Hello Sims Team!
First of all, thank you for hosting an event like this. It means a lot to the community that you are willing to listen to and engage with our experiences and concerns.
As for what those are for me, I think a large problem with The Sims franchise as a whole is that it feels like a Millennial Young Adult simulator, with few activities and meaningful relationships for other life stages. I think this has gotten better with newer packs, but the base game is still a bit lackluster in this area. Teen sims are practically just young adults who go to school. Children have very few things they can actually do in the game and their skills mean nothing unless they complete the entire aspiration.
Additionally, the family interactions are still lacking. Not only interaction-wise, but just the ability to create diverse families from the get-go in CAS. As of right now, the only pre-set relationships you can make in CAS are parent/child, sibling, and spouse. There is no way to create your aunt or grandparent or cousin without having to first make the parent. For people who have lost their parents or have difficult relationships with them, but still have close relationships with other members of their family, it can be painful to have to make them in the game, even as just a placeholder. Families look many different ways and a way TS4 can honor that is by giving the ability to make grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, boyfriend/girlfriends, and fiances out the bat from CAS. Ideally, it would be neat if those relationships had unique interactions in-game, but I believe the bare minimum is just to be able to establish those relations.
Another way to build upon the diversity of the game is to add more LGBTQ+ representation. As a person in that community myself, I have always valued the inclusivity of the Sims franchise, all the way from the days of TS2 up until today. The gender options update was a HUGE milestone for TS4, but there are some areas of improvement. The team made all the clothing choices available for all body frames, however, many of these options look distorted, giving the appearance of body characteristics that aren't there. For example, putting many of the dresses on masculine framed sims makes them look like they have breasts even when they do not. I think it would be nice to go back and retexture some of these items, but I think its more important that moving forward, new content is given this thought and reviewed on both frames to make sure it looks presentable. Furthermore, gender-neutral pronouns and language would be an ideal addition to TS4. Many people are now out as nonbinary (including myself!) and feel limited by the binary choices of gender in the Sims. Many games still have this issue, but I have high expectations for TS4 as a life simulator to be leading in this area. I understand that translation can be a big barrier in making a change like this, but with thoughtful collaboration with members of other cultures and native speakers of other languages, I believe TS4 can do its best to offer more gender neutral language in the game for its nonbinary players.
Next, an idea I have is to give players the ability to create custom styled looks. I have a LOT of sims in my save file, and dressing them each can be a pain. I usually go to styled looks to pick something quickly, but the options are so limited and I find myself with townies who wear the same handful of outfits. Giving players the chance to save custom styled looks would be a great opportunity. There could even be an option to upload custom styled looks on the gallery! With this in mind, I would love it if townies would randomly generate to the styled looks. I have a lot of NPCs who walk around in the most bizarre clothing and I either have to go into CAS to fix them or let it break my suspension of disbelief as I play. This could happen independent of the previous idea, but would go nicely together.
Lastly, I have a note on the cross-compatibility of packs. I have all packs (except Batuu) and I always get excited when there is cross-compatibility, but unfortunately this doesnt happen often. I would love to see more holiday traditions involving activities from Spa Day or from Eco Lifestyle. Things of this nature really bring The Sims 4 to life and make buying multiple packs really worthwhile. Going forward, it would be nice to see more effort put into the cross-compatibility of DLC.
Thank you so much for your time and energy. I really appreciate the extra care gone into hearing the voices of the TS4 community as of late, and believe that you are all doing your best to improve upon this game. I hope you all have a marvelous day!
Sul Sul,
Rhyan
EA Staff (Retired)