The problem with The Sims 4 beards

LR31O · May 2018

Okay, weird topic title, but hear me out. I've noticed that Sims that are "naturally created" (and by this I mean Sims who started out as a Child or younger) who grows up into adulthood will never have a beard, unless you edit it on them in CAS mode. It's a minor inconvenience but it irks me that the game doesn't generate beards on their own when transitioning from Teen to Young Adult, but the game removes the beards on Young Adults to Teens when edited on CAS mode?

Townies only have beards because they were generated as Young Adults and up. But if you're generated as a Teen, tough luck. The game will never create a beard for you on your own.

Playing legacy families is kind of annoying this way because unless you specifically want them to have a beard, they're all gonna look baby faced. Let me know your thoughts on this. Is there something wrong with my game? Is this issue just specific to me? Thanks!

LadyLana1 · May 2018

Now that you're mentioning this! Yes!!! My male Sims always have a beard but only because I edit them to have one! Wish they would randomly get one as teen or even YA when born in game

EgonVM · May 2018

It's because of this fact: The game never puts facial hair on teens to make them feel younger.
Believe me, if you go to CAS, put a facial hair on young adult or older male and make him into a teen, the facial hair is lost.
The game does give you the ability to put facial hair to teens, but it never generates any teens with it.
You can always go to CAS through mirror, wardrobe or Manage Households. I heard it helps.
Personally, it doesn't bother me. I usually either put light facial hair, moustache or nothing. I usually put beards to older males, but even that's not all the time. I do have a little facial hair, but it's barely noticeable (haven't even shaved it in my life)...

DeservedCriticism · May 2018

I hate when they do stuff like that with CAS. I've noticed both with Sims 3 and Sims 4 for example, they limit generated Sims to certain body types. In Sims 3, they introduced the breast slider, but then they had the strange decision of making everyone in Bridgeport a D-cup while everyone else ever in the entirety of the Sims world would never be bigger than a B-cup. (very seldom exceptions and zero with randomized or generated Sims) BOTH were unrealistic because they didn't showcase a realistic mix of body types that one might see in real life. A similar thing might've been the case with muscle tone, but it's harder to tell there since one of those sliders could only be seen when Sims were topless.

Sims 4, same thing. There's new edits to breast size, stomach size, shoulder width, butt size, stomache shape, arm thickness, leg thickness, etc etc etc, and yet the game grabs the same 9 or so body presets and just uses those. There's certain types of obesity that don't feel represented, there's certain kinds of thin body types that don't feel represented (and some odd ones that feel overrepresented), some body types I've seen people complain about them looking downright cartoonish or comical and not the least bit realistic (and they're right), once again breast size only seems to hit a certain size and then bigger sizes are not utilized at all as if D-cups are a work of fiction, and as OP points out here, for some reason facial hair isn't utilized by the offspring pool.

I understand that they want to avoid comical mixes of genetics that look downright weird, such as inheriting dad's bodybuilder upper body and mom's fat untoned thighs. We have such mixes regardless though (disappearing chin) and anytime I notice a physical trait that isn't included in the gene pool or sim generator, it just annoys me because they're effectively limiting the gene pool. I think the D-cup example annoys me most because including it would be as simple as rationalizing that the MAXIMUM end of a slider should be included 100% of the time, and the MINIMUM end of a slider should be included 100% of the time. By including both - while not perfect - it at least means that with enough reproducing you could eventually have access to all the points in between. The moment you exclude an extreme end from the gene pool, that means all values below or above it are non-existent within the randomized gene pool, so then you get oddities like being the only Sim in town with a certain physical characteristic. (because you've got the only handmade Sim) There the logic seems most blatant and obvious (whereas with others, it's understandable that eventually they'll get tired of making various body presets as templates), but that's one they've excluded twice, and I get the vibe it's like they think some customers will feel threatened if too many Sims have a commonly desireable trait or something.

I don't get why they don't focus on body limits instead of preset templates either. To me, it makes more sense to program in some no-go scenarios that should automatically be filtered out, rather than trying to create preset templates to base everything on. Preset templates will always be limited by a finite number, but excluding bad genetics that seem unrealistic means everything else is automatically fair game. For example, Sims 3 could've desperately used a filter denying the random generation of black sims with bleach blonde hair and the maximum obesity setting, as well as giving things such as max obesity a lower rate of occurance. Sims 4, it'd be great if they drew a line where the chin-to-face ratio cannot go below a certain amount, since too often the chin seems to disappear just cause mom has a small chin than dad.

EgonVM wrote: »

It's because of this fact: The game never puts facial hair on teens to make them feel younger.
Believe me, if you go to CAS, put a facial hair on young adult or older male and make him into a teen, the facial hair is lost.
The game does give you the ability to put facial hair to teens, but it never generates any teens with it.

And knowing this is probably the reason for the mysterious missing facial hair just sucks. It's like they failed to make teens feel unique, so they take a sledgehammer solution and just universally remove facial hair from teens knowing that facial hair ruins the differences betweens teens and adults even further, and now we get to pay for it because they didn't bother installing an additional generator to check if it should assign facial hair to Sims when they become adults. Thanks Sims Team.

