I want to propose an important improvement for the character editor and the resident generation system. Currently, hairstyles and clothing in the game are not divided into male and female categories, and this creates a lot of confusion.
Because of this lack of separation, the game often creates completely inappropriate characters in the city: men in women’s outfits with women’s hairstyles, or women with men’s haircuts and receding hairlines (like in the screenshot). It looks ridiculous and completely breaks the visual realism of the game.
In the editor itself, it’s also very inconvenient to find the things you need when everything is mixed together in one list. It would be great to make a clear division into male and female categories for hair and clothing. This is needed both for convenience in the editor and so that the city’s residents look logical and match their gender.
The problem with these hairstyles is actually a bad hairdresser in town. The bad hair salon is the reason for the messed up “haircuts”. We have already requested a rework for that because for some reason, they make females having that bald cut and males having ponytails. I’m afraid until the team fixes the hair dresser, we have to endure it or use the customZoi cheat on the townies…
In regards of the categories, CAZ splits the hair by lengths instead of gender, which I personally prefer. Because what would count as a “male haircut”? Every short hair? I have female Zois with short hair and male Zois with longer hair. So it might not be easy to split them by gender?
Regarding clothing, I personally have not encountered townies that are dressed weird since they wear default outfits that are set by the devs as far as I know. The only bug I had was, that some females ran around in underwear wearing a hat.
As for your request, if you mean the clothing will be split between male and female, would that remove the ability to mix match clothing?
Because I personally don’t want that. I like to wear knitted, cute cardigans with my male Zois while I want to be able to wear college jackets, loose pants and oversize shirts with my females. If it is just a filter for “sorting”, I don’t mind that. But I personally don’t want that restriction.
Interesting information about the barber in the city, I haven’t tried visiting him yet myself, so this is a discovery for me But if it really comes down to his algorithms, that only confirms my thinking.
To prevent situations like this from happening, it would be very good to add a special parameter or selection button to the game settings or to CAZ itself. For example: “Separate clothing and hairstyles by gender” or “Keep everything in a common list”.
If such a parameter appears, then both the barber-NPC and the game itself when generating ZOI will understand which items and hairstyles suit the character by default and which don’t. This will solve the problem with ridiculous-looking townspeople (like those bald spots on women or heels on men) and at the same time maintain order in the categories for those who need it!
I think there is a misunderstanding here. I didn’t confirm that this comes down to the normal NPC generation algorithm or that separating hairstyles by gender would fix it.
When I said “bad hairdresser”, I meant the actual hair salon mechanic. Since the salon was introduced, there have already been several discussions about NPCs receiving strange/random hairstyles from it.
There is actually a recent thread specifically about this:
The OP noticed the same thing after the barber services were introduced: men suddenly appearing with ponytails and women with bald/receding hairstyles. Other players in that thread also connect it to the salon, and one person even removed the barber chairs because the autonomous hairstyles seemed completely random.
I also talked about this myself before:
I went to the Bliss Bay hairdresser with a male Zoi and came out with pigtails. And I was seeing other townies walking around with similarly strange hairstyles while that salon was active.
There are other discussions about bad haircuts from salons too:
Kjun has also talked about the hair stylist system and stylist skill here:
So my point was that the woman in your screenshot might be affected by the salon/barber system, rather than being evidence that normal townie generation needs male/female hairstyle restrictions.
That’s also why I’m still not convinced that separating everything by gender would solve the actual problem.
If the salon is giving NPCs unsuitable/random hairstyles, then I would rather see the salon selection itself improved. For example, NPC hairstylists could have better rules for choosing an appropriate style, while we as players still keep the freedom to use every hairstyle on every Zoi.
I also still haven’t personally seen ordinary generated male townies randomly spawning in dresses or similar clothing. From what I’ve seen, their regular outfits seem much more controlled/preset. The strange hairstyle issue became especially noticeable after the salons were added.
I would be completely fine with optional Masculine / Feminine / All filters in CAZ for easier browsing, but it still raises the question what exactly classifies as male/female (aside from “obvious” clothing like dresses/high heels). Because there are actually a lot of unisex clothing pieces in my opinion.
