Recently I was thinking about re-doing my mods folder from scratch (for like the third time) because I got carried away and ended up with 8GB of mods/CC. I was OK with my game taking a while to load but I've been noticing that my ingame performance has gotten a lot more sluggish in general as well.

But I keep thinking about how I'm going to go about default replacements if I do decide to go along with this. The last time, I went and painstakingly replaced (almost) every piece of clothing in the game and- while the results made most of the sims and NPCs look a whole lot nicer and I was happy with it, I'm not sure if I should go through that again...

So I wanted to ask, those of you who use default replacements, do you do it for clothing too? Or do you think it isn't really necessary?

I use most defaults for clothes and hair. Easy to use and doesn't take up as much space as regular CC. But i combine both of them.

No, because I want my Sims to have the choice of the Maxis clothing as well as the CC clothing.

No, I simply ignore Eaxis clothes and sims.

I use some replacement textures for clothes I don't generally use for recoloring, just in case they spawn on townies (not meshes or full replacements, because those can be a bit iffy for CC making). I use default meshes to fix annoyances, like ugly seams or UVmap bugs. I use a big set of pregmorph replacements for a lot of the EAxis clothes to make the meshes more useful. Other than that I use custom clothes and not default replacements.

I actually like and/or don't mind quite a lot of the EAxis clothes, and use the originals and recolors quite a bit - sometimes they just need a bit of recoloring and they're fine. I also really don't like to have to deal with full CC replacements (I mostly use regular GMDC replacements, not the PropertySet ones). CC also have a lot of advantages when it comes to making sims and such (default replacements don't pack with sims, and I don't have the patience to track those items down).

I have mixed clothing. I use some hiders, especially for soccer outfits but I needed to download custom athletic for kids. Also hided something else. Some things have default replacements, usually lenghted waistline (untucked) for shirts and some things what I couldn't stand are replaced completely. Maxis clothing what is acceptable and nice stays as it is and I have a lot of CC clothes, especially for toddlers.

I either like or don't mind most of the Maxis clothing I've only replaced a couple things that I either found too ugly or to dated for my taste (the rave outfits that came with Nightlife, the Basegame hoola outfits with the coconut bras, the "105-s cartoon character dress with the dots from the basegame, the kilts who are everyday wear instead of formal, like they should be, stuff like that)

My sims style lately is really minimal CC and maxis match. I don't default replace anything much, except for the paper delivery kid's outfit which is too yellow for me! I have extra Maxis match genetic skintones to give a wider range, and I really love the Maxis clothes, most of which are really silly. Suits me!

I've only default replaced certain hairstyles that I either dislike or just thought the default looked nice... Skin and eye replacements I have to. As for clothes, no I like a wide variety of clothes. CC and Maxis. I think I've default replaced fbodysweatervest and tfbodytech, because I thought the default colours looked nice, but that's it.

I've mostly gotten CC along with EA clothing and love the soccer outfits as they work very well as athletic outfits and as everyday in late summer and early fall or in the spring when it's warming up.I actually loaded my game with tons of CC mistly for toddlers and children and will use a dfault replacement that make all toddler and child clothing for both genders.

I've default replaced skintones as I wanted something more realistic. But I haven't touched outfits or hair. I have enough variety with my CC for those.

I think that default replacing EAxis items might actually add to your sluggish game play as typically that means more files for your game to process. And the replacements may actually take up more space, and thus require more memory, than EAxis's outfits. So if you're concerned about game response, I'd leave the Eaxis outfits alone.

I didn't know that, that's really helpful to keep in mind, thank you!

I had replaced a wide majority of the Maxis clothes and hair and I had definitely replaced the skins, eyes, makeup and facial hair. Those are a must have for me. My laptop surprisingly handles them pretty well and it's not even a gaming laptop.