LR31O · May 2018

@DeservedCriticism - Oof, I never really thought about that but now I can see that The Sims 4 needs an update on their genetics system. If they didn't want to deal with teens having facial hair (but still giving us the option to have them), at least code them as something that can be inherited when the Teen transitions into the Young Adult phase. And a whole bunch of other stuff, such as the body types you mentioned. Another thing that should've been implemented is height, for that matter. Height is such a big deal in real life and one of the more obvious things that can be inherited from parents, I can't believe we still haven't gotten height variations after 4 generations of sims games. But anyway I'll stick to the whole beard discussion because we're going off topic, though this is an interesting conversation I'd like to participate in in a separate thread.

EgonVM wrote: »

It's because of this fact: The game never puts facial hair on teens to make them feel younger.
Believe me, if you go to CAS, put a facial hair on young adult or older male and make him into a teen, the facial hair is lost.

Yes, I'm aware of this. In fact I'm really disappointed with the lack of variation between life stages, period. Even elders look all young and active; apart from their facial wrinkles and some new animations, they're largely the same, especially in regards to body type. Their voices aren't very convincing either. Although I think the Gurus did tweet out something about working on some life stages, hopefully it's something substantial and included in the base game as a free update haha. (Going off on a quick tangent here, but I really appreciate games like Overwatch that constantly give free updates with whole new assets and heroes and maps and everything. I wish The Sims 4 had the same principle in regards to filling up the void that is owning just the base game itself.)

Shadowmarked · May 2018

I like that stylistic features such as hair and cloths don't change upon age up.
I figure if my sim is clean shaven as a teen and likes being like that why would becoming an adult change his habits all the sudden? If the sims decides to grow a beard I would rather choose it myself. (I also have a preference for a clean shaven face so this actually never bothered me or bugged me) Unless I give the teen stach to my teen sim I really don't want YA sim to have a beard.

I prefer when the game doesn't change stuff on me with out my input. I found it way more annoying in previous sim games when my sim would age up and look like total rubbish and would dress and style themselves in ways that rejected the character I had in mind for them.(Control freak at heart I know)

Anyways that's my two cents.

Cupid · May 2018

i feel like it's better to just be able to add it when I want to instead of having to take it off of people who I don't want to have it ;x

LR31O · May 2018

BeJaWa wrote: »

I like that stylistic features such as hair and cloths don't change upon age up.
I figure if my sim is clean shaven as a teen and likes being like that why would becoming an adult change his habits all the sudden? If the sims decides to grow a beard I would rather choose it myself.

Oh you have no idea lol teenagers change a lot when growing up. Especially with beard styles.

Cupid wrote: »

i feel like it's better to just be able to add it when I want to instead of having to take it off of people who I don't want to have it ;x

You know, maybe if beards was actually a part of the genetic traits Sims could inherit this wouldn't be a problem. Parents are clean shaven? Then children will be clean shaven when growing up. But if the parents have a history of beards and have that in their genes, then their children will have beard. Just like in real life.

Shadowmarked · May 2018

LR31O wrote: »

BeJaWa wrote: »

I like that stylistic features such as hair and cloths don't change upon age up.
I figure if my sim is clean shaven as a teen and likes being like that why would becoming an adult change his habits all the sudden? If the sims decides to grow a beard I would rather choose it myself.

Oh you have no idea lol teenagers change a lot when growing up. Especially with beard styles.

Cupid wrote: »

i feel like it's better to just be able to add it when I want to instead of having to take it off of people who I don't want to have it ;x

You know, maybe if beards was actually a part of the genetic traits Sims could inherit this wouldn't be a problem. Parents are clean shaven? Then children will be clean shaven when growing up. But if the parents have a history of beards and have that in their genes, then their children will have beard. Just like in real life.

might be so, but I still would rather have control and mine tend to not

Anthonydyer · May 2018

I don't consider beards a genetic thing. What beard your dad has is irrelevant unless maybe your parents required you to have a beard a certain way. In real life it is a choice. I choose to have facial hair. I think it is pretty reasonable to just add on a beard if you want it.

LR31O · May 2018

Anthonydyer wrote: »

I don't consider beards a genetic thing. What beard your dad has is irrelevant unless maybe your parents required you to have a beard a certain way. In real life it is a choice. I choose to have facial hair. I think it is pretty reasonable to just add on a beard if you want it.

oof it definitely is a genetic thing though. not everyone can grow a beard my dude. i myself can't grow full beard; only a thin mustache and a goatee but nothing else so i just shave it off. it depends on what kind of beard your father can grow.

Cupid · May 2018

LR31O wrote: »

Anthonydyer wrote: »

I don't consider beards a genetic thing. What beard your dad has is irrelevant unless maybe your parents required you to have a beard a certain way. In real life it is a choice. I choose to have facial hair. I think it is pretty reasonable to just add on a beard if you want it.

oof it definitely is a genetic thing though. not everyone can grow a beard my dude. i myself can't grow full beard; only a thin mustache and a goatee but nothing else so i just shave it off. it depends on what kind of beard your father can grow.

It's true that most people with beards have Y chromosomes (which you can only get from your father), but the factors in how those beards grow or whether or not they will grow can come from either side of the family. My father can grow a pretty good beard but I can't.

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The problem with The Sims 4 beards

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