So I think we are talking about two different things: better NPC/salon styling rules versus restricting the player’s CAZ options by gender.
I completely agree that long hair or ponytails on men are absolutely normal if it’s a regular unisex style. But my post is specifically about the fact that the game currently doesn’t distinguish between “just long hair” that suits men, and specifically feminine hairstyles.
It’s one thing when a man has a neat ponytail or neat long or medium-length hair characteristic of men’s hairstyles, and quite another when the barber script puts purely feminine hairstyles with characteristic feminine styling on male NPCs. It doesn’t look like a conscious character style choice, but rather like a technical error that ruins the entire impression of the world.
That’s exactly why I’m suggesting introducing filters and tags (Masculine / Feminine / Unisex). This would allow:
The barber script and the NPC generation system to choose hairstyles that match the character’s gender by default.
Us in CAZ to see which hairstyles were intended as masculine, which as feminine, or which as unisex while still preserving the ability to enable the “All” filter for creative experiments.
This is especially important for clothing and heeled shoes. Organization in the categories will help the game become more logical and “alive” without depriving us of freedom of choice
That way we’d all be happy and we can change whenever we want. For example, I’ve had a lot of doubts about this skin. I made a texture I saw on “Pinterest” for a men’s shirt, but I had to ask at home if this garment was for men, because so many buttons with loops and those short, tight sleeves still confuse me. I suppose it’s a bit of current fashion (or maybe I’m just very old-fashioned ).
I think we are talking past each other right now.
I have nothing against the sorting filters. Since they don’t restrict anything, I’m really fine with that.
But the hair for NPCs are bad right now because of another problem. That’s why I sent links in the previous post. The hair dresser has a “skill level” and it’s often very bad. So even if we filter the hair to male and female, the hair is still going to be messed up. Then male teenagers can have the bald, receeding hair, etc. It is this bad “on purpose”. It is NOT a style choice by the NPC Zoi. It’s because all the barbers have no skill and that is what needs balancing fixing.
Your filter idea for sorting is all good and I support it for people who want that
In that form - I wouldn’t agree. Yes, it would be more convenient, but it destroys freedom of choice. I don’t need male Zoe characters in women’s dresses and purely feminine hairstyles, but that doesn’t mean nobody needs them. Similarly, bald women or women with “crests” - such a hairstyle would suit some punk girl well, especially if you dye it pink or green.
And I can perfectly well want to create, for example, a character like this:
then it would look more normal… and it seems to me the problem is probably not just because of the hairdresser in the city, since not all NPCs automatically go there… or maybe I don’t understand something…
Hellloooo! I deleted all the barber shop chairs because it was a disaster(゜_゜). My zois after that all had normal hair then! So maybe it’s a mix of both things?? Bc before there was the barber shop update all my zois had the normal male/female hair. The issue started after that and i sort of fixed it by throwing the barber out of my town lol
The barber / hairdresser is the cause of all those crazy hairstyles - at least in my game. Before this was implemented I never had an issue with strange hairstyles in my cities.
I agree - the hairstyles should be sorted in male / female / unisex and then applied that way by the hairdressers.
On the issue with the “skill” which was mentioned by @Minthyuyu - how do you know what skill level the NPC hairdresser has? Is there anything we can do about it gameplaywise?
As far as I understood it from kjun’s post, it’s more one of those “hidden passive skills” not an active skill like fitness or cooking.
I discussed this topic here together with @Moooody that we would prefer to have a way to improve this skill actively instead of having the barber “butcher” our Zois to practice it.
@Minthyuyu left likes there as well! They should give us at least some control over this skill to actively improve it for our Zois and their employees.
. The bad hair salon is the reason for the messed up “haircuts”. We have already requested a rework for that because for some reason, they make females having that bald cut and males having ponytails. I’m afraid until the team fixes the hair dresser, we have to endure it or use the customZoi cheat on the townies…
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But if it really comes down to his algorithms, that only confirms my thinking.
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