Are townies in the Sims 4 all created with different appearances, rather than the generic pudding face mess that shipped with The Sims 3? It appears to me that they are, but I was wondering if this is just a result of different face templates like The Sims 2 had? Or are these truly individual, unique Sims getting created by the engine? If they are in fact unique, then that's something that the game did incredibly right, IMO.

All of my townies look like they are related to my gallery sims.

EDIT: I was just saying what all MY sims look like, not what everyone's look like. Gah.

My townies all look like either white-eyed demons with ratchet ass different colored hair, brows and beard (on the same sim), or they look like black-eyed demons with the same. I hate the colored textures so much. That shit didn't happen in Sims3 because everything was recolorable, and thus very rarely, a sim would spawn looking like a fairy on acid. Another reason I hate TS4.

More on topic, I think townies are randomized sims rather than just a face template.

This is from a little while ago

I swear I didn't touch any of those sims. The last one is just a CAS randomized tho, the first one to show up when I opened it.

Thanks for sharing, DiAnkhiar! Those are some freakishly attired Sims! Though I think the redheaded girl is really cute.

Mhm, besides from the fact that her eyebrows are white. I also like the guy under her; the rest I don't mind. What ruins it is the colors. How I wish they would bring recolor tool back

The biggest problem I have found is that you have to set everything to random or otherwise you can't inherit it from parents. Which means if you want alien eyes or odd eye/hair colors you have to allow townies to use it or otherwise if your sim has a baby with another they won't have any of those features. It was a lack of foresight on EA's part. Which means that yeah you get some odd looking townies. The only way I have found to combat this is I just have 3948329483849384 eye and hair recolors. That way there is a bigger chance of them choosing normal eyes/hair. This problem is worse for skins though. I have dark elf skins...and since most people aren't creating new skins I end up with like 50-60% dark elf looking townies. It has become such a problem in my worlds I have considered just setting them to non-random just roll a die for inheritance then cheat it.

Yes, this is annoying if you want special features, I also has the issue with townies preferring CC content, my favorite was the townie with two eye patches and glasses But why 20% of the males use the male skirt is also a bit weird.

Townies using wonkily-coloured hair is because the hair in question has been made available for townies .. it’s a problem with the CC in other words, not with the game. You can change it by changing one number in s4pe (or post where you downloaded and ask the creator to change it / make a non-townie version available; but the former is probably the more straightforward solution). Post in Create if you have questions on that.

I can say I've heard reports from a few people that once they make a CAS template the game copies it in order to generate sims to place in their world

like if you make a family in CAS (I'm being random here) an Asian father with a middle eastern child daughter, the game will save that template when you save the family in CAS and reproduce it when generating new townie families. So I'm fairly certain the game would do the same thing for individual sims. This could be why some of your townies look similar to ones you've made yourself. Thy're made off the same template.

This is complete and total nonsense. The game isn't doing any of this.

Too bad, it could have been nice. Combined with an option "Create totally random Sims or Create Sims based on the ones saved in my library", we could have had some fantastic automatic neighborhood customization. And with the use of different TS4 user folders, we could have easy themed games.

But sadly, not this time. Again.

The bottom left one looks like an evil Adam Savage.

Who had an accident at a highlighter factory.

I'm sorry, I'm only going off what I've been told by people, and there was a nicer way to say it. :\

Not everyone is sweet as pudding and that is ok.

Anyway, I do wish there was a way to kind of curb the townie appearances to what I want them to be. The fact Oasis Springs was nothing but obese white people made me want to delete the entire save and start all over. I have no problem with race/body type, but literally over 50 of the same kinds of people? DA HEK U DOIN BRO? LEARN2RANDOM PLS

I have a problem where my population is 80% single mothers with a teen daughter and child age son. My friend's population is mostly single mothers with either a child or a baby. I don't even know how the baby one happens since she's not playing any of these families and doesn't use mods. I know there /are/ templates the game uses to generate townies, and it /seems/ like the game picks one or two to generate over and over again rather than choosing at random.

PS: While the templates existing is a /fact/, what I suggest is happening with them in this post is from observations and /could/ be incorrect. If someone knows that it /is/ incorrect please say so in a nice way and not as though just said zebras give birth to orange wedges with party hats. Thank you.

You aren't alone in noticing that. Shimrod made a fix for it: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=548447

I'd call the fix very temporary. It just replaces one repeating type of family with another repeating type of family :\

Agreed. I hope we will soon see more variety.

Most of my townies seem to be black-haired, which bothers me when i search for legacy spouses, since i would like to keep the heirs fair-haired like the founder. It's like the game only chooses the first hair colour in CAS. I had this problem before i even used CC. It looks so boring if everyone has the same hair colour.

That being said, i rarely have ugly townies. I like the TS4 sims look.

Mondenkind, does it go against your principals to cheat and change the townies hair color? I got the impression that changing the hair color changed the DNA...?

Not in "normal" saves, but i'm a total vanilla player in my legacy challenge. I did it in my "casual" family save to make the game more interesting looking while going out (the clothes,too).

This could possibly be simply racial diversity, As black hair is the common or only colour for hair in a very large number of diverse countries.
I know I made a group of 8 sims all from different countries and 5/8 ended up with black hair because anything else would have looked unnatural on them :\

I'm not against ethnic diversity, but i would like some hair-colour diversity as well

I don't think it has anything to do with this though, since they don't look to have different ethnic backgrounds.

Which hair colour is valid for which archetype is also a flag in the CASP (just like with townie availability). Same thing applies here: if you want to change how stuff behaves, you need to edit that.