to assemble your own neighborhood from the terrains and lots available here. It took me a while to get the hang of decorating those 'hoods, but even before I figured out trees and clouds and steaming grates, I loved the personality of the neighborhoods.

p.s. Thanks, RiBlan!

(Mangaroo, I think you mean Riverblossom. )

I always used Strangetown. I dunno, I just liked the vibe of it. :D

I build custom 'hoods for custom Sims. It takes alot of time and effort, twice I deleted custom 'hoods after playing as I wasn't happy with them, once I had to delete very elaborate custom 'hood after it became glitchy. Now I'm slowly building (and already playing) another custom 'hood, using stuff I downloaded here, at GoS and SimsCave, the theme is "anything unusual", punk, gothic, , vampiric, steampunk, etc, and I play all four seasons, therefore none of premade neighbourhoods would work for me. I'm really not a builder either, it does not hold that much fun for me, but I love to decorate and furnish the lots, that's what I'm mostly working now on and it's fun, so takes so much time, I hope once I'm done this new place won't become glitchy too.

However, if I were to pick a custom 'hood for playing custom game, I'd choose Desiderata valley or Strangetown, depending on either I wish to play all the seasons or only summer

I use custom terrains-mostly islands, because it's easier to navigate around the neighborhood. I dislike almost all of the default hoods, and need something empty that I can customize to my heart's content.
In fact, I've become so fussy that I've removed all the decorations from my hoods and made them empty by not having any cars in the neighborhood view with a hack. It's useful when you have a medieval hood that should not have cars in it.

I'm using Pleasantview. I've been using that since I had just the base game. Problem is, whenever I get a new expansion that installs a new 'hood, I want to play there instead.

That's where my main families are, anyways. I've also put a few in Belladonna Cove -- characters who are based on existing fictional characters will go in there.

Mine go wherever I feel like it! I don't often put them into Strangetown though, I find that neighborhood rather small so although I like it I tend to keep that just for the sims already there. I expect most are probably in Pleasantview or Belladonna Cove though, as I think I play those the most. I have built one custom neighborhood, but it's themed. I'm generally rubbish at committing myself to creating a whole new neighborhood; I get bored.

I have a couple of themed custom 'hoods, but for my random Sims, I put them in Strangetown. I'm a sci-fi geek, so I heart Strangetown

I did put a family in Strangetown once, but I ususally make custom neighborhoods. (I love playing with neighborhood decorations.)
I like the Pleasantview terrain, though. The highest hill near the edge of town has room for a nice huge lot that you can stick a castle onto.

Before I made custom 'hoods, I used to stick my sims in Pleasantview (often) or Riverblossom (rarely). Aside from Strangetown, I never really played around with any of the other 'hoods.

When I first started playing I usually played Pleasantville but then I started to love Veronaville.

After I reinstalled my game though and got Seasons I have been in love with Riverblossom Hill and am still playing it. All my familes are there + I also play the familes that were already there.

I start all of my neighborhoods from scratch, with the Blank Neighborhood Templates from MATY.

Pleasantview seems like the most playable default 'hood, though, since all of the characters in Veronaville are themed and Strangetown is kind of hard to add characters to without the odd bent of Strangetown's obvious weirdness.

I always played pleasantview. Then one day i got bored with it and I was like, "hum...Veronaville, let's see..." Fell in love with it since. Trying to recreate it in Ts3. if only Riverview didn't glitch.

Strangetown .... I've never used Veronaville.

My favorite hood was Riverblossom. But I ran out of room making my houses too big. I didn't know really what I was doing, so all my houses back then were crappy. I don't like to place them too close together, so I decided to try another hood for more room and just became very comfortable playing in Veronaville. Because of the sims, not the terrain. I don't like the terrain much, so I've finally branched out to subhoods. I think the main subhood I am using now is a blank Pleasantview. I would rather have a very flat subhood with maybe a few beaches, but I'm too afraid of messing things up downloading custom hoods. I have a ton of cc, mods and hacks, so I don't know why I'm hesitant about hoods. I just know I can't talk myself into it.

I don't use the default neighbourhoods for my own sims at all. I prefer making my own terrains.
The only time I play a default terrain is when I play a premade neighbourhood, and usually then I still tweak the existing terrain with Mootilda's HoodReplace to make the buildable areas flat and the roadlayout a bit more sensible.

