As for Sims 3, I agree with you on certain points that I wish the team would’ve further addressed instead of pushing out TS4 so quickly. Going to parties, clubs really were very empty in S3 but I think that depended on your game’s specs. I actually loved the open world of TS3 bcus it was just so pretty. I enjoyed following my sims around in the taxi or their car or bike and just looking at the world around them. Crossing the mini bridge into town in Riverview, driving into it looked so pretty to me and felt so real. Going over the bridge in Bridgeport during Fall or winter or at night, it was breathtaking. I will never, I can never get over the idea of an open world. I do miss some of the interactions of TS3 when we got the little dialogue between sims at the top. I miss that. I miss how sims would wave when the recognized each other. The dialogue was small in 3 but it was and is a bit better than 4. I wish if I asked a sim about their day in S4, I’d get a message back like how in 3, it’d say whether the sim was happy or not. Kids would make fun of the parents and you’d see the joke at the top of what the one said to the other. Same with gossiping. The tree house interactions in S3 with kids was hilarious bcus of the pranks. S4 doesn’t even have that for kids. I did like TS2 romantic dates and the memory system, something that both TS3 and TS4 lacks. I agree about the restaurants in TS3 but I still enjoyed the dates with sims and they lasted for as long as I wanted it to. There was no time restriction like how it is in TS2 and TS4. Plus, there wasn’t no block off with other sims in the family. I could at least hop around to see what other sims in the household were doing or have them do something while I’m playing another sim but that’s not a thing in S4. Now, I didn’t play much of TS2 and though I still have it, the game always felt rushed to me bcus of the aging. I was never a S2 expert though so I still don’t know how to mod it to really get the full feel that everyone says about it. The color wheel in TS3 was also a huge thing that I wish they would’ve brought to Sims 4 and I like all that we can do with pets in TS4, however, I don’t miss controlling them like most. I thought I would and sometimes it’d be nice to make sure they use the bathroom and eat but I don’t miss having the extra sim space to control them much. I would, however like to control relationships of my pets with other pets. I did like that idea in S3 where I could send a pet off to interact with another and I could control that. So that, I did like. In TS3, the small pets we could interact with more. We had turtles and fish we could feed and we have no turtles or fish we can feed in TS4. Sure there was the whole small pet stuff but we all know the huge issue around that. Fish could die in S3 but not in S4.

I do believe that the team did make an effort to really try to focus more on the software system of S4, making it so it’s playable for a lot of people with lower grade computers. However, there was talk of everyone needing to upgrade their computers bcus of something that the sims team was working on that would make it so future packs of the game will no longer be playable if any computer is dated prior to Windows 10. Though S3 was great, my game crashed more times than I can count and my game has only crashed a few times and froze a few times mainly due to mods in S4. Now though, there’s this thing and it’s been an issue for a while where sims stand in idle which from what someone said, the team does know about it yet won’t fix it. The group system in S4 is amazing and I do enjoy going out with my Sims more. As much as I enjoy the group system, there’s still the annoyance of other sims being very intrusive. The minor things annoy me when sims are talking standing up and sit when it’s not necessary or when arguments happen but sims have no true emotional reaction. It’s lacking. In S3, if a sim cheated on my sim and it’s happened, for one, it annoyed me that the other sim somehow knew but I liked that we had the ability to confess and plead with that sim to make the relationship work. Sims would also get slapped for getting caught. Same in S2. I liked wondering that after those few days were up, will my sim still have a wife or girlfriend. It’s not like that in S4. There’s no reaction. My sim will curse or yell at her mother and they would still chat casually. I do love going to a cafe and it not having to be a rabbit hole like in 3. Same with restaurants and retail lots. I still rarely take my sims to the library and museum but I’ve been working on that. I loved bowling just as equally in both S3 and S4. I never experienced a S2 party to compare but I liked S3 parties though glitchy bcus yes, the routing was/still is a huge problem in that game. I mean, really there’s pros and cons for both you know. I agree that I wished that TS4 was a good combination of aspects of its predecessors. Now, I can only hope that S5 will be a mix of all 3.

The huge lack in socials in TS4 was and still is a huge thing for me bcus I still miss those little details from 3, especially the slow dancing. So I agree that S4 is greatly lacking in that. A lot of those socials, squeeze, kiss up arm, I remember from S2 but we do have feed a bite in S4 but the interaction for it is not smooth at all. I often times forget we have it and sims have to be sitting next to each other and not across from each other in order for it to work but you also have to cancel your sim eating, to do it. Omg, elders need a whole stuff pack to themselves, complete with new clothing, wallpaper, shoes, decor, hair, music, tv shows and interactions. Heck, it could be a game pack. Oh, and preteens. Now, I know we didn’t have it for S3 but it’d be nice to see a new age in the game where kids go from 10 years old to 13/14 without mods. Oh, and remember when kids could bake in S3 and it’d go towards the cooking skill or when kids could paint. There’s so much missing. I agree. We still don’t have slides for kids, no seesaws as I mentioned, no spring rider, the pools also need more interactions other than splash. What happened to the hold your breath contest. I wish we could play marco polo in the pools where parents could lift the kids on their shoulder so they could also play with teams of 4 at least. I miss that real wholesome gameplay. We don’t even have bikes.

