Quite a few of people I've seen posting on other Sims 4 threads have mentioned the Sims 4 genetics system as being a factor in whether or not they will be likely to buy it/love it/hate it.

It's certainly something that is a massively big deal for me: the genetics system in The Sims 2 was quite limited, but I liked it, but the genetics system in The Sims 3 was very disappointing and also quite limited, but in a different way. The genetics system in The Sims 3 was the main reason I went back to The Sims 2, and am in the middle of a should I, shouldn't I debate with myself about whether or not to uninstall The Sims 3 from my laptop, as I haven't played it in months, I don't really miss it, and I only played Supernatural & Seasons for a few days after I bought them before I got bored, even though I'd been really excited about buying them. So the Sims 4 genetics system really is important to me - if it's the same as the Sims 3 I'll probably never buy it.

I have many ideas and opinions about this myself, but I'd like to hear some of yours! So, how would you like genetics to work in The Sims 4? Is there anything you really want, or really don't want? I'd love to hear what other people think :-)

One thing that I didn't like about Sims 2 genetics was that if I made over some hideous townie, or corrected some hideous deformity on one of my born-in-game Sims, I'd have to use SimPE to make the changes genetic so that if they bred, they would pass on the fixed features rather than the deformity.
So, even though it's not 'realistic', I prefer the Sims 3 system where if you edit a vanilla face 1 pudding in CAS, they become genetically what you made them rather than passing vanilla face 1 features onto any kids they have.
I think it would be great if in Sims 4, they let us choose if a new nose/haircolor/whatever should become genetic and passed on to any kids that Sim has, or if it should be considered a non-genetic change.

oh god, ANYTHING more dynamic than TS3 genetics. i hate that if my sim has obviously-dyed hair when they breed with another sim, the baby will sometimes magically pop out with dyed hair too. maybe, if there was a way for TS4 to differentiate between natural hair colors and dyed hair colors, and only pay attention to the natural hair colors during reproduction. (maybe two sets of data that allow for the natural hair color, which would be the base color that the sim was first created with, to be edited without interfering with what ends up being reflected in the sproglings. or maybe a seperate hair dye function altogether, like at a spa or something, and maybe it washes out or fades over time. thatd be a nice touch of realism, in my opinion.)

additionally, id like to see less direct copies of parents' facial features/body build. TS3's genetics have no...actual mixing, they just rip off the exact design of mommy/daddy's features, and then the body comes out as either mommy or daddy's build, EXACTLY. which, i think, makes for some REALLY awkward moments when the dad was beeftacular, and now somehow his baby is now also super beefy without having done any of the work that daddy did, to get there. more middle grounds would be nice, or at least, some kind of separation between actual genetic influences and what the sim did after birth to influence their later state of appearance. (it always strikes me as WEIRD that sims who have plastic surgery pass along their genes as if they had been born that way, and thats just not how genetics works. if you were born with an ugly nose, and you have your face cut up and rearranged to fix it, and you go on to have babies, they will HAVE THAT UGLY NOSE, because dna itself is not influenced by such alterations to physical appearance. epigenetics, maybe, i could understand, but not for something as drastic and sudden as a nose job.)

That drives me insane, as well. One of the reasons I stick to 'real-world' hair colours and never, ever change my sims hair colour. It would be nice if EA would fix this for Sims 4.

While this might be controversial, if EA broadens and expands the traits field (please do this, please) let that carry over at least partially in the genetics as well. Offspring can already inherit certain hidden traits, like immune to fire or the ability to salute. Why not have the parents' traits influence the children's development as well? Especially if traits are slider based, rather than all or none.

So a parent who is moderately evil can have a child who is only mildly evil. Or the converse, a mildly evil parent ending up with Jeffrey Dahmer as their offspring (evil chosen just as an example, the same could be true for good parents, artistic parents, diva parents, and so forth). It would also mean your trait choices are even more important if you plan to play through several generations.

