Some of the townies in The Sims 4 – the collections of families who live in your neighborhoods that serve as their friends, lovers, and fruitcake-bearing welcome wagons – are still a little rough around the edges.
And the Sims team knows this, too. When the base game launched in 2014, it was kind of bare bones: no pools, no toddlers, no ghosts, and a noted lack of other staples, too. However, in May 2022, Maxis dropped a free update for one of the most iconic families in the games – the Goths – and has announced that more updates are to follow.
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The family received new outfits, reworked skin tones, and overall feel truer to their representations throughout the Sims series. And if they continue refreshing some of the townies whose looks are outdated, we’ve found a couple more households who deserve a little makeover, too.
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9 Jacques Villareal Is Inappropriately Dull
The Villareals – dad Jacques, daughter Luna, elder son Hugo, and younger son Max – came to us in Windenburg, the world added in Get Together. And we’d like to get this family in line for some improvements, stat. For starters, Jacques is a level nine criminal with a ton of money (and a wife that mysteriously vanished), so you’d think he’d look a little less librarian, and a little more James Bond. Popular community refreshes for the family make Jacques look more appropriately debonair.
The kids look a lot better off the cuff, with Luna and Max dressing for their part in the family's lore, but people tend give poor, lonely Hugo an outfit touch-up as well. They keep him delightfully awkward, but he's just a little better dressed.
8 Morgan Fyres Could Be So Much Brattier
Introduced in Get Together and residing with her family in Windenburg, Morgan Fyres is difficult to miss when you see her around town. But this rebellious teen's character feels a bit flat. To start with, Morgan’s whole thing is a sibling rivalry with her older sister, Siobhan. Her hunger for thrills and degeneracy don’t mesh well with Siobhan’s aspirations of popularity and order, but the sisters - oddly enough - don’t start the game with any relationship issues.
Now that we have Sentiments too, there’s a whole world to explore in this tense relationship. Additionally, Morgan is a rebel, and already has the look to prove it, but the influx of makeup, nail polish, and accessories since Get Together could give her that teen angst look.
7 Penny Pizzazz Should Be More Fab
Penny is THE girl to know in the city of San Myshuno. She’s level eight in the social media career introduced in City Living, she appears on billboards in the background, and is said to be the most up to date on trends. Like all the townies introduced before the Seasons expansion, Penny doesn’t have hot and cold weather outfits. When that happens, the game auto-generates an outfit appropriate to the world’s temperature for the Sim in question, but we all know that randomly generated outfits in this game aren’t known for being the most cohesive.
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A fashionista like Penny would never never wear a randomly generated outfit, and deserves something of her own. Besides, with so many new accessories, nail colors, and makeup looks added since City Living, she could definitely do with a bit of a glow-up.
6 All The “Glamorous” Characters
We know them and we kind of hate them; Sims flock to them when they show up in public and - oh my god - we were JUST about to have our first kiss. The “lux” Sims, for all their wealth and fabulousness, are kind of plain, and you shouldn't need mods to fix that.
Sims known for their glitz and glamour are decidedly lacking in either. Judith Ward, Octavia Moon, her husband Thorne Bailey, and even non-celebs like Lily Feng and Izzy Fabulous could do with a little more of their promised opulence. We’ve gotten too much makeup, nails, hairs, and accessories for them. If you’re known around town for being dazzling, you ought to really look the part.
5 Nancy Should Be Fancy
One of the series’ earliest dynasties, the Landgraab name is all over the games – buildings, products, and chance cards that allude to vast quantities of wealth. So why the hell do the family members look like they do? Neither of the men have hairstyles that feel fitting: Geoffrey’s doesn’t look right on him, and Malcom’s locks are an awful yellow swatch of blonde. Outfit refreshes also seem imperative – Malcom is a snobby bad boy, but his clothes feel incredibly dated.
Nancy is the real opportunity, though. With so many more customisation options available now, the heir to the massive family fortune should be more decadent.
4 Johnny Zest Doesn't Fair The Best
You’ve definitely seen Johnny Zest around Oasis Springs, but unless you read his household bio, you’d have no idea he’s a Landgraab. Johnny dropped out of school to pursue a career in entertainment, but his parents were none too pleased, disowning him from the family. They seem to have done this so extensively that nobody even knows each other.
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You could take this as a symptom of how intense the divide between them has become, but there’s no way nobody’s mad about their feud in-game. Now that we have Sentiments, it’d be more appropriate to see Johnny upset with his family members, or them upset with him. The notion that they’re total strangers feels unsatisfying to story players.
3 Bland, Boring Eliza Pancakes
The Pancakes family has been likened to the Newbies from older games: wives with similar haircuts married to bearded, slovenly men named Bob that they don’t seem to like. But, while the Newbies had fan legacy status, the Pancakes haven’t gotten as much love. A lot of people find them to be simply unremarkable, and for good reason: they’re base-game townies, so they look a little stale.
Bob seems like the most boring Sim on Earth, but Eliza appears to be aspiring for more. She owns painting supplies, has the Mansion Baron aspiration, and yet nothing about her says either. She’s a plain Jane, if ever there were one.
2 Literally Everyone From Vampires
Vampires was one of the earlier game packs for The Sims 4, releasing in January of 2017 - and it shows. Sims with vampirism have a regular form and a “Dark Form” - a secondary visual form not unlike alien Sims. But as it was in 2017, the availability of things like skin tone, makeup, nails, and clothes was limited, and it feels like they could be so much creepier now.
Give them relevant skin tones like the new grays and whites to reflect their lives lived in darkness. Give them dramatic eye makeup. Give them nail polish. Give them accessories. Make them look more like vampires and less like cosplayers.
1 The Calientes Could Use More Spice
This one has been confirmed already, which is good - it feels the most pressing. There have been a lot of accusations of whitewashing well-known base game families, and Bella was a victim of this as well. The Caliente surname definitely sounds Hispanic, but everyone in the family was notably very pale in The Sims 4. While Katrina is a new face in the series, Nina and Dina have been around since The Sims 2, and their skin tone has lightened considerably since then.
We’ll give the game the benefit of the doubt for the moment, but with dozens more skin tones to choose from, we’re definitely looking forward to the Caliente refresh, too.
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