I've defaulted a lot of hairs and clothes. I also use a set of skins with many more colors than the standard Maxis four and the Maxis eyes bother me to look at now - they seem so faded and washed out to me. I started with defaults of some base game clothes that I especially loathed and then expanded from there. The base game styles aren't all necessarily bad, but on this computer the blurry, low-res textures on most of them are painfully obvious. There were also some outfits (Angela Pleasant's sun dress, the female Business career "suit", taxi driver uniform, etc.) that I would have hated no matter which texture they were using. Thank heaven for the default replacement database!

So basically default replacing is just swapping out one outfit for another? Can you do that with clothing on different body shapes too or do they have to match up as close as possible to each other's meshes?

They don't have to match up (that's up to you). You can't use two replacements for the same item, and default replacements are for EAxis items. But if you want to replace these clothes with other bodyshapes, you can (if you find or make defaults with bodyshapes - they tend to be more EAxis shaped).

I default work outfits and NPC outfits like paper carrier because they get seen.
In my medieval game I defaulted more as I let townies spawn.

I have faces, eyes, skins, and most clothes and hairs defaulted. That way, my townies and CAS sims generate with reasonable looks. I don't want to spend game time giving people makeovers, so I use defaults instead.

I also have CC for these things, but I try to keep that to a minimum, and rely on nice defaults to keep me going.

I default pretty much everything. I live in 2020 and 2004 fashion, especially low-poly low-res 2004 fashion, just doesn't do it for me. Only thing I hate is that when it comes to MM CC people seem to think that overly saturated is more MM, often leaving me to have to edit the textures myself and desaturate them.

@HarVee I have no idea what you mean.

The only default replacement I use are genetics, Warlokk's Xhires Female Nude Top and bottom meshes (teen to elder) and Bloom's nude bottoms with sexy feet for all other ages/genders replacing Maxis ones, Rensim's Xhires Peau for the skins and Nouk's delicious for the eyes, They're still more or less fantasy eyes but a lot better than Maxis ones, for the alien skin I use maxis shade but slightly modified at home to be Xhires compatible and anatomically correct, otherwise like I told before, I don't pay attention to maxis clothes, all my sims are based on custom bodyshapes and I dress them according to their shapes, then no other default replacement in my game than the ones I told, I don't need any other.

I try to default clothes (@HarVee, I don't think I ever saw anyone in 2004 even remotely dressed like a basegame sim, let alone in 2020 )but I keep changing my mind about what I want and I'm having problems finding things I really like. so how much of the maxis clothes is actually default replaced varies from week to week. I constantly remove clothing defaults and then of course see townies walking around with half-bared bottoms and things like that, so I have to put in new defaults - and after a while I'm not really happy with them and the circle starts again.

^ One of the reasons I don't like using defaults. Townies can't dress even with proper clothes. Give them a selection of proper clothes and hair, and they'll still dress like the lights went out.

I've replaced several tops with untucked simpler designs (to combat the BG tucked ones with awful designs - they mostly look alright now and I don't mind most of the EP ones). Most of the pants aren't too bad. For whole outfits I've mostly done morph/mesh replacements, and several of the texture replacements are to make items untuckable or more usable.

I don't actually care about townies in all of this, but it is neat to have some more options for test sims without having to dress them in CC clothes I'll probably forget about and then remove at some point. I don't remove my default folder.

There are many shirts that are not only tucked in, but they are made for pants that are hiked up extremely high— and to make matters worse, almost none of the pants waistlines are that high. So there’s lots of midriff showing. It’s bad enough for women but look ridiculous for men. I default replace all those shirts.

I know mullet haircuts are supposed to look trashy. But the mullet haircut in TS2 looks like it was made by someone who had never actually seen the haircut before and just had it described to them. It’s a horrible buzzcut with a horizontal part... indescribable yuckiness. I default replace that sucker too.

I know not every human on the planet is a fashion plate. I don’t want all my sims gorgeous and fashionable. But there are some clothes that not even the worst dressed frumpiest people in the world would wear in the sims games. I get rid of that stuff. I like balding, sloppy sims with unfortunate fashion sense— but I don’t want bare-midriffed men with clown haircuts walking around town.

What you don't like the yellow and red kids hat or the Viking helmets? How dare you!

Only joking. Can't stand them myself either.