From what I've read, they got rid of the genetic system in Sim 3 because of the Sims 2 first born syndrome where if the couple had more than one child, children 2 and 3 were clones of the first if the player didn't roll the pacifier. Well, at least in my Sims 3, the kids end up being clones of the parents most of the time instead of clones of the first born, so throwing out genetics didn't stop the cloning problem.

In Sims 4 I hope they do have a proper genetics system in place with a more effective measure in place to stop cloning of the parent or the first child, since what they did in the past didn't work.

There are a lot of things in TS3 that are very subtle, so players actually miss them altogether. Some traits in TS3 are inherited by the offspring, even if they don't actually possess those traits. Haven't you ever seen the kid of a Neat sim that is always making his/her bed even though s/he does not have the Neat trait? Has anyone else seen this? I'm pretty sure it was not my imagination.

As for physical genetics, I would definitely like something more complex than the simple copycat formula used in TS3!

One of the most important aspects for me is genetics so I truly hope it makes a comeback in TS4. Something similar to TS2 would be great.

I will be honest and say I've always been a huge fan of all the The Sims series and bought all of them starting with Sims 1 to the Sims 3. Unfortunately I stopped buying after Generations or so because of the gameplay and glitches, although it was kind of fun for what it is it didn't hold my interest long enough or want to purchase any other expansions.

If they focus on the social dynamics and bring back genetics I'll be first in line to buy TS4. If not I'll continue playing my TS2, it was worth every penny I spent on it!

the only reason i can see that this probably wouldnt be something id enjoy is that it doesnt really leave room for any "black sheep of the family" to occur. and while its true that most people do carry on a bit of their parents' personalities into adulthood, the way itd have to be coordinated to be even remotely realistic would be very complicated (like, for example, say the sim is adopted. whose traits do they reflect, their adopted parents', or their mystery parents'? what about sims who are alien spawn, or clones, or something like that?)
and if it carried over fully, well then theyd just be making sims that essentially acted the same as the parents, which i think would result in a lot of really boring results in multi-child households. part of the fun of sims is choosing what kinds of personalities/contrasts the kids will have in relation to each other, despite having dropped from the same set of genetics. ;3

Oh, I'm not suggesting that all traits be inherited. Rather, some can be inherited, or the degree of the trait can be influenced, while still being able to choose new traits with age ups. That would satisfy the variability in the types of traits each sim in the family would have, along with some genetic/environmental influence of their parents and home life. The only thing we have close to that is whether a sim completes certain achievements by an age up (walking, talking, or school performance) is whether we can choose a trait or a random , usually a negative trait, will be assigned by the game engine. I guess I'm just suggesting some subtlety in trait assignment would be a nice addition.

Not so many hats in hair as I have noticed that there has been more hat styles in hair than any other. Please may there be less hat styles and more hair.

Or have hats be separate accessories.

Only if they finally provide a way to streamline CAS screens so you don't have to go have a smoke (or a fag, for those non-US English speaking posters out there) while waiting for the accessories to load.

I agree with this as long as my sims can have weird genetic hair colors like blue. If they designate blue hair unnatural and it can't be passed on I will be upset. So If you could designate a genetic hair color verse a dyed color that would be fantastic.

Although for the most part sims 3 genetics didn't bother me I'd like Sims 4 to be more realistic I've always felt like siblings lack resemblance to each other which would be okay some of the time but most sibling I know share enough similarities that you can tell they are related.

Also Twins. There should be a distinction between identical and fraternal. It bugged me that Twins in CAS Are copies of each other but born in game Twins NEVER are.


I hope occasionally they would still have a chance of looking just like a parent as I am nearly identical to a young version of my mother

- Mendelian genetics rather than Lamarkian. ( Translation for those who have no idea what I just said: no dyed hair becoming the new 'actual' hair colour). Find some way to mark the Create-A-Sim hairstyle as a sim's genetic one.