Cheshirekat: There's absolutely nothing that can go wrong if all you download is the simple terrain, being the SC4 file. The game doesn't even recognise it as 'custom'. Pick one you like, pop it in the SC4 File folder, and have a brandnew terrain to play around with

I like custom neibourhoods, but I always seem to use Belladonna Cove, don't know why.

normally i make custom hoods, but if i do stick them in one, it's normally Strangetown, as in my opinion, that place is the funnest place too play (:

Cheshirekat: some sc4 files don't come with neighborhood pictures. If you get one of those it will look like a wireframe in the neighborhood selector. It's not broken unless it doesn't load. You just need to add a picture. Go into the game, snap a picture of the neighborhood, then open it in a graphics program and save as N00?_Neighborhood.png (where ? is the neighborhood number) Drop it in the folder to replace that silly wireframe.

You can even update the photo as the neighborhood grows.

Since I'm too lazy to build my own neighborhoods, I always used Pleasantview... the problem is that it became overpopulated
I didn't want to delete any of my characters, so I had to choose another neighborhood. I like Veronaville as it is and I don't want to touch it yet. And, even if I like the mystery in Strangetown, I'm not a huge fan of the desert... so now I'm populating Riverblossom Hills

I don't think I've ever used Veronaville, the air of the place is too snotty/upper class for me (no offense to anyone who uses it!) I also don't like that my sims would move in, have two Capps and a Monty come by...and they would start arguing! ooohh, that got me so mad. So I just never look in on the Summerdreams or anything.

Usually though, I'll use Belladonna Cove or Pleasantview. I'm smitten with Desiderata Valley, but evertime I get into CAS, no matter who I make looks like they wouldn't fit in there...so I end up recreating them in either Belladonna or Pleasantview XD

Prosthetics, I killed all the Capps except Hermia. Really enjoyed doing it.

Although, I have to say that there really wasn't any fighting after I killed Consort Capp a while ago. He was the main one starting fights and attacking my sims. That's what made me hate the Capps so much.

When I first started playing Veronaville, I just wanted to kill off all the maxis characters. So I ignored them until I got ready to kill them. The only reason I started playing with the Monty clan is that Bianca was so friendly she made friends with my sims in comm lots. I kept getting that message "You can't call someone that doesn't have a phone." because so many of my sims tried to call her. So I looked her up, found her living in an empty house, and instead of just giving her a phone, I moved her into a small furnished house. Then I had to play her to make sure the house I built was okay. Fell in love with her because she was like water gently caressing the shores of most of my families. Not snobby at all.

I have very few sims like Bianca and I like sims that can make a lot of friends easily. I had other sims I tried to make main characters and they always seemed to make too many enemies or manifest weird behaviour.

I didn't like the Summerdreams either. Something about Juliette and Hermia made me think of hidden, sneaky, evil. Titania gives me that creepy feeling too. I don't know why I didn't kill Titania when I killed the other Summerdreams. Sims with weird face makeup bother me. I don't mind the pointy ears, though I don't know why she has pointy ears. I just hope the face painting is removable because it annoys me each time I look at her. Each time I think about giving her a makeover, I look at her and think that without her makeup, she reminds me of the Capps. So, I'll probably end up killing her. Right now I just don't zoom in close.

The face paint is actually removable, but I didn't like what I saw underneath it!

Well, a few years ago, when I had only 3 basic hoods, I started playing Pleasantview because of its storyline and that Bella incident, which gave this small town an intrigue. I made quite a ot of Sims and moved them into that NH. However, I got fed up with it soon, and its soap-operaish atmosphere started to annoy me, so I looked into other two NHs. I disliked Veronaville bacause of its predicatable character (well, I know, that some creative ppl play the scenarion in a different way, not according to the Shakespeare's plays, but I was not one of them, definitely). And the houses didn't appeal to me, too.
Strangetown seemed to be unpleasant mainly because of its desert climate (I hate hot places, and prefer cooler, temperate climate), but its wierdness was very attractive, so I decided to put some quite normal sims I created in CAS (I didn't use BodyShop back then)into this odd plce, and make them survive and get used to the wierd atmosphere they found themselves in. It was fun, but not for a long time. I became a more experienced builder, discovered how to download CC, and got some EPs soon (I bought Uni, OFB and NL at once, so there was much new for me) and created my first custom NH. I never played Eaxis hoods since then. I went into the NHs coming with each EP, but well, there was not so interesting.

I like Pleasantview the best, but I try to spread my CAS sims into Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville evenly. I like that Pleasantview has the "soap operaish" feel because I can manipulate how the characters do things and it doesn't "mess up" the feel of the neighborhood. Stangetown is great for putting my geeky/sci-fi sims in. I also am a HUGE Shakespeare fan so I like Veronaville as well. I stick my fanfic/RPC characters in that one.