August 2025 patch good or bad?

The patch was a little bit of a letdown with how it broke so many mods. But I hope that the update made the game more stable and less buggy, less likely to lag or crash. The DirectX 11 update was good. My computer lasts longer before the game just closes itself due to insufficient memory or something (but that might just be because I made a new save without most of my mods).

But is it just me, or did they add stuff no one asked for....? Did one person ask for barely-there rosacea? Stretch marks are fine. But the age spots and birthmarks... why do we get a few specific spots and not a way to draw on age spots, scars, and birthmarks on Sims? Update it to an existing pack if you must have it behind a paywall. The current age spots are like just skin overlays. There are a million of them online for free, and they all clutter up the skin details area in one big list where you can barely tell the thumbnails apart. At least add a CAS organization label mod to list and separate the sections. (Like Sparrow's CC Tidy Details & Tidy Tattoos mod. Or YoruQueenofNightSims's Tidy CAS mod.) 

Why aren't there any good eyelashes still, despite modders creating over a hundred of them far better than what EA puts out? It doesn't look like the new glam kit fixes this either. What a disappointment. Why aren't there twenty new eyelashes? That can be a kit on its own. (Just invite Miiko, Kijiko, Northern Siberia Winds, TwistedCat, Obscurus, MMSIMS, KATCO, Cien, Pralinesims, WightSpider07, Learxfl, dreamgirl, SOMEONE to do it PLEASE.)

Why is there not a "More columns" update for CAS? There is soooo much content now, it's painful to go through only two items at a time. I've used the More Columns mod for years and years now. At least add one more column for console players, or add a toggle to select how many columns they can use for the different display sizes!

Still no contour or highlight makeup categories, or contact category. No eyebags for toddlers, kids, and teens, despite it being considered youthful and cute in some Asian cultures. No scars and body marks you can draw on, despite the programming already existing for tattoos. No better sliders or more presets, despite hundreds existing as mods. No save file corruption fix. No notification toggles. (Many modders have made notification removals. I have one for every festival and pack event. It's so bad; they are so frequent that it makes the game unplayable without them.)

Mt Kom residents are still being created as blonds even though they're Asian. (There's a mod fix for that called Enkidu's Asian Archetype Dark Hair.) New save files still are missing some relationships (looking at you Johnny Zest). Premade Sims and Townie creation are still unbalanced disasters. (Mods to fix this also exist by BosseladyTV, Chingyu, and Kayaker.)

No default skin refresh for the base game skins. I thought this was what the new skin update was going to be, but it was ~wrinkles~.

Sigh.

I'm grateful for the updates that we do get, but it just seems like so little for the thousands of dollars that I put into this game. It's like we're celebrating nothing. Wrinkles? And some birthmarks I'll never use? A sarcastic yippee. Hardly anyone in real life has those exact spots. People want to make Sims that look like themselves. In real life, I put stuff on to get rid of my sun damage. I don't want to add sun damage spots and melanoma to my Sims in a fantasy game. I want escapism, not drudgery.

EA doesn't even have to pay for the physical distribution of the ~100 packs and kits this game has.  Where's all my money going? (That's rhetorical, I know it's going to other EA games I'll never care about, and will never play. Grrrrrr. The Sims is the only PC/Console game I play.)

I really hope Paralives and InZoi catch up. I purchased early access InZoi to fund its development, but didn't even bother downloading the game. I'm waiting for it to develop more. I hear it's about as developed as The Sims 4 was when it first came out. I don't think it will end up with so many game-breaking patch updates multiple times a year. And the modders are already starting to work on it. It shouldn't be such a money pitfall as The Sims.

At this point, I feel like The Sims 4 is a leech sucking me dry. I didn't know it would be such a never-ending money pit. Why bother buying more packs and kits if I can't play with them all together? Why bother trying to collect every pack and kit if they will never stop releasing new ones? Am I willing to invest ANOTHER thousand dollars into this game? Not with the quality it is, and the quality of the packs being released with reused game content. (How many rabbitholes and swing sets do we need? And moodlets?)

I wanted The Sims 5 with a better, more stable engine, and Sims with personalities like earlier Sims versions. Instead, I get the never-ending kits that don't add any new gameplay to a game over a decade old that still has bugs. 

Yeah, I stopped buying anything new. 

I would buy an expansion pack that added Create a World. And I would buy an updated graphics version of The Sims 2 that looked more like The Sims 4. 

I won't play multiplayer. I won't buy microtransactions. I won't buy an app version.

I feel like EA is really disconnected from its fans. The latest survey didn't list anything I wanted or could get excited about. The Sims development team clearly cares, but it's like they aren't getting enough funding or something. Everything's show without substance now. "How little can we get away with for as much money as we can? In as little time as we can?"