- Recreate a dominant/recessive genetics system. I know why they did it that way, but it can't be too difficult to devise a coin flip system -- example, I have two children in the sims 3 household I'm playing. One has green eyes, the other brown. Make it so that the brown-haired child can pass down the green eyes as an actual recessive and not "oh, this baby's grandmother had green eyes". I want to play four-five generations down the line and have those green eyes turn up once again. This will also stop the random getting genes from an adopted grandparent that the grandchild has no genetic link to.

- More genetic mixing. Maybe this already happens, but I've noticed in my game and various posts people have made that sim-children tend to start looking alike after a while, albeit with different genetics. My two sim kids are identical facially, just with different hair and eye colours.

I'm not sure on the plastic vs. genetic surgery. I like being able to make over the occasional sims 3 townie and know that it's genetic.

Yes.

Yes!!

YES!

Although, what they have now is a coin flip system, what they need is to store the sims' genetic information again. What they do now, and it seems so lazy, is to just use the sim's information at the time, nothing else stored. It's not that hard to build and implement a type of Sim DNA... really, it's not.

For me this is a really big deal, though I know I'm in the minority.
But, in the Sims 2, all townies were generated from the default templates in the game. Even though I installed replacements for the defaults that I liked, since there were a limited number of templates, I ended up with many townies that were identical to each other facially, just with different hair/skin/eye colors. If one of my playables was going to marry or breed with one of these townies, I liked to tweak them a little to be more unique, but making that genetic required a bunch of SimPE work.
In Sims 3 the townie generation situation is even worse, because they all have the same facial features. And unlike S2 townies, the S3 Sims who actually move into your town can breed on their own, and their vanilla face 1 pudding face will take over your town. Before Twallan added the feature to his SP mod that made Sim immigrants get faces made from the genetics of the Sims in your bin, I was making over vanilla puddings right and left to ensure different features. I would have gone crazy if I then had to go fix them in SimPE to make it genetic.

If they were to actually implement a system for generating NPCs & townies like Twallan's, that takes genetics from Sims in your bin to make new Sims, rather than just popping out template Sims that will be identical to each other, then I'd be all for making CAS changes as non-genetic. But if they are going to throw clone Sims at me, I want to be able to change their features and make it genetic. Especially if they're going to breed.

well, with my idea, that would be easy to achieve. youd simply go into CAS, make your sim with their blue hair, then when theyre out and about, you may dye their hair any color, but when their offspring arrive, they may arrive with blue hair and NOT the dyed color. thered be no color FILTER, per say, just that the game would have to differentiate between the color the sim was "born" with (or made in CAS with) and the color the user changed it to, and only pay attention to the colors the sim was born with.



i never have a problem with any of this. TS3 gives me a ton of genetic clones. there arent ANY middle grounds. maybe you could try just breeding a pair of sims with very striking features that would show you how easily theyre passed along directly.
(not everyone is good at looking past the trickery of skintone/hair color/hair style/eye color to notice that the bone structure is identical to a sim of a different skintone/hair color/hair style/hair color.)
though it may just pay to keep in mind that, some features on different sexes look different. as evidenced by in CAS, when one designs a perfectly attractive female or male, then flips the sex, and the features flat-out translate badly.

The problem with this scenario is that you will have the child come out with the exact color of the parent without variation. Suppose the other parent has black or white blonde hair. Wouldn't that be expected to influence the blue in some way?

In my experiments, I've learned that color scales are very effective, much like skintones with mod correction. So in this example, you have a sim with blue from a blue color scale, and a sim with blonde from a brown color scale. Their child could have blue but on the scale somewhere between the parents. Presto, variation! If EA can find a better way to do this, I'm all for that too. I just want actual thought behind their genetics.

