Neighborhood stories, and adult family bios.
Firstly - Neighborhood stories were the absolute best things ever, because you could build your town from the ground up and add all the details in those stories about your townies. It made the game much more customizable, and more story friendly that just 'here, play this.' It added much more depth and life to the game.
Secondly - The Sims 2 was much more mature and realistic than 3 and 4. The old lady in Strangetown who had a graveyard full of her old husbands, all of them being rich and dying mysteriously after just marrying her... The couple who basically stole the son of that old woman and was using him as a living science experiment in their basement... The dad of the Pleasant family in Pleasantview cheating on his career driven wife with the maid because his wife wasn't giving him any love?
I absolutely loved these premade bios, because they added realism to the game that we just don't have anymore. When Sims 3 came about, the game got a whole lot more kid friendly, and less people friendly as a whole. I was a child when I played Sims 2, and wasn't traumatized by the bios at all. They made me appreciate the mature story telling, and it was honestly fun to play around with those mature themes to make fun stories. Sims 3 and 4 make it seem like children are just stupid and need to be sheltered from the real world, so they leave out mature details. or they force you to pay money for it, in the master suite stuff pack.
