couldnt agree with you more. sims 4 has hugely disappointed me as a long time simmer from the early days. i cant say i hate everything about it. Create a sim was impressive, though lacking in options previously available. Toddlers: not something i cared about before we had them, but after their release i found very well done. and Vampires i thought to be also very well done. parenthood also not something i thought too much about before but found to be interesting. those packs are what stand out to me but that being said, i'm still overwhelmingly disappointed cause none of them were enough to make me content and give me that feeling that i cant wait to play the sims again today like other games of the past had always provided no matter how long has passed since the last DLC was released. i would much rather have seen a sims 3 remake with better art, better optimization, and added features such as the ones listed above to name a few. It's really time for some competition to step into the spotlight to make EA step up or step out.
The game feels alot like its trying to reach out to the sims 2 crowd and bring them back. i remember thinking with some pack releases like what do i need this for? i already have this for the sims 2 and it doesnt feel so hollow. bowling was one of them, i forget what else. which at the time led me to re-installing the sims 2 rather than going out and getting those packs. it had felt like sims 4 was a prettied up / watered down sims 2. that failed in its intentions.
just my opinion.
I was very pleased with how they handled some of their game packs, I felt many of them actually added more gameplay than even the expansions. Like dine out, owning restaurants and managing food/employees, it actually felt like a SIMulation game but of a different kind. Or the perk system included in vampires, I really didn't expect them to have something like that. I don't have parenthood as I don't have children in my game because of wicked whims but of the gameplay I've seen it comes with a system that influences how children grow which adds more depth, more "systems" to factor in a sims life other than temporary moodlets/emotions.
We need more things like that. Get to work was cool....for a few hours...until you'd seen all the jobs and interactions, owning a business and building it (literally) was definitely the highlight for me. Also, the simray and satellite dish were really cool, hope turbo does something with those someday *COUGH soon COUGH*. Jungle adventure was a HUGE letdown as I really loved world adventures from 3. It needed actual puzzles, more danger, and could have benefited from either more locations or procedurally generated environments/buildings instead of like 6 small jungle areas and a single temple that has a few templates.
The game really is capable of being great, even better than 3 in a lot of aspects but those low invest high return stuff packs are dragging the games potential down considerably.
Now-a-days I just boot 4 up to build houses while listening to music or even sometimes the sims 1 build/buy music when I want to relax. It's funny, they initially made the first game to be nothing more than a house building simulator and it ended up being the most unique game for it's time, now the series has come full circle and it's become nothing more than a building simulator to me.