I get why townies were added in the first place, but at this stage in the game there is physically no need for them. Even if you just have 3 non base game worlds there is easily enough sims to populate the world and lots twice over. There is no need to generate tons of ugly townies to fill every single lot when the actual sims in the world could do the same job instead. What makes the townies worse is that the AI is horrible. They all look ugly, generate with the most ridiculous outfits and hair colors and it just totally breaks the immersion having every lot filled with 15 circus clowns.There's already mods which disable townies and they really just show how totally unnecessary they are as the game works perfectly fine without them. I just want to see the sims I've actually created in my world and the sims that live there rather than the travelling circus arriving every time I send my sim to a bar. There's physically no need for ugly townies so can the game just stop generating them already and use our own sims instead :s

I agree. Something more needs to be done about the ugly townie spawning issue. In theory the concept of randomly generated townies is good, because it creates more variation in the public landscape. It’s realistic. We don’t always see the same people. Right now however, these townies ruin that landscape and should probably not exist at all. I appreciate console players who cannot have mods, so it would be useful if we were to have a tool that: lets the player assign the townie label to existing households either via their own library or the gallery; an option to assign a generic townie fashion style; an option to choose the amount of townies generated per district. Begone ye pink pear shaped buffoon!

The townies themselves aren't even that ugly. It's the random makeup and clothing that's the problem in my game. They look like a bunch of toddlers playing dress up! I think I spend more time in CAS fixing these townies up rather than actual gameplay... I honestly think that only base game clothes should be randomly generated and nothing else. Limit the options. You'd think with the limited color scheme, it'd cause less mismatching. lol

I agree, there should be more effort made in improving it, I think this is just as important as everything else they put in this game. What's the point of making this life simulator if you don't care what your sims look like when you are walking around? You hire artists to make great looking clothes for our sims but then you let the your game just take all their hard work and throw it in the bin when it uses them on townies.When they are making their packs and updating their game they should try to improve townie generation as well. The game should be better at using existing sims for npc roles and the game should have more systems in place to reduce ugly outfits.

agreed and please give us a toggle to choose if we want new sims spawning or not.

This will be less irritating if the townies actually use outfit from the styled look template exclusively and not just randomized one.

Use existing sims rather than generating new townies.

15 Replies

Lorenerd11
5 years ago
I think we should be able to customize which Sims will appear in which neighborhoods in household management. That way we wouldn't get Del Sol Valley celebrities or San Myshuno Uptown residents showing up in Strangerville.

We should be able to do the same with townies, effectively assigning then to specific locations without wasting the precious few lots.

Moreover, randomly generated townies should use styled looks, or at least only use CAS item from whichever pack the world they were generated for (townies generated for Strangerville would only use base game and Strangerville items), or for Occult Sims, use the items of the pack their Occult type came from (so, Aliens would use Get To Work items, and Vampires would use Vampire items).
SEREFRAS
Legend
5 years ago
Personally, I make my own townies & delete all the others in all the worlds. All except, Bella Goth.
logionX
Legend
5 years ago
"Netzspannung;c-17812744" wrote:
Game-generated randoms, such a pet peeve. What bothers me the most is that the game constantly generates new townies. I make over townies all the time, because I find outfits like this very distracting and irritating, especially when I want to take screenshots in my game.

https://i.imgur.com/9nCrQyk.jpg

And I know if I make them over in 'Manage Households' they can lose their roles/jobs, so I do it by shift-clicking on them in live mode after activating the cas.fulleditmode cheat. And yet, when I visit the lot again the game does not generate the lot with the 10 townies I just made over but generates a bunch of new ones. I try to use as few mods as possible, but I will have to look into another mod for this, because making over townies has turned into such a chore. But I would very much welcome an in-game solution. I feel like the game developers can hardly be proud of how this game mechanic plays out in practice.

Yeah, this is as far as I understand by design, the game generates new townies by default for every situation, it's very bad at reusing existing sims, I don't know if it's because it gives them ncp roles and can't reuse them again. But if modders have found ways to improve it I think Maxis should too.

As for the developers, the impression that I have gotten is that they treat it as a "joke" to deal with it. They don't want to talk about it so they kindly brush it away as a joke. If I was a developer I would want to deal with it because it makes the game look bad, making all these CAS assets are not easy and it takes time and costs money, but then they just let the game randomize everything into a mess.
GrumpyGlowfish
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
I wrote a lengthy repsonse to this, filled with anecdotes from my game about how and why townies can be unnecessary and annoying, but then I accidentally closed the window, it's all gone and I don't feel like writing it again. So long story short: Yes, please give us either a toggle for townies or an intelligent system that knows when to stop generating new ones. Or both.
bleachjpeg
5 years ago
I don't understand how the game has a clearly defined color system and race archaetype, but the townies aren't generated with any kind of scheme ? The code has to be

when (townies_generate) {
var top = must wear;
var bottom = must wear;
var accessories = 70% chance;
name = doesn't matter;
job = 5% chance;
}

and that's it

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Use existing sims rather than generating new townies.

15 Replies

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