[NEEDS INPUT] [CL] Japanese and Moroccan Townies Mostly Red or Blonde-Haired

[The_Ratticator]

Can anyone who has Snowy Escape, but not City Living, confirm or deny if they are experiencing this problem? I'm curious to know if this really is also an issue with Snowy Escape, not just City Living.

[ElDimentio]

I have all packs except Batuu and have the same issue.  For me the biggest problem is dark skin sims with blond hair. It seems almost every single dark skin Sim the game generates ends up with blond hair. This is very tedious...

[The_Ratticator]

Huh, that's interesting. So it's not just Moroccan Sims, but black Sims in general who are affected by this bug? Anyways, I've been watching some Cottage Living let's plays, and I haven't really seen this happening in them. That's probably because the version of the game that the Game Changers are playing excludes all packs except for Cottage Living and the base game, which means no City Living or Snowy Escape. As such, I'm sure this bug will continue to rear its head when Cottage Living releases for everyone.

[The_Ratticator]

This problem is especially noticeable when playing in worlds like San Myshuno and Mt. Komorebi. I certainly expect Moroccan/black and Japanese Sims in those worlds. That part isn't the issue. What's bothersome is this red/blonde hair thing that seems to be attached to these specific archetypes for some reason. I hate having to go in CAS and alter all of the townies' hair colors all the time. It's really annoying, and I hope it gets laundry listed sooner than later! This has literally been an issue with the townie generator for years.

[clurrie89]

I do see this with Japanese and Moroccan sims in the world. I won't even notice they're Japanese until I see their name and realize it's a townie. I do see this with black townies, and I see it a TON when generating sims randomly in CAS with the black sims it generates. 

[The_Ratticator]

@clurrie89 I've definitely noticed this when randomizing Sims in CAS as well. The vast majority of the time, randomly-generated Asian or black Sims in CAS have red or blonde hair. As such, it's clear why this is such a prevalent issue with townie generation. It really is getting disheartening to never see this end up on any laundry lists. It'd be nice if we could at least get some confirmation that the Sims Team is aware of this issue and is looking into it. After all, this has legitimately been a problem for years, ever since City Living first came out. And Snowy Escape has only intensified it.

[LetMePlaySimSoon]

@The_Ratticator When randomising in CAS? Huh, that doesn't match my impression; and it's easy to check, I'll do 15 right now. Skin tone, hair colour
(I have a couple CC hairs that aren't randomise-disabled but I'm skipping those.)

1. medium-dark, dark brown
2. medium, dark brown
3. dark, red
4. medium-dark, black
5. medium-light, orange
6. dark, dark brown
7. medium, black
8. medium-dark, black
9. medium-dark, mid-brown
10. dark, black hair but blonde eyebrows, claiming to be matching (?!)
11. medium-dark, black
12. medium, red
13. medium-dark, mid-brown
14. medium, mid-brown
15. medium-light, brown
[16. light, dark brown. see it does give me light skin, just. not in the set i committed to counting. lol.]

I have City Living and nothing else. There's definitely more dark skin/light hair than you get in real life, both in this test and in my game, but not to an overwhelming degree and it does make the visuals more varied.

[lostinmalloc]

For those affected by this tremendous bug, the mod No/Less CL/IL/SE NPC names helps a lot.

[cosumeu]

I think different bugs are contributing to similar symptoms.

Referring strictly to "Japanese townies having blonde hair":

Most hairs have a "Platinum" color swatch that has been mistakenly tagged as being allowed to Asian archetype.

Here's a screenshot of a random hair in S4S (cloned from the game).

I say this is a mistake because similar color swatches (all other blond/yellow swatches) are NOT tagged for Asian archetype.
I checked this for every yellow-ish hairstyle I've seen on Japanese sims and it's always the Platinum swatch.

Most Japanese townies in CL and SE are generated to conform to the Asian archetype tag. About 4-5 swatches per hair have the Asian archetype tag and one is Platinum leading to about 1 in 4 Asian sims being Blonde-Haired. 

The thread should probably be tagged for Snowy Escape as well.

Referring to other bugs that have been mentioned in this thread:

a) Moroccan sims having red hair - I haven't researched this too much but it may be similarly related to the "Auburn" swatch color. African Archetype hair swatches have about 40% blond & red hair swatches from what I've checked. This is what probably leads to an over-representation of these hair-colors.

b) The game spawns a lot of Japanese townies intentionally if you have Snowy Escape with a bonus if you also have City Living. I use a mod that decreases the required quota. Japanese townies are sims created by the game with the Asian archetype AND Japanese names. Mods removing the cultural names simply alter the name of the sims, their looks are still mismatched for their archetype.

c) Members of Japanese families not looking Asian. Sometimes the game needs to spawn a sim for a role (co-workers for your sim, children that play at the park when you visit, etc). It will sometimes spawn them with a family. Even if the needed sim is of a specific cultural archetype the rest of the family may not be. They will be random but still follow the initial naming structure (Japanese, Moroccan, Islander etc). Therefore you get sims with cultural names that don't have the corresponding CAS features. I said "sometimes" because SE has full-archetype families in some situations and they will all look Asian but CL uses some family templates when spawning children (with single parents mostly) that don't have a specified archetype (thus they will have random looking parents).

d) Similar to the hair swatch situation, some skin tones have unexpected tags but I think that's mostly related to the quality of the skin tone itself. There are some blue-ish and ashy tones that would look natural only on occults but are tagged for use with some archetypes.

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I've verified this in game version 1.90.375.1020, PC, all packs to date. I haven't used mods when observing the behavior. 

I have looked at the tuning files and used some small mods to figure out what is going on in-game.

The Japanese townies with platinum hair is a different bug from the bugs at a, b, c and d. Unfortunately they're different to separate in gameplay.

Other similar threads:

• the consequences of c) are also in this thread https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEEDS-SAVES-Single-Townies-and-Their-Children-Look-Nothing-Ali...
• and b) is also reported here https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Townies-in-worlds-spawn-with-Asian-names/td-p/9794299

Regarding the CAS issue: sims created in-game are different from sims created in CAS in so many ways it's tricky to say if the issues are related or not. I'm not sure CAS randomizes by archetype tags.

[The_Ratticator]

@cosumeu What an incredibly insightful post! Thank you so much! You've definitely revealed just how frustrating it is that the hair color thing hasn't been fixed yet. To put things into perspective, this is a thread on the hair color issue that was posted in 2016. It's 2022 now. The solution to this problem is as simple as unchecking some boxes, but as of yet? Still no fix! If this doesn't show up on the laundry list soon, now that we know this, it'll be absolutely inexcusable.