What is most important for depth?

A tough one, because all of these need to be fixed! I was torn the most between personality and meaningful life events, but chose the latter in the end.

While sim personalities leave a lot to be desired, at least they do exist in some form. The same can't be said for sims properly reacting to and remembering things happening around them. We need memories of important events, not just moodlets, because moodlets last for a few hours maybe, sometimes days, and then they're gone forever. But you don't just stop grieving over your deceased mother or being angry at your cheating husband after two days.

In TS2 sims would occasionally remember things from the past and react to them again, whereas one of my sims in TS4 couldn't even be bothered to react once when her daughter was burning to death right next to her. Parenthood made a step in the right direction by introducing values that can be taught to children and will stay with them for the rest of their lives, but we need more of that. And once we have it, they can start fleshing out personalities to make sure not every sim reacts the same way to everything.

This was hard to vote for. It was a three way tie between personality, more meaningful life events, and fleshing out the lifespans. I love the Sims 2 turn on/turn offs and the traits from Sims 3 and the fact that you can have five traits because three just doesn't cut it. Ultimately I voted for more meaningful life events/memories because it will make things better and more realistic.

It is a difficult choice! I want all of these fixed, but I think that if the sims' personalities are fixed first, I can get more attached to them now and thus enjoy the game more as I play out their lives. It's important for many players to feel attached, otherwise they don't really care about what happens to them, thus the game gets boring more easily.

@SimGuruLyndsay ‏
@SimGuruRyan
@SimGuruGraham
Up there is the list to turn a game with many wonderful features into a wonderful game in total, imo. B)

All these points are what this game needs most.
Right now personality is tops on my list because these sims don't feel as unique to me as past sims games.
I would still love to see a whim bubble dedicated to trait related whims since sims have one dedicated to emotions. This will bring more attention to the personality of your sim.

I think consequences has a low score because it's described kind of narrowly and can be a part of relationships and life events.
There should be consequences for declaring another sim a nemesis. They should be proactive in getting payback for negative incidents.
There should be consequences for the choice you make related to life events.

Tentatively going with relationships. As a free will off micromanaging sandbox player I feel emotions and personality often get in the way, as do consequences. The game cannot know how each of my sims will react to the death of another, to time-outs (focused, really?!) and the like and it has even less way of knowing what kind of society I play in.

So I thought "What EP did I have the most fun so far?" and the answer was Get together and the rather open political career from City living. Both are focused on relationships between sims, though of a different kind than romantic ones. Family, co-workers, ex-roommates in college, rivals, research teams, people that do not neccesarily like each other but are in for the same goal or simply all the kids in town who have seen the monster under the bed... a web that covers all my sims and gives them a shared history. At the point the sims world comes to live for me.

@CK213 Thanks for tagging the gurus! It's nice that someone else thought it worthy to be tagged since I always tag them in my own ideas so it's refreshing for once hahahahah

Other. Namely: all.

I ended up going with memorable life events though it was tied with fleshed out personalities. This game really needs to differentiate between each sim as much as possible. I love this game but diversity of each sim is where it most struggles. Good thing I have a huge imagination.

Thank you for everyone who is explaining their vote! It's good to hear why everyone wants certain things and how it contributes to the many play styles and enjoyability etc. I think these explanations and votes can be useful to help clarify to the devs what to focus on, regarding the core of the game.

I chose meaningful life events because a lot of events in the game seem to just give a temporary moodlet, and once it's gone, it doesn't seem to affect gameplay all that much. Maybe if we had a memory system that ties into a sim's personality (kind of like Inside Out), it would be better. Some of the things in Sims 2 like the lifetime aspiration bar were good too, providing boosts to sims if they have a generally fulfilling life.

All of the other things you stated are good too, of course. Fleshed out life stages and more in-depth personalities would help a lot. Parenthood was a step in the right direction regarding the life stages, and the phases are somewhat true-to-life and add a little depth to kids and teens. It's pretty nice. And the character values system is pretty great too.