Genetics

From my experience features do not skip generations. If a grandchild has a feature of a grandparent, it is because he/she got it from a parent. This is not always obvious where the parent who carried the feature is of the opposite gender.

@DivinylsFan I think the biggest problem with same slider positions in the genders is proportion. Although the shape may be almost the same to look at the resizing for the opposite gender, to me, is ridiculous. I appreciate that female features are generally softer but the game's genetics take it to the extreme.
I agree that it would be cool if features skipped generations but I suspect this would be too complex.
Hair and eye colour can skip generations but you're more likely to see random mutations where hair and eyes are concerned. I use a mod that stops random mutation in hair and eye colour because I am not fond of the default colours, especially when the worst of an already bad lot shows up.
As for the Goths, and other premade families, Mortimer is not the genetic offspring of Gunther and Cornelia. I imagine that all the premade families were made individually rather than using the game's genetics. As for stories about the Goths, and other recurring sims, I have no idea. For me, the lives of premades only begins when I start playing with them. I have zero interest in back stories.

@mw1525 I vaguely remember those base game vanilla days. I do remember clones of single parents appearing but I also saw zero slider children. I didn't really think much of them as they would usually be killed off by vanilla SP as my families started to grow and would never have been allowed into my sim families in any case. To me, Morty more resembles Gunther but only superficially. I think it's the nose that gives me that impression even though they are not really the same.

I agree that appearance doesn't factor into what makes a sim a sim. Rather it is their traits and life experiences that do. Having said that, I only play the game for genetics so appearance does matter. I don't gender switch sims for playing purposes, although I have done so on a couple of occasions when filling towns if the population balance was bad. I gender switch them in CAS to see if the features I like translate well to the opposite gender so I know what to expect when my sims have kids.

My earlier comments were based on the game's genetics, which is what I thought your original question was about. What people "see" as far as resemblance goes, is subjective. I base mine in the first instance to what I see but always confirm by comparing slider positions.

With mods you can add anyone to a family tree so I imagine the developers and creators had tools to do that without having to play a family for generations to fill graveyards with ancestors for the residents. I think it's interesting that people take the lore seriously. I have been told I lack imagination (which is fine by me) and only believe what I have learned about the game's genetics by raising hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sim babies over the years in many saves which span generations.

"Mikezumi;c-18331818" wrote:
@DivinylsFan I think the biggest problem with same slider positions in the genders is proportion. Although the shape may be almost the same to look at the resizing for the opposite gender, to me, is ridiculous. I appreciate that female features are generally softer but the game's genetics take it to the extreme.
I agree that it would be cool if features skipped generations but I suspect this would be too complex.
Hair and eye colour can skip generations but you're more likely to see random mutations where hair and eyes are concerned. I use a mod that stops random mutation in hair and eye colour because I am not fond of the default colours, especially when the worst of an already bad lot shows up.
As for the Goths, and other premade families, Mortimer is not the genetic offspring of Gunther and Cornelia. I imagine that all the premade families were made individually rather than using the game's genetics. As for stories about the Goths, and other recurring sims, I have no idea. For me, the lives of premades only begins when I start playing with them. I have zero interest in back stories.

You are likely to see random mutations pop up. In my recent game, I got a toddler who develop blonde hair whilst his parents have brown/black hair.

@xxnearlyperfectx yeah hair and eye colour works well in a dominant/recessive gene way across the generations. It did in The Sims 2 as well. I noticed that the grey streak in the Alto family gets inherited but I didn't play their family long enough to see if it ever skipped a generation. That one would be really obvious if it did happen.
The facial features such as a bumpy or button nose, or full or thin lips, are the thing I was curious about, especially about if they ever skip a generation, or whether they only get passed down directly to the next generation. In real life I read or hear about aristocratic families boast having a certain chin or something like that. Tess of the D'urbervilles comes to mind, although it is fiction. In my own family there is someone who looks nothing like the parents, but a great-great relative.

I vaguely remember something being mentioned about it, triggering that I look for it occurring. Maybe that was Sims 4. Maybe it was just a discussion somewhere.
Opposite gender faces in 3 don't have the same distortion they did with Sims 2.
Anyway, it would be cool if features did skip generations. Maybe even though one nose is carefully tweaked to a certain unique shape in CAS, its general type of shape could be recessive or dominant assigned by the game, or maybe the success of a founding sim could strengthen their facial genetics, like aristocrats ... and work similar to hair and eye colour
Whose nose is Mortimer Goth's then? Not Gunther or Cornelia's. Or was there a secret story about him being adopted?

"DivinylsFan;c-18331751" wrote:
Maybe even though one nose is carefully tweaked to a certain unique shape in CAS, its general type of shape could be recessive or dominant assigned by the game, or maybe the success of a founding sim could strengthen their facial genetics, like aristocrats ... and work similar to hair and eye colour

This ^^ was a suggestion of how facial features skipping generations could work in the future. The added complexity only being in the way they are assigned into types. Then the dominant and recessiveness part of the genetics-programming would use the same technology as hair and eye colour. Doesn't sound too complex to me.

There is a setting in nraas' story progression about the facial blending. I'm pretty sure it also includes a setting about the grandparents. Without that mod, or with it, I'm wondering whether custom hairs and eyes get assigned to their base and then follow a formula of dominance and recessiveness. If it actually was a part of Sims 3 with the facial features and my vague memory of reading it somewhere ages ago is correct, then that might be how noses, chins etc work. I wonder if I played without that mod if the grandparents' genetics would come through more often. Or how well it would work if I tweaked that option to a greater percentage chance of the grandparents' genetics.

@DivinylsFan The setting in nraas' SP about facial blending only shifts features a very small amount. I doubt the human eye could detect it and the only way to be sure is to compare slider numbers in CAS. It's not actually "blending" of parental features, rather than an occasional small shift in slider position. From memory, it does increase the chance of hair and eye colour being inherited from a grandparent but not facial features. There is a genetics mod (not Nraas) that does blend parent features but, as far as I could tell after playing several generations, it only blends the genetics of the parents and the grandparents' genetics don't factor into the blending. Without mods you would only get inherited whole features from either parent and there would be no generation skipping, only the passing of whatever feature/s were passed down to the parent. The genetics are basic and dominant and recessive genetics are non-existent.

@Mikezumi - Teenage Mortimer became my sim's BFF. I gave the kid a good look and (to my eye) he does resemble his mother a bit. Could it be possible he was created using just her genetic information much like the game used to do when it gave single sims infants (way back in the day)? He just doesn't (to my eye) look like an Indy sim.