S4 has certain rare items geared mainly towards specific worlds, like granite falls or Selvadorada to learn and find different items there. I just wish it was more universal in all worlds. Same thing with bugs. There hasn’t been a secret spot either since the base game and granite falls. I also miss the vacation aspect that S3 had. With 4, there are certain recipes sims can make when in certain moods that I often times forget are there but still remember, like if angry, sims can make some sort of angry spaghetti, if energized and I just had my sim make this yesterday, they can make the energized plate or something like that. If sims are playful, they can make the gummy pancakes. If flirty, they can make the heart cookies. I don’t think there’s anything for sad/confident/focused moods but certain paintings you can make with those emotions. A lot of different things exist but are easily forgotten about in S4 just bcus sometimes it does lack that wow factor moment. Things get old, then forgotten about and then we remember it like, oh yea! Like I said, I think this game has some great potential but it can’t get there if the Sims Teams keeps pushing out things that we don’t want or packs that are lacking or patches that break everything right down to the clothes and eyelashes. It’s a good game. It could be great but sometimes I feel like I don’t get those same vibes from the gurus anymore. It’s like, it’s just another day at the office. Like, they have to force to sell product bcus they themselves aren’t excited about it. I remember the hype they had on stream with Island Paradise. It’s just not the same and it’s noticeable.

I agree with you that if all the main game elements (like basements, toddlers etc) had been present from the start we would probably be further ahead. About TS3, I will say that I don’t particularly miss the open neighborhood only because I didn’t care for all the rabbitholes, routing problems and stuck sims. TS3 had a ton of things that I would like back, but even when I played TS3 I missed TS2: the excellent social and group interactions, the animations, the memory and attraction systems, the interests/ enthusiasms and hobbies. What I would really like is a Sims game that is a combination of those two I think. In many ways I find/ found TS3 to be a shallow game. Yes, it had a lot of stuff to do and use, but some things were handled in a way that seemed shallow: there were minor pets, for example, but you couldn’t do much with them. Community lots were nearly always empty and parties poorly attended. The store bought restaurant, retail system, bakery and spa were incomplete and unsatisfying (to me), and I didn’t like taking my sims on dates because of all the rabbit holes. Finally, the element that felt the most unsatisfying to me was that the socials and interactions between Sims, especially those of different ages, were so thin.

TS4 has improved on some things from TS3 in a way that makes me think they made a conscious effort in certain areas. Group outings and community lots are much better. Community lots are usually well populated, with or without the presence of a resident club. Clubs have added a lot of immersion, fun, realism and options for socialization and communal relations. Group conversations are better than before and I really enjoy doing things with my sims like going on dates, going out to restaurants, using the spa to take a yoga class or get a massage, going to bars and nightclubs, using the library or museum, even going to parks. I also like parties in TS4; they remind me more of the TS2 parties.

Still, in one important area TS4 remains as shallow as TS3, and that is in the socials between Sims. The romantic socials aren’t bad (but could definitely be improved with the return of interactions like slow dancing, waltz, feed a bite, shy kiss, check out, goose, squeeze, tender kiss, up arm kiss, smooch). However, the interactions between parents and teens, parents and kids, parents and toddlers, teens and teens, teens and kids, kids and kids, kids and toddlers, toddlers and toddlers could all use improvement. Actually I should toss elders in there too, because they don’t have a lot of unique interactions either. (I agree with you about babies too — they should free the babies and make them small sims and not just objects). Mostly I just wish sims in TS4 could interact together more — casually touch each other, pass things back and forth, throw balls, do sports in a group, play games like Mary Mack, cops and robbers, hide and seek, hold hands, have pillow fights, sing/ teach nursery rhymes, play with toys together (as opposed to just side by side), play piggyback with a bigger sim, or dance on feet (like in TS2), bake or cook together as a family, sing together (beyond carols or folk songs), play in bands, etc.

In addition to all of these social elements, which I wish they would bring back from previous games and enhance, TS4 could benefit from the inclusion of more risk and danger, more challenge and purpose. Perhaps there could be more trait or skill gains from completing certain difficult in-game activities (beyond the aspirations), or more rare and hard to find collectibles or ingredients to encourage travelling at certain times or in certain ways. Or there could be rare recipes with special properties, or unique abilities, which could only be unlocked with a certain amount of effort, or after a certain sequence of steps (like the last kindness challenge). If these sorts of quests were to involve doing a few activities with more than one sim, that would be even better. I get that solo activities are easier to animate and include in TS4 (with all the potential for various emotions etc that each one must include here), but if any Sims version is to be a realistic game there must be worthwhile goals, interesting socials and depth of immersion. I do hope they improve the game in these areas as well as by revising certain skills. They definitely could if they wanted to do so.

If the devs were to clone an object, then update it within a new pack, patches for one pack, or the other, may potentially break the object, since the functions and tuning (packed xml with parameters for instantiation, inheritance, interaction filters, component naming and association, static enumerators, +) for the new object are non-existent or incompatible. Additionally, each pack is effectively a separate sub-product, therefore, the object can’t be sold as new, which means, legally, that they can’t present it as a component of the new package. An updated version of an asset from another pack can only be sold as a fix, or free update. This is what I’m referring to as ‘bad practice’ – they can do it easily, but it wouldn’t be cost-effective, and the ‘players’ would rebel against the devs for ruining the original objects with undesired updates.

Well I never said I think TS4 gives you your money’s worth. Quite the opposite. It very clearly does not. At the end of the day, it is a half-baked Sims game, and a blatant money grab. Nothing changes that. My stance on that is the same as yours and many others’.

The only thing I’m arguing against, is people calling the devs lazy. They aren’t necessarily lazy. Indeed, a lot of features and packs seem rather lazy in execution. But that something seems like lazy work, does not mean it is lazy work. The game is the way it is because of financial and business reasons on the company’s (EA) part (abysmally low development budget), and poor priotitizing and decision-making on the gurus’ part.

I too hate what is happening to this franchise. It’s disheartening to see how this iteration is being handled/mishandled. EA ruins most franchises they touch. Every franchise that comes into their possesion is ultimately doomed to fail due to pure corporate greed. At least The Sims doesn’t have lootboxes… Yet.