I see no reason why we couldn't have both plastic and genetic surgery at the same time. It seems reasonable to assume that whatever features you give your sim in CAS before you start playing with him/her are automatically considered genetic - those are the features that he/she is "born" with.
If you then, later on, decide to give him/her plastic surgery, e.g. by taking him/her to the hospital, then it is superficial, plastic surgery... unless you also invoke a new, scifi-like treatment that could be added to the game, to make the surgery genetic. In-game, we can see it as an expensive adjustment of the sim's DNA (it should cost a lot more than regular plastic surgery). That way we can have both options. Normally you would only give your sims regular plastic surgery, but you can also choose to give your townies genetic surgery if that's desired.

the variation is the genetics involved. 2 parents, 2 pools, right off the bat. as the generations build, more genetic pools arrive to draw from. isnt this a bit of a given? nowhere did i say that only one parent would dominate with their genetic influence.
you just wouldnt get dyed hair color, genetically, or any other nonsense in there like the occasional bouts of poo brown hair that would randomly pop up in toddlers in TS3, regardless of the fact that NOBODY in the family line had that hair color up until then, so it doesnt make any sense that the baby would. (in a family of sims that have only ever had blonde hair, you can expect the baby to have blonde hair. if you want something like a redheaded child to come out of two blonde parents, who came from lines of blonde sims, then yes, this idea wouldnt work for you. you would have to involve other genetics if you expected to get different results.)

LOL, I suggested a 'both' option in my first post and got like 20 disagrees. But, yes, I'd like both, as long as I can adjust townies on the fly without it having to involve some gameplay mechanic like sending them to the hospital.
But even better, if Sims 4 townies would actually generate with a better variety of features, not just some default template, I wouldn't need to mess with them at all.

Now, now, you only got 14 disagrees. That's not so bad. I had one post with over 50 disagrees last I saw of it. Though I would have to hire a protective detail for when the townfolk with pitchforks stormed the house. And that was just because I though the aliens looked kind of lame.

I am, BTW, in full agreement on the need for the game to natively generate townies with a better feature set, like I can with Twallan's SP and a bin of nice looking sims. The zeroed slider look really has to be done away with.

I'm not sure what you mean by genetic pools. Do you mean that each sim has a dominant and a recessive, and the child sim exhibits a mixture of the two colors? Or do you mean that each parent sim has 1 dominant color and 1 recessive color and the child sim inherits 1 color from each parent?

The problem with definition 1 is that the way calculating colors works, the two colors could cancel each other out where you end up with a muddy green or grey. This is very hard to avoid without human intervention. The problem with definition 2 is that you will have child sims end up with the exact hair color as those before it. This is a little unrealistic, and a bit strange, when you end up with two very blond sims with an auburn haired child (Edit) because some ancestor had specifically auburn hair. This was the genetics of Sims 2, and personally, I think they could and should do better.

So to sum it up, at least in my experience, a "pool" has to be a set of defined colors within a range to have any variation without the risk of muddy brown or grey.

by genetic pools, i mean, genetic pools. genetic references, if you will. each parent sim has 1 actual hair color, and a first generation baby between them has a 50% chance of gaining either color, which is henceforth their actual hair color. though they should retain the past history of the other colors that might influence the genetic makeup of their own offspring...for example, they may get mothers' hair color, but their offspring may have a chance at getting their (grand)fathers' hair color. this chance should be smaller than the chance that they will inherit their hair color from either of their parent sims.



ive never met someone whose hair is a mixture of their parents' hair colors. case in point: my own hair color is exactly the same as my grandmothers' hair color. i have two brothers, and one has my mothers' hair color, and the other has my fathers' hair color. the brother with my mothers' hair color ended up with eye color identical to my grandfathers' eye color. the brother with my fathers' hair color ended up with eye color identical to my father's eye color.
my face shape is the same as my grandmothers'. my nose is clearly from my father. my eye color is from my mother. (its actually pretty spooky to hold up a picture of my grandmother at my age next to me, we're practically clones. if i had her exact nose, i could impersonate her.) my skin is the same pale, easily-burned skin of my mother.
so as you can see, if sims4 set up their genetics to work on a basis of primary draw between the colors the parents' were born with, and a secondary draw from the grandparents that is lesser, and a third draw from the great grandparents that was even lesser...you would get plenty of genetic variation, even ignoring entirely a sort of "random" color/shape mutation and completely disregarding hair dye (if what happened to shape a sim after they were born, was completely ignored in the reproduction equation).