Asian townies

"FKM100;15407844" wrote:
I am really enjoying the wider range of ethnic types appearing in the game since CL, but I too have found that the townie generation function doesn't always get things right. I have seen some really implausible combinations of name and ethnic appearance and yes, it does bother me.

Like some other players, I periodically go through all the NPC households in my game and edit them in CAS. I don't bother to use full edit mode, but I fix what I can to make the characters' appearance match their names (eg, change skin & hair color and features) and I change their clothes and body shape to something one would be more likely to find in RL. My game seems to have an inexplicable preference for certain clothing items (the maxi skirt is one of them) and these seem to show up all over the place, ad nauseam, regardless of suitability. Also, I have found lately that most of my townie women are impossibly fat, with enormous stomachs. I know that obesity is on the rise in RL, but this is going a bit too far...

I agree with you, but the constant editing is very tiresome...I'm not saying that my Townies have to all look perfect, but if we are going to add "diversity" then let it be diverse. Ever since adding CL I've only seen japanese/Asian names for all my Townies and they only wear CL clothing. Their race or ethnicity is not even that much diverse. It's just annoying to me honestly.

I just wanted to add that in the last batch of unnecessarily created sims my game created 5 indian sims, 5 asian sims plus 1 sim with a dark skin tone and ginger hair. I don't think this is an accurate representation of any place, anywhere. If you forcefully generate townies and then force these townies to be of real-world ethnicities (which means sims world = real world and that comes with a whole bunch of unfortunate implications) then please at least make the population somewhat accurately resemble a normal american town. I'm pretty sure New York doesn't have 45% asians, 45% indians, 10% genetically atypical people and nothing else :lol:

I suppose it depends on where you imagine San Myshuno to be. For my part, I don't think of San Myshuno as an American city. I know that the designers were influenced by American cities like San Francisco, but to me San Myshuno just does not look American. The upmarket areas are just too uniformly new-looking. If this were a major American city, I would certainly expect to see some futuristic architecture, but the new would be interspersed with the old.

To me, San Myshuno speaks of a city that started off on a fairly modest scale, but then experienced a sudden burst of growth and prosperity, obliging the planners to create a whole new, completely modern downtown area across the bridge from the old downtown area. Admittedly, there are many cities that might fit this profile, but not New York (or San Francisco, for that matter). I prefer to think of San Myshuno as an (imaginary) eastern city, with a backstory something like a cross between Hong Kong and Dubai. That being the case, the ethnic mix of the population works very well for me.

I just want to make clear that I have nothing against more diversity in the game. As an European I've always felt the sims offered a very American view of life, so it's really nice to have new worlds like Windenburg and San Myshuno. I was recently in Hong Kong and woooow I could totally see the influence it had on San Myshuno and I loved it.
What I've noticed is that, as usual, the townies the game generates are too random... I like my townies to have a cohesive look, so it would be nice if their appearance matched their supposed ethnicity! I know it is not a huge deal since you can edit their look on CAS. However, it is so time consuming and such a nuisance to me!

"Jprp83;15407788" wrote:

"EnkiSchmidt;15407612" wrote:
I think the name and the sims generator are not linked in any way, so every combination of look and name is possible.

I used to think that too, but since CL the townie generation seems a little less random. It's just that if you're gonna create a sim with a Japanese name, you might as well make them look Japanese! Oh well...

I think they're linked cuz the facial features tend to look "Japanese" if they have a Japanese name, or "Middle-Eastern" if they have a Middle-Eastern name in my game. But yeah the hair color is the only thing that is off sometimes.

"Jprp83;15414002" wrote:
I just want to make clear that I have nothing against more diversity in the game. As an European I've always felt the sims offered a very American view of life, so it's really nice to have new worlds like Windenburg and San Myshuno. I was recently in Hong Kong and woooow I could totally see the influence it had on San Myshuno and I loved it.
What I've noticed is that, as usual, the townies the game generates are too random... I like my townies to have a cohesive look, so it would be nice if their appearance matched their supposed ethnicity! I know it is not a huge deal since you can edit their look on CAS. However, it is so time consuming and such a nuisance to me!

I'm with you there. The game makes provision for a wide range of ethnicity, in terms of complexion, facial features and names, but seems to be incapable of matching the three up. Presumably, it was just never programmed to do this. Or was it? I really don't know. I will say that I don't remember there being all that many glaring inconsistencies before CL, but perhaps I wasn't really paying attention.

"DeKay;15414014" wrote:

"Jprp83;15407788" wrote:

"EnkiSchmidt;15407612" wrote:
I think the name and the sims generator are not linked in any way, so every combination of look and name is possible.

I used to think that too, but since CL the townie generation seems a little less random. It's just that if you're gonna create a sim with a Japanese name, you might as well make them look Japanese! Oh well...

I think they're linked cuz the facial features tend to look "Japanese" if they have a Japanese name, or "Middle-Eastern" if they have a Middle-Eastern name in my game. But yeah the hair color is the only thing that is off sometimes.

Which is funny, because it's stereotyping by trying to be more diverse.

@FKM100 I think you missed the point of my post. I wasn't talking about san myshuno or its inhabitants, I was talking about the townies that are randomly generated by the game. They can be in any neighbourhood, not just san myshuno. And even then the point of my post was that the representation is off and for that it doesn't even matter whether the game is american or not. Either the game is based on america in which case the population data from there should be used to determine how many townies of which ethnicities are generated or it should be equally spread. But my game seems to predominantly generate indian and asian (by that I mean korean, japanese and chinese... I know technically india is in asia as well) townies. I'd like to have some african american and hispanic sims as well, maybe some italian or french sims even. My game in this state lacks diversity - it has non-white sims but it doesn't have a wide range of them. And you can't tell me Willow Creek and Windenburg are supposed to be eastern cities.

Yeah, I have noticed this in my game too. It is definitely time-consuming to have to go through and edit everybody, especially when I'm playing a file that's meant to be from a particular place or time period. I'm not sure there is a programming solution to this problem, though...